Audioscrobbler posts

Filed under: Audio, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Expect more and better Last.FM apps, thanks to a new API

by Jay Hathaway Jul 4th 2008

We've covered several apps that integrate with the social music platform Last.FM, and we've expressed our worries about what might happen to the site when it was bought by CBS. As it happens, though, Last.FM has only gotten better lately. And now that they've released a shiny new version of their public API, we're hoping for more development on the downloadable app front.

Here's the skinny on the new API features: there's now read/write authentication for desktop, web and mobile apps, which, besides being essential for any service that logs your music listening, sets the stage for -- dare we hope? -- a killer Last.fm app for iPhone. The API will also allow apps to access search functions and make playlists, which means easier access to Last.FM's growing library of free streaming tracks. Scrobble on, amigos.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

UPDATE: Some of our astute readers have recommended MobileScrobbler as the killer Last.FM app for iPod/iPhone. Thanks, Neil and Robotrock.

Tags: API, Audioscrobbler, Last.FM, music, social

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Internet

Visualize your Last.fm listening habits with LastGraph

by Jay Hathaway Jul 2nd 2008

If you listen to a ton of music and the word "scrobble" is part of your vocabulary, you'll get a kick out of Lastgraph. It's a service that generates interesting visual representations of your Last.fm listening history. You can view a sweet line graph of your listening to a given artist, or you can generate some snazzy posters of your overall listening.

The posters are pretty huge and take quite a while to render, but you can actually print them out as some stylish, informative wall art. If you don't need something that huge, there's also a smaller version available through the quick timeline feature. You can also export your data as an Excel file, a CSV or JSON.

Tags: audioscrobbler, graph, Last.fm, Lastgraph, listening, music, visualizer

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Social Software

Last.fm gets a facelift

by Grant Robertson Jul 14th 2006

Web 2.0 music pioneer Last.fm has relaunched with a new look and dropped its "Beta" disclaimer. The new version of the site features a clean look, and a focus that would seem to put rival Pandora directly in its sites. They've even started promoting a new word, "scrobbling", to describe the process of listening to your music collection with tools that allow Last.fm to learn your preferences and thus make suggestions.

Last.fm combines social networking with music to give listeners a Web 2.0 way to find new music they are likely to enjoy. Last.fm's method stands in stark contrast to competitor Pandora, which uses a complex set of characteristics and a closed categorization system to make recommendations based on music you are already familiar with.

Users of Last.fm install a special plug-in to their media player of choice (a wide range of plug-ins exist for all types of media players that support 3rd party add-ons) which uploads non-anonymous information on what they listen to. Using your actual day-to-day listening choices, Last.fm is able to identify other artists you may be interested in.

Tags: audioscrobbler, find music, FindMusic, last.fm, music selection services, music taste services, MusicSelectionServices, MusicTasteServices, pandora

Filed under: Audio, Web services

Pandora vs. Last.fm music recommendations

by Jordan Running Feb 1st 2006

Pandora and Last.fm are both services that purport to recommend music to you based on your musical preferences, but in different ways. Pandora lets you pick a song and then recommends song with similar musical qualities. Last.fm, on the other hand, recommends music based on the preferences of other people who like some of the same music you do. Blogger Steve Krause used both Pandora and Last.fm for a few months and wrote a nice article on the services' differences and similarities and how good they really are at recommending music. Ultimately Krause decided that both services are cool, but found "Last.fm better than Pandora at delivering songs that I liked or at least didn't feel compelled to skip."

Tags: audioscrobbler, last.fm, music, pandora, recommend, social software, Steve Krause

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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