19 May 2005

By Person added to RadioWave

I finally got back into the RadioWave code and added a By Person tab. This first iteration lists all current, future, and file-based content by person. Past content is excluded unless it was recorded, and any content where the person couldn't be determined is excluded. It's still a little shakey, but that'll work itself out. I plan on adding a filter for the content type (only files, only recorded streams, etc.).

After using it, I was immediately reminded of Clay Shirky's admonitions against classifications and praise for dynamic linking (acyclic graphs). My impressions with regard to the new RadioWave feature may be based on the limited content, but I think that the search feature is more useful than this new categorization. However, the tabs that provide hourly and station-based filters are also classifications, and they seem very useful. I suspect the difference between those classifications and the person classification is the amount of data and the semantics of that data. The current hour of the day far outweighs the importance of any other hours. Similarly, a specific station's content is unique and worthy of emphasizing on its own. I thought that categorizing artists/DJs was the next logical step. Instead, I think it's easier to search for "Shostakovich" than to navigate to the correct (Sa-Sz) page.

[ posted by sstrader on 19 May 2005 at 12:45:39 PM in Music ]