Today my post won`t be about any serious scripting or security issues - I will write little bit about my biggest problem - working in open space.
Working space have many advantages, but also many disadvantages. For companies, it is cheaper to have open space, also productivity is increased... But only in case if you work at helpdesk or have some similar job. But if you are half-developer\architect as me, it is really annoying and instant buzz can get on your nerves.
Therefore if I need to focus on something, I really like to listen to music (my music taste is mixed, but I mostly prefer chillout and indie rock). My problem is that I heard all my mp3s and cds all over and over again.
For some time, I was listening to web radios, however they are not really what I was looking for, instant advertisements were driving me crazy (this is specially case with PowerFM or CapitalFM, they have same ads for almost two years now and they repeat them very often).
After some time I encountered www.last.fm and I can HIGHLY recommend it. Generally, last.FM is music social network - I would compare it to music FaceBook, however last.fm not useless (sorry all FB fans ;)). You can listen to your personalized radios based on your preferences. You can either start by tag or by your favorite artist.
For example right now I am playing "christmas" tag at home. It will automatically play all songs that were tagged by christmas. Usually at my work I listen to chillout tag.
I can (personally) see four major advantages compared to other scenarios (web radios and own music) - you can mark music as loved\baned (which really works), you dont have any ads, you have TONS of songs and you get to know new artists (for example my favorites are now Frou Frou and Sia - never heard of them before).
Even my old xbox (running XBMC) have support for last.fm and that`s all I needed. Right now only feature I am missing is "forgotten bits" (thats my name). What that means?
Quite often it happens that I know only melody\words, but have no clues about artists or track names. This is specially case when I listen to songs on my PDA - I like to have it hidden somewhere and I am too lazy to take it out and have a look on display. So for my favorites songs, only thing I know is melody itself. Not long time ago I was thinking it would be nice idea (from Live or Google) to implement songs search based on voice - you will just hmmm, hmmmmmm bit of song you know and it will find it automatically - and I really found existing (and working) solution :) You can find it at www.midomi.com - just go there, select "Click for signing search" and try to sign part of your song. I tested it myself and even though I am VERY bad singer and I have problem with saying "R", my searching were really working. That way I found that Here comes the sun (song that I really like) is quite old and is from Beatles (I had no idea) :)
So, did you try last.fm and midomi? And do you like it? Share through comments :)
Martin