************************************************************************ ************************************************************************ *** It'sGotTheVibez 0.1.2 README *** (c) 2006-2007 Gunter Ohrner *** *** It'sGotTheVibez is a scrobbler for last.fm, see below for details. *** *** Licensed under the GNU GPL V2.0, see file GPL_V2 for reference ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************ [1]last.fm is a huge and pretty cool music community site which automatically computes personalized music recommendations for each user, based on his or her [2]listening profile. Additionally crosslinks between the artist's information pages available at last.fm are created depending on similarities between the artists deduced from the users listening habits. This way, you can find lots of interesting artists previously unknown to you just by browsing the last.fm site, starting at the information page of an artist you like, last.fm is fed with the required data by its users, who submit information about the music they are listening to using special software music players or plugins for their preferred software player. For this purpose, last.fm is powered by a system called [3]Audioscrobbler and the programs which submit the listening information to last.fm are simply called "Scrobblers". It'sGotTheVibez - a Scrobbler for the Trekstor Vibez If you're a last.fm user and also own a portable music player, you probably have a problem. So far, there's not a single portable player I know if which officially supports the audioscrobbler system. In effect this means that you "loose" any information about the music you listen to on the go, at least from the point of view of your last.fm listening profile. However, there are a few inofficial Scrobblers for some selected portable music players, written by last.fm enthusiasts. Enter "It'sGotTheVibez", a scrobbler for [4]Trekstor's "Vibez" portable music player. It'sGotTheVibez is the result of several relaxing hours with my family around christmas 2006 - sitting inmidst about a dozend paper sheets covered with hex dumps which I used to reverse-engineer the Vibez' binary data base format to a level which enabled me to extract all required data for writing a working scrobbler... ;) (And, no, in my optinion analyzing binary data base formats is no worse way to spend your leisure time than solving sudoku or crossword puzzles. After all, with a solved sudoku puzzle you still cannot feed your last.fm profile, can you? ;) Download It'sGotTheVibez [5]It'sGotTheVibez 0.1.1 Prerequisites The most important prerequisites are 1. a Trekstor Vibez, 2. a last.fm account and 3. interest in updating your music profile with music you listened on the go of course. ;) It'sGotTheVibez is a rather simple Python-script within any further dependencies than a conforming Python 2.4 implementation. Unfortunately, It'sGotTheVibez does not yet work with Microsoft's IronPython implementation for the .NET plattform, as some modules which It'sGotTheVibez needs for communication with the Audioscrobbler system are missing from IronPython 1.0. However, IronPython 1.1 will include these modules and I plan to ensure It'sGotTheVibez' compatibility with IronPython 1.1 for .NET. In the meantime, you can try [6]Markus Gerhold's [7]VibezScrobbler, which is written in Java, based on It'sGotTheVibez' Vibez DB parser and the [8]Karmascrobblers and also works on Windows. Usage Usage of It'sGotTheVibez for updating your last.fm listening profile is pretty simple. If your Vibez is attached to your computer and mounted, the following suffices for a full sychronization of your Vibez' DB with It'sGotTheVibez (and thus, with last.fm): ./itsgotthevibez.py -u USERNAME -p PASSWORD -z /.private/smalldb Supplying your user name and password as command line arguments is not recommended however, for obvious secrity reasons. It'sGotTheVibez also supports a simple configuration file to which you can add all required information, and which allows you to call It'sGotTheVibez without a single command line argument at all. Updating your profile could not be simpler. Futher usage details and an exsample configuration file can be found in the It'sGotTheViebz downloadable tar ball. Please Note: Your Vibez must be switched off before it's connected to your computer, otherwise It'sGotTheVibez cannot parse the database. If you accidentially left you Vibez turned on before connecting it and It'sGotTheVibez complains loudly, just unmount your Vibez, unplug it, turn it off and attach it to your computer again. It'sGotTheVibez can not damage anything on your Vibez, as it accesses the database in read only mode exclusively. You can also mount your Vibez completely read-only for extra safety, if you like. It'sGotTheVibez is a pure command line application, however it would probably relatively easy to extend it with a GUI, if someone wants to take on this task. Besides that It'sGotTheVibez provides its functionality using modules which can also easily be used by other applications. How does in work? (for the technically interested) The Vibez saves quite a few information about its music collection in an internal data base, however it's also lacking some information which would be required to implement a perfectly working scrobbler. The Vibez stores some static meta data like the artist, title, album, length etc. of each track, as well as a play counter (a natural number) and a "last playing time" timestamp. It does not, however, explicitely record all times a track is played. Thus It'sGotTheVibez remebers the last known playing counter and the last known listening time of each track and compares this information with the data provided by the Vibez during the next sync. With this information, the last listen event of each track can be submitted verbatim to last.fm, previous listening times have to be extrapolated using a more or less intelligent algorithm. The more often you sync your Vibez, the more accurate the submitted data will be. The Trekstor Vibez is closely related to the Rio Karma mp3 player, which is supported by the Karmascrobbler. However, Karmascrobbler and It'sGotTheVibez have been developed are completely independently. References Visible links 1. http://www.lastfm.de/ 2. http://www.lastfm.de/user/Interneci 3. http://www.audioscrobbler.com/ 4. http://www.vibez.de/ 5. file:///home/gunter/misc/prog/hp/download/itsgotthevibez_0.1.1.tar.bz2 6. http://emgeh.m-seidl.com/ 7. http://emgeh.m-seidl.com/vibezscrobbler/ 8. http://www.gnurou.org/code/karmascrobbler