Listening Room 2.0
I've been thinking it's time to work on an update to the Listening Room, which would first require finding a better embedded mp3 player, then improving the scripts to make it easier to use. Ideally this would be the digital equivalent to the '80s scenario where a few people get together with a selection of albums from their music collection to make a mixed tape. Being a seasoned programmer, I immediately went online to see if someone else has already created something suitable. Lo and behold, the age of social networking has brought many interesting developments for media sharing. I took a look at about a dozen promising ones from this possible list of candidates. A few of them let you publish your library (you need to have your computer on, acting as a file server):

Dottunes ... here's my dottunes site (will only work if my laptop is online)

Slimserver

... while others provide an easy way to upload music to a "locker" which can be played and shared on the web or PDAs:

MP3tunes ... transfer music with Locker Sync

Tunefeed ... my test upload stalled at 35% loaded

On one site, Streampad, you can create playlists of music files that have been skimmed across the web, like this:



That's pretty cool. Streampad can also access music uploaded to an mp3tunes locker. But multiple locker owner's can't collaborate to make a playlist together on a rainy day. Maybe its time I learned more about web development, became a partner to mp3tunes and created such a thing.

......

update: it appears Streampad is only a part-time effort itself as the developer took a day job.
  posted by John : 10:25 AM

 
The Day the Garifuna Music Died
Andy Palacio, Who Saved Garifuna Music, Dies at 47

  posted by John : 7:09 PM