New bird on the block

Here’s something that’s sure to ruffle a few feathers (pun very much intended). Yesterday while searching for an open-source player for a particular music file format I stumbled across this tuneful Songbird. It’s basically half-iTunes, half-Firefox. Intrigued? I know I was, and not just by the great design and illustration of the site.

After installing the developer preview (it’s currently in alpha, not even beta yet) and taking a look around I found that when you navigate to a website it automatically scans the page and puts all the music files linked from the page into a playlist ready for listening and/or downloading. Fantastic, and not unlike my very own Greasemonkey script for playing MP3 files on 3Hive. Except better. Much, much better.

I think it looks pretty cool, and you get even more great illustration in the program itself (is that bird pooping?) as well as a load of configuration options – and even add-ons, just like the fantastic ‘Fox. It says it integrates with iPods as well, and while it certainly recognised my iPod and showed all the playlists on it, I couldn’t create or copy a playlist to the iPod itself. Hopefully there’ll be some decent documentation somewhere that will help me out.

So if you’re into the musical web, this could well be the most useful software you get this year.

Catching up

Returning from a short break over the Easter weekend I find myself with the usual problem of too much reading to catch up on. My blog reading list has thousands of items outstanding on it, and I need to decide what I really need to read before I hit the magic “Mark all read” button. Here’s my top 5 must-read blogs (not in any specific order).

  1. Creating Passionate Users: I’ve linked to and written about Kathy’s excellent writings so many times before I’m not going to subject you to my fawning fandom again. Suffice to say if you’re involved in anything that provides products or services to anyone, you need to be a regular reader. Despite what’s happened recently there is still a wealth of information on the blog that’s worthy of your attention.
  2. Signal vs. Noise: 37signals are to modern web development what Tower of Power are to funk. Anyone in the know knows that they know their stuff, and they produce the very best in the business. I’m very influenced by 37signals’ ethos of less-is-more, and their blog truly is a window on the world through their eyes.
  3. The Cartoon Blog: Dave Walker is a friend of mine, and I’m proud to say so. He’s a cartoonist, humourist, blogist and websitist with a particularly unique way of looking at the world. He also has a book which is rather good.
  4. John Heron project: Wood is also a friend of mine, and could be described as a ”hack’, although his short stories are what draws me back time and again. Stories that skirt around the gap between this world and the other dimension that exists deep in each of our souls. Compelling stories.
  5. Gaping void: Hugh is one of those blog A-listers about which not much more could be said. I like what he says more than some of the cartoons that accompany the words, but the cartoons that really intrigue me are the ones about faith. There’s something going on deep inside Hugh, something fascinating.

Of course, there’s a lot more that just missed out being in that list, but these are the can’t-live-without-them ones.

More JavaScript goodness

If you’re one of the few people in the world that liked the look of my Performer JavaScript library but found it didn’t quite do what you want, take a look at these projects from LivePipe.com which include really nifty modal window generators.

And if that’s not enough then the talented Dustin Diaz has a
chainable JavaScript kit
built on the Yahoo! UI framework. It’s quite a bit more complicated than using the Performer classes, but it’s a whole lot more powerful.

And if all that is too geeky for you, take a trip down memory lane with PC World’s 50 best tech products of all time. It made interesting reading, and I had fun seeing which of my favourite gadgets made it into the list.

Switching off

It seems like quite a few of my regular blogs reads are closing down. This is a shame, and the fact that these well-respected and very talented writers are hanging up their keyboards, so to speak, because of online abuse (sometimes of an extreme, disgusting and frightening nature) is an indictment on certain sectors of the online community.

Wherever groups of people gather you expect there to be a few idiots. I know, I’ve been an idiot many times. However when the tone of what’s being said turns from mere stupidity to extreme vulgarity and even disturbing threats, a line has been crossed. I wish everyone who has been adversely affected by the goings-on around the web over the last few weeks the very best, and encourage them to not lose touch with the genuine friends they have made here.

I’ll be keeping this blog going, one of the advantages of being a nobody is you’re not set up as a target. However with such a lot on my plate at the moment I doubt I’ll be breaking any writing records.