new stuff

I'm trying out some code from my friend Jason. I was too lazy to do it myself. (just sad)

Currently listening to:

Mos Def - Black on Both Sides - 6/4/2002

Last.fm

If you've talked to me a bit in the last couple of weeks, I've probably mentioned Last.fm. It's not for everyone, but I sure as hell like it. The site takes the music tracks that you listen to, categorizes them, and matches them with the thousands of other users that it has. You get to mark tracks that you really like and "tag" what genre they belong too. Those are the options when you're playing your own music.

Last.fm is free music. Literally. There are no commercials, no ads, no bullshit (not yet). You have the option of never playing any of your own music, and simply just playing their web station all day. As a free user, you can play music in various different ways. You can play music tagged as certain genres, such as 'hip-hop', 'rap', 'acid rock', 'pop', whatever... It's incredibly accurate when it comes to that, because of how it matches genres (the matching of thousands of taggers). You can also tell it to play music similar to x..y..z.. The first artist name that I put in was 'Wu Tang Clan' and I was soon attacked with all types of thought provoking artists that I had never heard of before. The third way is called "neighbor radio" where it plays the songs that your neighbors are listening to.

That is one of Last.fm's best features. When you go to play music from the site, the playlist is created by matching with your 'neighbors' on the site who have the most similar taste in music as you. It wouldn't be that great if it only spit the songs that you played right back at you. Instead, you hear music that people with your taste would love. Basically it learns who you are and what you like, and plays songs that you haven't heard before to match that. It takes the music you love, and educates you about everything new that is going on in that genre. Whatever new your neighbors find out about, you find out about also.

It's really a community too. The site recommends all types of things to you based on your statistics, including groups of people with the same taste as you. In these groups, people write journal entries about their musical happenings, concerts, new albums, et cetera. From there, and from your neighbors page, you can click the profiles of everyone you come across. See the music they're currently listening (its all in real time) and all types of charts categorizing their listening. Weekly, Monthy, Most played artist, Most played track, et cetera. You get to view the same type of stats for yourself also of course. Here is my profile page, give the site a try, you might like it. (No, I am not on the Last.fm payroll. Just My Thoughts)

Dave Chappelle On Oprah 02/03/06

I finally got to see it. OH THANK GOD I SAW IT! He's just about my favorite man in show business right now, completely keeping his cool while under pressure on Oprah. Spills his guts and tells his side of the story. Here is "Dave Chappelle On The Oprah Winfrey Show 2.3.06".

Google Hacks - Fascinating:Robots.txt

RSS Reading at work as usual, and I came across this. It really caught my attention and stuck out as something I think I’ll be doing regularly now.

Go to Google and search "robots.txt" at any domain that you want (sites:domain). Robots.txt is a file on a web server that defines what you’re not allowed to see. Too bad you still have access to the file to read it. It’s very interesting to try this one.. robots.txt site:whitehouse.gov.

Read this at Digg: Google Screenshots. At the bottom of the article is the stuff about robots.txt, but all of it is interesting. Best thing is, the site linked to Ultimate Online Resource for Google Hacking! The site is currently down due to very high traffic volume, try back later.

gTalk - The Universal Chat Client

Thanks to Lateef for the heads up. Google has opened its Google Talk gates to other jabber servers, and therefore to other IM services. Use gTalk to communicate to users on AIM, MSN, and Yahoo. Instructions can be found here.

Calendar first impression

About a year ago, it appears that among the web trend-watchers out there, a consensus was met that there was a real opportunity in the market of a web calendar. The previous standard was Yahoo’s calendar, but no one thought of it as an awesome product, it was simply what was available. Google and Yahoo started looking for great web calendar start-ups to buy, and starts-ups started trying to fill those shoes.

According to Joel on Software, these folks made the mistake of trying to be bought instead of trying to make a great product. Instead of making something that can stand on its own, its obvious that these calendars have been created for the sole purpose of being bought. After reading about, and trying out some of these calendars, I realize, WOW, I do want a great web calendar where I can keep all my info (for the time being).

Right now, 30Boxes is the one I like the most. It might not be the most professional looking (definitely is cool looking), or even have the most features (calendar ones at least), but its interface is awesome to use (AJAX), and it has the potential to create a huge web community behind it. You can link calendars with friends, allow others to add events to your calendar, and establish a detailed profile that ties all of your activities on upcoming.org, flickr.com, your blog feeds, and even your local weather into not only your calendar, but everyone that can see yours. It has great potential to be useful, but also is just a lot of fun.

Around the same time last year, one of the first groups to participate in The Summer Founder Program groups had the same idea. The result is Kiko, another great AJAX calendar that has big dreams of being purchased. Its got some features that 30boxes doesn't have, but you can check it out for yourself.

I loved it!

I'm in an internet stage right now. The last few days I've been all over the web - blogs, news, gadgest, all that good ish. Free-time is permitting right now. Like all things, we'll see how long it lasts.

I have started to put ish I like from the web into a collection. Del.icio.us. I had saw it a while ago on the firefox extension homepage but didn't pay it any attention, until recently being suggested to it by a friend. It's pretty tite, like digg, all the good ish seems to filter up to the top. Might be speeding a good amount of time on there.

I ran across this site, http://youtube.com. I like it, similar to http://wastedpage.com and Google Video, its good for when my eyes start twitching from reading off this screen so much. Here is a video I saw there that I thought was cool.

Update

So yeah, my web publishing ran out... and I didn't update it. I saw no reason to, I can host my own ish. Of course, a lazy guy like myself hasn't really gone about doing that yet.

I'm not in a position to right now. I'm separated away from my cable connection and dont really have dependable home internet up in New Jersey. I went back to hosting the blog back on blogspot (actually never did before), so until I update everything, some of the links from previous posts wont work. Later