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.
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.


July 19th, 2007 at 10:04
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. :-)
July 19th, 2007 at 10:05
That was Gareth, but I also listen to Frou Frou too. :-)
July 19th, 2007 at 14:47
Click on most any US site and you see fairly recognizable stuff: Eagles, LedZep, Bjork… then click on the Cambridge site. Huh?!? :)
July 23rd, 2007 at 14:31
How do you figure out which last.fm users to track? It doesn’t seem to be picking up my songs at the mo’ (http://www.last.fm/user/rewbs/).
July 23rd, 2007 at 16:10
Hi Robin, you need to signup on the internal version if you haven’t already done so. I need to manually transfer the users over periodically. If you haven’t signed up, go to http://ibmrocks.bluehost.ibm.com/ibmrocks/index.php and then click on join.
July 23rd, 2007 at 19:26
This is great! :) Thanks for sharing this.
July 24th, 2007 at 12:41
Brilliant – thanks Darren!
July 30th, 2007 at 21:44
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!
August 18th, 2007 at 05:01
How very interesting.
August 20th, 2007 at 22:51
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! :D
http://www.last.fm/group/IBM+Rockers
September 17th, 2007 at 18:23
“Virtual Worlds for Corporate Collaboration” by Roo Reynolds
Here is a reference to a Slideshare presentation with audio that one of my fellow IBM colleagues, Roo Reynolds, did at the recent “Serious Virtual Worlds 2007″ conference around the subject of how social software and virtual worlds are impacting the …
October 1st, 2007 at 12:03
[...] eightbar » Blog Archive » LastFM IBM = IBM Rocks [...]
November 23rd, 2008 at 04:33
I feel very fine lstening music its my life!
December 19th, 2008 at 14:23
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…
January 15th, 2009 at 00:37
es una idea genial, grandioso amazing
October 9th, 2009 at 15:22
=O