Last.fm

http://www.last.fm/

Hardly new or anything, but I figured I’d do a little write up on it. Need to get some more techno-nerdy posts up here. So hey, why not.

I’ve been using last.fm for awhile now (although, I just installed it on my computer out here in DC).

last.fm is a music social network blended with a radio station. I originally found last.fm when I was looking for a way to automatically keep a list of songs I’m listening to on my facebook profile. After looking a little bit on what it would take to write a Windows Media Player (my player of choice, albeit I really didn’t evaluate many alternatives).   You create an account with last.fm and then install their software. When you install the software it scans to see what players you have installed and then will install “Scrobbler” plugin for those players. The Scrobbler posts the songs you are listening to up to the last.fm site. You can then see the listing of songs you’re listening to. Here’s my profile: http://www.last.fm/user/geeksteve.  If you were really obsessive you can even subscribe to an RSS feed with of what i’m currently listening too. A little less on the stalker side of things you can add a widget to you site or blog. For my blog, I decided to go with publishing the list of Recently Listen Tracks.
(I’m not sure on how to get that info the widgets sidebar on wordpress yet though…)
EDIT: Seems wordpress.com for security won’t allow javascript, embed, or flash in posts. Although that means I can’t host the fun last.fm widget, I do like knowing that I won’t be causing any cross-site-scripting vunerabilities. Usibility comes at the price of security after all . Instead I’ve just hooked into the RSS feed using the wordpress supplied widget. Not as pretty, but it works.

On my facebook page (mainly because it never auto-refreshes), I chose to go with the Weekly Top Tracks. The facebook app is called What I’m Listening To and published out pretty much the same information that you get with the site/blog widget. The only downside (and I think this is a facebook performance imposed constraint) is that the copy on the profile isn’t updated. Every so often I go into the settings for the app and just click save to force a refresh on the profile.

Anyway, back to the last.fm app. Besides the ability to just keep a tally on what you’re listening to, it takes that information and allows you to

1. create a radio station with just the music you like.
2. find people who are into the same type of music you are into
3. notify you when artist you like are having a show/event/gig near you

the last big feature (probably the biggest) is that you can stream music from their player/app. Back in MI (because I didn’t have a lot of ripped music on my computer) I was using it pretty extensively. I would just enter in “emo” or “alternative” and bingo-bango I was set with hours and hours of music I like.

If you have a Windows Mobile device and a Last.fm profile, you can grab the software from the Last.fm Mobile Forum or download a version direct from here:

Last.fm Mobile for Pocket PC (v1.4)
Last.fm Mobile for Smartphone (v1.1)

(Sadly, I have a crackberry now, so I can’t enjoy said app)

Sidenote:

I think that’ll do for a post. I’m trying to stick with my 1 post minium a week. Its been tough. But then again, would I have really needed to make a goal if it wasn’t going to be a challenge?

The First 90 Days

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael Watkins.

My newfound commute to and fro work has granted me the wonderful gift of having plenty of time to read. ;-p I picked up this book after seeing that J.D. Meier recommend it (http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/01/17/success-strategies.aspx) just around the time that I was looking to transition to my new job. Overall the book is pretty good. Akin to the situational leadership approach, Watkins breaks the environmental situation into four core types (STaRS), each requiring a different approach. Each chapter ends with a quick list of questions that try to get you to think about the your situation in regards to the topic of that chapter. If there was on thing I didn’t like is that it was too easy to read. I found myself reading through the chapters without stopping to reflect and really process the material and concepts. I think this is a common problem with these declarative leadership/business type books.

The big takeaways for me (in the context of starting a new job in a new organization) were

• Accomplish as much as you can early on. But make sure those quick wins are aligned with your long term goal.
• Focus in on what you can do early on. There probably is a lot that needs fixing, don’t spread yourself too thin.
• Figure out the best way to communicate with your new boss. You need to make sure you keep them in the loop/in the know. That’s really hard to do if you don’t use the medium they are most confortable with.
• Related to the item above, negotiate success. Make sure you clear up expectations on what and how you will be judged on with your boss. For me (in the geek context), this was a really good point. Back at UofM I was really working to automate IT solutions and get vision/scope defined for projects. It would be a bad assumption to go into this new job thinking I would be evaluated against how well I achieved those things (and some related others). If documentation isn’t important at this new place, and I spend a lot of time writing up/pre-planning, even though the end result is the system deployed it might seem like it “took to long” to my new boss.
• Take 100% responsibility for making the relationship work [with your boss]

On interesting thing about the book (admitting it could just be biased from my point of view) is that although the book was intended for “new leaders at all levels”, it seemed like the major focus of the book was about how to deal with the people above you. The implied hidden subtext seems to be that leadership is the ability to get things done despite the powers from above.

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