Links and Music

The other day I got this crazy idea into my head… I review and rate an enormous number of websites over at StumbleUpon.com with their toolbar application, and I knew the list of sites I’ve rated was actually located on my own computer. It’s a lot of data, and I wanted to see if I could put it to some more use, since it’s sitting here on my computer anyway, right? My idea was to import that data into a links blog, so that other people could see and visit the sites I’ve rated as “I like it!” with a Thumbs Up… plus, I wanted to encourage people to download the toolbar and take part in the rating process. So, I posted my idea over at the StumbleUpon forum. A few other people got really enthusiastic about my idea, and before I knew it, Greg, who I met through BlogShares, had come up with a solution! He’s written a perl script to convert that data to a list of clickable links, and he included a component to make it easily updated right from my desktop! (He’s posted the source file over at the Stumble forums.) Well, it works GREAT! And you can check out the sites I’ve rated because I created a new template for this blog and have pulled that list right into my blog! The blog’s css file handles the formatting of the list, making the whole thing appear seamless. Very kewl, and much better than a separate links blog!

Also, this morning I checked out the front page of BlogShares and found a press release from Swa there. I went to his website and downloaded his latest mix, the yearend mix for 2003. I am totally impressed with the quality of this mix, it’s very professional, very seamless… and I enjoyed the hell out of it. He’s making it and his other mixes available for download from his website. Swa’s dance mixes get played all over on European radio stations, so check them out, go download a few and get out your dancing shoes. Very kewl stuff!