Spotify vs last.fm

N'kay. I have been somewhat, er, bruised today by my younger colleagues concerning my affiliation to last.fm vs this new fangled thang (Spotify).

Well I am listening right now to a new listener maybe 'friend' of mine and seeing just why the social aspect of music twitches my bones. He's (?) giving me F+++++g great shit after F+++++g great shit.

A German has similar music taste to mine and through him I discover new stuff. That's how last.fm works. And it's brilliant.

I don't have stacks of 'friends' on last.fm. Just the 28. But they always show me new stuff I'll like when I try their 'stations'. That's how last.fm works. The more you put in the more you get out. And this 'station' of 'lakritza' I'm hearing hits my spot.

I steeeeetch, within my musical comfort zone. Shit, this German also likes something called 'Cowboy Junkies' (?) alongside Marvin Gaye. N'kay. S'alright.

And I add shit to my own library. And because I's a old queen, I get 2hear some fabulous retreads. Jigga jigga. Sweeeeeet. Sa-weat.

And that's a problem?

Spotify is just iTunes, better biz model.

Swish.

Big org goes guerilla

At # 7 in my 'ten point plan' is cheaper usability methods. This means so-called guerilla usability, as championed by Jakob et al — and resisted by the 'experts'.

Just to elaborate, this doesn't mean the expert have no role, Shit, no. Just that we (egov) can't always afford them. So applying 'usability' in practice has to mean systematic engagement with audience and specific engagement with experts rather than handing over everyrthing to experts. And the only way to do that is to use guerrilla methods. My (debated at length) bone with Nomensa.

So let's just say I was 'most pleased' to read that my favourite 'internet radio station' used self-described 'guerilla' methods to interrogate their new designs. last.fm did it. Worth shitloads to US MSM last.fm did this. Guerilla HCI is mainstream, proven methodology.

Grabbing a seat at the nearest café with wifi, I arranged to meet a few people in the area (long-time users who’ve been with us for years; new users still discovering what we do; friends and relatives; random people off the street; anyone with a spare twenty minutes, really) to show them beta.last.fm and watch them having a play with it. Loose, informal user testing — or, to use its technical term, ‘chatting to and watching people try out our new ideas over some free coffee and cake’ — is fascinating, great fun to do, and, combined with our other feedback-recording methods, as I believe Mr. Matthew Ogle, Esq. will discuss, reveals fantastically rich layers of information that really help us improve the Last.fm experience.

Doh! Yeah, this has 'value'. Doh! Yeah, you need basic people skills to conduct. Doh! Yeah, it yields "fantastically rich layers of information". Doh! Yeah, it's not as easy as it looks but you can learn how to do it. Basically, PEOPLE engagement is the key. Geeks locked away from audience ain't good. Guerrilla usability is but one tool to get over the barriers, force people to truly engage, and break the cycle. It's all good. It'd not complicated and doesn't require complication.

And this has no relevance to egov?

Scrapbook clips catch up

Make your own at whatever.wecanbelievein.com

lastfm has a new design which I'm slowly getting used to. It appears to have a couple - that's all - new features, but they're useful. Techcrunch thinks it's buggy. The Times nails the business model, which is rather good, boasting the "'smartest' ads on the web".

An example of the new "smart" adverts displays an image of a mobile phone handset which changes according to what the Last.fm user is doing. For instance, if someone is listening to Bon Jovi, the phone would appear to start playing a Bon Jovi track, showing off its MP3 player.

Hotel chains will be able to tap into a Last.fm user's list of favourite artists and display adverts for hotels in cities where those artists have upcoming gigs. Train companies, similarly, will be able to advertise services running to other music-based events that may be of interest to the user.

iphonic madness? Behold: "I Am Rich," a $999.99 app from Armin Heinrich, which just displays a red gem on the phone's screen — nothing else.



directgov is soon to launch a tellmeonce tool, which has some designs leaking out here. PSF has the story noting that it's the much-anticipated 'Citizens Account'.

Here we see the Citizen's Account is split into two sections, the first showing an inbox of messages from government departments, and a second listing the user's relationships with given individuals.

A further page shows how the user manages these relationships. An explanatory states: 'Please note that most relationships need to be created by having a face-to-face interview with an officer at the Department for Work and Pensions'.

North East Connects, a consortium of local councils, has raised urgent and serious concerns about councils' readiness for NI 14 (measuring avoidable contact). It says:

Avoidable contact' figure which councils need to report to CLG [Whitehall], and which will be published nationally, is 'relatively meaningless', despite it underpinning one of the Government's two key progress measures for service transformation.

When parliament wanted "improved design and navigation" and "simpler presentation" of bills and a "greatly improved" search engine it cost £3,644,000. But to show us our MPs speaking in the house cost virtually nothing, because MySociety volunteers did it. Sheesh.

The Tiananmen Massacre Map (PDF)

Smart of China to parade an earthquake victim in the opening ceremony. In Schezuan, parents whose kids died in collapsed, shoddily built government schools (where schools for kids of officials didn't collape) are being repressed from protesting.



Yu Tingyun, left, lost his daughter, Yang, in the May earthquake in southwest China, and Huang Lianfen, right, lost a nephew. Ms. Huang holds an agreement that Chinese officials want parents to sign, saying they will not hold protests about collapsed schools.

avaaz.org's latest campaign is the Olympic Handshake.

The handshake began with the Dalai Lama, passing through the streets of London, now it's gone online where all of us can join in -- help the handshake travel toward Beijing, where our message will be delivered through a big Olympic media campaign before the closing ceremonies. Join the handshake, and see yourself and others as it goes around the globe!

art.com has a set of stunning exhibits. Here's one, a kinetic sculpture, which seems terribly early 80s to me ...



Anyone using a filter, created by US technology company SonicWall, which gives employers the option to block access to websites simply because they “promote or cater to gay and lesbian lifestyles” could be breaking the law. Here's one UK school using them.

SonicWall’s Anna Wright declined to say if the company would warn its UK customers they could be unwittingly breaking the law by using the gay-blocking setting.

Wired's great take on those photoshopped Iranian missiles.



Matthew Inman's great take on the 'state of the web, summer 2008'.




Quote of the week:

"These brainstorming meetings at Guantanamo produced animated discussion," writes Sands. "'Who has the glassy eyes?" Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, thirty or more of them. She was invariably the only woman in the room, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get excited, agitated, even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas" [reported Beaver]. A wan smile crossed Beaver's face: "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard, I can stay detached."' [Sands, p 63]

From Naomi Wolf, Sex Crimes in the White House.

PC hearts lastfm

Last.fm is the British-born online music social network which was bought by CBS (of all people) last year. They have just 'upped the offering' by making a lot of music playable in its entirety on the website. And this has apparently helped its usage balloon in the States.

The reasons I love it are two sides of their core offering: new-to-me music. I love that the method introduces me to 'similar' music via various routes — one would be, after feeding the system lots of info, who else in the world shares my eclectic taste and another via 'tags'. But it also has an enormous archive so I can find music I've lost touch with, a lot from when I was a deejay (I've read that this makes me an example of their desired audience, middle aging blokes revisiting their youth!).

It's more than that though. It still has a 'community' feel, which is most evident on the forums where last.fm staff actually contribute. There's also local communities and lots of people with groups and events and more I've barely touched. But most of all it's enabled me to build up an archive so wherever I might be I don't need an ipod to hear 'my sort of music'.

I've had interesting experiences explaining it. 'Radio stations' really is a last.fm concept in need of a new name. Ain't easy to explain how it works but when showing it to a young friend of mine I jumped with glee when they 'got it' immediately. There are lots of ways to play around with it but the bottom line is you do have to give back to get out, it's not a passive medium.

The best thing by far though is the opportunity to be exposed to music you'll probably like but wouldn't otherwise know, and maybe a lil' bit further.

'tis the future with music I think. Apple be damned!

Paint The White House Black

Been catching up with last.fm and - yay! - got re-exposed to this P-Fonkay jam from George 'presient' Clinton's 2nd album release "Hey Man... Smell My Finger" on Prince's Paisley Park/NPG Records label in '93..

Spooky ...

The Rt. Hon. Minister for YouTube

Absolutely damning take on UK dot.com in The Register by Chris Williams : Where in the world is the UK's silicon valley?

After running through the real successes - last.fm, which is genius and, er, a few more (it misses Bebo) - and after failing to locate UK dot.com's beating heart, it turns it's attention to Gordon Brown, DC, SMC , da Millibands and pals.

The Rt. Hon. Minister for YouTube

What about government support? The newly minted departments for trade and industry might do better (we'll give them the benefit of the doubt) but so far, when it comes to technology, our politicians often prefer not to let facts, or indeed issues, get in the way of a good story. Meaningful discussion gives way to posturing.

Having failed to engage with da yoof via every medium ever, both main parties have claimed to be convinced that YouTube and Facebook are the tools they've been waiting for to involve the Kersal Massive in public discourse. Before his promotion to glory in the Foreign Office, Labour's David Miliband was engaged in a battle royale with the opposition to decide who gets social networking the most.

Cameron might have a blog [which is getting better, though I wouldn't auto-load video and the text's too small ;) ], but Miliband clearly gained the initiative with this recent nonsense by channeling conference magnate Tim O’Reilly:

Instead of citizens acting in isolation, unsure of whether their actions are reciprocated by others, feeling powerless in the face of large organisations and global change, citizens can feel part of a bigger project. They can create a shared willingness to act, their preferences can be aggregated, and can give rise to collective action as well as collective discussion.

Cynics would suggest this is the internet equivalent of Gordon Brown proclaiming himself an Arctic Monkeys fan. Serious lamenters of the lack of government support around new technology might be less charitable. It shows UK tech entrepreneurs they’re on their own, as it ever was, and probably should be.

Widgets do have issues

I've updated my last.fm widget and, previously, added a Feedburner widget. Both are neat stuff.

The last.fm widget is Flash 4.0 I think and caused a print preview crash (was in IE6) on another PC for me today. That may well be availability - problem caused by an old Flash installation which the Network isn't ready to upgrade yet

Blog's waiting for Feedburner to load as I type, at Internet peaktime. Waiting, waiting ... make tea ...

I can find myself waiting for YouTube elements to load too.

This might be me and might be my network right now but the Amnesty widget, coming via them, not a third party, is showing me 'unavailable'. It's happened before. Too popular?

This is one of the less stated problems with widgets — availability and accessibility (in its widest sense).

I've previously dropped widgets (like Chimp-o-matic) which kept holding up pages (or the right-hand column); the market, especially the mass-market of bloggers, will be just as ruthless. Plus decisions will be as much about 'how much do I really need this?' as 'is there an alternative?'

Postscript: as I look at sorting a tagcloud, I notice this ... tagcloud.com > Our dirty little secret: that's all been done on one single server. Many people have written us frustrated that we haven't been able to keep up with the demand, and they've been correct. We're happy to announce that we are now sponsored ...

Redefining 'boy'band

Yay. 'Old' queens can do tacky HiNRG, jiggle about and strike a pose too!

Actually quite well .. there's 'ope for the rest of us ...

They're called Bearforce1 and they're Dutch. Thanks to Paul in Oz.

Here's some real disco.

last.fm: bought ...

.. and - touch wood - not sold out to CBS.

What a cliché...

I can't speak highly enough of last.fm but the way it's been described by non-users has been amusing me all day.

No, last.fm isn't recommending anything to me but I can understand why people think it does.

I have used it to find, mainly, older music which I love but have lost touch with. I'm describing their (or what was their) target audience. Oh, I'll say it then: middle-aged geeks.

The BBC gets it right:

It allows users to connect with other listeners with similar music tastes, to custom-build their own radio stations and to watch music video-clips.

I've used tagging to build up my own 'stations' and and 'gamed' it a touch in order to do that. I get to hear new things when I turn on 'Discovery' mode or I tune into another's 'station'. Usually in order to get something tagged which isn't otherwise available so I can hear it again.

I don't tend to just listen to another's 'station' but I do look at my 'neighbours' pages, those with similar tastes. It's not a very good word 'station' though: I ain't broadcasting.



Music clips leave me cold.

But it took months to get a real taste match (a couple I've found after 1,800 plays have spookily similar taste) and there's a lot of music which isn't available including from the likes of Aretha Franklin. I also have no way to save anything except by stripping info from my webpage (and remembering to).

I can only hope that the playlist expands as a result of the sale and that the marketing remains unobtrusive, though it's so good that I'd put up with a lot.

Bytes ·$10 laptop? - Malware on websites - last.fm goes MTV

• The One Laptop Per Child Project, recently pushed its price per laptop to $175, from $100.
  
  But India's HRD ministry says it thinks it can push that price down to $10 — the manufacturing cost has already been scaled down to $47, reports the India Times.
  
  It is also Indians who have forced down the costs of HIV/AIDS drugs to a level that developing countries, like Brazil, can afford. Hence prolonging many million of lives.
  
  
• A recent Google study discovered "around 450,000 web pages that launched drive-by downloads of malicious programs. Another 700,000 pages launched downloads of suspicious software."
  

  "We have started an effort to identify all web pages on the Internet that could potentially be malicious ... Web sites that have been identified as malicious, using our verification procedure, are labeled as potentially harmful when returned as a search result."

• The New York Times is performing a SEO trick to get it's archived content seen — everything's been redated.
  

  Each “article” is re-purposed on a clean, CSS-driven text page, clearly dated TODAY and not-co-clearly labeled as “originally published” back in 1997, 1998, or whatever all the way back to 1981 .. Clearly if Google is going to rank “newly published” results as most relevant in a SERP, there is a nice big fat incentive to “re-publish” such archives fairly often.

• YouTube/Google is experimenting with text ads, running directly under videos. They've also announced they'll soon start sharing advertising revenue with content-creating users.
  
  Next stage, user-generated viral advertising?
  
  All of which should send Vivienne Reding, the European Commissioner whose TV Without Frontiers directive includes a ban on "falsely representing oneself as a consumer", back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, it's UK law from the end of the year.
  
  
• last.fm is launching a video service, using a much higher bitrate than YouTube. You could set up your own version of MTV (I'll stick to audio ... ) The eventual aim is to have every music video ever made!
  
  
• VeeSee TV is a new Web TV Station for deaf people, using BSL. Like Current TV, it'll carry user-generated content

last.fm

what a great 'lil widget :]

great find lastfm — it's social radio.

I only just signed up but have found stuff I haven't heard for at least a decade and some new stuff.

from a look after one week at how it builds up what I like and what I love and who else likes it too, I've got pointers + recommendations for music I'd otherwise have never found. love it. love it.

• wikipedia entry
• seems that they are attracting the attention of bigcorps
  
  and that I (accidentally) picked VHS (lastfm in red) over BETA (crosses fingers ... )
  — jack schofield explains what it's about