Category Archives: Around the web

iLike beta

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A new social music tracking site has launched today, named iLike which is in beta of course, got to have that fashionable beta sign!

It looks very nice, but it has limitations, namely that you’re limited to using iTunes for submitting your music and it isn’t Linux compatible. It’s early days, and no doubt it will improve (they say for example that in the future you can use other music players with the site), but for now there’s not much to attract me.

Personally, I’ll be sticking with last.fm (which, incidentally, has some nice new features coming in the next week or so, the best of which is a music events tracking and recommendation system). For the moment, last.fm has far more functionality and doesn’t tie you down to a particular player or OS, which is definately a good thing.

Library Thing

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I’ve found a new toy – in a similar vein to last.fm, LibraryThing allows you to keep a catalogue of your book collection and display it on their site. Just like any self respecting ‘web 2.0′ site, there is also a social side which matches books with users. As you will see from the new random reads section on my sidebar, you can also display your books in a number of ways on your blog.

What I really love is the recommendation feature, no doubt I’ll be using that in the future to discover authors I haven’t read before.

The site is free, however once you reach 200 books you can’t add any more without paying. It’s only a small fee though ($10 per year or $25 lifetime), and if you have hundreds of books like me (I’ve reached just over a hundred already without making much of an effort) it’s well worth it.

I was led to this site via the comments in a Digg article about another book tracking site, Shelfari. That one is free, and although the design is more appealing, it’s lacking in features. I think I’ll stick with LibraryThing (my full catalogue is here).

Google do it again – Google reader

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I know they’re a big evil corporation and everything, but I do love Google.

For the last couple of days I’ve been toying with different feed readers (my staple diet is usually either Blogbridge or Feedlounge). Some time ago I’d toyed with FeedDemon – when I bought that a free business grade subscription to Newsgator came with it. I’d never really used Newsgator all that much, but after reading this post on Khaled’s blog I thought I’d give it a try. It’s pretty good I must admit – both speedy and functional.

To get to the point, whilst browsing around the different feeds on Newsgator, I came across a post on the official Google blog (go there for more info) saying that a new version of Google Reader had just been released.

I was sceptical, when it first hit the masses it was pretty useless if you had anything more than around 10 feeds (I watch hundreds). Basic was an understatement. So, approaching with caution, off I went to take a look.

Was I ever surprised – it’s just like Gmail only for news feeds now! One feature that I always look for is the flag (save an article for later) feature, and Google has it with the starred items, just like in Gmail. You can now have folders to sort your feeds, a ‘shared’ folder for articles you want to share with others, and lots of other little features, all within a slick and simple interface. Load times have greatly improved too.

This is what Google Reader should have been the first time around. But hey, I’m not complaining, better late than never. Well done Google, this is another killer application for me, and best of all, it’s free!

Brit Pulse

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The forum project I’ve been working on has finally gone live today. I decided against using Textpattern for the time being, mostly due to time constraints (it’s taken me long enough as it is!).

I could write a nice original post about it all, but instead I’ll just copy the opening announcement here.

We are pleased to announce that Brit Pulse is now officially open!

To become a member of our new community please click on the Register link at the top of the page and follow the instructions. The first 50 new registrations will become proud owners of a Brit Pulse Founder badge to show our appreciation to those first members.

So what is Brit Pulse all about? Brit Pulse aims to be a relaxed and fun community for people living in, originating from, or just plain interested in the UK.

To celebrate our opening and in order to foster community spirit from the beginning, we are also holding a competition. The prize? A 6 month subscription to our Supporters package (details of which can be found here ).

We would like some input on member titles. On our forum, whenever you make a certain amount of posts, your user title will change according to how many posts you have made. We need submissions for different title sets (with 10 titles in each set), all of which must be a theme connected to the UK in some way.

You may submit as many sets as you like, however there will be only one winner. Judging will be conducted by the forum administrators, the criteria being how well we deem a title set will fit in with the theme of Brit Pulse.

The closing date is 12pm on 15 September 2005, and the winner will be announced no later than 16 September 2005.

Once again, welcome to Brit Pulse, and we look forward to making your acquaintance!

Brit Pulse Administrators,
Zenith
Azhria Lilu

Hope to see some of you there, all are welcome!

Camera art

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Before I became an internet user, which would be some 11 or so years ago, I admit I ddn’t really appreciate art all that much. I mean I’d go to an art gallery stroke museum once every couple of years, ooh and ah at the pretty pictures, and that was about the extent of it. The nearest I got to real art on a regular basis was marvelling at a book cover on a fantasy novel.

The internet changed all of that, and I’m convinced that can only be a good thing. We’re surrounded by art on the internet. It is after all what every website is grounded on. Thousands of people are out there every day, both rank amateurs and award winning professionals, propagating the internet with their own special brand of artwork. Opinions on design are just as divided as they are in the ‘classical’ world of art I’m sure – what rocks one persons boat will sink anothers.

Anyway, whilst I could spend all day gawping at sites such as this one that wasn’t really my intention. I wanted to write about the modern artform of digital photography.

More and more people are displaying their photographs on their websites. In particular photoblogs (and indeed blogs with photos) are becoming commonplace, and I for one am loving it. Just take a look here, or here, or here, or here. I could go on, these are just a few samples.

I admit that previously I’d never really thought of photography as an artform, possibly because I was rarely exposed to photography for photographies sake. If I saw a photograph it was either in a newspaper or magazine, or a (generally badly taken) photo of family. In the past few months I’ve been making up for that lack of exposure. I’m finding that staring at a great photo for a few minutes every day is quite therapeutic. I’m also finding that a well taken photo makes my brain tick just as much as, if not more than most paintings I’ve ever seen.

Maybe this isn’t a new discovery for some people. For me it is, and I’m gladly marvelling at the broad range of talent out there.

I’ll have a photoblog of my own soon, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. Not that I’m any good with a camera, quite the opposite, I’m a disaster. But I hope that will improve with practise, and if nothing else it will give everyone a good laugh at my expense.

If you have a photoblog feel free to leave a link in a comment. I’m enjoying making all these new discoveries.