Using twitterfeed I have directed a couple of feeds for my own private use to the user longwayroundfb. One of those is my Facebook Friends’ status updates, the other is the BBC’s weather forecast for Paderborn-Lippstadt International airport.

Of more potential use to others is the BBC’s Southend United news feed which I’ve set up having become bored of Virgin Mobile’s failure to send me the score updates that they had previously sent to me.

¹(It’s one of the perils of being a languages teacher that now and then I can be dragged unceremoniously away from the classroom to spend an inordinate amount of time in German bars accompany students on educational visits.)

Tonight I have also discovered iStalkr, a social feed aggregator. I’m less convinced by the need for this one but I shall follow it with a little interest.

I have found that this forum software integrates very nicely with WordPress but the default template is, in my opinion, an awful mess of tiny fonts (‘font-size: 62.5%‘!) and impenetrable DIVs.

I had made some progress with integrating the design of the fora with that of the rest of the site. Then, I installed BBpress 0.74 over v0.73 and, being a bit dim, lost the changes I had made.

I think the principle benefit of having a forum at the moment is that it presents a less intimidating interface than WordPress.

Or is it looking at me?

Pitchfork Feature: Better Than We Know Ourselves

“Music is tribal in its essence”

Much like Ringo more than a decade ago, Last.fm— which launched in its present form in August 2005– recommends music by comparing you to everybody else in the system, and it builds a community where you can find other fans who share your tastes. But unlike Ringo, it doesn\’t study you through a questionnaire: You give it permission to spy on you and learn everything it can based on the music you play on your computer.

As co-founder Martin Stiksel explains on the phone from their London office, “Last.fm developed out of a platform for unsigned artists and bands. Two of the founders, Felix [Miller] and myself, had an online label/unsigned artist platform on our website, [along with] streaming radio. And we were inundated with great music. Within a short time we had 500 different artists that nobody knew.”

So they built a collaborative filtering system— a tool that makes recommendations based on the fans who most closely share your tastes. Put simply, if your collection and somebody else’s are 80% alike, it’s a safe bet you would like the other 20%. Once the system gets a read on you, it uses this formula to recommend bands, point you to your “neighbours”— other users with similar listening habits— and stream a custom-tailored radio station to your Last.fm music player.

Sadly, the operators of the service, PremiumTV appear to have little or no knowledge of reality. The service for which I pay allows me to receive a 16 kbps stream of BBC Essex commentary on Southend United games. The service is ropey in that the link is frequently lost but there is no other practical way for exiled football supporters to follow many of their clubs’ games.

Now, however, I find that PremiumTV are changing the system. Currently it can be accessed using almost any web browser and Windows Media Player 9 using the ACELP codec. In the future, however, the system will move to WMP10′s DRM system, compatible only with Windows.

For music sales, I am in many ways ambivalent about DRM. I have bought a good number of tracks from the iTunes store and rarely ever now buy a physical single. However, this is for a 128kbps recording. I honestly struggle to believe that PremiumTV will do anything to protect their market by moving into DRM to protect a 16kbps audio stream, a bitrate which is in quality terms roughly halfway between a telephone call and medium-wave radio.

I remain optimistic that the company may see sense. For what it’s worth, I have contacted the Football League, Southend United F.C. and the SUSCT.

Technorati Tags: Football, League, PremiumTV, Windows Media Player, ACELP, DRM

I describe this as guff since I remember using their free trial some time ago to download albums by Cocteau Twins, the Pixies and Madder Rose. Today, I downloaded another 25 tracks using their free trial. It would appear that, so long as the card number is different each time, users can have as many free trials as they like.

Thanks eMusic for Franz Ferdinand‘s “You Could Have It So Much Better”, the Cocteau Twins’ “Treasure” and The Fall‘s “Totally Wired”.

The range of music on eMusic is not at all bad, unless your musical interests are mainstream but a subscription service really would not be my cup of tea.

Technorati Tags: eMusic, Cocteau Twins, Pixies, Madder Rose, Franz Ferdinand, The Fall

For the past month and a half we’ve been looking at the web 2.0 trend and what it could mean for your church. We’ve looked at the highs and lows, the possibilities and the dangers and whether or not any of it means anything for telling more people about Jesus.