Cool links

I've posted a few links to some "cool" content, some of which are also fine examples of Web 2.0. For those of you who aren't as "down with the kids" as I am, here follows a little description...

Last FM: "The social music revolution". You download a plugin for Windows Media Player/iTunes/Winamp/whatever program you use to listen to music and it then logs a record of every track you listen to. From this the site builds up a "music profile" for each user, listing your top artists and songs of the week/overall, as well as connecting you to "musical neighbours" with similar tastes to you, and recommending new artists based on your musical tastes. However, as discussed in class with reference to other social networking sites such as Facebook, this too allows users to create an online persona which is not necessarily an accurate depiction of reality. I am sure that many people use the site purely as a platform for showing off their hip and happening taste in music. It is in fact only necessary for the user to listen to the first thirty seconds or so of the song in order for it to register. Now, I am in no way ashamed of my diverse musical tastes which range from manufactured 90s pop groups such as Aqua, 5ive and The Spice Girls to the epic progressive metal of Dragonforce and Tool. However, with a bit of simple manipulation, certain artists and tracks could easily be removed, making my playlist appear far more "cool"in the Radio 1 sense of the word...

The Ride Pimper: A lovely little application which lets you modify your own cars. You too can be as cool as Tim Westwood. Let's face it, we all know the UK version is much better. Sick up your ride, cuz.

Russell Brand on BBC Radio 2: Radio? Through a computer? "How can this be?" I hear you cry. Welcome to the wonderful world of BBC Radio's "Listen Online" funtion. A step up from digital radio, this allows users to listen live to their favourite shows direct from the website using RealPlayer. Many shows are also available to download from iTunes as podcasts. For those not in the know, a podcast is simply a catchy term for a digial media file (such as an mp3) which is distributed via the Internet. It can then You can even subscribe to a show so that it downloads automatically every week and you won't miss a single one. I dread to think what would happen if I didn't get my weekly dose of Russell Brand and co-host Matt Morgan's discussing such topics as revolution, sex with flamingos, pin-pinnery and the Chinese occupation of Tibet...

Lolcats: Who would have though that posting photos of cats with gramatically incorrect captions would be so funny, or indeed popular?