Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Last.fm and the new playlist issues.. what do you think?

What in the heaven's name just happened to the last.fm playlists?
On one hand, we now have the ability to create more than 1 playlist. On the other hand, now only the subscribers can actually play those playlists, and that is only if the playlist contains at least 45 tracks and 15 different artists!! As you can imagine I'm not happy about that at all! On top of that, what really ticked me off last night was that I noticed the new 200 track limit, which has already been applied on ALL playlists, even the ones that had been created before the updates. This of course means that large parts of some of my favorite neighborhood playlists have simply been annihilated. No backups, nothing. So now I have 5 playlists which I can do very close to zilch with, and I can no longer go swimming in the mighty playlists created by my friends.
And just to make my mood even darker, obviously the flash playlist player widget no longer works either... it did till 2 days ago... grrrrrrrrrr!!
So, anybody else sharing my mood?

Labels: , , ,

Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Waaaaaaall - eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! =D

Awwwwwwwwwwwww Wall-e melted meeeee! =) Well, yesterday I finally stole the time to go and watch the Wall-e movie which I had been waiting for...for... forever pretty much! And it was so worth the wait! =) This was probably one of the cutest animated movies that I have EVER seen in my life. Both the main characters, Wall-e and Evaa [Eve], were simply adorable, and the general plot was pretty neat too. I'm not going to say more since I want to avoid spoilers. I can only say this: don't miss this movie! =)
Now I'm going to wait and see if I can get my hands on the toy robot that I've been reading about on Gizmodo. ;)

Labels: , , , ,

Thursday, July 03, 2008
Aasemoon & Last.fm Beta [First Day Review]

For the past few weeks I was constantly bumping into articles here and there, talking about the new last.fm beta and all it's cool and new features, and of course that it would be available to the website subscribers. Well, I've been using last.fm for the past 2 years and can call myself a pretty serious user, although somehow I never found it necessary to subscribe, and I never have. So I guess you can imagine my sheer surprise when yesterday morning I received an invitation to the beta, regardless of my status. No clue how this happens, but I'm glad I got the chance to have a look inside, cause there really are some very cool changes. =) So let me see, where to start...
That's my new profile, and yes I do have a tendency of sneaking into my friends channels and listening to what they're listening to. As you can see I was stalking amvee.=) Click for larger images.
I guess I better start with the part that is the most important to me, the user profiles. When I first logged into the beta, it took my eyes a couple of seconds to get used to the lack of some of the previous version's eye candy. There's a very plain red strip on the top of the page which I'm not the biggest fan of, but perhaps that's the only part that I'm not a fan of. The first thing that _really_ took my attention and put a smile on my lips, was the answer to my prayers, a perfectly working playlist player on the right column. YAY. YAAAAY. And guess what, my Loved Tracks are now actually good for something as they're playable through the playlist player. This means that I can get much better a view of what my friends really consider loved music and not just frequently played music, and vice versa. [Yes, I can actually see everybody's profile on the beta...] The charts are still there, only with more options to play around with. And now there's something called "Library" that contains information about your listening habits, every artist you ever listened to and the track counts. The Library is customizable, you can have it show whatever you'd like, and it looks great too.
The artist pages also look neat and pretty much the same as user pages. Generally the information is a lot better organized, and it's much easier to use features like tagging or making a recommendation. Both user and artist profiles have an "activity feed" lower in the page which again, is a pretty neat fature.
Not all the features are working as of yet. As you can see in the screenies, Videos, Charts and Events are yet to be added. But from what I've seen on my 1st day, I can say that last.fm did manage to make an even  bigger fan of me than I already was. Way to go guys, and thanks for inviting me. =)

Labels: , , , , ,


Intel Demo Competition 2008 : The Real Deal Is In!

Well well well, I was notified this morning by Optimus [thank you!] that the actual entries for the IDC 2008 are finally released and ready to be voted for. And I have to say, oh boy, aren't they awesome! I mean I started with the Cocoon demo and the music caught me right away, and of course the graphics were nothing short of marvellous. Then the Firlight & TBL demo with those cute little buttons [dude, I want some of those! =)] and the scary dissolving faces gave me round eyes. Next was the MFX demo and it's cool style, I specially liked the beginning of this one. Then came the Inque demo with again fantastic music, and all the orange juice. I mean they even have ASD labeled orange juice. ;) Last but certainly not least was the beautiful beautiful Still demo. The music is just otherworldly, and the visuals, oh, the visuals... no words, I'm speechless. As I mentioned before, Still always has a way of making me happy. =)
So, big Kudos to all the competing teams, and now it's time for you all to go and see the demos for yourselves. You can either watch the demos on the IDC website, or download the real-times here. Enjoy. And, well, wish me luck too as I have a competition of my own to face, tomorrow. =)

Labels: ,

Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Don S. Davis Passed Away...

=""( I read the news last night on GateWorld. Don S. Davis, one of my favorite actors, and the player of the role of General Hammond, one of my favorite Stargate characters, passed away on the 29th. It appears that the cause was a severe heart attack. This made me very very sad....

Labels: , ,


RSS Bandit Phoenix

I've been using RSS Bandit as my feed reader for a few years now and I'm a big fan of it. I even posted an article about there here [in 2005], and I like it now as much as I did back then, or even more. The cool thing is, apparently these folk never stopped working on the project and making improvements to the software, and now as a result, there's RSS Bandit Phoenix. This is a new version of RSS Bandit who's alpha installer is now available for download through the RSS Bandit Website. Phoenix has all the old Bandit goodies, as well as a whole bunch of kool and new features that make it even more of a joy to use. So whether you're already a Bandit user or you've never heard of it before, and if you're as much of a feed freak as I am, do check Phoenix out. =)

Labels: , ,

 

Ahoo "Aasemoon" Pirsoleimani, 1998-2014