Last.fm

Liz

Anyone know anything about this? Any good?

andy

You're voluntarily starting a techie thread....

Pete uses it, I think.

David

I've been using it too. It's ok. Bit buggy right now, but Pedro and I are sharing each others listening lists. A bit novelty really. Though like Pete, it has introduced me to a few things I haven't heard before.

Pete

its rss stuff is useful and clever. Despite it running like a chair every once in a while.
Were you asking about how it works or what it does?

Liz

?'Running like a chair'? Bit of both really. Mainly wondering whether it's worth investing the time to check it out and get to grips with it, given that I'm not very adept at such things.

Pete

Runs like a chair - A object that, as part of its design, is stationary to offer maximum use and comfort. So when something on the infobahn "runs like a chair", its design is faulty, and thus is use flawed.
Example: The RSS feeds from last.fm are ace in concept. I have them feed onto the accounts page at dazegoonboy.co.uk. But because of server-side traffic, it times out and give an ugly error message. I can't find a solution to at least stop it garbling 20 sentences at the top of the screen
"Runs like a chair"

Sorry, i was being dramatic

I like it thought. I like how its recording what I'm listening to, what tracks are "special", what genres are awful. It takes a while for it to fully function and make recommendations that are worthwhile. the "more mainstream - More obscure" option is useful. I like more underground sounds.

All it all, it reminds me of launchcast.com before yahoo bought it out and raped it.

David

Pete, you want to cache the rss feed, then code a switch that declares that if the feed times out from the last.fm server it pulls up the cached version from your own server. I use [Magpie](http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/) which will probably be impossible to integrate with vanilla but you might be able to learn enough from it to tweak your plugin. I wrote that just for Lucy.

Pete

I use the vanilla extensions on getvanilla.com. They have a lastfm one that seems to be based on magpie.

And magpie gave me enough headaches once upon a time. Wanting to cache 4 rss feeds can lead to a website taking 5 minutes to fully load, and thats touch and go.

David

caching should be instantaneous. i'll look at the plugin. Also, i'm dissappointed Lucy hasn't contributed to this discussion

Pete

I'm pretty sure she given up on trying to work out what I'm on about

Liz

Anyone fancy actually answering my question? Anyone? Anyone?

David

It's free Liz, so just login, start an account and see how you go with it.

Lucy

my head hurts.