So I recently signed up for an account at Lastfm.com (intafon), which for those unknowing is like a version of flickr mixed with MySpace where you have playlists instead of photo sets (well, there is other stuff as well). I’ve been working from home, and set up a user account on my old grey G4 that does nothing but open iTunes, the LastFm app, and OSX vnc with remote apple events turned on so that I can use my old machine as a jukebox that just runs all day, and I can log into it via Chicken of the VNC if I need to, or run Remote Remote or iTunes Remote if I just want to control iTunes from my laptop. (Remote Remote has a smaller footprint and seems to be a bit more stable as a client for controlling the remote computer iTunes.)
It takes a few minutes for your tracks to start showing up on LastFm once you are running the “Scrobbler” app as I think they call it (it “scrobbles” your played tracks to LastFm, I guess via flying turkeys or something). After a few days to a week, you start getting “neighbors” and recommended radio and what-not. The freaky part is the “neighbors,” or people with similarities in their playlists. My number 1 neighbor has a startling number of the same top artists, which is weird since my track plays so far have ranged from James Brown to Boards of Canada to Thee Michelle Gun Elephant to King Tubby and Mos Def to Boris the Sprinkler and Nation of Ulysses and the Birthday Party.
Anyway, check it out, its pretty interesting if you’re into that sort of thing…(you know, blindly gathering contacts that you don’t know from Adam or Eve on the internet based on some sort of herding algorithms…)