Nusiki is a new music social network, with functionality similar to Facebook and Twitter. We’ve seen this before with the likes of Last.fm and MySpace that have been around for years.
In this review, let’s find out if Nusiki’s features are enough to make you consider switching.
Setup
Because it’s a social network, the app requires you to create an account in order to use it after you download and install it from Google Play.
This is quite simple, however. You have three options: signing up with Facebook, Twitter, or an email address.
Features
You will be met with a Facebook-like feed after you sign in. As such, each post can be liked, commented on, or shared.
Listen to the music within posts by tapping on the song’s title or image caption.
To control playback, use the player at the bottom. Swipe up from the player to maximize it. This will reveal the YouTube video if available, the seek time, as well as the like, comment, and share controls.
At the top of this feed is a shuffle mode. This allows you to switch between reverse chronological and random order.
Swipe from the left to reveal a sidebar or press the icon at the top left. From here, you are able to view notifications, respond to private messages, change account settings, invite friends, and give feedback. There’s also an explore option which brings up a feed of music of users you have not followed.
Your account follows specific users by default. To change who you’re following, swipe from the left to reveal the sidebar and tap on your profile information in order to go to your profile. Click “Following” under your username and unselect users using the icons on the right.
Tap the search button at the top right to look for music, users, and hashtags.
Nusiki shows promise as a social network stream for music, but partly due to the fact that it is new, Nusiki needs some improvements.
The app requires more optimization because the interface commonly hangs, especially when bringing it to the foreground or sending it to the background. Music will often lag, skip back a second or so, or pause itself.
There also is an inconsistency with the music player where you can either swipe up on or tap the panel to maximize it, but you can only tap on the panel to minimize it.
You cannot listen to songs you find through the search menu. Therefore, the service isn’t the best for previewing what songs sound like. Also, you can’t perform a search on the feed itself.
I found one fault with the setup, and that was the lack of Google account integration. I believe adding this makes sense since it is present in many other apps like it, and hopefully, it will be added in the future.
While I prefer darker themes, Nusiki should consider adding a lighter one for those who prefer them and for situations where there is a lot of direct sunlight.
What We Liked
- Potentially endless music
- Social interaction
- The ability to shuffle music
- You don’t need to follow users in order to listen to songs
- Private messaging
- Option to make profile private
Room for Improvement
- Only posted songs can be listened to
- App interface lags after startup
- Transitions from foreground and background cause playback to lag, to go back slightly, and/or to stop
- Playback lags after transitions in between songs
- Inconsistency with swiping the music player
- Inability to search through feed
- Setup should include Google account integration
- Needs to provide a lighter theme
Even networks such as Facebook and Twitter that are not primarily focused on music are competing with the service. They have tens to hundreds of millions of users more whom many share artists and songs with others.
The exposure they provide currently exceeds Nusiki’s specialty because, ultimately, people will not move to another network unless they know their family, friends, and associates are going to use it.
[pb-app-box pname=’com.nusiki.distribution’ name=’Nusiki’ theme=’light’ lang=’en’]
Pebble is arguably the first successful smartwatch manufacturer, and we’ve seen some great updates from them in the past year or so. Pebble Steel and Time were both highly praised additions to the family, and it looks like we can add another name to that list. Meet Pebble Time Round.
Pebble is claiming roughly two days of battery life with this new smartwatch. It looks like there’s been a focus on fast charging, as the Time Round can supposedly get enough juice to power through a full day in just a 15 minute charge. It will be interesting to see if original Pebble owners will migrate to the new, round watch, given that the original Pebble could easily last a week on a single charge. Pebble Time Round will use a proprietary charger not unlike the one made for the previous models.
From what we can see, there is more focus on customization with this watch as well. There are three different colors that are coupled with a 14mm band, and two with the 20mm band. So overall, buyers will have five choices with the Time Round. It is also worth nothing that, according to the product page, metal bands are coming soon. It retails for $249 and you can order one directly from Pebble. Keep in mind that the watch won’t ship for 6-8 weeks, so you won’t be able to get your hands on it right away.
