Chopstork

…or not. MediaMaster.com and Faces.com are sites that let you upload your (unprotected) music, create playlists, and put them on a web page using a widget (same way you embed YouTube movies in a site). I had grand plans for the Chopstork—I want to hear what you all listen to and discover me some new music.

I’ve started trying out the sites this weekend, but too bad they both have problems…at least for now. I haven’t been able to upload a single damn album yet. The problems with both are just bugs - they’ll be fixed eventually, so maybe we’ll try this again later.

From what I can tell, Faces has the better embedable widget. Anyone can listen to the playlists and skip tracks (but you can’t rewind). MediaMaster’s widget only let’s you pause and resume, and I haven’t figured out if the song order is always random. It let’s you see someone’s entire album collection, but not listen to it—you can only listen to playlists they’ve created—really confusing.

On the flip side, when you’re looking at your own account, MediaMaster acts as an online music player (looks very similar to iTunes). You can see and listen to all your albums plus easily create playlists. Faces is really a social-networking site and the music is just part of it. Music is stored in a “locker”—you can only listen to one song at a time from the locker. The only way to listen to an album in Face is is to explicitly create playlists and listen through the widgets (”TuneFeeds”).

The othe problem with Faces is it only takes MP3 files. If you use AAC, WMA, OGG, FLAC, or whatever, you have to convert them all to MP3 before upload—sucks.

In case you’re curious, or want to try it yourself and see if you get different results:

• MediaMaster fails to recognize when an upload is complete. When I try to play a song, it tells me it’s still waiting on the upload and can’t play it. Some songs work, some don’t.
• Faces’ bulk uploader just plain doesn’t work. It won’t let me drop any files into it.

I don’t know how persistent bloggers do it! Does a topic just splash over their head and compel them to dive in and write up an article? How do they feel substantial amidst the torrent of posts, comments, and feeds flowing like a thousand Amazon’s and a million Mississippi’s into the world wide interweb?

Perhaps, I don’t see or don’t pickup on the conversational rhythm of blogging in general. Each of my posts seems like a corked note in a bottle tossed out to sea. Someday a pirate may happen across it looking for plunder, but more likely the cork will soak through and the note will float silently to the bottom.

Just maybe years later it will get picked by a gnarly fisherman trolling the bottom for crabs and old tires.

Folks, I have determined with out a doubt that comcast technicians that have southern accents have absolutely no idea what the Internet actually is. After spending 45 minutes on the phone listening to the low bit rate waiting music I got a hold of the technician. She asked me for my name and address and I politely gave her the information. She asked me what the nature of my problem was and I told her that my Internet connection was not working and I needed to have it fixed ASAP. She walked me through a couple standard steps - make sure the little lights are blinking on the modem, make sure your Ethernet cable is plugged into the modem, make sure your cable is actually working… Then the most amazing and insightful thing I have ever heard from a trained Internet technician was uttered, and I quote: “It looks like your high speed internet connection may not be working. Please open up your Internet Explorer window and go to comcast.net to file a trouble ticket” So to summarize, I spent over an hour of my cell phone rollover minutes and valuable time to find out that the assumption I made with regard to my internet connection was in fact correct. Brilliant! I miss the days of the telegraph. (sigh)

—Vonbadass