LastFM + IBM = IBM Rocks

Psssst! Ian’s away on holiday and I can’t see Roo, so I’m going to hijack eightbar and write about something none virtual worlds related.

There’s a competition running inside IBM at the moment, it’s to develop a situational application (mashup) using some of the data feeds available on our Intranet. Lots of people here listen to music while they work and being a nerdy population, they also tend to use LastFM. So why not show the music that’s being listened to at different IBM sites across the world? That’s what IBM Rocks does.

IBM Rocks

It takes feeds from our internal directory system (bluepages) and our site location database (RESO) , merges them with LastFM feeds and displays them on a Poly9 3D earth. Pretty simple really, not much business value (so we wont win the competition), but it looks pretty.

16 thoughts on “LastFM + IBM = IBM Rocks

  1. It’s always refreshing to have non-virtual worlds posts (reminds me of the early days of Eightbar.. ahh, the nostalgia), but especially when they’re as fun as this. Great stuff Darren!

    You realise I’m going to have to listen to a lot more music now so that my musical tastes are reflected in Hursley’s playlist. I see someone in Hursley is listening to Frou Frou this morning though, which is a good start. 🙂

  2. Click on most any US site and you see fairly recognizable stuff: Eagles, LedZep, Bjork… then click on the Cambridge site. Huh?!? 🙂

  3. I have used it since you posted it here on Eightbar, but it looks like it doesn’t pick up every track played (or in the RSS feed from last.fm). Maybe you could post something about how it works – in more detail.

    But it is nice!

  4. Very cool! I signed up earlier today and I couldn’t help but keep checking the global stats throughout the day to see what other IBMers were listening to. There goes my productivity rate! 😉

    FYI: There’s also a Last.FM group for IBMers called “IBM Rockers” – Join up! 😀

    http://www.last.fm/group/IBM+Rockers

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  7. Great idea. I’m a new IBMer and just love to find this. Now I feel better listening music here (and installing last.fm plugin). 😉
    But, why doesn’t this version here http://ibmrocks.mytoycode.com/ show just one IBM site in Brazil? I wanna know what people is listening here, what are the most popular tracks…

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