Getting carried away by the Raptr

Last night when I was browsing my friend's twitter profile, I noticed she was updating her profile with a feed of her gaming activity. Curiosity got the better of me and I followed the link to her profile and discovered Raptr. It's basically a social networking site that "helps you connect with friends who like to play and discover games. Our goal is to make playing games more fun and social.".



I previously wrote an article about last.fm, my current favourite networking site. The concepts are very similar. Raptr detects what games you play by downloading their client and updating your details, it then updates your profile status (e.g. what game you're playing and what achievements you have made in that game). It allows you to add games to your library so people can see what games & consoles you own. Based on your own library and games you like, it'll recommend games to you that might be of interest. You can add fellow gamers and keep up-to-date with their gaming activity and compare your gaming tastes.

I've already recommended it to my oldest brother, an avid PC gamer that uses Steam, and he was very intrigued! It's still a Beta version and has a feedback console on the side of the page, allowing users to give thoughts for room for improvement. I can definitely see this gaining popularity as the gaming industry is vastly growing and gaining more share in the entertainment world.

If you're interested you can find my profile here!

"I see sounds..."

In all the conversations I've had with people I've met for the first time, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is "So, what music you into?/Who's you favourite band?". I hate those questions. Don't get wrong - it has nothing to do with the person asking it but more to do with the question itself. I can never answer a question like that. And I imagine that most people can never answer it truthfully either...

See, I'm a very fickle person. If you asked what song I love at the moment today, the answer would be very different if you asked me that same question tomorrow. Music is affected by our moods, environment, our friends etc. And music is so broad and diverse. I can never pinpoint it to just one simple thing...

And that's why I love last.fm

If you never heard of last.fm then let me break it down for you: it a music social networking website. But don't mistake it for anything like Facebook or MySpace. It matters not about how many friends you have, or how many songs you listen to but what you listen to.



The website "scrobbles" the songs you play in winamp/windows media player/itunes/last.fm player (although it recommends you use their own player as the old skool plugins fo the other apps are no longer supported by them). Then the smart bunnies at last.fm create you own little music chart (it like the top40 based on what you listen to instead of the nation).




But that's only the beginning! From here, you can get recommendations for other artist you might like and provides you updates about events that might interest you. All in all, it pretty damn cool.