From the category archives:
music
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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Winging it, mac style!
Some time ago I owned an Apple Powerbook G4. Not a bad machine, though a little sluggish from time to time. For one reason or another I lost interest in it, and went back to my Windows desktop and laptop, eventually selling the Powerbook.
Lately my interest in the Mac world has risen again. Having Intel based processors these days, it’s opened up a whole new world of possibilites. To cut a long story short, we went to the Apple store in Sheffield yesterday, and came away with a nice shiny 20″ iMac, with wireless (mighty) mouse and keyboard.
I have my music all set up on an external drive, along with Harman Soundsticks II speakers (which are very nice, my music is sounding great), and iTunes actually runs nicely on the iMac. The windows version is a complete mess compared to this, which is why I normally wouldn’t touch iTunes with a bargepole. But I think it may become a favourite now (apart from the store at least).
So, I’ve spent the last 24 hours busily exploring new software and various gizmos (like Quicksilver and Growl). It’s opened up a whole new world. I’m sure I’ll be happily exploring new things for days and weeks to come. Oh, and if you’re a Mac user, feel free to mention your favourite bits of software in the comments, although I’ve owned a Mac before it’s been a while!
My software favourites so far are -
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