TheFilter, a UK-based music recommendation startup that I profiled in last August is entering its private beta phase. On its landing page, they now have a new logo, and three demo Flash slides appeared show that it is not only served as a music tracking engine, but rather a startup dedicated to recommend good musics, movies, videos, Web videos for their users.

“We’ve all sat there at the computer with muscle fatigue in our thumbs and faced with so much information without focus,” said Peter Gabriel, an investor and partner in TheFilter. “Getting the good stuff without the grief, that is the dream. And I’m not talking just about music, I mean everything. Not just a disc jockey, but a life jockey.”

As reported by Los Angeles Times, TheFilter is slated to be launched in May to the public. I’ll write another review on its public version by then. Stay tuned.

iLike, an Internet music service provider has released a plugin that works on Windows Media Player, shortly thereafter the released of iLike Sidebar for iTunes. The plugin is a relatively small download weight in at 2.6MB, and existing Windows users that download and install this plugin will automatically see an iLike sidebar appear in the right-hand side when they open Windows Media Player. In fact, this plugin can only works on the latest and updated Windows Media Player, if you’re still using Windows Media Player version 8, you’ll find that you won’t see any sidebar you expected it to be appeared in the first place.

According to iLike, this new iLike Sidebar combines an existing iLike.com user’s friend-list and her Facebook friend-list, as well as show what all her friends are listening to. It has designed to test the listening habits with friends, share music library and show some music recommendations based on what songs an existing user listening to. The interesting parts after an user installed this plugin are the information flow, transparency feature, and the connections between the iLike users. For instance, an user’s profile on iLike.com will show the music that she play in the Windows Media Player.