One does not thank logic
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Posted by AQ // Fri, Sep 17, 2004 1:02 PM
********
/****** freeLoader "v2.0"
/**** mp3 blog music harvester
/** a Microsoft .NET 2.0 Smart Client
/* Copyright 2004 AQ.
ahmedqurashi@gmail.com
"DOWNLOADING music from the Internet is not illegal.
Plenty of music available online is not just free but
also easily available, legal and — most important —
worth hearing."
-- "No Fears: Laptop D.J.'s Have a Feast",
The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2004
Sure, everyone knows about the Killers, the Strokes,
Talib Kwali, Guided By Voices, Interpol, Bjork, the
Roots, etc. But how do you find new music?
Mp3 Bloggers of course!
Many of these individuals slave away in The Industry
or are simply addicted to finding the rarest tracks. As
such they provide an indispensible service to the
community at large, those of us too busy to hunt out the
lastest mp3s. How else would I have gotten turned on to
the Libertines, Radio4, Brother Ali or Japancakes?
Problem Domain:
Ok, so most Mp3 Bloggers use third party blog publishing
software to write their little blurbs and publish links
to mp3 music files. Usually XML feeds of their blogs are
automatically generated. The feeds, however, are of the
blog entries themselves, not the music, which is what one
desires. What does it matter what you thought of a certain
track? The chatter is irrelevant. Only I can tell if a cut
will appeal to me or not. Aesthetically then, what I require
is an app which toils away in the background, sucking up all
the mp3 files from the blogosphere, and depositing them in my
hard drive for my listening convenience.
Solution:
Initially, I envisioned this project as an Add-On to the
popular RSS Bandit XML Feed News Aggregator. But, for this
problem, RSS is really quite useless.
I also wanted to develop the app quickly in Whidbey,
using some of the latest features of C# 2.0. RSS Bandit,
however, uses the SandBar layout engine, which does not
have Whidbey design-time support for now.
Also, I felt like moving away from a traditional UI, to
a more inductive, web-like user experience.
(see Microsoft's Inductive UI Guidelines for more)
Result:
Welcome to freeLoader "v2.0"!
Enter an mp3 blog url and the links are harvested from
the site. Then, select the files you want to save and
they are downloaded in the background.
What's new in C# 2.0:
Some of the new features of Whidbey used are the new
DataGridView Windows Form Control, partial classes,
generic anonymous methods, new Web Client and GDI+
members.
So, a little something to fill up all that extra
bandwith you've been sitting on! Just in testing this
little sucker, I've gotten close to half a gig of new
music. Sure, a lot of it I will never listen to again.
But what about that Beatles vs. Beastie Boys mashup? Or
the Kellis remix of Bjork's new single. Or that rare
Conan O'Brian performance of Nick Cave from 1994?
You get the Idea...Enjoy!
ok,
aq
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