So it seems my server got overloaded due to the excessive api calls my lastest mashup was making to the last.fm server. This did work fine when I had it running locally, I may post a video of it in action instead of the demo. In the meantime I am thinking of another tool. The other day I worked out how much my iTunes collection was worth based on 79p/track. The figure was over £18k!! Maybe a little tool to work out your last.fm value based on your plays would be fun, if I was feeling cheeky this could be linked to how popular each artist was. It may even be nice to plot these against your friends...

A month or so ago I hacked the last.fm for wordpress plugin to allow for integration with Spotify. The basic  idea was that the plugin would pull in your recently played tracks and then allow users to open those tracks directly within Spotify by clicking on a green note. A had a spare two hours this morning so decided to see what I could make in that time. This new mash-up is a little different. You give it your Last.fm username and it will go and find your top artists. It then uses this to find the top tags for each of those artists. It then orders the tags by the amount of times they occur across...

After changing my domain hosting to Dreamhost, I also set up Google Apps for my Mail and Calendar services. So far the service has been brilliant and I didn’t seem to notice any problems after Google’s recent outage. In response to the downtime Google has launched an App Status Dashboard so that users can see if their services are up and running correctly. Take a look at it here.

I have created the Wordpress widget that displays recent tracks from last.fm with the ability to open the tracks in Spotify. Read more and check it out here - http://www.blog.sizzla-media.co.uk/plugins/ Hope you like it.  Any feedback add them to the comments – enjoy

I have hacked the Last.fm for Wordpress plugin from here to search Spotify. At present I don’t plan to release the plugin but will do shortly after I have tidied up the code. You can test it out by firstly downloading Spotify from here. Then simply click on the green note icon next to the track in my sidebar (under last.fm) to launch Spotify and play the track. An image of my Last.fm side bar There is no API for Spotify yet but a bit of digging around in the Greasemonkey script enabled me to send the track name and artist to a search within the Spotify app. Hopefully an API will be available...

A new service called Spotify aims to halt the illegal downloading of music by allowing users to stream content to their PC’s and Macs. The idea is pretty simple; rather than the user paying upfront for the music it is funded by advertising, and rather than downloading a physical copy which can be shared it is streamed. The app is slick an works similar to iTunes in that playlists can be created. These playlists can be shared with other users as can individual tracks. In essence this is nothing more than a link as the music is not on a users machine (although music is cached and a P2P solution...

(with a little help from my iPhone) So I finally gave in and brought an Apple TV last month and managed to get a little discount thanks to the Thanksgiving Sale. It was a long and arduous decision; I read many blogs and really did my research as i’d heard mixed reviews about the device. I must admit that the ability to install Boxee onto it did swing my decision slightly.  The ATV out of the box is a bit pants (a bit like the iPhone) but with a few simple hacks the thing can be really good – again like the iPhone. For this reason I decided to apply the aTV hack. I even forked up the...

This is my latest Flash extension panel – Ratio Calc. We’ve all been there, creating a video player for an application and having the task of working out the aspect ratio, or perhaps resizing images or even just trying to work out the size of the stage. This tool will do it for you with a few simple clicks and it’s free. The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that...

Just a quick post to show you a web service that allows you to create and download ringtones for your iPhone. Simply head to http://audiko.net and follow the instructions. Here is one I made earlier: http://audiko.net/ringtone/Roots+Manuva/886290/Buff+Nuff+%28Prod.+By+Toddla+T%29/en.html?fresh

As a web designer/developer having an iPhone helps to make being productive just that bit easier. Here are some of the tools and work-flows I use to achieve this: Email Our company currently use Google Apps to provide email and shared calendar solutions. Since the iPhone is pre-configured with G Mail support I get access to my work mail via IMAP on the go. Whether I choose to read this or not is ofcourse another option. Calendars I use MobileMe for my personal calendar which is also synced to both my work iMac and home MacBook. As we use Google Apps for our calendars at work, I can view them by...