Automated Spotify Playlists #music

To celebrate the release of Spotify in the US I'll highlight 3 fun Spotify mashups which can be used to create playlists for Spotify.

BBCify – Daily Spotify Playlists from Awesome BBC Radio

BBCify mashes up radio listings from the BBC with Spotify to create playlists of shows, it also creates a central playlist which is updated daily with the music from the shows.

BBCify – lastify magic playlists for Spotify from last.fm recommendations

Lastify connects to last.fm and uses information from last.fm's recommendations and creates a personalised playlists with recommended artists in Spotify.

biblify – the latest album reviews for new spotify releases

The last Spotify mashup is biblify, which is again a playlist generator for Spotify. biblify using the latest album reviews from various sources, including The Guardian, NME, Pitchfork, Uncut, Drowned In Sound, The Fly and the BBC.

Have fun listening to music!

Image source: SimplyZesty

6 Months of Security Links #2011

I’m a regular curator of daily links, and like to give overviews of my collection of curated links and posts. This is partly as there are some good sources and articles in here and as I am working on a research project which I started based on a number of books I read.

I’m sure you’ll find something interesting in the items below – there are some gems in the list – and I dare to hazard the guess you might learn something you wanted to know. 🙂

Spotify reaches US in July #music

I remember first using Spotify and needing to create an account using an UK based proxy and setting the proxy in the configuration settings. Since then the service has changed some. Ironically I only got back into Spotify when my father asked me about it – we has set up for him and he wondered why it didn’t work any more. I too had forgotten about the proxy settings. After I ran the update and set it up for him to work I went on to install it on my own laptop.

^{Spotify Adoption Europe}

A couple of weeks earlier a colleague, who is a paid up subscriber, asked a group of colleagues to name artists we thought would not be in Spotify. Naturally having a hipster as a friend paid off and I was able to name a number of artists which Spotify did not have in its collection, a hipster colleague was also able to name a couple. In good hipster/geek fashion we ridiculed him. 😉

Between you and me I like Spotify, and lament the start up issues they have had in the US. Based on the service offered – and from the articles I’ve read in Wired and some other sources – I am positive about the possibilities it has to offer with its Freemium model.

Spotify will launch in the US sometime in July.

Image source: SimplyZesty (logo), International Federation of the Phonographic Industry & Wired (graph)

My friend the popstar! #music

So I meet somebody nice have lots of fun at a festival in Turkey, and all that time he’s a popstar. A real live popstar. Off all the things you could be! WARNING: Shameless plug: The band is called Githead, the music is quite nice to listen to. I’m not going to tell you who I know otherwise I’ll just get lots of groupies hassling me because they want him for his body.

If he thinks I’m going to treat him different now that I know, he can forget it. (Now to find out if I can get a free CD.)

Originally posted here.

technorati tags: music, friends, mail, humour, humor

See you in 1 1/2 weeks

I’m going to the Boom Festival, so chances are you’ll only be getting the things I preprogrammed. I’d like to leave you with some parting words:

Gayatri Mantra

AUM
BHUH BHUVAH SVAH
TAT SAVITUR VARENYM
BHARGO DEVASYA DHEEMAHE
DHIYO’YO NAH PRACHODAYAT

Algorithmically Matching Books

On /. I saw the article Boiling Down Books, Algorithmically, it reminded me of my previous post Thrown together, summarize.

“Aaron Stanton rose to online fame after vowing in a video that he’d fly to California and pitch an idea to Google.”^{Google Heard Me, Now What?} He created a service called BookLamp, “BookLamp.org is a system for matching readers to books through an analysis of writing styles, similar to the way that Pandora.com matches music lovers to new music.”

What that means is that if you like William Gibson you’ll get Bruce Sterling and other Cyberpunk authors with similar styles. You’ll also get recommendations for authors who have similar writing style. Or as in the run I tried Isaac Asimov’s Ugly Little Boy -> Harry Harrison – Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge -> Cary Rockwell – Sabotage in Space -> Darrell Bain – Crazy Ships. All based on the following attributes:

• Pacing
• Density
• Action
• Description
• Dialogue

“In the mean time, they’ve tucked a couple practical jokes into the system. Searching for George Orwell’s 1984, the system returns a 98% match for the USA Patriot Act.“^{Google Stalker Reveals Secret Project}

On another note I’m blocked from Pandora.com:

Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

technorati tags: pandora, booklamp, slashdot, books, music, google

Glade Festival 2008

Eat Static at the Glade between the 17th and 20th of July 2008. I’d like to go, but I should really save my money for the Boom. Hmm…

technorati tags: music, festival, boom, glade