Geek Swagger.
Posts tagged Music
GetGlue.com – A Social Network that Sticks
Jan 10th
Last week I discovered a new social check-in site similar to Foursquare and Gowalla called GetGlue. What's new you ask? With the two services I mentioned above leading the way and Facebook Places making a big splash, how can there be room for another location-based check-in site? Well, GetGlue has its own take on checking in. Instead of focusing on physical locations you instead use GetGlue to check into the various media you happen to be consuming at any given moment.
Movies, Books, Music...You Name It!
The nice part about using GetGlue is that it seems to know about most types of media and all of the various artists and titles in that category. You can check into television shows, podcasts, video games...pretty much anything you can think of. As you check in and like different things you build a profile based on your tastes and GetGlue will start to recommend new things that you might not have experienced yet. What's more, if you add some friends on the website the recommendations will take their favorites into account as well. Ultimately the idea is to expose users to new things they haven't heard of before and it works pretty darn well.
Stick To It
A lot of the check-in social networks on the web use their own currency...badges in Foursquare for example. GetGlue is no different, but instead of badges you deal with colorful stickers, and who doesn't love stickers? As you like different things your collection of stickers will grow. The coolest part about GetGlue is that there's a physical aspect to the stickers because once you've earned enough you can actually have physical copies mailed to you. You only have to get 20 stickers within a 30 day period so if you love to listen to music or watch movies as much as I do you'll be swimming in collectible adhesives in no time!
The final selling point I want to relay is that GetGlue has an awesome sweet of mobile applications, which is critical. I use their iPad app more than anything and it's incredibly well thought out and easy to use. They've also developed browser plugins that will automatically detect media within webpages and let you like things on the fly. There's really no excuse for you to ever go more than a few hours without increasing your like count.
GetGlue is totally free so give it a shot and let me know what you think! You can . Feel free to add me as a friend on the site (after all, social networks are so much more fun when you use them socially).
My taste in music is so weird.
May 20th
I go from listening to some Canibus, the greatest rapper alive, to songs like Christy Moore's "Ride On." Â I think I might have to pick up his whole "Live in Dublin 2006" album sometime. Â I've seen a few of the songs on YouTube and they're all pretty great. Â Anyways:
One of my favorite live performances
Feb 15th
I've been on a bit of an A Perfect Circle kick lately. I've been listening Mer De Noms and Thirteenth Step (their first two albums) back-to-back, and this is reflected by my YouTube activity. I found this video of APC playing "Three Libras" live on Leno, and I have to share it. It's no secret that Maynard James Keenan - frontman of Tool and A Perfect Circle - is an amazing singer. What's more he's one of the few singers in this genre that probably sounds better live than on an album.
I remember my brother showing me a recording of this exact performance many years ago. He knew in advance that they'd be on Leno and had recorded a VHS copy (dating us both a bit there, as well as APC I suppose) and when we watched it he commented on how it was one of the best performances he'd seen. I'd have to agree. Unfortunately the YouTube version I found has been disabled for embeds, but here's the same video from imeem in a lesser quality:
I also favorited the video on YouTube so if you still want to see that version you can check out my channel there. Username is dmkemick.
Pandora Radio and complementary tools
Nov 1st
Pandora Radio has changed the way I've listened to music. It's the most powerful music recommendation application I've ever used, and it's led to me spending a lot on new albums. If you're a music lover looking to broaden your horizons, check it out at pandora.com.
In this video not only do I talk about Pandora Radio, but some complementary tools to improve your Pandora listening experience. The first tool is PandoraBoy, a Google Code project that runs Pandora as an application (OSX only, but Pandora also has a platform-independent Adobe AIR application). This is cool for a couple reasons - first of all, it lets you cut out the big advertisements that are on Pandora.com and in the Adobe AIR version of Pandora, and secondly it adds some functionality (Growl notifications, keyboard shortcuts) which only a desktop application can deliver.
The second tool is a plugin for Adium, which is (in my opinion) the best instant messenger client for OSX. The script lets you use whatever is playing in PandoraBoy as your Adium status. If you've used iTunes to show your Now Playing song in Adium you'll know what I mean. Check out the video and leave a comment! Thanks for watching!
PandoraBoy
"Now Playing in Pandora" Adium script
Pandora Radio
Now Playing:
