Firstly there is now a tab called Library where all the music from my local machine has been dragged in and is now playable via the spotify client which is a great addition to the service.

Secondly there is a box above the album art which allows you to share your songs with Twitter and Facebook. This is a great feature however I would say it does need more work as most of the time it is simply just posting a link to the web browser so it would be nice in future releases to see thi totally builtin.

One of the most impressive new features is the Facebook people tab which shows all friends using facebook who are on spotify and their librarys. The features of the Facebook social groups are:

• View friends playlists
• Subscribe to friends playlists
• View friends subscribed playlists.
• Show subscribed playlists on facebook
• Top tracks playlist sharing
• Send tracks to people.
• Link your own tracks with tracks on the Spotify network.
• Update details of your own files.

These features in Spotify 0.4.3 make Spotify even better especially with it being free.

I look forward to seeing what the team at Spotify are doing next and what brilliant ideas are yet to come.

Also I look forward to a BlackBerry client if there ever will be one!

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Once you are in you will notice a few different changes to the UI however much remains the same. Some changes include:-

• Tabbed chats
• New emoticons collection
• New categories for contacts including blocked contacts.
• New photo sharing
• Video messaging
• Live Badges
• New scenes.

If you would like to take a look for yourself then I have published some screenshots and a link to the download site.

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If this becomes an issue I am also willing to take this down.

Installer

Patch

Credits go to Michael Gillett at My Microsoft Life for this find.

Just to mention a few of its features, it allows you to view a calendar of events detailing birthdays and events that are upcoming and passed. The application also allows you to look at profiles, the lifestream and many other features available in the facebook site.

The downsides to the application are that there is as of yet no chat on there and many of the photos are not available to the application however this should be fixed before the public release of the software.

Another nice feature to this is that it has got great potential for being a media center import and due to it’s large text is easily readable on large screens and from a distance.

As this is using silverlight4, you must first install the beta for this before you can use the facebook application. This can be done by using the developer access which the link at the bottom of the screen will direct you to.

I would like to thank Michael Gillett for pointing this out to me and helping me to get this running!

Silverlight Facebook Application Installer

Silverlight v4.0 developer beta

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When buying student editions of adobe products you are required to have the following:-

• Students enrolled at an accredited public or private primary or secondary school providing full-time instruction
• Full- or part-time students enrolled at a Higher Education Establishment, defined as an accredited public or private university or college that grants degrees requiring not less than the equivalent of two (2) years of full-time study
• Full- or part-time faculty and staff employed by accredited Educational Establishments
• Other qualified examples as listed by Adobe from time to time on its website or in other written communication

Since I am studying a BTEC National IT course for 2 years then I met the criteria. Adobe sent me a key straight away with no questions asked. I simply sent a copy of my college ID to adobe with online as a JPEG file and they agreed. I recieved my key within 24hrs and am very pleased with the product.

Adobe student editions is a great way to gain access to cheap adobe software which would otherwise be £300+ with up to 80% off. I would reccomend this to anybody studying courses in the UK.

Firstly the good points, when you first load up chrome it loads very quickly, you are presented with the login screen pretty much straight away and then you are given the option to login using your gmail account (A feature I think microsoft should have taken up with windows and it’s live ID service). I then login using this ID and the interface is extremely simple to use, it is very similar to the chrome browser and lightweight, just what is needed for notebook applications.

Some of the bad points are that you can never guarantee that you will have internet access therefore will not be able to access all of chromeOS’s features and also the fact that the OS is very minimal feature and asthetically. I would say that they need to give it some more work before releasing it fully.. I have seen that google have started releasing projects wave being one of these that are not anywhere near finished and this does not please me. I and many others would rather see a kick-ass finished project than somethng that looks rushed.

I would also like to take the opportunity to say sorry for not posting in a while and I am hopefully going to be posting soon regarding an ongoing project that I am starting to work on.

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So today I finally got my invite for Google’s new service “Google Wave” after being nominated last week. I eagerly logged on and started testing it out. The service is quite impressive however I feel like I am working on something that is a bit primitive and maybe the features could have simply been added with google mail. The service works by you adding people into stream called a wave and then being able to add text and media into the wave for which in real time is shown to the users on the other end.

Good points

• Nice and light and easy to navigate.
• Ability to drag photos from folders directly to a wave (Chrome or Google Gears needed).
• Ability to embed youtube videos via the link.
• See photo’s before they are fully loaded.
• Ability to add many different people to a wave
• Ability to send private messages.
• Ability to edit messages after they have been sent.
• Ability to replay a conversation ( Don’t know why you would need to do this )

Bad points

• No real intergration with any other google services
• Can be slow at times when loading a menu
• Settings is non-existant ( See Screenshot )
• If you do not enter any text when you reply it will post the reply with a blank message, not good if you accidentally click below a wave
• Does not seem to register when you have read a wave
• Photo’s can not simply be dragged to the browser unless gears or chrome, they are trying to make this a feature of HTML5 though.

Feel free to browse the pictures and see what you think. If you have Google wave then feel free to add me

cbuckley1992@googlewave.com

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• Client Side Scripting
• Server Side Scripting
• Databases
• Tutorial
• Information Systems
• CISCO
• Application of Number

So yes it is quite an interesting year for me. I did not enjoy the first week back however I think I am actually starting to get used to it now fianlly. Last week must have been a down for me as I really did not feel like I could cope with another year. Another funny thing about this year is that the set C and B have merged therefore we are left with half the class isolated from the other half which is a little odd, I am sure though in time we will start to mix a little more.

Just thought I would give you all a little update on the latest as I have not blogged for a while.  Should be doing a post tomorrow though to review a product that I have been following the betas for a few months now and will let you know how the public release goes tomorrow.

Peace out

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