Sun Labs Snapp Radio
Frequently asked questions
- What is Snapp Radio
Snapp Radio is a mashup of
Radio Paradise, Last.fm and Flickr. While you are listening to music on
Radio Paradise or Last.FM, Snapp Radio will collect images that are
related to the current song and present them as a slideshow in
your Web browser.
- How does it work?
Snapp Radio will connect to Radio Paradise or Last.FM to figure out what song you are
currently listening to.
Snapp Radio augments this information by connecting to Last.FM and finding any social tags
that have been attached to this song and artist.
Snapp Radio then uses all of this information to fashion a set
of queries to Flickr to find a
set of interesting images that are related to the song.
Snapp Radio collects the images, orders them in an interesting
way and presents them to you in your Web browser.
- I can't hear any music! How come? Snapp Radio doesn't actually play any music. If you are using the
Radio Paradise edition, then to
hear the music that goes along with the slideshow, go to the
Radio Paradise Listen page where you'll find all sorts of audio streaming options. If you are using the last.fm edition
go to last.fm to start the music player.
- I can't get the Last.fm player to work, what should I do?
You should check with Last.fm for support for their player.
- I just saw an interesting picture in Snapp Radio,
how do I find it in Flickr?
If you click on an image, a popup window will
open up that shows more information about the image. If you click on the image title, you'll be brought to
the Flickr page for the image.
- I just heard an interesting song, how do I find it in Radio Paradise?
If you click on the album cover a separate browser window
will open up that shows the Radio Paradise page for the album.
- How does Snapp Radio decide which pictures to show for a song?
Snapp Radio uses all the information it can find can about the song, including the
artist, album, any social tags that have been applied to the song,
artist or album. Snapp Radio then filters this information to emphasize some
information (artists and emotional content) and de-emphasize others
(social tags such as 'favorite' or 'I own it' are not very useful).
Snapp Radio then make a series of queries to Flickr based on the filtered
info to get a good set of photos.
- What technologies did you use to build Snapp Radio?
- Java Servlets for the backend
- Flickrj to interface to Flickr
- Javascript/CSS for the frontend
- Scriptaculous - for some of the image transition effects
- The last.fm Web services API
- The Radio Paradise RSS Feed
- The Cookie package from David Flanagan's
JavaScript - the definitive guide published by O'Reilly.
Note: This product uses the Flickr API but is not endorsed or certified by Flickr.
- Who built Snapp Radio?
Snapp Radio was built by researchers in Sun labs.
- Why are you showing a picture of band
X when band Y is playing?
Sometimes when people go to a festival with lots of performers
they tag all of their photos with the names of all of the bands,
so they might have a photo of "Jimmy Eat World" that is tagged
"Green Day" since they both played at the same venue.
- I have an idea for a new feature, could you add it?
Maybe. Send me a note at Paul.Lamere@sun.com
- How do I slow down the slides In the upper left hand corner
there is a 'Settings' link. This will bring you to a page where you can set
the Slide delay. You can make the delay as low as 2 Seconds or as long as 60 seconds.
- Snapp Radio seems to be out of sync with the music! What can I do? Some of the audio
streams have a built-in delay that can cause Snapp Radio to appear to be out of sync with the audio. You
can adjust Snapp Radio's timing on the settings menu. Set the 'Sync Delay' field to equal the time between
the point where Snapp Radio starts a new song and the point where you hear the new song start on your audio stream.
- I'm listening to Last.FM with their flash player, but Snapp Radio doesn't seem to notice. What gives?
Currently, the flash-based last.fm player doesn't update the 'now playing' information at last.fm. A future release of
the last.fm player should take care of this.
- Woah, you just showed me a picture that
was not safe for work!
Woah! Sorry about that. Sometimes Flickr has NSFW images. You
can tell Flickr that the image 'may be inappropriate'. We do have a
filter to present only photos that are safe for work,
though sometimes things sneak by.
- I'm concerned about my privacy, what information do you
collect about me when I use Snapp Radio? What do you do with this
information?
We log your IP address so we can try to track how many users have visited. If you are using the last.fm version
we also log your last.fm user name. We won't give this information to anyone.
- How many people have used Snapp Radio? There is information on Snapp Radio usage on the Stats pages.
There's a
Snapp Radio - Radio Paradise Edition Stats page and a
Snapp Radio - last.fm Edition Stats page.
- Where is the image rating data?
The latest image rating data can be found on the
Snapp Radio - Image Rating page
- What are people saying about Snapp Radio?
Not much, but here are some testimonials..
- What's next?
Check out the release notes to see the "To Do" list.
