The menu on the phone app gave few options. There is no importing of current playlists so you have to start over recreating them with the PC portion of MeCanto. You’ll definitely find yourself struggling if you have a large collection (and isn’t this the intended audience – those with more songs than they can get on a 16GB chip?).

I love the idea and the attempt but after a couple of days invested in trying to get it flowing it’s just not working out. One thing I’d like to see is some of the software functionality of Mobbler placed into McCanto. Primarily though, until they can get the buffers or datarate improved it’s just gonna be a weekend fling.

Uzi.

Hi Suraj,

Thank you very much for your fair review!
We are currently in beta stage and keep updating the service according to requests and comments from our users so we really appreciate your input.
We are already working on improving some of the weaknesses you mentioned in your review : ‘un-uploaded’ tracks will be clearly marked (and possibly the user will be able to filter them out when their PC is offline) and a more detailed status indication for the PC application is on its way. In addition we’re currently considering the various options for generating a rating for tracks according to its play count and other relevant parameters.
As for the continuous play issue – MeCanto works in a way similar to Winamp and WMP where you create a playlist while browsing your music library and this playlist gets played. This model give the user the flexibility to build his desired custom playlist on-the-fly and manage it easily in a separate view. In addition the user can have the equivalent of ‘continuous play’ by choosing the album/artist/genre/folder he wishes to play and pressing the ‘add to playlist’ or ‘play’ buttons (in the options menu).
As for the security risk – we obviously understand your concerns. Security has been a main issue in the design of our system as one of our team members is an experienced security analyst. That’s why the entire operation of our client is performed in ‘push mode’, doesn’t open any ports and doesn’t allow ANY incoming connections (unlike some other similar services). This design brings the security risks of our application to a definite minimum. Furthermore, users are always welcome to read and query us regarding our privacy policy at http://mecanto.com/privacy .
Regarding the limit for only one play per account at a time – it’s mostly a legal limit. We will happily lift this limit as soon as we get the green light from our legal consultants. But anyhow, Future versions of the client will not logout but only prompt for a retry (it is already implemented in our upcoming iphone client and will also come with our next symbian version).

Thanks again and please feel free to contact me with any question/remark regarding this issue.
Cheers,
Uzi.