Borderline Fantastic

Reading the news about Spotify’s Apps launching had me intrigued. Including last.fm in the launch had me completely on board. The biggest feature lacking from Spotify is a way to discover new music.

I assume this was a first attempt, you’ll get better kid …
I downloaded the beta and added the last.fm app and … ugh. It offers a window into your account page. Gives you some album or track recommendations. A listing of your recent and loved tracks. When you are playing a song in Spotify, it will tell you some things similar to what you are currently listening to. Some of that is nice, but it isn’t at all what I was hoping.

The quick last.fm overview: it can track what you listen to. You can get an add-on to upload what you listen to in iTunes and on your iPod, and it is built in to Spotify (even with out the app). It then offers you some radio options. My favorite is the Recommendations Radio, which looks at what you like to listen to and plays songs it thinks you will like.

I was hoping for that last.fm Recommendations Radio feature but bolstered by the backing of the vast Spotify library. I’m not sure how many songs last.fm offers, but Spotify is much more in-depth. After getting that running inside Spotify, it would be easy to add the new tracks you find to your existing playlists.

It’s about time Spotify …
Today, Spotify finally added some recommended radio to the app, it has nothing to do with any of the app integration (or last.fm) that was apparently such a big deal. It works a lot like Pandora. Give it an artist or track and it will play similar songs. I like this. I tried it out for a while today and was pleased with the results.

I still have a request …
I only ask for one more step. Recommendations to add to Playlists. One problem with Spotify is the effort you have to put in when getting started to create the playlists that you want. Another problem is adding tracks to those playlists after you create them.

Problem: I have two main playlists. One of my favorite music that I hear about through various websites that I follow. I keep up with new stuff on my own. The other is a hits playlist that usually gets populated from new things I hear when listening to Sirius. With Spotify, I’m listening to less and less Sirius in the car and am thinking about ending my subscription. When that happens, how will I add new songs to my hits playlist?

Tips on how you discover new music would be appreciated.

A solution: Spotify figures out what is going on with your playlist and offers suggestions on what to add to the playlist, including new tracks. They have this recommendation radio now, it should be as simple as feeding all the tracks in a playlist into that and seeing what gets the most matches. A list is generated from there giving you a selection of similar songs to your playlist, and if you want it can give a little more weight to new songs.

Oh, and give me some recommended radio in the iPhone app.

I’m so confused. The Office does lots of weird online clips but for some reason this one seems outside of that. But it can’t be real, can it? Watch (at least a little) …

There it is. His real name is Leslie David Baker but you know him as Stanley Hudson on The Office. I don’t see any mention of a musical past on his Wikipedia. I would have expected this from Creed, at least he is known for being in a band.

I’m hoping this is a creation of The Office writers, and I hope they stop doing things like this until they put their efforts into making the actual show good again.

The tags for this post should be ‘Music?, TV?, What?’.

Found on AbsolutePunk.

The Grammy nominees were announced not too long ago and I finally got around to putting up Grammy Picks on Ice Cream Helmet. With the Emmys I set it up to easily add award games to ICH. Turns out I got a little lazy in that effort. But now, it is easy. So look forward to the Oscars again plus the Golden Globes. If you think other award shows are worthy, then drop a comment and let me know.

For Grammy Picks, I picked the 35 categories I though most people might care about (there are 78 total categories). I’m still not entirely sure the different between Performance and Song. I can kind of guess, but I’m not sure which is which. I also went with some interesting categories from the bottom of the list for Spoken Word, Music Videos, Historical, Boxed Sets, Liner Notes, maybe some other I forgot about.

The Grammys are on February 12th at 8pm Eastern on CBS (hint, that’s the deadline). You can create your groups and make your picks now.

Grammy Picks on ICH
Make Picks

Favorite story of the day. (Actually yesterday, but I didn’t get to it.)

How much fun is that?!? This is a yearly tradition, after the first goal of the game, everyone tosses their stuffed animals onto the ice. Not sure what happens if the home team gets shut out, but it is minor league hockey and in my experience, that doesn’t happen very often.

The home team is the Calgary Hitmen. What are the chances that a team called the hitmen survives in the US?

Found at PuckDaddy.

Finally.

Highly recommended. I struggled to catch up before Season 3 started because only Season 1 was on Netflix. After you are caught up, then let me know, because I have so few people to talk with about new episodes.

Netflix

Audio: mp3
Running Time: 1:03:59
Hosts: Evan and Mike

Topics
Evan – Model UN and Coaching Basketball
Evan’s school wins football state title
BCS Thoughts and Observations

23 minute mark – DONE TALKING SPORTS

Catching up …
Evan made cobbler
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Mike’s 10-year High School Reunion

Key to the City
Using a pointless conversation topic to save a damsel in distress

If you don’t listen to anything else, listen to our discussion about the concept of the Key to the City. Also, find out which new show on The CW Evan has been watching.

Google Moderator for the next show. Submit your questions or requests for topics.

Favorite Story of the Day.

Ok, from reading the story it’s a mine, but when I heard it on the news this morning they said bomb. I mean, they both blow up.

45,000 people had to be evacuated from Koblenz. Apparently they find bombs and mines here from that period somewhat often, but this is the largest evacuation since the war.

They found the mines because the river is very low due to lack of rain. They expect to find even more while the river is low. It doesn’t answer my main question: How long are the people evacuated for?

Info: HuffPost

I post videos from CBS Sunday Morning often. I’m still pretty sure I’m the only person under 50 who DVRs the show. Every week there are at least two segments that are excellent. Thinking about it this morning, I think it has a better hit rate than SNL overall. SNL doesn’t do heartwarming, but Sunday Morning does do funny. Traveling for Thanksgiving I was a few weeks behind. Here are two clips I loved from I think 2 weeks ago.

If you would have asked if I wanted to watch a story about toasters, I would have said no. Now I want to go to the convention, and leave my wallet at home to keep me from buying anything.

First, I had no idea what bialys were. When they said they came from Bialystock, I only thought of Max Bialystock. After that, the story is really amazing.

Working on a project at school I overheard someone listening to this clip, and loved it.

I don’t know who this Kendall is, but I want to hear more from him.

Just watch. You’ll need a minute after to readjust your jaw.

How do you not know about Mac and Cheese? No trips to KFC? Or Boston Market? Or in public?

In Central PA, 700 Club is often on my TV when I turn it on in the morning. Whatever taped overnight is on the same channel. It’s on the list of reasons I question if I want to stay in Central PA after graduating.