Jogli - The Next Frontier in Streaming Playlists

Listening to streaming music on the web is one of its best daily uses. Over the last several years there have been quite a few sites that offered different services of streaming music. Pandora.com was one of the first noticeable ones that took it a step further and offered you to get acquainted with music similar in style to the one you like, by taking the artist you like and playing for you his/her music along with music by similar artists.

After Pandora shut its doors to the world(i.e. anyone who's not in the US), a new contender proved supreme. Last.fm came to the rescue and provided a much needed alternative to Pandora, with a much better service. No longer do you need to register with the site just to enjoy it to the fullest, and the music selection is huge.

All the while, there have been a few out shoots that sprung up. Musicovery.net and Musicmesh.net to name a few. While Musicovery took the same style of operation of Pandora and Last.fm, it added extra features that are not available in either of its predecessors.

Jogli came to my attention when TechCrunch reviewed them. After reading the review, I had to try it myself.

I found the site to be very well versed in most of the music I was looking for. I think only one band or two were not found, and all the rest were easily brought up to specs.

What's nice about Jogli, in my opinion, is found within two fronts, both important. First, it plays the songs continuously without pausing for you to press play again (just like Last.fm does). Secondly, it allows you to save your own playlists of the specific songs that I like, without any addons or stipulations.

Being able to save myown playlist and build it any time I want is a great service for a person to use. You can build it at home in the morning, and hear it at work, rebuild in the afternoon and hear at home, and so on.

So far, I've come to realize that Jogli is one of the long anticipated music reliefs I was hoping for, but didn't know how to put it in words. If they keep it up, add more features and music into their structure, I am confident it will change the way we stream our music online.

UPDATE: Well, like all new sites and services, Jogli has its share of bumps and quirks. Over the past week, about have of my playlist doesn't play. It's as if the movie was taken down in Youtube, and Jogli haven't yet synchronized it yet with another video. So, as you can imagine, I am back to good-old Last.fm, where at least I know the music will keep on playing.

I do hope they solve that problem. The site has a lot of potential, but if half of my playlist is non-functional, I can't make any use of it, and there is no point in using it.

I will check out the site some time later to see they've solved the problem.

Game making

Game making is one of those wishful thinking that I think most gamers have - to be able to create your own game, yourself.

A rescent thread in Digg started me thinking about it again. While there could be quite a few tutorials(see also here) on game making for the coding-challanged gamer, most tools leave much to be desired when you look under the hood.

An example of that is Gamemaker, which like many others, provides many options, tools, and customization options for the user in making computer games.

However, one important and often overlooked criteria on choosing your prefered tool is what rights will you have when you've completed a game with a certain software.

Intellectual Property rights are very important, not only to the developers of game-making tools, but also to the creators themselves. It is how we, as creators of our works, can assert our rights, both to be recognized as the authors of our works, and also affect how we use the game we have just created, to our own benefit.

Not many novice game-makers want to immidately run and sell their game. Not many would send it off to large game/software firms as an attempt to pitch for a job. Not many would even want to do anything with it, other that have it on their computers, and know that they've created a game. But some of them would.

Those people who would like to do something with the game, will need to read the many terms and conditions, licenses and other legal banter ubundantly crammed into a proprietary game-making software, and even open-source software.

Before making a game using a certain platform (this game-making software or the other), one must first look into the restrictions it has in its licenses on the users/game-creaters, and thus, on any games created by it.

Only by looking at the legal limitations that accompany a game-making software, will we be truelly able to pick our most suitable tool for creating games, and having the freedom we want to do as we please with them (or at least as close as we can).

You know it's summer when...

You know it's summer when Gizmodo reviews water guns and try them on their intern, just to report which is better for the next water fight.

Firefox 3 sets a new world record

Mozilla has set a new world record for largest number of software downloads in 24 hours with Firefox3 (see also debate at digg).

With so many people eager to try out Firefox, it's no wonder they were able to achieve so many downloads in just 24hours.

To be fair, I must admit that I, myself, have not yet made the move from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. A few reasons exist, but beyond them all is a fear to abandon my beloved firefox 2 and advance to the great unknown of a new software. I am aware of all the debates that have been taken place, and that the official version is only out after all the kinks and quirks were dealt with and ridden of, but still there remains that back-of-your-throat feeling that perhaps holding on to the known and the familiar will ease the transfer, in the future, to the newer model.