Long live last.fm!

"Aaahhh - I love it when the bass rattles everything in the kitchen"
jemimakiss

So the beautiful new last.fm is live and I'm loving it! There's a lot on offer out there that's confusing and time wasting. Unless you're a geek journo, what's the point of chopping and changing all the time? You end up spending more time setting up, re-finding your friends and putting in your music preferences. "If it ain't broken don't try and fix it" and last.fm was never bust but now it's better.

It's hard to explain exactly why. Yes, it looks better, it takes all your media player tunes into account, charts and recommendations are updated immediately and yes, the player is on nearly every page. Admittedly, I have had the odd problem in losing music when changing page but on the whole it's pretty reliable. Yes, it had a few problems on launch but let's just call that a victim of its own success and the tekkies seem to have it under control now.

Feature updates are a necessary duty to keep users onside but the thing that does it for me is the new design and navigation. It's simpler, cleaner and smarter at the same time offering a musical mystery tour anytime you want. As, my musical journey continues, I'm being offered more relevant choices. It's like someone has made a compilation tape for me with all my favourite stuff on - even stuff I've never heard of.

The journey through artist and track info passes you by until you realise that you've been cliking away for ages without thinking. It works. The videos are nicely organised against each artist, album or track and, whilst they're mostly pulled in from YouTube, you always find what you're looking for without clutter. Video also works in the same way as music so you get offered better choices the more you play.

It's not like me to give so much praise to anyone or anything. So I better stop before I get a new reputation. But it's rare to see a good British web application working the way it's supposed to. Long live last.fm. A haiku dedication seems only right and proper now.

New look last fm
Easier, cleaner, smarter...
British 2.0!

So be my first and best last.fm friend www.last.fm/user/haikuriosgeorg

Scouting for gossip

Been a busy old week scouting for gossip which is also proving very difficult when you're undercover. Think I caused a bit of a stir with my last post - am just sorry that Paul Carr is getting all the flack for unleashing me.

Thursday looks set to be the highlight. It starts with Saul Klein's OpenCoffee Meetup at 10am. "Hmmm, I'd give that a miss" I hear you say. At time of press, there are 7 signed up and, no offence Saul, but these things are at best a bunch of no-hopers thinking that someone with a big wallet or a philanthropic web developer will come up to them and say "yes, a website that will connect owners of "'Allegro's' with other owners - count me in!". Stop it George, you don't really mean that. Sorry, coffee lovers. We all know that people leave it till the last minute to sign up for these things. I suggest in the case of this Thursday's you don't.

Watch this space. I hear this Thursday could be different. That's all I can say for the moment. Don't want to put it all over Facebook yet and have the police cancel the event. Enough already!

Except for one last moan on the earlier spelling mistakes discussion. Found a spelling mistake on Saul's blog. Near the bottom. Answers on a postcard. Sort it out Saul!


"Moo" said the confused sheep

"I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought I'd rather dance with the cows until you come home."
Groucho Marx

There's been a rumour going around that I might be showing my face on Thursday night at the moo.com party. Yep, that's right, complete with my moo cards and signed photos...

Nooo. But my spirit will be there, my (virtual) ears to the ground, yours - burning. Looks set to be a great evening taking over the trendy Exmouth Market with smattering of peeps from the dot com community and a few like me going for the free beer and gossip.

In case you didn't know, Moo's a great little company that prints, mostly, calling cards of your own design. It's run by the lovely Richard Moross and they've gained a lot of popularity with the online community. You can import your image from Facebook, Bebo, Flickr etc. It's easy and inexpensive.

May see you Thursday!



One last thing

Has anyone seen Samsung trying to get in on the haiku act? Through Twitter you can tweet your haiku to win one of their new Instinct phones. Why didn't they just come to me? So my question is, should I degrade myself and enter? tweet me at twitter.com/haikuriousgeorg, email me or leave a comment.