I’ve been using last.fm since it was audioscrobbler, and they just keep making it better. I really feel like this kind of open API driven data collection is the future of all consumer industries… not just the music industry.
Last.fm just launched http://build.last.fm/, a sweet-ass showcase of all the awesome stuff that can be done with last.fm’s data. Just browsing for a few minutes, I found a script that will generate my personal cloud of musical recommendations. Here’s mine:
Air Andrew Bird Azure Ray Boards of Canada Bright Eyes Broadcast Broken Social Scene Built to Spill Cat Power Death Cab for Cutie Dntel Efterklang Elliott Smith Eluvium Emiliana Torrini Erlend Øye Explosions in the Sky Feist Flunk Fridge Frou Frou Goldfrapp Groove Armada ISAN Junior Boys Lamb M. Ward Manitoba Mogwai Ms. John Soda Múm Okkervil River Orbital Pinback Stereolab Sufjan Stevens Telefon Tel Aviv The Album Leaf The Appleseed Cast The Books The Boy Least Likely To The Fiery Furnaces The Mountain Goats The Octopus Project The Unicorns Thievery Corporation Ugly Casanova Wilco Zero 7 of Montreal
I think this list is split about 50/50 artists I’ve heard of (and in many cases already own and listen to — I have all of AIR’s albums, for instance), and artists I’ve never heard of… maybe I’ll do a more in-depth analysis later if I have time.
My friend Sara just got me to sign up for GoodReads, a social networking site where you keep track of your books… a lot like LibraryThing, but a little more review-focused (from what I’ve seen so far). I was able to import my booklist from an exported CSV from librarything. Now I just wish the sites talked to each other so I didn’t have to manage both lists. (Because I’m guessing I won’t do a good job of either.) I do sort of think that, on first impression, it’s a little more fun to surf around GoodReads, mostly because of all the reviews. Next to each book listing (review) are links to rate the book, so I’m finding it as gratifying as when I used to surf around netflix to rate movies.
Just for fun, here are the links to my profiles (add me!): GoodReads, LibraryThing
Everyone knows I’m a sucker for social networking sites. I just discovered another one, The Great Games Experiment, a site that allows you to sign up as a game player or game developer. I’ve found some of the interface to be awesome and intuitive, but other features of the site are just abysmally hard to understand. There is definitely a lot to do over there, I’ll have to look at it more when I’m less sleepy.
Oh, and after a single day, I’m totally addicted to Travian, a web-based massively multiplayer RTS. Check it out!
I was trolling around looking for cool game developer conferences, and found out I just missed the imgd conference this very month, here in MN. Sounds like it focused more on MMO (an acronym I’m not sure I’ve encountered before, but assume is the relevant parts of MMORPG), but it still would probably have been worth checking out.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to whether I’m really interested in persuing a career in game development, or whether I really just want it to be something I do in my spare time for fun. I can honestly say I really dig my current job, and I know that’s something relatively rare and special. I think for now I’m just along for the ride. We’ll see where this thing takes me.