Hung Up on Last.fm
Apr 11th, 07 |I spent most of yesterday playing around with last.fm, and being entirely unproductive. After a couple hours, I realized how much time had gotten away from me, and consequently that familiar old feeling of guilt took over. You know that feeling, when you’ve wasted too much time on something, and you knew all along you could’ve been doing something better?
So I started thinking about how I could shake the guilt, and I think I’ve got the answer… research! When all else fails, fall back on research. ;) In this case, it’s not even a far stretch. There’s a correlation between listening to good music and producing good design. Doesn’t matter what your listening preferences are, or your design style. I believe there was a seminar on it at SXSW, released afterward as a podcast (I just can’t remember which one). Anyway, if you listen to music that fosters creativity according to your interests and personality, you’re going to roll out better work.
Which brings me to my point (I really am getting to it). Yesterday wasn’t a waste of time. It was a task which needed immediate attention, mostly because I’m sick to death of the same old stations and the same old songs, and I need some new inspiration. It is after all, a critical element of design. It’s the starting point. The first hurdle. Without inspiration you end up with ordinary, or even worse - a blank canvas.
So I’ve convinced myself the time on last.fm was well spent when it comes to longevity. I downloaded their player (and subsequently the Foxytunes plugin for it), searcd for new music, created playlists, etc. Haven’t done much with tagging or recommendations yet, but I got an earful of great music all day long. I also found this nifty little plugin for pulling in and displaying your latest tracks on your blog. Last.fm has what they call charts, where you can capture the 10 most recent tracks/artists that you’ve heard for inclusion on your site, but I thought it was pointless because it’s just a static image. Manual updating is so yesterday. ;)
