One of my grad students has written a (free, as in beer) Windows desktop player for last.fm music streams, called myLastFM.
Why use it?
We use last.fm to stream music all day long. Sometimes the web interface from last.fm does not refresh correcty. Usually this is not a problem... unless a song that you do not care for comes on and you can't skip it! myLastFM prevents that from happening by giving control of the music stream to a desktop player. Using myLastFM also helps take some of the load off of the last.fm webserver. The whole community benefits from a lesser load on the site. This makes it faster for new users to signup and for existing users to login and utilize the music community features.
From the screen shots, it looks lovely (not a surprise; this is someone who consistently does high-quality work).
(So, Eric, when are you writing the Cocoa-based version for your real computer? ;) )
On a completely separate subject, the 2005 "Bloggies" [web log] Awards Nominees have been posted.
Thought you might be interested.
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More importantly if you're like me you can't resist clicking on the profile icons of online lastfm users. It's an addiction. I am weak. MyLastFM doesn't make me stronger but it puts the cork back in the bottle.
Hey Liz,
Thank you for the wonderful comments :-)
I am afraid that I cannot take all of the credit for making such a good looking application. While I did dream myLastFM up one day at work and decide that I was going to stay up for two days writing it, Nicole is the one who designed all of the awesome graphics. She stayed up for two days straight with me and created the design and website. Nicole also helped with the dynamics, interface, and the layout of both the application and the website. We really are a great team :-)
As far as the Mac client goes... it might be a few months. I would like to write a Cocoa-based version soon but I need to find a book on it first and take a week off from work. (That doesn't sound like a bad idea!) Right now we are taking several requests per day for additional features and working with the Last.FM team to get a production web service in order. We have even taken on another developer (a good friend) who is writing (from scratch) a Shoutcast client so that myLastFM does not depend on a third-party client. There are many other exciting features which will be rolling out in the next few weeks too.
Well, I'm determined to get a new beta out tonight with a few bug fixes and a few new features so I had better get back to the code window. :-)
Eric