From the monthly archives:
May 2007
Last.fm widgets and playlists
My favourite music site has just introduced some nice new features.
Widgets
You can now use last.fm widgets on your blog / website. The widget choices we have are recently played / top artists etc., a quilt made up of the covers from your most listened to albums, a playlist player and a radio player. You also get four colour choices - last.fm red (which looks pink to me), black, blue or light grey. You can see the ‘recent tracks’ and playlist widgets in action on my sidebar. I was thinking of adding the album quilt too, but decided that might be slight overkill.
Playlists
Playlists themselves have been around for a while, but whereas previously they only played snippets of a song, they now play the full length tracks (providing they’re available in the last.fm catalogue). Using the aforementioned widget, that means you can easily share your taste in music with your site visitors. The only ‘catch’ is that your list will play in shuffle mode - this is presumably to get around licensing restrictions.
Charts display
It’s now possible to select different periods of time for the charts that show on your profile page. You can choose between your overall charts (as it’s always been) or 3, 6, or 12 month rolling charts. We’re also told that more customisation is on the way.
You can view the official announcement here.
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Firefox speed dial addon
The latest version of the Opera browser brought with it a great new feature called ’speed dial’. What that does is allow you to bookmark 9 sites all within the speed dial tab, and Opera gives you a graphical representation of those sites that you assigned to each ‘dial’. There’s a screenshot here. It looks very slick and is a great tool, very handy for keeping those oft visited sites at your fingertips.
Firefox obviously lacks this feature, but not any more! Firefox users now have the speed dial addon. Though not nearly as well presented as it is in Opera, it does what it says in the tin. It’s been working well enough for me anyway. I do use Opera too (it seems to perform a lot better on my iMac for a start), I can’t get away from Firefox and all its addons, so it’s nice to be able to use this whichever browser I’m in.
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OpenID and a widget
Just a quick post to say that you can now sign in to comment here using OpenID.
This was made possible with the OpenID WP plugin and the help of my friend Steffen, who has kindly made an OpenID WP widget.
For those who don’t know what OpenID is, you can read here, and here for more information, and you can also get your own login by signing up at myOpenID. There are other places you can get an OpenID, but this is the one that I use.
So, thanks Steffen, without you I’d have had to spend time digging around in the code (I’m getting lazy in my old age, the easy option is a good option!).
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Who is your favourite muppet?
No I’m not talking about somebody you know who you think is an idiot. That would be a whole other blog post. I’m talking about The Muppet Show, one of my favourite programmes when I was growing up. It was a regular Saturday evening appointment for the whole family, and I’m not ashamed to say I really miss it! They just don’t make stuff like that anymore sadly. Jim Henson was a genius.
After getting all nostalgic on Youtube the other night, I thought I’d write this little post.
There were a lot of great characters in the show, but my favourite was always Animal (though Gonzo was pretty cool too!). I mean what’s not to like? He’s a talented musician who is passionate about his drums, an all round entertainer, and sometimes he could even be a teeny bit romantic!
So, who’s your favourite?
I’ll leave you with this piece of genius…
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