I Want My, I Want My, I Want My MP3

First some comments related to my last post. Harry asked why I didn't like Musicstrand and Upto11. Well they just didn't compare to the results and info available through Liveplasma and LastFM. There is a site that really sparks my interest and I have to share though - FoxyTunes Planet. I discovered FoxyTunes Planet when looking through the FoxyTunes Firefox add-on I've been using for awhile. The FoxyTunes add-on provides a media player controller that's integrated with the browser (there's an add-on for IE too). No more alt+tab between the browser and iTunes or Windows Media Player to change volume or tracks. In the controller there is a link to FoxyTunes Planet, which is like an aggregator for artist information. Do a search and you can find a biography, links to their official webpage and MySpace page, a Google search result list, Flickr search, YouTube videos, LastFM, lyrics to their songs. and well just check it out to see everything. It's all together in one spot. And what's really cool is that I can be listening to INXS in a media player and the FoxyTunes controller has a button that will take me straight to their info page on FoxyTunes Planet! I was listening to the song "The One Thing" and the page came up with the lyrics to the song showing and links to YouTube videos for the song. Love it!!!!

Now it's time for the week 10 assignment, the final in this journey called OCLS Learn 2.0. The topic this time is one that I guess you could say I know a thing or two about - podcasting. I asked for a pass on actually creating a podcast since I was involved with getting all of the OCLS podcasts/vodcasts started. Maybe I'll create one another day, but not today. Probably not tomorrow or even this month or... but maybe one day :-)

I love listening to podcasts though. I subscribe to all three OCLS feeds and regularly listen to NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and Inside The Magic (Disney related). I started with Juice, which was the iPodder Lemon back then, and now use iTunes to subscribe and listen to my feeds. If you've never listened to a podcast, you have to try it.

Our other assignment was to download an audiobook. I've done this before, but it was so long ago that my NetLibrary account was deactivated. The process of downloading is very easy and last year I took a downloaded book from my computer and saved it to an mp3 player. I listened to about half of the book before I fell asleep and never went back to it. This time, once I re-registered, I downloaded a real short story by Stephen King called "The Stationary Bike". I thought that if I tried a very short story I might make it through the entire book. The Harry Potter audio books are pretty good but even they were just too long to hold my attention. Keep your fingers crossed.

Now my final assignment blog-wise - what I will do with my MP3. I will load it with music and experiment with it in anticipation of Staff Day. Did I say Staff Day? What's happening with MP3's and Staff Day? Hmmmm...what indeed.