Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Listen to Triple J's Hitlist

I've added a little Triple J hitlist radio widget/gadget in my sidebar. It is a Finetune play list that behaves like a radio. It's the songs that were available on Finetune's database today from the rotation list on Triple J's website. Enjoy! And credit to Triple J for being such a fine radio station.

Well Designed MySpace and other Oxymorons

What does it take to make a nice looking
MySpace: Annoying Web Design Geeks Since 2003

These days just enter "Design MySpace for Me" into Google and you will come up with a myriad of sites offering the sweetest designs but for the ill educated Web User they will most likely have a "Free Kick Ass Mutha-Truckin MySpace Layouts" Banner on the top right of their page linking to the very reason their MySpace sucks.

There are a few tools around to make your MySpace look sweet enough to bite without having to many of those crappy and annoying "Which past Big Brother contestant's toenails are most like yours?" Gadget which you wouldn't have on there unless you were like a person that you adore or think other people do.

So here is my MySpace Designer School

Images

It's called Photobucket and you probably would have contributed to their server load at some point if you use MySpace or frequent blogs. If you wanna put your own images up there you have to register. Once registered you will be assigned a photo album to put all your images into once uploaded. The editing of size and other properties is limited once you upload your image so best do that beforehand.

Uploading is very straight forward. You just browse and locate the image, preferably JPG or GIF but they do allow for a few other formats depending on your needs.

Once your picture is in you photo album you are going to want to click the yellow box next HTML Tag. This will copy the code ready for you to place it where it is needed.

Click on HTML Tag

From here it's just a matter of choosing which section you want to place the image. One of the below sections is a good place to start:

About Me | Who I'd Like To Meet | Interests | Music | Movies | Books | Heroes

The html code which will look something like this:

Photobucket code as it comes

It's just a matter of changing the URL in the brackets after href and the =

If you want no link on your image delete the code above.

Photos in a bucket.
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Videos

It's pretty straightforward with Veoh. Register an account and you are on your way. Videos are on the site as soon as you upload them and they look sweet without all that crappy branding that YouTube does. Just embed your video onto MySpace and change the dimensions to suit which part of your page you are on.

Use the Calculator on your computer to do this.

A better uploading experience than YouTube
No Nonsense at Veoh

Music

If you want to entertain your visitors with a radio station of your own making than Finetune is just for you. Just look in the top right of this page to see it in action. The Finetune playlist was made by selecting songs from a generous song catalogue and they play back for you and the world to hear.

You need to select a minimum of 45 songs for each playlist you create and from there the song selection's the limit. I created a few different lists.

I created a personalised playlist to listen to on my desktop with the new Finetune Desktop Beta as well as in my MySpace music section. You can also listen to it on the Wii if you have one. They have a part of their site dedicated to it. You could probably use it on the Playstation 3 come to think of it.

I also created a Film Scores playlist comprising my favourite film scores which is nice to set the mood when you are having dinner or something.

And than I created a playlist based on my favourite radio station's most played songs on rotation hitlist of the moment.

You gotta be creative and good things will happen.

Tune into yourself today
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

I hope you were schooled in the finer arts of using other people's ideas and knowledge to make a killer looking MySpace page to show off to all of your friends.

Till next time.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Finetune: The Mixtape Evolved

OK, to get this out I wanted to post it on Digg. But someone already beaten me to the punch with a less than desirable headline. "The Best of SXSW 2007 Playlist".

So this is what was to explain Finetune, one of the greatest new inventions on the internet for social networking and making your Wii into a damn fine bedside, partyside and b-side music player for a while. Plus it is just damn cool and so well designed.

So this is a custom playlist made my some guy that I picked that was on the front page in the playlists section.

Ipod's Shuffle Feature for Free Online
It's pretty much Apple iPod's shuffle feature except you don't have to buy the songs. Probably not much of a change for most of you but nonetheless a little guilty. Shuffle on your compy and Wii and I'm pretty sure a portable device somehow. Anything's possible these days with sites like Lifehacker and the sort.

Send Your Friend's Playlists Without Sending Them The Songs
But you can make a playlist for yourself. Minimum 45 songs than it plays on random. Put it on your Social Network page of choice (It lets you embed wherever it's possible, including this post hopefully) and Hey Presto! You can share your tastes with people you know as well as the whole world.


Wi/i Like/s Listening to Fine Tunes
Another great use is for your Wii. It looks great on your TV and it sounds great if you have a good stereo system. You are probably saying that is what my iPod or mp3 player of choice hooked up to a Hi-Fi system is for. But if you have your Wii connected to the net or probably any device that can connect to the net with sound you can listen to playlists made my friends, family and people from all over the world.

So give it a go and tell your friends. I don't know the benefit of telling people because it will probably just make it slower but it's just such a nifty and handy thing. Better than Pandora and less restrictive than Last.fm as I remember them.

So have fun. The site again is www.finetune.com