How to save Last.fm

Next Monday, Last.fm will start charging users for the privilege of listening to music from their service. I, like many, am not willing to pay for this. Nevertheless, I think I’ve found a way to keep, at least, part of the free online radio. It’s very simple.

Only play royalty free music.

I’m sure many artists only want the exposure and are willing to let Last.fm play their music for free. Jamendo and Magnatune, for example would probably be interested in this. Last.fm would only have to implement a system where the artist selects, or not, this option. All the other things that make the service good will keep existing, but for the free users, instead of playing every available artist, it would select only those from the royalty free list. I could live with this, could you?

My mobile phone killer app

With Android getting into cruise speed, it’s probably time to talk about an integration, or application, that does something I’ve been waiting for a long time. It’s actually very simple: full contact list integration.

So, what do I mean by this?

Day by day, our world is getting even more connected in each and every way, but our personal availability to connect is still limited. More, the “mobile internet” is already here: iPhone, netbooks, cheap mobile data plans, etc. Of course, not everyone wants to be available 24/7, but remember there’s always the off switch.

To put it short, I want, and predict, that the next generation of contact lists, most probably the mobile phone books, will also be instant messengers, with redundant contacts to the same person/object. It isn’t anything new, just the merging of two concepts. Pidgin is a very good example, where a single client program connects to a variety of services, providing an almost seamless instant messaging experience to the user. Now just imagine that it works in your own mobile, and integrates with it’s phone book. Bingo! You are now able to talk (or communicate) with any person in your contacts list, either they have a mobile phone or not! Another example is Jaiku‘s S60 application, that integrates with Nokia‘s mobile phone books.

Again, I know there are lots of programs that to a part of this, but I’m still waiting to see the full integration. No messy apps, just one contact list, with everything you need to communicate with another person.

And Android could well be the best candidate platform to do this…

Bergamot – FOSS Software for the Symbian OS

I’m a big fan of Symbian and UIQ3, so I was very happy when I found Bergamot.

In their words:

The Bergamot Project produces high quality free and open source software for the Symbian mobile phone platform used by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and Samsung.

Unfortunately:

As the Symbian environment is presently undergoing significant changes, we are shifting the project’s focus from the UIQ user interface towards S60, which will be the basis for the coming Symbian OS.

Still, I’ve been using Escarpod (a podcatcher) under UIQ3, and it works really well.

Transparência na AP

É uma excelente iniciativa da ANSOL, baseada no Base – Contractos Públicos Online. Esta ferramenta pode muito bem, e deve, ser o ponto de partida para investigações jornalísticas sobre os ajustes directos mais ou menos transparentes que se avizinham.

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