Tag: spotify

Lastify: Last.fm Recommendations in a Spotify Playlist

Lastify is a great way to discover new bands and new music within Spotify by using the recommendations from your Last.fm profile and turning them into playlists. As a fan of both Last.fm and Spotify I immediately liked this website.

After entering your Last.fm username on Lastify’s website, a playlist is generated for you based on the artists that Last.fm recommends to you. After the playlist has been generated, you can subscribe to it in Spotify.

The playlist will be refreshed automatically every 24 hours. When you listen to tracks from your generated playlist from time to time, Last.fm will come up with new recommendations after a while, so over time the artists in your generated playlist will change.

I hope that Spotify will implement functionality like this and put it in their software. Until that moment comes, Lastify is a great tool I will surely keep on using.

OS X Tip: Prevent iTunes from Opening when Pressing Play/Pause Key

People that own a Mac and use Spotify must have noticed the same annoying behavior of iTunes as I did. When you press the Play/Pause key on your keyboard, not only will Spotify start/stop playback of your music, but iTunes will open and start playing music as well. I don’t know if Apple sees this as an intended feature of iTunes but what I do know is that it’s incredibly annoying to say the least.

After looking around for a while on the Internet for a solution I found a workaround that is very elegant and does not need any additional programs to be installed or any scripts to be run.

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An Impression of the IFA 2010 Trade Show in Berlin

Last weekend I went to the 50th edition of the IFA trade show which took place at the Messe in Berlin. This is one of the biggest trade shows (if not, the biggest) in Europe for consumer electronics and home appliance. Spanning over 160,000 m2 and an interlinked network of 26 fair halls there is an awful lot to see and check out. Needless to say I was able to fill up the better part of two days walking around at the IFA and still did not see everything that was going on at the Messe. In this post I will discuss my highlights of these two days.

Samsung Hall

Visually Stunning Exhibition

The big and most influential brands of course had the biggest booths. Some of these companies even had a complete hall at their disposal. Among them were Samsung, Sony, LG, Phillips and Panasonic. No expense was spared by these big companies to show off their trade in visually stunning ways. I have included a few pictures at the bottom of this post to give you an idea, although I realize they cannot get across what I have seen with my own eyes.

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