David Emery OnlineiTunes Ping integration with Twitter = embedable iTunes widget
Twitter and Apple recently announced a nice-ish integration between iTunes Ping and Twitter – I say ‘ish’ as auto-tweeting should never be a default on things like this, and the use of long iTunes urls is a bit baffling. Anyhow, the nicest bit is that on twitter.com in the new Tweet side pane you get a nifty little embeded preview box, where you can see the release artwork, track listing and track previews.
After a bit of digging it turns out that it’s very straight forward to pull this code out and use it on your own site:
Or a single track:
Sadly I can’t quite decipher the URL structure iframe uses – it’s easy enough to get the ‘id’ (which referrers to an album) and the ‘i’ which refers to a track from the share links you get out of iTunes, but the ‘wdId’ remains a mystery to me, so to make the embeds you’ll need to post to twitter from iTunes, then right click on the iFrame embed on Twitter.com and get it’s SRC.
Hopefully might be useful to someone!
My iPad Magazine Stand
My opinion about iPad-based magazines is that they run counter to how people use tablets today and, unless something changes, will remain at odds with the way people will use tablets as the medium matures. They’re bloated, user-unfriendly and map to a tired pattern of mass media brands trying vainly to establish beachheads on new platforms without really understanding the platforms at all.
Khoi picks on (quite fairly) all sorts of problems with current eMagazines, like pricing models and the lack of sharing, copy and paste etc but it strikes me these are all very straight forward to solve.
We mustn’t forget that eMagazines are only about 6 months old (the Wired one launched the end of May, for example) – personally I already prefer them to physical ones, but they’re only going to get better.
Visit ➔iPad as the new Flash
Too many designers and publishers see the iPad as an opportunity to do all the wrong things—things they once did in Flash—without the taint of Flash.
I still firmly think that tablet magazines – in some form, at least – make sense, although there’s starting to be a large chorus of people I respect saying otherwise. They make sense in the same way that eBooks make sense – I don’t want to buy paper magazines any more, I want to buy them on my iPad; I like reading articles in a specifically designed context and I’m happy to pay for them.
Interesting also that Jeffrey picks up on an app that makes Wikipedia look and function nicer – isn’t that in effect what an eMagazine is doing?
Visit ➔RIM introduces PlayBook - the BlackBerry tablet
The new slate -- which Lazaridis described as "the first professional tablet" -- will sport a 7-inch, 1024 x 600, capacitive multitouch display, a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU (the company calls it the "fastest tablet ever"), 1GB of RAM, and a 3 megapixel front-facing camera along with a 5 megapixel rear lens (and yes, there will be video conferencing).
Looks fairly impressive, but I don’t understand why all the iPad competitors are using 7” screens – 10” is just about big enough to do “normal” things like web browsing without feeling cramped, whereas 7” is a weird in-between size between mobile and laptop.
Also, don’t forget that this isn’t shipping until “Early 2011” – this thing is an iPad v2 competitor, not the one on the shelves at the moment.
Visit ➔Making Future Magic: light painting with the iPad
We developed a specific photographic technique for this film. Through long exposures we record an iPad moving through space to make three-dimensional forms in light.
Well this is seriously cool:
Twitter power: how social networking is revolutionising the music business
...Sites enable smaller labels and less mainstream artists to spread the word about their talents, said David Emery of Beggars Group, a collection of independent record labels. "Word of mouth has always been incredibly important to us and now it's easier than ever to get the word out there," he said. Different networks play different roles, he added. "Twitter is great for artists interacting directly with fans, like MIA, who has millions of followers and will do things like make a video on her phone and post it on Twitter. That is so much more powerful than traditional marketing.
A good tie in to the whole Kanye on Twitter stuff.
Visit ➔Kanye On Twitter
This is important.
Historically, there’s been a buffer between star and audience. And this buffer was managed by professionals who’d seen it all and told you how and when to play. It was like everybody with a media profile had a coach. And if you disobeyed him, you were booted from the team.
But now, through the magic of the Web, through the magic of Twitter, a celebrity can speak directly to his audience, can tell his side of the story, sans the reinterpretation and the agenda of the media.
Kanye on Twitter has been really interesting this past few days.
He ‘gets’ it.
Visit ➔iTunes Says Artist Profiles On Ping Invitation Only
We asked Apple to explain and just heard back from a spokesperson that "artist profiles were launched by invitation, but we'll keep adding more and more." No information was provied on who is handing invites or what criteria they are using. But bands do have another option ...kind of. "Any iTunes user can create a profile on Ping, artist or otherwise," reminds Apple.
As a follow up to my earlier post, it does indeed seem to be the case that you have to go through the existing iTunes Connect system that labels/distributors have with Apple.
Interestingly, the recommended artists section on Ping is now suggesting 31 artists, along with the 6 I’m following already, and it’s going up day by day and adding new pages to the box.
Which suggests to me that as of right now, there are only 37 artists active on Ping.
Visit ➔Ping!
It’s been a long running cliché that Apple have never really ‘got’ the web, and never really ‘got’ social networking either – it’s been something they’ve been happy to ignore, letting their products do the talking without friending, liking and status updating.
Until now:
Introducing iTunes 10 with Ping
Ping takes (read: rips off and/or steals) its features from the holy trinity of incumbent social network sites, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The whole thing feels quite Facebook-like, and indeed it does strike me that had the two companies worked together on something that would have been far more interesting (with Facebook getting a decent music offering via iTunes, and Apple getting a decent social network) but alas instead we just get artist pages which are similar to Facebook pages, and activity streams that are obviously very familiar (and hence quite Twitter like as well).
It’s MySpace (and to a lesser extent, Last.fm) that’s more of a target though, as they’re increasingly repositioning themselves as a music-focused site (now that everyone does their social networking on Facebook and Twitter). Ping could well be the final nail (of many nails) in their coffin.
That’s not to say that Ping’s particularly good, however. It has a certain...
Read more ➔Since October 7, 2005, I’ve Read 219,651 Stories Via RSS. You?
Google is now telling you the total number of items you’ve read all time. For me, that number stands at 219,652 over these past (nearly) 5 years. I would have thought that would be pretty impressive, but apparently some people are much higher, because the Reader team notes that there’s a 300,000 limit on their tallies.
“From your 967 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 51,399 items. Since February 4, 2010 you have read a total of 300,000+ items.”
I feel this feature may be less useful to me than most.
Visit ➔