The Right Stuff

Discovered today and immediately integrated into dasBlog: Audioscrobbler.

The service gives you the ability to upload information about the tracks you're listening to. It's hosted on Last.fm, a social web radio service. They're tracking incoming song information and build charts and personal recommendations on top of them. I didn't test these features until now, but I believe that over time they'll give additional input to my music discovery process.

To use the service there are a few simple steps to take:

1. Create a profile.
2. Download and install the plugin for you favorite music player.

Your music player will then upload song information if you're online.

Now on to the best part: Audioscrobbler supports a Web Service interface to your profile and data. In my opinion, and ideal way to extend your blog. So did I, writing a macro assembly for use with dasBlog. Currently there are only two macros, one for showing a little Audioscrobbler icon. The other one displays the last songs played. The Web Service limits these to ten, the macro can be instructed to reduce the number of results even more.

Have a look at the right-hand side of this page. There you can see the outputs of these two macros under "Now Playing". (RecentTracks has been limited to 5.)

There are some configuration settings to make before you can use these custom macros.

1. Download the macro and supplemental images.
2. Copy Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros.dll into the dasBlog\bin directory. (The binaries of dasBlog reside there, i.e. newtelligence.DasBlog.Runtime.dll)
3. Copy the Audioscrobbler logo and the little icon that will be shown next to each track in the list to the dasBlog\images directory. Of course you can override these images in your custom theme.
4. Edit theme.manifest adding the Audioscrobber logo image. (This step can be omitted if you don't plan to use the Button macro.)
   

   
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
   <theme name="YourTheme" title="YourTheme" templateDirectory="themes/YourTheme" imageDirectory="themes/YourTheme">
   	<image name="AudioscrobblerButton" fileName="AudioscrobblerButton.png" />
   </theme>

5. Edit dasBlog\web.config to let dasBlog know about the new macros.
   Depending on your configuration, uncomment or add the first and add the second line under /configuration/configSections.
   

   <section name="newtelligence.DasBlog.Macros" type="newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Core.MacroSectionHandler, newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Core" />
   <section name="Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros.Audioscrobbler" type="Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros.AudioscrobblerConfigSectionHandler, Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros" />

   Uncomment or add the following lines under /configuration.
   

   <newtelligence.DasBlog.Macros>
   	<add macro="Audioscrobbler" type="Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros.Audioscrobbler.Macros, Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros"/>
   </newtelligence.DasBlog.Macros>

6. Enter your Last.fm user information under /configuration

   <Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros.Audioscrobbler>
   	<add setting="UserName" value="<Enter your Last.fm user name here>"/>
   </Softwareschmiede.DasBlog.Macros.Audioscrobbler>
   

Now you're ready to use the two macros as described above in your .blogtemplate files.

<div>
	<% RecentTracks(5)|Audioscrobbler %>
	<% Button()|Audioscrobbler %>
</div>

If anyone is interested in extending the macros, download the Visual Studio Project.