DJALCHEMI

Hibernation and software upgrade

As regular readers will have noticed, I've been posting here much less frequently in the past couple of months. This will continue at least until December, as I am being pretty single-minded about completing the first draft of my book. Normal service will return in due course.

The software that this blog runs on was upgraded last week. For most use, you won't notice any difference — at least until I start using some of the extra features now available to me. The exception to this is if you're making comments. The comment system is much better at handling comment spam, of which I get a lot. Unfortunately, though, there is a glitch at the moment: if you try to enter a comment, you will be able to preview it fine, but when you try to post it, you will end at a blank page. Although this is disconcerting and unhelpful, your comment has been registered on the system, and will appear on the site as soon as I review it. When the glitch is fixed, the comment system will also enable TypeKey registered users to post without being moderated by me.

Soundflavor moves into music recommendation client software

Soundflavor is the latest playlist sharing service to move beyond just their sharing community (see my review) to offer a software download that plugs into iTunes to recommend playlists. The download is called Soundflavor DJ™, and you can download it here.

I haven't been able to try the software yet as it's only available for Windows, but versions for Mac and for players other than iTunes are promised. From the descriptions, it looks like a fairly similar product to the MyStrands plug-in. It also supports discovery of music in other people's libraries (provided you are on the same local area network), which is an interesting extra dimension.

I like the way that, on the same day they announce the product, Soundflavor also publicise some research that shows — guess what — that digital music users are crying out for just the kind of support that Soundflavor DJ offers.