Pappmaskin.no

Norwegian firm Aspiro is working on a Spotify competitor, due to go into beta in the summer of 2009 according to NRKbeta. But a happy few, including me, has had access for a while, and I wanted to share a few annotated screenshots from the Abobe Air-based client.

PS: To get a betatest login, please send your name and mobile phone number to wimp@aspiro.com, and follow @aspiromusic on Twitter

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Get personal recommendations based on your last.fm history by authorizing Wimp to access your data. This is what my recommandations look like. A little unusual selection perhaps, but looks interresting.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

It turns out that my new Iphone creates some very interesting “effects” if you take pictures under certain conditions. Bright light plus movement as you take the picture makes the image warp, due to how the Iphone captures the image, almost like a scanner, calling for hours of future fun (see a few of my experiments below).

Wired has written about this, check out Take Distorted and Psychedelic iPhone Photos

There are even iPhone distortions Flickr groups (thanks to Retroper for the link)

I am a huge fan of Spotify, it is basically running 24/7 at work and at home, but yesterday I wanted to test the collaborative playlist feature. I made a Spotify playlist called “It’s friday and I’m in love” and inviting people on Twitter to join in. The result was really interesting. We created a very strange soundtrack indeed, but I feel like people respected the theme set by the playlist name and first song, and without being explicitly asked to do so. The list even got Rick-rolled by someone adding “Never gonna give you up” on every other line (and then regretted and removed them again), which in my opinion is the ultimate honor.

Cute and social experiment, it almost feels like magic when you see the list growing by the minute.

Spotify is still very barren when it comes to social features, the collab lists is basically the only way you can interact with people at this point, but I am sure this will be expanded upon with new releases of the software, or with plugins. It sucks to not be able to see who adds a particular song, or to be able to comment and talk to people, so hopefully it won’t take too long before such features are added.

The list, as of March 21 2009:

Ps: All links open directly in the Spotify application. I you don’t have it installed you are out of luck. Read more about how I put it online at the bottom of this post.

Open the whole playlist: It’s friday and I’m in love

Or click on each track to listen to it:

Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up

The Cure – Friday I’m in Love

The Levellers – What A Beautiful Day

The Cure – Just Like Heaven

Nena – 99 Luftballons

The Cure – Friday I’m in Love

Kiss – Love Gun

Katrina and the Waves – Walking On Sunshine

Billy Idol – Rebel Yell

Michael Jackson & The Jackson 5 – The Love You Save

Bo Kaspers Orkester – Dansa på min grav

Duffy – Mercy

Perry Como – Magic Moments

Beastie Boys – Girls

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Date With the Night

The Lionheart Brothers – 50 Souls And A Discobowl

La Bionda – I Wanna Be Your Lover

Walter Wanderley – O Samba Brasileiro

Sufjan Stevens – Chicago

Ulf Lundell – Stackars jack

Norway – Jesus Girl

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Gold Lion

Modest Mouse – Little Motel

The Thrills – Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?

Neil Young – Out on the Weekend

The Go! Team – Doing It Right

Stan Getz – Samba De Uma Nota So

Death Cab for Cutie – Marching Bands of Manhattan

Eels – Somebody Loves You

Copy – Thanks to the Pen

A Tribe Called Quest – Can I Kick It?

Belle and Sebastian – The Boy Done Wrong Again

A Tribe Called Quest – What?

Daryl Hall & John Oates – Rich Girl

Cab Calloway – Minnie The Moocher (The Ho-De-Ho Song)

Gerard Joling – Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Reggae Version)

Jason Mraz – I’m Yours

Rob Swift – Queens Lounge 2

Åge Aleksandersen – Fotbaill

The Doobie Brothers – What a Fool Believes

Steely Dan – Kid Charlemagne

Waylon Jennings – I’m A Ramblin’ Man

Grinderman – No Pussy Blues

Yelle – Jogging

Yelle – Ce jeu

Pixies – Where Is My Mind?

Mott The Hoople – All the Young Dudes

Bears – Girl With Clouds

Hasse Alfredson – Öl

Todd Rundgren – Can We Still Be Friends

Åge Aleksandersen – Rosalita

Wilco – Jesus, Etc.

The Highwaymen (Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson) – Highwayman

Catherine Feeny – Hurricane Glass

The Band – The Weight

David Bowie – The Jean Genie

Gösta Jonsson – Samling vid pumpen

Åge Aleksandersen – Dains me dæ

Åge Aleksandersen – Ljus och värme

Åge Aleksandersen – Langt igjæn til Royal Albert Hall

Tom Waits – Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis

Yo La Tengo – Gentle Hour

TV on the Radio – Heroes

Pet Shop Boys – I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing

Jokke – Paranoid

Eagles Of Death Metal – I Want You So Hard (Boy’s Bad News)

The Smiths – William It Was Really Nothing

Jackie Davis – Manana (Is Soon Enough For Me)

Poor Rich Ones – I Was Made For Loving You

Wall Of Voodoo – Mexican Radio

Paul Hardcastle – 19

Bryan Ferry – The Way You Look Tonight

The Magnetic Fields – Too Drunk to Dream

Bon Jovi – Livin’ on a Prayer

Foo Fighters – Monkey Wrench

Marit Larsen – Ten Steps

Vømmøl Spellmannslag – Auksjonsvisa

Flight Of The Conchords – Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros (feat. Rhymenoceros and the Hiphopopotamus)

Flight Of The Conchords – Business Time

The Be Good Tanyas – When Doves Cry

Curt Haagers – Fågeldansen

Pulp – Babies

Flight Of The Conchords – The Prince of Parties

Grace Jones – La Vie En Rose

The Wiseguys – The Bounce

Infected Mushroom – Artillery

Terence Trent D’Arby – Sign Your Name

Paul Simon – How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns

The Cardigans – And Then You Kissed Me

Wyclef Jean featuring Mary J. Blige – 911

Chris Isaak – Wicked Game

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart

Queens Of The Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of the Summer

MC Hammer – U Can’t Touch This

Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby

Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)

Jojje Wadenius – Kalles Klätterträd

Queens Of The Stone Age – In My Head

Mojinos Escozios – Mi Barrí de Servesa

Sonic Youth – Teen Age Riot

Prince & The Revolution – Raspberry Beret

Rainbow – Snowman

Prince – Slow Love

Ilene Woods – So This Is Love

Vanilla Ice – Stop That Train

Tenacious D – Tribute

Elvis Costello & The Attractions – The Other Side of Summer

The Magnetic Fields – The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side

Tenacious D – Fuck Her Gently

Pixies – Where Is My Mind? (Remastered)

Young MC – Bust a Move

Bros – When Will I Be Famous

New Kids On The Block – Hangin’ Tough

Jahn Teigen – Det Vakreste Som Fins

Jahn Teigen – Min Første Kjærlighet

Jahn Teigen – Optimist

Crowded House – Chocolate Cake

INXS – Need You Tonight

The Clash – Rock the Casbah

Tori Amos – My Favorite Things

I Was a Teenage Satan Worshipper – OMG, Techno Chicks!!!

Jerry Reed – East Bound & Down (Jerry Reed)

Billie Holiday – That Ole Devil Called Love

The White Stripes – I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself

Dusty Springfield – I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself

The Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog

The Stooges – No Fun

The Beach Boys – Kokomo

The Stooges – Down On The Street

Ramones – Judy Is a Punk

The Killers – When You Were Young

The Stone Roses – I Wanna Be Adored

Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart

Jace Everett – Bad Things

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Just Like Honey

Stealers Wheel – Stuck In The Middle With You

George Baker Selection – Little Green Bag

Foals – Cassius

Liam Lynch – Electrician’s Day

The Vines – Autumn Shade II

T. Rex – Cosmic Dancer

T. Rex – Jeepster

The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony

The Clash – Clampdown

Jeff Buckley – Eternal Life

Jimi Hendrix Experience – All Along the Watchtower

They Might Be Giants – Infinity

XTC – Senses Working Overtime

The Specials – Our Lips Are Sealed

Depeche Mode – Never Let Me Down Again

Love and Rockets – Motorcycle

The Doors – Back Door Man

Lou Reed – I’m So Free

Boy George – Everything I Own

Morrissey – The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get

MC Júnior E MC Leonardo – Rap Das Armas

ABBA – Dancing Queen

Kylie Minogue – The Loco-Motion

The The – Dogs Of Lust

Tricky – Hell Is Round the Corner

Tommy Tokyo & Starving For My Gravy – Derail And Demise

Living Colour – Glamour Boys

Mitch Hedberg – Mitch in the S’th

Mikael Wiehe och Ebba Forsberg – Allra minst en morgon

MC Lyte – Cold Rock A Party

Datarock – Fa-Fa-Fa

Nina Simone – Sinnerman

Bon Iver – Flume

Fred Åkerström – Jag ger dig min morgon

Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen

Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc.

Euroboys – One-Way Street

Simian – We Are Your Friends (Radio Edit)

Jay-Z – Brooklyn Go Hard [feat. Santogold]

Lupe Fiasco – Daydreamin’ Featuring Jill Scott

Arctic Monkeys – Dancing Shoes

Known collaborators (based on conversations on Twitter):

MrChrister, Eterg, lastninja1980, _Rolf_, mariusgenser, johanhal, Barstein, degarden, paljoakim, nielsw64, Markussss, nech

How to publish a Spotify playlist on the web the easy way
You might be wondering how I was able to put all the songs from the playlist in the post? Spotify still hasn’t got an API, so my plan was to actually build it by hand. I first tried to mark all the songs in the playlist and CTRL-C/APPLE-C them, but instead of a lovely list of artist and song names I got the http links to all the tracks, so there went that idea. But to my amasement something magic happened when I posted all the urls into Textedit on my macbook! All the urls got transformed into clickable links automatically! All I had to do was save the Textedit document as html and open it in my browser to test it, and it worked like a charm! Just a view source and a copy paste away from this blog post! (I believe the Spotify software needs to be running when you do this).

If you want to copy the nice Spotify URI direct links instead of the HTTP links you have to select all the songs in your list, the right click and choose “Copy Spotify URI”.

There are alread plenty of sites where you can share your Spotify playlists, and when those can access a proper API I believe great things will happen. Spotify is already a fantastic product. When people can start adding cool stuff it will explode!

Update: Due to spotty performance from Snapcasa I’m currently working on switching to another screenshot service. Read about it here.

Whiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! If this works there should be about 6 thumbnails on this page, showing links bookmarked using Delicious, and tagged with “art”.

Just Taking Pictures

laura pannack's blog

YouTube - Dulux Walls Ad - Director's Cut

YouTube - Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - 'Lux Aurumque'

Interactive Multitouch Display

YouTube - iPhone as Musical Instrument

See all bookmarks tagged art by mskogly on Delicious.

Download:

Download wp_delicious_snapcasa.zip here, version 0.5 of my very first wordpress plugin.

Usage:

(ps, right now you have to hack it if you want to see your own bookmarks, mskogly is hardcoded  :) Working on that :)

What’s next:

I’m considering a few other thumbnailing services:

http://www.thumboo.com/

http://webthumb.bluga.net/home

http://www.pageglimpse.com/

http://www.scurlr.com/

First off I just want to say that I think this is probably NOT a very good idea, but I downloaded the Timelope extension for firefox today, that basically publishes every single webpage you visit to timelope.com and as an rss.

Smart? No, maybe not, but kind of fun!

Whyyy!
Some people would probably say that publishing every singe page you visit on the web as kind of overkill, and also a sliiiiight security nightmare, and both are probably correct, but is just so darn cool to have!

On a more serious note: It is also a good reminder of just how much information you leave behind while surfing. Perhaps you can even change some habits? Think: If it aint safe to show on the web for all to see, then perhaps it’s not very good for your brain eighter!

Good control over what to display
Timelope has a lot of options to make it easy to control what people see:

1. You can choose to make everything private, and just use it as a log for yourself.
2. By default localhost and all visits to urls starting with https:// is hidden (that means online banking and alle secure logons)
3. You can create a whitelist consisting of sites you want to display.
4. You can create a blacklist with all the sites or parts of websites you don’t want to show (like the link to phpmyadmin, wp-admin, or just any boring site you don’t want to bother people with telling about.
5. There is a convenient checkbox to hide any porn sites you visit.
6. There is a small button in Firefox where you easily can turn off all publishing.
7. And lastly, you can manually delete stuff that you feel clutter up your lovely stream, and you can at the same time choose hide all later visits to knitting.com or other embarrasing sites automatically.

Displaying the Timelope – feed in WordPress:
You can use the wonderful RSS Stream WordPress plugin to display you browser history.

This plugin only supports RSS 2.0, and timelope has chosen to deliver an atomfeed, so you have to fetch your timelope stream and reformat it with for instance feedburner. Log on to feedburner.com and create a new feed, paste in your feedurl from timelope (http://timelope.com/mskogly/feed), when you are done with the wizard you must turn off Smartfeed and then look for Convert Format Burner. Choose Rss 2.0 and then activate.

Then you can go into wordpress admin and insert the feed into Rss Stream, and you are set for some serious information overload fun for all.

Your lifestream will suddenly be flooded with lovely stuff like this:

Update: 26th of april 2009: Decided to turn off Timelope, because it took to much time to administrate and weed out the sites I didn’t want to show.

m.

Ustream test:

Test “social stream”

Choosing Meebo

We were looking for a simple chat solution for a few of our websites, and wanted to check out Meebo. The window that is embedded here is for the radio channel and community over at nrk.no/mp3, where we combined the chat from meebo.com with a webcam solution from ustream.tv. (visible on the front page only in the morning and afternoon).

My colleague Lars Haugdal Andersen made a new adminfunction that lets the djs easily switch the chat/video on and off on demand, and the chat and stream is currently running it 6 hours per day, with about 60 very chatty users blabbering happily away! Good times for all!

Hardware

There is a laptop in the studio that runs the ustream flashapp from the browser. We are using a fairly cheap $100 webcam, but added an external usb soundcard between the laptop and the mixingboard to get better audio. It is not the best setup, but it works for testing purposes, you can hear some audio artifacts in the stream due to the cheap IBM line in, but this is something we can easily improve if we decide to continue the project. This is not a technical experiment by the way, we want to test if it works as a part of the radio show, the technical aspect is secondary.

Other chat solutions

Ustream which we use to host the video stream actually has a chat solution, but because of firewall-issues we couldn’t use it, so Meebo seems like a good substitute. The firewall also makes IRC problematic choise. There are others to choose from, or we could even create our own chat using Flash Media Server, but for now we will stick to Meebo.

Some observations about Meebo so far:

The design is nice, fairly clean, and we love the solution for posting links, images and video, it makes it more more fun for everyone. On one of the sites, NRK Urørt, a site for unsigned Norwegian bands, we want to encourage users to post links directly to their songs as mp3, or to their music videos. Meebo remembers all the latest postings, making it very easy to get a discussion about music going. At least in theory, we have only a few days of experience to gleen from :). But so far, I heartily recommend Meebo for light applications, personal chatrooms, etc at least.

My only reservation so far is that there seem to be a bit of spamming, there is always someone popping in to ask for private msg “with horny naked latinas etc”, which is a pain. Meebo does have warning and ban function, and buildt in dirty word filter (in english), but seem to lack floodcontrol and systemwide autokick etc, stuff that is vital to have if we are to keep the chats on topic and free of spam. We have a choice to close the chats off with passwords, but we preffer not to, it should be as open as possible, but if the spamming gets worse we will definitely need to close it up a little bit more. I think the problem is that all the chats on Meebo are searchable, I miss an option to hide the chatrooms, so that we don’t get random english users popping in all the time.

A spam-solution: With some help from Ted Lee from Meebo Lars had made a script for working with the Meebo api, where you can set each chat to featurable and searchable to false, and this has reduced spamming to basically nothing. I would suggest to Meebo that they make this the default setting for a chat room, and that they include these settings in the webbased admin, inputting this though a php script is pretty bad gui.

Another negative issue is related to whether or not you want to show the sharing section of Meebo in your chat. There is actually no setting for turning it off, it is entirely based on the size you choose for the chat itself, so we had to experience with the with and height a bit, and actually had to choose dimensions based on Meebo limitations and not on how we wanted things to look.

The last issue is related to showing when people join or leave the room, there is actully no way to switch this off. Because the chat at nrk.no/mp3 is placed on the frontpage of the site, there is ALOT of people entering the room and leaving, all the time, which is rather annoying, and actually redendant information since you can see all the nicknames of people attending on the left side of the chat. A simple variable in the embed-code should be enough to switch this off.

Fantastic support!

Big plus and thumbs up to Meebo for superfast response time to questions sent about their api and other features, very impressive. I got an api key in just an hour or so, by email, and we are now looking into autocreating rooms and creating services around it. Hat off to Ted Lee over at Meebo! We salute you!

The api documentation could be more extensive though, and I miss being able to configure more of the chat through variables set in the embed code.

Next step

We will let this test run live for a while now, and see what we learn, and do some poking around with the api and different settings. I love testing new stuff in a real world environment, you learn so much more when you have real users to work with.

We might also play with the api to be able to autochoose nickname for people based on their login info, if we decide to continue using Meebo.

Ustream.tv

Ps: Big tanks to Øyvind Solstad over at NRKbeta for recommending Ustream to us. We tested a few others but settled on Ustream, especially because of their superp control panel. NRKbeta has posted several articles about ustream.tv the first on in June 2007.

Popular Posts

• DIY: How-to repair a broken iPhone 3G glass front panel for about $24
• DIY: How to make your own iPhone macro lens
• DIY : The picturetweeting bathroom scale (aka the worst christmas present ever)
• Get you popcorn ready! Voddler screenshots and details
• DIY: Spill Rock Band 2 med ekte gitar og boksehansker!
• If I was anything other than human
• DIY: Creating a flickrering garden lantern triggered by the wind
• Screenshots from the Wimp music software
• Testing Scribblelive
• DIY: Play Rock band 2 with a real guitar and boxing gloves

Content

Activism Art Artwork Code Commentary DIY Featured Found Greener Home and Garden How-to Ideas Input Inspiration Notes NRK Open Source Personal Photography Portfolio Rant Repair the planet Review Reviews Social web Tekno Tempo Standard Testing Travel Trends Video Web2.0 Webdesign Webdev youtube

Recent Posts

• test
• Kodak 1922 Kodachrome Film Test
• Kajakk2010 – a set on Flickr
• Wired on the iPad – Transforming the Magazine Experience
• Welcome to Repair 2.0
• iPad: First encounter geekout!
• Found: Winscape, another reason for never leaving the appartment
• Slut keyboard prank
• When games invade real life
• 5 iPad apps I’m looking forward to
• How to make the Get The Image WordPress plugin to work with TimThumb
• Farmville is the shit!

Photography

Fotoessay: Jay-Z og Beyoncé ankommer Trondheim

Late of the pier – Pstereofestivalen 2009

Gang of Four – Pstereofestivalen 2009

Motorpsycho – Pstereofestivalen 2009

Thåström – Pstereofestivalen 2009

Ads