Looks like if I would have read the Apple discussion post a bit longer before hastily writing my last post, I would have found the solution. For anybody that is consistently getting a 4010 error, this seems to work:
(1) Open [username]/Music/iTunes/ in the Finder.
(2) Make a copy of "iTunes Music Library.xml"
(3) Validate the XML file. The easiest way to do this, if you have Firefox 3, is to open the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file in Firefox. Depending on how large the file is, this might take some time. Presumably, at this point, you'll get an error message saying that there was an XML Parsing Error.
(4) Find the song that is causing the problem. If you can't tell which song it is, you may have to open up the file in a text editor, and navigate to the line number specified.
(5) Go into iTunes, find the song, right click it, and click "Get Info".
(6) You should see some funky characters somewhere. At this point, you can either (a) delete the song, or (b) click on Info, and make sure to completely delete and re-write all the information.
(7) Once you've done that, re-load the file into Firefox and correct all the songs until there are no more errors.
(8) When Firefox parses the file correctly, quit iTunes.
(9) Open the [username]/Music/iTunes/ folder in Finder again and remove the "iTunes Library Extras.itdb" and "iTunes Library Genius.itdb" files by dragging them to the Trash and emptying it.
(10) Restart iTunes, enable Genius, and voila!
It's quite unfortunate that iTunes doesn't seem to be able to repair corrupted XML, or at least tell you that that's the problem.
I've been trying to set up Genius on iTunes 8 for the last few days, with no luck. I'm getting the "Genius results can't be updated right now. An unknown error occurred (4010)." message during Step 2, "Waiting for Apple to process information".
Looks like lots of other people are having this problem. What's so strange about it, is that it seems to come and go -- sometimes it works for people, sometimes it doesn't. Most people seem to think it's a server load issue.
None of us know if it's a server issue or not. But after the MobileMe fiasco, I'm starting to think that Apple is seriously unprepared in their "capacity planning" department.
From the team that brought you Rock Band and Guitar Hero, a new startup that's a bit hard to describe. It's a little bit game, a little bit social, a little bit music discovery, and a lot of fun.
These guys are doing so much right, I don't even know where to begin. I was attracted to their game by a Facebook ad that said "Like Ladytron? We don't have it yet, but we do have a ton of indie electronic music." My kind of website, I thought to myself.
The idea is like Guitar Hero with the arrows on your keyboard. Naturally, a lot of fun right off the bat.
Add to that a very social experience. You choose to "dance" for people (either flirty, flashy, or funny), and leave a comment for them, sort of like an IM conversation. Comments are auto-generated, so even if you don't really want to say anything in particular, it's still quite funny to have this pseudo-chat.
Since they are advertising on Facebook and to a presumably younger crowd, they're attracting a real mix of male and female audience. I saw a mostly college-aged crowd while I was there.
The beauty of it, is that in order to talk to someone, you need to "dance" with/for them. All in all, it feels very flirty, and is much more like doing an activity with someone, as opposed to creepily talking to a random person.
Looks like their product is living up to their stated vision: "Are emoticons and pixellated panties the stuff that true friendships are made of? The activities and experiences that we share are what bind us together. When spending time together online is as fun as a night of clubbing or as intense as a great jam session, then social networks will truly be social."
I was a couple days late to the scoop: Venturebeat covered it on the 8th (Damn! If only I'd clicked on that Facebook ad sooner. Congrats guy, though, on some seriously cool sleuthing). Since Venturebeat's already let the cat out of the bag, I don't feel too bad pointing to the alpha url: http://alpha.loudcrowd.com/
Here's a video intro from Vimeo:
