Mobile phone chargers are one of the many household things that when plugged in they burn electricity even when they are not being used.  Electronic goods with “standby” options are also a big waste of energy.  So Nokia, who are releasing their new low power phone chargers, wanted to raise Earth Hour’s profile by creating a website.

So I present to you “Planet Unplug“!  A simple, fun little site where you can join others in pledging to do something energy efficient during Earth Hour by adding a little plug socket character to our wall!

Please spread the word anyway you can by emailing, blogging or “tweeting” about it.  We have created a few little widgets that can be added to blogs (http://www.planetunplug.com/main/blogtools) to help get the word out too!  Here’s what the first two looks like:

We will be adding a few more features over the next week or two so come back and check them out!

Now go ahead and have an explore!  And don’t forget to add your pledge!

Planet Unplug: http://www.planetunplug.com

There is definitely a love-hate relationship with them for many people. We love Beatport for having such a wide choice of music. We love them for getting early exclusives. But we also hate them for being a bit “too big for their boots” and, most importantly, not really listening to their users.

We waited a looong time for this new version of Beatport. Far longer than it should have taken and even when they launched in January this year they were missing a few things fans thought would be shoe-ins.

Something I have been calling for since Beatport announced it was making version 4.0 over a year ago is a public API. Why oh why haven’t Beatport sorted this out yet?

Websites that offer open APIs get all the usual benefits of open source development: a huge, creative workforce for very little money! Simply look at the enormous success of Facebook’s API, which continues to grow and go in new directions, and also Twitter with it’s simple but very useful API.  These APIs have helped these sites grow enormously by effectively outsourcing work to anyone from hobbyist programmers and professional developers.

I would love to have access to a Beatport API for many reasons.  One of the best reasons for me would be so I can access my account’s favourite artists and labels so I can display them here on my blog.  Or have a list of the latest tracks released by my favourite artists in a simple list so I can see if it’s worth going to Beatport today.

Probably the main reason I’d like an API is because I don’t think Beatport are serving my needs very well, which is fair enough if I am in a small minority, but then why not let fans like me mold and shape the Beatport service to suit my needs?  It can still be Beatport branded and it will still have me going through their payment gateway so it will always benefit them.  Also, creative people will be able to add huge value to the Beatport service.  A Beatport API should be a no-brainer!

Does anyone agree with me about this?  What other things would be cool to create using a Beatport API?  Add you comments below!

A mix of some of the best progressive/trance tracks from the end of 2008. It’s a bit rough in one or two places as I was trying new things in Traktor Pro but overall pretty good!

It ends abruptly (on my favourite track of 2008!!) because I forgot I left the setting on which splits the audio recordings at 750MB (at about 55minutes). Apologies…

The Shit Box

http://www.thebrowncorporation.com/

I will be adding more mixes to Soundcloud and featuring them here from time to time, or you can visit my page at Soundcloud.

If you like them then let me know with a comment!