A couple of days ago, while pondering what to add to my blog, I thought it would be great if I could share the music (the artists and titles, not the music itself) that I am listening to. But how to do it automatically, and not have to upload every time my tastes that day changed. Not that I think my tastes are the greatest. But I like music alot, and I figured mentioning them would help to create possible discussion about them, which I would enjoy.
Enter iChatStatus. I had been using this great, but pointless, freeware utility for a number of months. It has the ability, among other things to talk to iTunes, and put the song you are listening in to in the status field of your iChat (Apple's AIM program). I had gotten alot of comments from the friends on Macs, commenting on this or that artist, and it general struck up some nice conversation. But to have it upload the information to a website, that was another matter.
Enter Jakob Peterhäns. He had written a script, because iChatStatus is Applescript friendly, that would do just that. His "iTunes to iChat & HTML" script continued the default of updating your iChat with your latest tunes, but it also created a text file for both the song you were playing, and would also create a list from a play list that you have. For example the default was set to read the "Top 25" playlist and would create a text file with the top 5 songs. So with a little tweaking, and a bit of help from Jakob, I was able to modify the scripting code for my server, and for my means.
Once the text files are uploaded, I had to make it so that my blogger would read it. The main blogger page used to be just an HTML page, I turned it into a PHP page and added a php include tag to the template. And Viola! What you see before you was born.
I don't really have a name for it, as you can see. I'm not that great with naming things. I mean "Camoto" okay, its a camera, and its a photo, it could refer to any type of photo. it doesn't mention the beauty of the service which is that it's MOBILE and updated on the go. Hudson's Mo-Pho is a much better name.
But already it has started to control my life. Now I feel controlled by it, and I am constantly fighting it off. If a song comes up on my random play that I don't want people to know I'm listening to, like Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" I have to forward to the next song in order to avoid its recording on my Blog. It will be a test of strength, who will control my music tastes, me or my machine. Or "How I learned to stop worrying, and love the blog"
Comments (2)
Kylie Minogue? Yikes!
itunes to ichat is based on the great kung-tunes source. It's another great way to get your tunes into your blog, I'm sure you're using it already, but if not-I HIGHLY recommend kung-log for movabletype posting! Kung-log integrates well with itunes as well, and will add a "this song was playing while i wrote this blog post" type of thing to your posts.
kung apps:
http://www.kung-foo.tv/itti.php
http://www.kung-foo.tv/kunglog.php
Posted by hudson | July 18, 2003 9:32 AM
Posted on July 18, 2003 09:32
oh wow, I didn't know about this program. I did know that itunes to ichat was based on Kung-Tunes source and even checked out the Kung-Tunes blog on it, but I didn't make the connection. Great find! Thanks very much indeed!
is this what you use exclusively when you are at your home machine? wow, so new at this blogging thing...
Posted by neps | July 18, 2003 10:51 AM
Posted on July 18, 2003 10:51