After my original review of playlist sharing services, and FIQL addendum, I’ve been contacted again, this time from Ben of Mixmatcher. So here’s a quick canter through a review, based on my experience of setting up the same-old, same-old playlist using Mixmatcher.
Human-Computer Interaction
FIQL: a further playlist service
Following my review of playlist sharing services, Mike Wu of FIQL.com got in touch to point me to his site. Mike writes, FIQL.com is also a playlist sharing site and we have close to 2,000 community contributed playlists divided up by genre, mood and occasion. Our playlists are hooked up to itunes, msn music and […]
Playlist sharing services: a comparative review
Since my series of postings about different playlist sharing experiments, Wired has picked up on the theme with a feature on the playlist phenomenon a few days ago. This focuses on the social and community potential of sharing playlists, though, in my opinion, it’s important not to get carried away with the everyone-a-DJ concept: if […]
Evaluation of Learning Activity Management Systems
I’ve finally finished the rigorous evaluation report of Learning Activity Management Systems (LAMS). Seb Schmoller has an overview of the report and commentary on the small number of actual LAMS implementation cases. One strand of the report jumped out at me. It observes that “it is less easy to adapt [a] lesson ‘on the fly’ […]
Usability of People’s Network Enquire service
I covered the announcement of the People’s Network Online Enquiry Service last year, and, as of last week, the ‘Enquire’ service is operational. Here is the press release about the launch from the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, wherein the Chief Executive says “Enquire is designed to get answers to people wherever they are, night […]
Update on Learning Activity Management Systems
Seb Schmoller’s fortnightly mailing provides the latest news on Learning Activity Management Systems (LAMS), which I touched on last year. The LAMS concept, developed in Australia, now has a web site, from where you view a four-minute Flash demonstration of LAMS in action and download the open source LAMS software. Seb has more details on […]
Researching how communities share music via iTunes
This research paper on patterns of sharing iTunes music in an office, presented at the CHI (originally Computer-Human Interaction) conference yesterday, is the other side of the coin from the personal-stereo research I reviewed in my last posting. Where that research was about using music to reclaim public space as private space, this paper is […]
What does On-Demand Media really mean?
This week Arbitron and Edison Media Research published a report of their research survey on Internet and multimedia usage, The On-demand Media Consumer. The headline result being quoted is that “One in ten Americans show a heavy preference to control their media and entertainment“. Reading the summary report, however, suggests that this conclusion is not […]
Online Social Networks Conference (feeling overloaded)
I’m currently taking part in Online Social Networks 2005, and online conference that runs until 23 February — as the web site says, “It’s not to late to register”. It’s organised by leading evangelists for online networking, Howard Rheingold, Lisa Kimball, and Joi Ito. Most of the proceedings are available only to people who have […]
The politics of location-based technologies
Attending the PLAN network last week, the biggest surprise for me — given that PLAN is an arts organisation — was how many of the speakers focused on macro issues of policy, regulation and infrastructure. This emphasis led me to search out Jonathan Grudin’s prescient paper from fifteen years ago, The Computer Reaches Out: the […]