Ottomatias.

Grooveshark, about which I have already written once (Google translated from finnish) is a great service for streaming music online. It seems I was way too pessimistic about the future of Spotify back then. Spotify is just great and their music catalogue just keeps on growing and growing, though still at times they are also required to remove some songs/artists from it due to copyright reasons.

But back to Grooveshark. It is a on-request music streaming service like Spotify (or last.fm/Pandora on steroids) but it runs on your web browser, doesn’t require invites or even registration and seems not to care that much about copyrights as it uses user uploaded content. It doesn’t really matter that much to an average listener, but it could be that Grooveshark gets shut down any moment. Sound quality varies and is usually somewhere between Youtube and Spotify (Spotify stream is 160kbps Ogg Vorbis v9 for non-premium and 320kbps for Premium users) and music catalogue is very wide.

The user experience is far from Spotifys native application, and as usual for Flash code it sometimes just hangs up your computer for an infinite time. On the other hand, drag and drop works smoothly, which is nice for creating playlists. If you want to create playlists, you have to register for free. I did and now you can find my playlist – ottomatias plays funky groove on Grooveshark – here.

If you, like many other people, use Youtube for listening to your favorites online, please give Grooveshark a chance. You’ll get started in seconds, just go here and type the song you want to hear. At least for me it seemed that there is a lot more “rarities” on Grooveshark. Is it a pro big enough to cover all its cons? What do you think?

:finnish abstract:

Grooveshark on palvelu, jolla voi soittaa musiikkia suoraan omasta selaimesta. Groovesharkin musiikkitarjonta on todella laajaa, ja toisin kuin Spotify, se ei edes vaadi kutsua. Olen kirjoittanut Groovesharkista aiemmin täällä. Jos et ole vielä ehtinyt testaamaan, kokeile ihmeessä.

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Facebook  is revising it’s Privacy Policy  for the upcoming changes to be published in F8 developer conference. It’s asking “feedback” rom the users for 7-days period and hopefully we actually are going to see more changes or at least clarifications as this is not cool, m’kay?

Most of the changes proposed have to deal with  location-awareness  which (at least so it seems) is going to be introduced to Facebook after F8. Facebook has already rolled some location language to its privacy policy but now it seems they are extending the use of location data even further. After the updates location data will be  incorporated in two ways  (according New York Times):

” The new location feature will have two aspects, according to the people familiar with Facebook’s plans. One will be a service offered directly by Facebook that will allow users to share their location information with friends.

The other will be a set of software tools, known as A.P.I.’s[sic], that outside developers can use to offer their own location-based services to Facebook users.”

You can read more about the updates from your favorite blog (eg. from Mashable, Techcrunch or WebProNews).

The most fearful thing in those changes is not the location data, as it is somewhat easily controllable (practically every site can locate us with an accuracy of a city or region nowadays already with the help of IP addresses (see here what it shows for you), but sharing your a lot more accurate GPS location of course requires working GPS signal which in turn requires a GPS receiver turned on). They are also rolling out changes to their use of cookies with 3rd party websites and  that  is fearful. But as cookies and all this jargon doesn’t tell anything to anyone I’ll tell you what its all about. (or at least who I interpreted it). So here it comes: 

3 Ways You Will Be Screwed Up Because Of Facebook Privacy Policy:

1. You go to amazon.com and buy a Kama Sutra book for you and your lover. Amazon gets your name and friends from Facebook without any questions from you nor information provided about the connection to Facebook. Next time your wife goes to Amazon looking for a book about gardening she gets this huge ad next to her cart “YOUR FRIEND MATT JOHNSON BOUGHT KAMA SUTRA – SHOULD YOU BUY IT AS WELL?”. She will be disappointed after she finds out that the book will never get its way to their own bookshelf.

2. You go to pornhub.com (okay, I doubt it will be among the pre-approved partners, but just to make my point clear) and again,  without any notice  it gets your  real name, profile picture and all the information you have published under ‘Everyone’ setting in Facebook . Next time your boss goes to Pornhub, he gets a list of his friends who has used the service lately. Well, you can see your boss there as well so maybe it’s mutually awkward to both of you. Don’t know if that helps a lot, though.

3. You are sharing your phone number to everyone order for people to find you. That I do not concern very problematic. However, your friend goes to audi.com and gets a new car. After that car sellers across the country start calling you to tell the news and tell you about the situation – maybe they don’t even have to tell the news. The problem here? The psychology behind car sales, which was actually revealed in Finland some years ago. If your neighbor buys a car, your probability to buy a new car  rises up by 86%. If I was the marketing guy at Audi, I’d be calling Facebook offices already about pre-approving.

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