The Power Of Social Networking: Last.fm Gets It Right
While tinkering away with Evan Weaver’s sweeper (a ruby gem for updating id3 tags of mp3s based off last.fm’s fingerprint database) I started clicking around my last.fm profile. I’ve been a religious scrobbler for a few years now (nearly 20,000 songs since May 4th, 2004), but I had never stopped to think about how powerful all of this data could be. I mostly used last.fm for its music recommendations; my profile page will suggest artists for me to explore based off what I have listened to in the past.
Today, I discovered an even cooler feature: events. Last.fm knows what I like, and it knows about lots of events (concerts, shows, festivals). By combining this data, the service can build me a custom calendar of upcoming acts that I may be interested in! I’ve created a quick mash-up using 30 boxes iCal support to display the information on the web, but I have already added this calendar to my personal google calendar. Now, even as my music tastes change, and I move around, I will always have calendar of upcoming events in my area that I will likely be interested in attending. It makes even more sense that CBS spent big money to acquire these guys.
Soul Position
Soul Position (RJD2 + Blueprint) has a new album out: The Heads of State have done a really cool poster that I want for my wall!
iPod Nano
After dropping my 3G iPod a few weeks back, I finally was able to replace it with a snazzy new 4GB Black iPod nano. Pretty snazzy little device, I’m hoping it will make me listen to new music as I can’t fit all of mine on it, I’ll be rotating albums. Snazzy.
Steadman
Steadman is a British band that has twice been signed to major label deals. Unfortunately both of those deals imploded. Fortunately for the world, they have have gone “indie” and have released their entire catalog online. I’ve been listening to them this evening and its very good stuff – maybe I’ll post a proper review later in the week? Nope.
