Spotio is an open-source, web-based, multi-user Spotify remote. It features support for viewing the currently playing track, skipping tracks and, most importantly, the ability to control playback.
Spotio is optimised for use in a modern WebKit browser (such as Google Chrome and Mobile Safari). As such it’s possible for multiple people using multiple devices to control the playback of a Spotify playlist with realtime feedback.
It annoyed my slightly that simple things such as hitting escape to close the new tweet window were only available to people who’d purchased the MacHeist Nanobundle. You can enable these preferences yourself with only a small amount of command line tinkering.
To disable the preference that you’ve just enabled change true to false and vice versa.
I’ve been an avid reader of Jason Calacanis‘ various newsletters for some time, not least for the sheer amount of work he puts into each and every one.
In his latest newsletter he offers a suggestion as to why Facebook is perceived as either evil, clueless or just plain unlucky when it comes to releasing new products:
Facebook’s success — and mistakes — are based on its developer-driven culture, not because Zuckerberg is some evil mastermind.
The Zuckerberg Doctrine: Developers design products with significantly improved speed and functionality compared to product managers and designers, outweighing potential mistakes and drawbacks.
And in this world, speed is everything. We shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes at the cost of innovation. New Year Resolution anyone?
You can sign up for Jason’s free newsletter here.
Well it looks like Facebook Places has just launched in the UK. Worryingly this was brought to my attention by my newsfeed showing that one of my distant friends (who shall remain nameless) has just checked-in to his house. Let’s just hope that place isn’t publicly available, though I doubt it as it’s listed as a “Local Business”. Way to go Facebook.
I’ve been a Git convert, and version control geek, for over a year now so I’ve sort of become the unofficial Git consultant at the office. If anythings breaks or something weird happens I’m usually the one called in to sort it out.
In order to preserve at least some of the remnants of our sanity I decided, after my colleague managed to corrupt his entire local repository, that I needed to enforce some sort of system. What I finished up with is this fairly typical workflow:
git checkout -b my_new_featuregit commit early and often. Small diffs are the key.git checkout mastergit pull any changesgit checkout my_new_featuregit rebase mastergit rebase -i so that I squash all the commits in my branch down into one. This keeps the master branch nice and tidy.git checkout master once the code is readygit merge my_new_featuregit push