Many of us are already using our mobiles to look up information on the go. Whether that be searching for the closest pizza joint on Google Maps, checking the bus times or using Wikipedia to shoot down that amazing story your mate just told at the pub. But it is a bit fiddly on a mobile and we would access information on the web much more often if there was an easier way.

That easier way could be augmented reality browsing which is made possible by a number of technology improvements. I have for quite some time had high expectations of what could come out of three converging trends:

• More mobile capabilities. The mobile revolution has been going on for a while now, but we are now seeing more and more people with mobile devices that have Internet access and a good data plan to go with it.
• More Location-based services. An increasing number of mobile applications are starting to leverage the fact that many devices know where they are, either through GPS or cellular triangulation.
• More real-time information. With all these Internet-enabled mobile devices out there, it is easier than ever for people to submit real-time information whether that is posting to Twitter, sharing photos or uploading videos.

Augmented reality browsing is a perfect example of a concept that leverages these three converging trends. An augmented reality browser shows what is around you by displaying real-time information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile phone. The best way to get an idea of the concept is to watch the video below showing a prototype developed by Layar:

Imagine that. Rather than browsing to various websites and keying in search terms, all you need to do is hold your mobile phone in front of you like a camera and any information will only be a touch away on the screen. You could be walking along wanting to find out what year that bridge across the river was built, if the house on the right is for sale and how much it is listed for or what people are saying right now about the food at the restaurant across the street.

It is easy to imagine the potential of this for travelling. It would help you to dicsover secrets you would otherwise have missed. Just let your phone probe the surrounds, touch to retrieve the details and you have instant answers. Cool stuff, but we really need a catchier name than augmented reality browser!

Related posts:

1. Internet-enabled cameras are coming
2. Summary of TIME’s cover story about Twitter

I have previously had an outburst about how snailmail should be a thing of the past. I became very keen on the idea of a managed PO box that I could use as my postal address. A few companies out there offer this service and will scan your mail and let you manage it through an online portal. Great.

But getting a company to scan your mail for you is really just treating the symptoms. Why should all this mail temporarily be turned into paper when it was all electronic to start with? Inefficient and wasteful to say the least. Optimally, companies that require to mail me something would use email in the first place. And think about all the costs they would save, so it’s hard to understand why they aren’t just doing that.

So, I thought I would embark on a mission to eliminate all snailmail. Ideally, I don’t want anyone or anything to send me letters. Over the last couple of months I have kept a log of any mail coming in. I then went through the log and contacted all the entities sending me mail with a request to please send all correspondence via email only.

I have all along received my mobile phone bill and Internet bill as emails only. Good on those companies for having that as the standard option. The bills are securely delivered and I can easily file them for future reference. But what about the rest of my bills and other correspondence that lands in my mailbox? Well, this is how I went with eliminating the rest of my snailmail:

• Credit card statements. Through the self-service online portal, this bank was actually actively promoting switching to email statements. A simple update to my profile details made it all happen.
• Bank statements. Unfortunately, my bank claimed that regulation requires them to send out a paper statement at least every six months. Considering that the bank providing my credit card had no issues with emails, I’m not sure whether they really are required by law to send me dead trees.
• Health insurance bills and newsletters. Like with the credit card statement, this was just a matter of changing my details on their online portal.
• Utilities bills. This one was quite a daunting task to tackle. The utilities provider in my town is notorious for not responding to customer emails and leaving people on hold for hours on end. Hoping that I could avoid spending half my life on hold I emailed them a couple of times, but predictably I never got a reply. When I finally got through on the phone, they couldn’t do anything to accommodate my request. They said this service was under consideration but no timeframe was available.
• Superannuation statements. Fortunately another easy one. The paperless option was being promoted on the online portal and very easy to sign up for.
• Car insurance bills and newsletters. This company does not provide an online portal but via a quick phone call they had updated my details to send all correspondence via email only in less than two minutes.
• Post office notifications. Obviously parcels cannot be squeezed into emails but wouldn’t it be great if the notice from the post office came in an email instead? In that way, I could pick up a parcel from the post office on the way home on the same day as it was delivered. Although they thought it was an excellent idea when I called them, they currently do not offer this service.

All up, I’m pretty happy with the result. Apart from the half-annual bank statement and the utilities bill, I no longer receive any snailmail. Having bills, statements and other documents arriving electronically via email makes archiving a whole lot simpler and it’s much easier to find papers when I really need them. And I haven’t even touched on the environmental benefits.

Related posts:

1. Snailmail should be a thing of the past
2. Internet-enabled cameras are coming

Having effective means of capturing ideas and thoughts when they occur and take note of any other valuable information you come across is crucial for your productivity. Firstly, you don’t want to waste time later on trying to think of what you didn’t capture and secondly, you want to return to what you were actually doing as quickly as possible. OneNote has a number of great capturing tools meeting those requirements, some of which are instantly activated through universal keyboard shortcuts:

• Capturing side notes. OneNote’s side notes are much like an electronic version of yellow sticky notes. They are easily created on the fly from a universal keyboard shortcut and are great for quick notes to self. For example, if someone interrupts you with a message, you can quickly write it down and return to what you were doing. [Windows logo key + N]
• Taking meeting notes. Directly from appointments within your Microsoft Outlook calendar, you can create meeting notes in OneNote. The file is automatically generated with a nice formatted header displaying appointment details such as date, location and attendees. [Right-click an appointment in the Outlook calendar and select 'Meeting Notes']
• Scribbling on e-mails. If you feel a need to add some additional notes or even drawings to an email you can send it straight to OneNote where lots of scribble tools are available. [Click 'Send selected e-mail to OneNote' on the Outlook toolbar]
• Capturing parts of the screen. With a universal keyboard shortcut you are instantly able to capture any part of your screen. The screen capture is forwarded to OneNote where you can add additional notes. This is very useful for creating personal help files if you need to remember how to use a certain system or website. [Windows logo key + S]
• Saving web pages. If Internet Explorer is your browser of choice, then any web page can be sent to OneNote with the simple click of a button. It’s great for capturing news articles or other web content you may want to read offline or save for future reference. [Click 'Send to OneNote' on the Internet Explorer toolbar]
• Recording sound snippets. OneNote also has a slick way of recording audio on the fly. Admittedly, I’m yet to get much use out of this feature, but it’s still pretty cool. [Right-click the OneNote icon in the system tray and select 'Start Recording Audio']

All of the features above are quick and easy ways of capturing thoughts, ideas or other important information registering on your radar. From a GTD perspective, it’s superb that all of these different ways of collecting stuff automatically creates files in the same ‘Unfiled Notes’ folder which then becomes a single ‘Inbox’ you can process along with your other inboxes.

Another great GTD-friendly feature of OneNote is the tight integration with Outlook tasks. When you process the ‘Unfiled Notes’ folder as any other inbox, you can create Outlook tasks straight from within OneNote. These tasks will contain a link back to the original note in OneNote, so when you get down to the actual doing of that task you can instantly access the context of which the task was created in.

Finally, if your phone is running Windows Mobile you can also use the mobile version of OneNote. Mobile notes are synchronised with your desktop notes whenever you connect your device through ActiveSync. This provides you with another great tool for collecting ideas and thoughts on the go. If you’re like me and have paperphobic tendencies then a tool like OneNote for creating and managing unstructured notes is highly desireable.

When Triple J announced this Hottest 100 Of All Time poll, people were encouraged to vote for their most favourite songs rather than what they believed were the best songs. This has indeed brought a lot of songs with an emotional appeal to the list. Nonetheless, there is some fantastic music in there. Here’s what made it to the top 10:

1. Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit
2. Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name
3. Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah
4. Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Part
5. Radiohead – Paranoid Android
6. Queens – Bohemian Rhapsody
7. Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye
8. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge
9. Foo Fighters – Everlong
10. Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven

If I had to pick my three favourites out the Hottest 100 list, it would be Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers, One by Metallica and New Slang by The Shins. I’ve added all 100 songs to a playlist on Last.fm which you can access here. At this point in time, it looks like a little over than half of the songs are available for streaming. Happy listening!

Related posts:

1. Triple J Hottest 100 2008 on Last.fm
2. How to gain more control over your music on Last.fm

There is no shortage of blog posts out there analysing Twitter and all the remarkable phenomena that have appeared and evolved as a result if it. What’s interesting about this article is the larger perspective it puts it all in. The impact of Twitter goes far beyond what’s immediately obvious and a string of new and exciting concepts will have far-reaching effects in years to come.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Twitter is the evolution it’s been through. It’s now being widely used in ways the founders most certainly had never dreamt of. Twitter has been redesigned and reinvented by its users many times over already. Hashtags and @-replies are both concepts that were spontaneously invented and developed by the user base. Similarly, there are literally thousands of applications (now more than 11,000 apparently) out there developed on the Twitter platform by people not affiliated with the Twitter company. And indeed the vast majority of users interact with the service through third-party software rather than using the website itself on Twitter.com.

This whole idea of end-user innovation is increasingly the most important success factor in new and existing ventures. If you can create a platform that effectively facilitates end-user innovation your product will evolve faster and be more closely aligned with customer needs than what can ever be achieved with a more traditional R&D approach.

Twitter facilitates quite a unique form of communication which is very democratic. There is no central authority and it’s open to everyone. It’s real time and about real events. For example, knowledge sharing at conferences and other industry events are now often catalysed by real-time conversations on Twitter which aren’t confined to delegates attending the events. The concept of hashtags plays a key role in this.

Twitter is also becoming a valuable tool for many when seeking information. The combination of social networking, real-time searching and link-sharing provides an interesting alternative to Google when it comes to finding information. It’s more current and provides interesting comments from your extended social network.

It is also noteworthy that Twitter is just the underlying technology platform. The fascinating development to follow is the characteristics of the type of communication it facilitates. The real-time conversation and knowledge sharing will be entrenched in many platforms to come. Although, it’s hard to imagine right now, it’s entirely possible that Twitter might not exist or have morphed into something completely different in three or four years. However, the key elements of the platform including the follower structure, link-sharing and real-time searching are here to stay and the three major information channels of news, searching and advertising will evolve around these key elements.

Another point mentioned in the article is that Twitter does not make a very good first impression. The majority of new registered users never do much after signing up. It’s definitely one of those things that needs to be experienced before the value is understood. If you’re keen to experience the Twittersphere I have a brief article on how you get started with Twitter.

Related posts:

1. How you get started with Twitter
2. Augmented reality browsing
3. Work/life integration, instead of balance?

Home is the latest creation by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It is a feature length documentary about our planet’s ecosystem and how humans have affected it, narrated by Glenn Close. Yann Arthus-Bertrand was the photographer behind the Earth from Above exhibition which travelled to more than 110 cities worldwide. I remember being quite fascinated by his amazing aerial photos from around the globe when they were displayed in Copenhagen in 2002.

The movie presents a frightening number of mind-blowing facts about the human impact on our planet over the last 50 years. It is, however, not all doom and gloom. It finishes up with encouraging examples of how many countries are now actually trying to do the right things and steer towards a more sustainable way of life. Watch the trailer here:

Home has just been released on YouTube in its entire length and is available in High Definition. It’s a great showcase of streaming High Definition movies straight from the Web. Go ahead and watch the full documentary on the Home Project’s YouTube Channel.

Related posts:

1. Internet-enabled cameras are coming
2. Augmented reality browsing

The following tips do require that you sign up as a subscriber. For a minimal monthly fee you will get access to some key functionality including the ability to play your own library and your own loved tracks. But you can control more than what’s immediately obvious. I am surprised how few people are actually taking advantage of playlists and tags.

• Playlists. In the beginning Last.fm would only let you create one playlist but now you can have as many as you want. Once a playlist contains at least 45 songs from at least 15 different artists you can listen to it. It will still stream the tracks in random order, but you have narrowed it down to 45 songs which effectively means you have 2-3 hours of music you have chosen. There are many ways you can use these playlists. You can create a playlist with the top three songs of all your favourite bands in a certain genre or you can create a playlist for a specific occasion, trip or party. Another cool way of using playlists is to copy compilations such as Triple J Hottest 100.
• Tag stations. Everything you listen to automatically gets scrobbled into your library. The key to organise the large amount of tracks in your library is to use tags. It is very easy to tag your songs as you listen to them or as you browse the site. Tags can be any words that you use to describe a song (e.g. “rock”, “indie”, “60s”, “fun”, “favourite”, “chillout”, “seen live”, “british”, etc.). Once you’ve tagged lots of songs you can start playing tag stations (e.g. play your “rock” collection or your “seen live” collection). A tag station is really much like a playlist but you only require 15 songs to play it, you can have songs with multiple tags and with a newly introduced feature you can combine tags when listening (e.g. play your music tagged “british” and “indie”).

Once you start using playlists and tag stations, you may realise that you don’t really need your own copies of music. It’s much easier to have your entire music collection hanging up there in the cloud. Although you don’t have 100% control of the exact playing order of the tracks, you can control the content quite well over all. It’s a great intermediate service until the music industry wakes up and gives us live streaming on demand with a choice spanning across every piece of music ever released.

Related posts:

1. When does the music industry wake up?
2. Triple J Hottest 100 2008 on Last.fm
3. Triple J Hottest 100 Of All Time on Last.fm

Twitter is essentially a public short messaging (micro-blogging) system that allows users to publish updates (tweets) and to follow other users’ updates. Every update has to be in 140 characters or less. It’s probably one of the simplest websites out there, yet the use of it can be very advanced.

So, what do I use it for? Well, first of all, I don’t really tweet much about what I’m doing on the weekend or trivialities such as what I eat for lunch. I’ve got Facebook for that sort of friend-to-friend type chit-chat. I use Twitter as an important tool in my profession as a Solutions Architect and I believe any professional can potentially extract a lot of value from Twitter.

My professional area of expertise is around designing and architecting technology solutions for enterprises to solve problems in collaboration, content management and information access. There are many other people around the world working in the same area and through Twitter I can connect and collaborate with those people. The basic idea is that if we all share our knowledge, we can all grow collectively. On Twitter we can ask questions, help others and share news of interest. It becomes a professional grapevine and you can compare it to the casual conversations happening in your open-plan office environment but you are potentially engaging with the global experts in your field.

Apart from using Twitter as a work tool, I also found it very useful for travel research when I went to India a few months back. If it sounds like something you can benefit from as well, then here are my tips for getting started with Twitter:

1. Assume nothing. It takes a while to really understand how you get value from it. Go into it with an open mind and spend some time trying to understand how it all works.
2. Sign up. Using your real name is a great opportunity to take control of your personal brand, but we will save that discussion for another blog post. Use an alias if you’re not comfortable with using your own name.
3. Find interesting people to follow. Start with about 20-40. Use Twitter Search to search for tweets in your areas of interest and then follow the people with tweets you find interesting. It’s very easy to stop following people, so don’t hesitate to follow people for a while just to check them out.
4. Tweet. Share interesting thoughts, let people know what you’re working on or ask questions. If you went to an event with lots of people in your profession, what would you talk about?
5. Engage with people. If you start a message with @user_name it will be directed at that user (e.g. “@kalsing Hmm… I don’t know about this Twitter thing”). Respond to questions, ask questions, comment on thoughts, etc.
6. Don’t think you have to read all tweets. The more people you follow, the more tweets you get in your timeline. But don’t feel you necessarily have to read all those tweets. It’s like your office chit-chat, if you’re not there it doesn’t really matter. However, the fact that you do participate regularly means that you know what’s going on and you have an opportunity to share experiences.
7. Install a Twitter application. The Twitter website is too basic for the advanced uses of Twitter. If you are running Windows I recommend you start with Twhirl and move onto TweetDeck once you’re hooked. But there are many other Twitter applications available.

Follow the steps above and give it a chance for a couple of weeks. Then ask me for more tips because one of the most fascinating aspects of Twitter is the amount of applications and tools built on top of the Twitter platform. Thanks for reading and I look forward to connecting with you on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Summary of TIME’s cover story about Twitter
2. Off to India, travelling 2.0

This debate is mostly relevant to knowledge workers, people in jobs that can be performed from practically anywhere. We’re seeing more and more people responding to work emails from their mobile devices at night and organising social events with friends on Facebook during normal working hours. Through social networking sites, we’re giving our work colleagues more insight into our personal lives and our friends learn more about what we do for work. The boundary between our work and personal life is no longer as clear as it used to be.

So, what’s the driver behind integrating our professional and personal lives? Flexibility. And with more flexibility comes higher efficiency. By being able to perform tasks at the most convenient time and utilise pockets of downtime we can achieve more overall. The main concern here is how we manage this growing mishmash of interwoven professional and personal things to do. Well, that’s where technology is helping us through improved connectivity and an ever growing range of productivity tools.

To fully subscribe to the idea of work being what we do and not so much where and when we do it, we need to be a lot more outcomes-driven. The idea of getting remunerated based on the hours we clock up is no longer practical if our work and personal tasks are interwoven. As a positive consequence, we will be forced to think more carefully about performance management at work and be clearer about what we are trying to achieve.

Another aspect to consider is how we are all different. To what extend we want to integrate our work and personal life is dependent on our personalities. Not everyone is thrilled by the thought of having the two overlapping, so we must not forget to respect that. For some personalities it could even be counter-productive to have too much work/life integration. Like with everything else, you really need to find out what works best for you, but with the tools and technologies now available a high degree of work/life integration is definitely possible.

Related posts:

1. How you get started with Twitter
2. Using OneNote for the collection process in GTD

My mobile happens to be a Windows-based device (Samsung Omnia). However, most mobiles these days will allow you to do all the following provided you have Internet access and a good data plan to go with it. The big question for many is how you type. Do you pick a phone with a traditional phone keypad, a qwerty keyboard or do you jump on the touch wagon? Regardless of which you pick, it will always be a bit awkward. This list is mainly focused on doing things that don’t require much typing, so it really isn’t critical to your productivity how well you can type.

• Reading emails. This is pretty straight forward and increasingly common. But note the emphasis on reading emails. It’s much easier and more productive to write your emails once you’re on your laptop, so unless it’s urgent I generally don’t worry about replying to emails from my mobile.
• Reading RSS feeds. Subscribing to RSS feeds is a must for professionals who want to stay on top of new developments in their area of expertise. I manage all my feeds with Google Reader which also has a nifty mobile browser interface that allows me to read new articles from my handset.
• Listening to podcasts. Many newer mobiles have a neat interface natively that will let you search for podcasts by topic that you can listen and subscribe to. Alternatively you can always manually copy them down to your device when you sync it with your PC. The great thing about podcasts is that I can continue listening while I get on and off the bus and even when I walk down the street.
• Creating outlines for blog posts. I maintain a few different blogs including this one, my professional blog and an internal blog at work. Most of my posts are usually drafted on busses or planes where I have a bit of downtime. And there’s something about travelling which has a positive effect on generating ideas.
• Tuning in to Twitter. If you’re into Twitter, you can tune in on the grapevine of your colleagues around the world and get up to speed on what’s happening right now in your industry and profession. Using a mobile browser go to ‘m.twitter.com’ or install a rich client for a more streamlined experience.

The fact that you can do all this during your commute to work is a great reason to pick public transport over driving yourself. If you absolutely must drive your own vehicle then the podcasts are still a good option. What are your tips for productivity on the go?

Related posts:

1. How you get started with Twitter
2. Summary of TIME’s cover story about Twitter

The Triple J Hottest 100 is an annual highlight for music lovers in Australia. Every year the radio station Triple J organises a poll where listeners can vote for the most popular songs for the previous year. With close to a million voters, it is regarded as the largest music poll in the world. The top 100 songs are revealed in a big countdown show over the Australia Day weekend and a selection of those songs is also released on a compilation CD.

A friend of mine has created a playlist on Last.fm with all the songs from the latest Triple J Hottest 100. This is a brilliant idea and an awesome use of Last.fm playlists. Some of the songs aren’t available but that may change over time and because of the copyright restrictions Last.fm operate under, you can only play the list in random order. It is in fact a customised radio station only playing the Hottest 100 songs of 2008.

And just for the record, Last.fm do pay royalties to the artists. So there you have it: The latest Triple J Hottest 100, free of charge, perfectly legal and accessible from anywhere.

Related posts:

1. Triple J Hottest 100 Of All Time on Last.fm
2. How to gain more control over your music on Last.fm
3. When does the music industry wake up?

The news and reviews on this camera seem to focus on the ease with which you can share your photos instantly online. This is definitely cool but it’s something we can already do with the ever improving cameras in our mobile phone devices. I believe the real potential is the ability to continuously have your photos backed up to a secure site, regardless of whether you share them or not. In particular those high quality images that requires an optical lens beyond what is available in mobile phones.

When travelling it’s always a worry that you may lose your pictures if your camera gets stolen or your memory cards misplace themselves. Some people are really concerned about this and will regularly burn back-up CDs at Internet cafés along the road and perhaps even put those CDs in the mail.

Wouldn’t it be much easier if every photo was automatically uploaded to a secure storage as soon as a photo was taken or even asynchronously on a regular basis. Your photos would always be safe and you could access them from anywhere as required.

Ideally we want connectivity beyond Wi-Fi and be able to utilise mobile data networks for our cameras. All this obviously depends on reliable and affordable mobile connectivity. Attractive mobile broadband plans are starting to emerge but it will still be a challenge while travelling with pricy international roaming rates and limited availability in many countries. But I sense that second and third World countries are catching up quickly skipping the legacy of fixed lines altogether.

Related posts:

1. Augmented reality browsing
2. The ‘Home’ documentary released on YouTube
3. Off to India, travelling 2.0

Other than reading about potential destinations and talking to Indian friends, I have prepared for the trip by following tweets of people currently travelling in Rajasthan. A couple of weeks ago I started searching for tweets mentioning places we have thought of visiting which has lead me to quite a few travellers currently in the area. It’s been very inspiring to follow those. With lots of photos coming through live I’ve really been getting in the mood and can’t wait to go.

For someone like me that ultimately believes that I shouldn’t own much apart from what can be stored on a remote server somewhere, packing for such a trip is an easy exercise. I basically never travel with checked luggage. And the few times I’ve done that many years ago, the airline has ususally lost it anyway. I’ll be taking an average-sized daypack and it’s actually amazing how much you can fit once you leave out all the stuff you never end up using anyway. All my travel documents are securely stored in the cloud and accessible from anywhere, just in case. Needless to say that travelling becomes much easier that way.

Along the way, I will endavour to keep family, friends and others updated via photos and notes on Facebook and I will regularly publish my current location via BrightKite. And in the interwoven mishmash of web 2.0 apps the updates will even pass through Twitter. Let that be our Christmas card for the year. Happy Xmas!

Related posts:

1. Internet-enabled cameras are coming

Wouldn’t it be nice if it all just got delivered by email? I’ve asked most places to do it, but they refuse for various reasons (kudos to my mobile telecom 3 for doing it though). Paper-based mail has a number of fundamental problems: it’s a waste of paper, it’s inconvenient to archive and there is no guarantee of delivery.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I recently stumbled across Earth Class Mail. They promote a great concept. Basically you have a managed PO box with them as your mailing address. All your snailmail goes to them and through a web portal you can decide what to do with your mail: have it shredded, scanned or forwarded to your real address. In that way you can receive all your mail as PDFs in emails. Much easier to archive and much easier to find again when you really need it.

Unfortunately these guys do not support PO boxes in Australia yet. They do say they’re happy with international customers, but I would expect lots of institutions being sceptical about having an overseas PO box. Very disappointing, but hopefully something like this will be available in Australia in the not so distant future.

For me that would be the perfect setup. And if we all started doing this, perhaps all the institutions would eventually realise that they should send all their letters out through email in the first place. And a heck of a lot of paper would be saved.

Related posts:

1. Eliminating snailmail
2. Triple J Hottest 100 2008 on Last.fm

The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that music is not available the way I want to consume it. In today’s world I am used to being overly spoiled for choice, so I expect the same when it comes to music and other digital content. I want more choice!

When I was younger (10 years ago or so) I probably bought a new CD every month. In effect I was contributing $30 into the music industry every month. I would then listen to this CD over and over until I bought the next one.

Now, I find the whole idea of having my own copies of music antiquated. So I’m not asking for music downloads here. I want live streaming on demand with a choice spanning across every song ever released. If this was available, I would gladly contribute $30 every month. This model should still bring the same amount of cash into the industry. But rather than listening to the same CDs over and over again, I would have the option of listening to a vast variety of music.

The closest I currently get to this is with Last.fm. Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website. Powered by social networking it lets you explore other users’ music libraries and gradually build up your own customised radion stations. Although you can’t play any song on demand, you can largely control which songs get played over the next hour or so. Last.fm also has rich community content providing profiles of artists and songs. Last.fm is great as a free service and for €2.50 a month you get additional features.

The point is that Last.fm has managed to reignite my interest in music. And it has done so by making music available in a way I want to consume music. I have access to more music than I could ever dream of and it has relieved me from the burden of managing my own copies of music. I can access my music library at home, at work and on the bus via my mobile.

I think everybody agrees that the music industry is currently heading towards self-destruction and that the industry needs to fundamentally redefine their business model. And I believe looking to the success of services like Last.fm is a good place to start.

Related posts:

1. How to gain more control over your music on Last.fm
2. Triple J Hottest 100 2008 on Last.fm
3. Triple J Hottest 100 Of All Time on Last.fm