Mediamonkey 3

I regret to say that the new Mediamonkey 3 icon of a black silhouette against a moon/sun(?) isn't so endearing as the beaming monkey face; minimized, it rather resembled the edonkey icon and I had to hover and look twice to be sure I didn't just somehow install edonkey on top of emule. But other than that, it's all great!

(click to enlarge)

The screenshot should speak enough of a sleeker, generally improved interface, with added functionalities like rating a song with one click on the player while listening to it, more ways to view your collection (by track details, album art, or album art with details), while largely maintaining the intuitive navigation structure of previous builds. Geeks may want to check out what exactly got improved, more screenshots, or a whole forum on MM3.

Download the latest build of MM3 here. Note that this is still in beta stage and there are still bugs and unfixed issues, so before diving in, back up what you need to back up, and enjoy. ;)

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Now playing: Cocteau Twins - Pitch The Baby

update on beta last.fm and mediamonkey compatibility

I got my reply from last.fm staff about said problem, and apparently it's because in installing the beta client it also automatically updated the plugins, which affect mediamonkey since the winamp plugin (which MM uses) is now updated to accommodate the latest winamp release (which, by the way, looks pretty slick, so much so I actually downloaded and tried out, and I rather gleefully say that functionality-wise it is still nowhere nearing MM.) and inadvertently loses the support for MM.

The rather simple solution is in this thread on the MM forum, but just to sum things up:

Download this .dll file. Exit MM and Last.fm, Locate the Plugins folder for MM (usually C:/Program Files/MediaMonkey/Pugins), and overwrite the file "gen_wa2_scrobbler.dll" with this file with the same name. Restart MM and it should work.

(I suspect it will work just as fine to simply backup your existent scrobbler.dll if you already have had MM installed and scrobbling working. Install beta or any version that has winamp plugin updated, and overwrite the gen_wa2_scrobbler.dll file with backup.)

Never used MM to scrobble before? It's easy. In the last.fm client, click on "tools" --> "Get plugin" --> next --> Add --> choose "Winamp" in the dropdown box and then click on 'browse' to locate your MediaMonkey folder, choose MediaMonkey.exe, click "Open" and then "Ok". You are set to scrobble now. ;)

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Now playing: Diary Of Dreams - Darker

beta last.fm and more

Alright, I'm a last.fm junkie, I like looking at stats, wandering tech forums, digging for easter eggs and extensions, and hopping on the endless 'similar artists' links and read whatever catches my fancy--works for me like wikipedia for some wikiholics, and sucks time like a black hole, xD.

So I installed the beta client yesterday--it's supposed to work just as slick, with improved tagging and some other goodies, but unfortunately it and my Mediamonkey don't seem to go along this time (I emailed and last.fm staff is already investigating), so MM users, don't rush in to test the new water yet. I now have to resort to listen to the rarely utilized radio stations in the client (out of reluctance to let my tracks go unscrobbled...yeah I'm this hooked), and which, delightfully, turned out to be very good! It streams quite smooth (with my not-so-broad broadband service) and the audio quality isn't bad at all. Totally loving it now.

As for tricks, statistic lovers are gonna love this: Extended last.fm stats based on weekly artist charts. Just enter the username and any specified time period, and it will generate a very comprehensive and rather impressive sheet of stats, like this. Sweet eh? =D

Another find is this Open Minded Index Generator--it calculates the so-named OMI by looking at the user's own tags in relation to the top artists of the last 12 months. Even as a lazy and sporadic tagger, I think the work is pretty nice (not that I got a very high score lol). Try and see for yourself. ;)

For the old tricks, see here.

Last.fm tricks and applications

The sporadic tech junkie post, heh heh. If you like what last.fm offers as much as I do and not afraid of the ‘geek’ label, children--here’s some stuff you may play with in your own idle time:

- Last.Fm Toolshed

Some rather handy small applications and greasemonkey scripts here, including Chart Changes, Recent Tracks Updater, 6 Degrees, Reverse Neighbours, and PyScrobble. (If you don’t know what greasemonkey is—it’s a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to specific web pages (wiki). Which means before you install any monkey scripts you’ll need the monkey itself--believe me, the magic is well worth the two clicks you need to execute!) I’ve had Chart Changes and Recent Tracks Updater for some time now--CC allows you to see the changes in artist and track rankings over time (7 days for the weekly charts, and for every update of the overall charts), and RTU updates your recently listened track list without you having to leave the user page--more details and illustrations in the links themselves. Work like magic. xD.

- Gijsco’s Last.fm Desktop Generator

Great little application here--downloads your personal chart data, and generates desktop wallpapers of various sizes from various schemes of your choosing. Very neat.

- Last.fm normalised rankings

"A little application to rank your favourite artists and albums by an estimation of how long you have spent listening to them" instead of number of tracks, which is often not a very accurately representative stat.

- Mainstream-O-Meter

Finally somebody thought of making another -O-Meter, lol.. A little blurb from the author: "The Mainstream-O-Meter calculates your mainstreamness by comparing the listener count of your favorite bands to the average listener count of the five bands who have the most listeners among Last.fm-users." More maths here.

Last.fm – the social music revolution

Something I stumbled upon the other day and had since fallen head over heels for. Basically it is a comprehensive music service that allows you to sample clips, see what's recommended and popular with other listeners, and the best part is this small software that runs quietly in the background of the computer, collects information of the music you are listening to, send it to the last.fm server so that personal billboard/radio 'charts-like’ thingie are automatically built up, allowing you (and others) to see weekly/overall top listened artists/tracks, who on the network share similar tastes with you, and other tricks I am still continuing to discover. It currently supports wmp and winamp. My (highly rudimentary) chart now looks like this.

Verdict: Highly recommended for index-maniacs and general music fiends. Geek to Live!