Spotify is a new piece of software (well relatively new anyway) which you can download to your PC or Mac and then listen to as much music as you want – for free. It’s advertising supported, so unless you sign up for the premium account, you’ll be hearing an ad every four or five tracks (and this’ll probably grow in the future). However, it’s brilliant being able to listen to practically any track or album you want (and legally as well).

Now if only it combined with last.fm’s recommendation engine, that would be amazing, but in the meantime, it can scrobble your tracks to your last.fm account. I would have probably prefered it if it had been a last.fm service to begin with though, to avoid having to give my e-mail address to another company.

Saying that though, Spotify’s a great way to preview music before you buy it, and could mean you potentially save a fortune on music too. With this, there’s potentially no reason you’d ever have to buy music again, as long as you don’t mind putting up with the ads. You can give it a go here – invites were required previously but if you’re in the UK you no longer need one to sign up. An iPhone version would obviously be awesome!

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This looks pretty neat – Google Latitude is basically a service which allows you to see if any of your friends are nearby, so if you’re bored or whatever you can hook up with them.

I’ve tried services like this before (most significantly Brightkite) but they never seem to have gained enough acceptance to make it worth my while – none of my friends for example are signed up to it. Google might just have the weight behind them to make it happen.

Some problems that I can see that make it a bit less ideal though:

• you need to log in each time you use it (so if you are looking for a mate that may be nearby, they not only have to be nearby but logged in too)
• you need to have the contacts in your GMail address book (not that big a deal, but I don’t, and it gives me another syncing nightmare to keep them up to date with Me.com)
• it’s yet another set-up / invite process to annoy people with – wouldn’t it be better coming from Facebook to avoid having to do all that?
• there doesn’t seem an easy way to access it from a computer, unless you go through Google’s iGoogle service which I don’t use and don’t really like

Google Latidude is available now at www.google.com/latitude for Blackberrys, Nokia Smartphones and Windows mobile Devices. An iPhone version is on the way apparently.

Hmmmm!

I’ve also enabled a function on my site that allows you to log in using Facebook when you want to post a comment – I just thought this was a nice feature to have. You’ll have the option when posting a comment using your Facebook ID as to whether or not you want it to appear on your newsfeed. I can’t seem to get avatars to appear though so if anyone can help with that, I would be grateful (I’m using the wp-fbconnect plugin) !

I’ve joined Twitter for the second time, after a mate persuaded me to do it, so if you’re on Twitter, you can find me here. I think I’m still at the “denial / presence” stages but I’m gonna to stick with it for a while yet anyway.

One side effect of all this (though nothing to do with me signing up to Twitter) is that my feed seems to have become broken. I’m trying to get this fixed at the moment, and the guys over at Feedburner have replicated the fault and are having a look at it for me. So please bare with me if you use that while it gets fixed.

Mac users have been able to stream video from the BBC’s iPlayer service for a while now – nearly a year I think, but now you can download video as well, and keep it for 30 days before it expires. The BBC has launched a new version of the iPlayer desktop manager, which you can get here.

I’ve downloaded it out of curiosity, but will probably stick to using the iPlayer most on my TV through my Virgin Media box. It does drive me insane though that it takes about two minutes for the box to respond after pressing a button on my remote.

Download to your heart’s content!

Ok so I’m a bit behind with this because it happened last week, but Amazon have started selling music downloads – at a discount to iTunes. At the moment, as what I can only presume is a loss-leader to get people to try the service, they’re offering some brand new albums for only £3 – including ones by Kings of Leon, Take That, Girls Aloud, and Snow Patrol (although Miley is £6.49 annoyingly as I’m a bit tempted.)

I might try it to give it a go – I’m tempted because there’s no DRM restrictions on the music, so I can use it how I want, it will play nicely with my iPhone and iPod, and Amazon’s software (a small plug-in type thing) apparently makes it a cinch to copy into iTunes. Normal (i.e. not discounted) albums seem to cost £6.49 compared to iTunes £7.99.

Find the Amazon MP3 store here.

Ok I’m a bit behind with this, but basically if you are in the habit of sending drunk e-mails that you later regret, and are a Gmail user, fear no more, with the introduction of Mail Goggles from Google.

It asks you to perform some sums before you can send your e-mail, hence avoiding the crushing feeling I’m all too familiar with after waking up the next morning after a night out. 

Now I’m not in the habit of sending drunken e-mails, but if I could find something like this to avoid tipsy texting and facebook messaging, I reckon I’d have found nirvana (or something like that anyway.)

Via Neatorama

Google today launched Lively which is a like a Second Life type world where you can create your own avatars, rooms and chat with your friends. Details of how to actually get started with it seem pretty skimpy at the moment, but one cool feature is that you can apparently watch Youtube videos in a virtual room with your friends.

I never got into the Second Life thing, but what’s different about Lively is that once you download the software on to your PC (PC only at the moment Grrrrr) you can access your room from Facebook, your site, and other places on the web. Which seems like quite a good idea. Maybe when it’s a Mac download I’ll give it a shot.

If you’re like me, you’ll use an image editing application quite a lot – from removing red-eye from party photographs to cropping an image, rotating it or putting a border on it for your blog and so on.

It’s sometimes frustrating though, say if you’re at work and need to alter an image quickly or away from home without a laptop or your own computer. No more! Although there are other online imaging editors out there, Photoshop Express which launched last week seems to do a pretty good job, and has a thorough (though basic) feature set. It also looks pretty good.

It’s meant to be currently available in the US only though I had no problems setting up an account. You get 2GB storage free for your images as well.

I use Gmail for my e-mail, and think it’s great – it does everything (almost) that I could possibly want – access from my Mail client at my home, the web, and my ‘phone. That’s not why I like the video above though – I think it’s just a brilliant demonstration of how creative people can be with a very simple premise.

Google asked people to send in clips for a collabarative video imagining how an e-mail can travel. The result is above. They’ve also mapped all the contributions on a map which you can see here.