But they’ve redesigned and added all kinds of functionality — the site looks great now, and while pages don’t load a lot faster, it seems to be recording the music I’m currently listening to without flaw. I was often frustrated that it didn’t record what I listened to accurately. In fact, I was frustrated to the point where I began writing my own Java plugin for iTunes to upload data to my web site, and build my own personal version of Audioscrobbler. It’s easier to use the service, though, and I haven’t had time to do it. I’m going to put off writing that plugin for awhile, possibly forever, providing Audioscrobbler is consistantly online from this point forward. (Okay, I’ll may ‘em a break — a couple downtimes or skipped songs, no problem.)
I won’t go into detail about the new stuff — you should head over and see it all for yourself — but I will say that the site has gone from ugly/barely functional to beautiful/extremely functional. I’d like to say I was part of it, but alas I don’t live in England with the developers of the service… Ah well, excellent job to the guys who put this thing together!
It looks great, but if anything the slow load times are going to make me want to use it less and less. Its really frustrating when you have a super high speed internet connection yet pages load dirt slow.
August 10th, 2005 at 7:28 pm
I think part of the server issue is them having a cool idea and not being able to handle the initial load of users. If you don’t like the performance, but you like the tool, do something cool like send them money as a way to pay for the service and help them pay for the stuff to host it properly. I need to do that at some point to. They pretty much accept whatever you can give them.
Also, I don’t check it that much, so the issue of load times isn’t that big. It should get to a point to where your main charts don’t change that much anyway, and only the weekly one would be worth looking at.
One thing I did notice with the change my neighbours got overhauled big time. I’m not sure why some people are listed because of so few similar artists. Add to the fact some of my neighbours have really crappy musical taste. (chuckles) Maybe if I looked at my account more often I would have seen the change happen. I know I’m going to add some music to hopefully sway me towards better neighbours.
August 11th, 2005 at 4:39 pm
I’ve stopped using it now. The Winamp plugin would grind my computer to a halt every couple of minutes while it tried to upload…
And then I felt that the stats reflected too much on fads and not enough on long-time habits. Listening to a song three times a week for a three months would put it below a song listened to ten times a day for two weeks…
Whatever.
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:17 am