I wanted to start writing about apps that stand out for me. Apps that truly help to fix a problem. Apps that I believe will last, rather than being one of many fads that I either force myself to use, or delete. I hope you find my insights helpful.

Today I want to tell you about Pocket – the re branded overhaul of Read it Later. It’s a place to put web content that you want to view later.

Whether you send text, images, or videos; Pocket will strip down the content and present it in an elegant, distraction free format, ready for you to consume when it’s most convenient. The app also allows you to sync this content so it can be viewed offline.

I’ve recently changed the way I use the web during the day. To avoid information overload and low productivity, I find it useful to divert anything potentially interesting on the Internet to a separate inbox. By doing this, I can take it off my mind, and deal with it later. Ever since Read it Later transformed into the beautiful new Pocket, it has been that separate inbox for me.

There are already a few popular methods for saving articles to read later, provided in a stripped down and clean format:

• Instapaper has always been a fantastic iOS app with this functionality;
• Readability finally managed to release their iOS app earlier this year, and;
• Apple has it’s own implementation in Safari via a combination of Reading List and the Reader view.

I used to swear by the stunning and simple Readability app, until I tried Pocket out for a few weeks.

One of Pocket’s most important features is being able to send it video links. Before Pocket, any video I wanted to view later would either be added to the respective watch later list for Vimeo and YouTube, or sent to ShowYou.

Consuming this content at the same time as my reading list (when I got home) makes sense, so the convenience of one inbox versus many is an obvious benefit. Pocket won’t distract me with new content like the other video saving services; I only see what I’ve put in.

Being able to send Pocket almost anything is a killer feature, but it’s the entire experience that makes this app stand out. Pocket is gorgeous (the visual inbox layout on iPad is fantastic), it has limited yet impressive fonts, the app is very fast (especially the syncing process), you can send it content from over 300 apps (it works with Read it Later links), and it can share to most services you would need (including Evernote).

If I had to suggest an area for improvement, it would be that YouTube videos saved to Pocket don’t play in HD, but hopefully this will become possible in the future.

Pocket is an incredible app for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. It’s also free. I recommend you definitely try it out, especially if, like me, you find yourself easily distracted by that popular new article on Twitter, a funny video shared on Facebook, or the latest update in your RSS feed.

I’d love to hear what you think of Pocket – or any other cool apps you are digging at the moment that I should check out – so leave a comment!

Today is a great day for Australian music. We now have the two best streaming music services live in Australia: Rdio launched back January 2012, and today we have Spotify. I’m a big fan of streaming music and I really believe that this is the future of music listening. Here’s why streaming is important:

Music is our culture. Streaming models give greater access to more music. The more that people consume music, the better.

We’re seeing a major shift in consumer behaviour away from ownership (buying songs) to access (unlimited songs on demand). Some music fans and artists are unsure about the value of streaming for them, so I wanted to weigh in with my personal perspective: I’m a music artist with a bunch of records out, I’m a music fan that consumes music, and I’m one of the founders of a music tech startup based in Australia. Here’s the deal for me:

As a music artist
As a music artist, I earn money from various record deals, a publishing deal, and (previously) from touring revenue. I know from personal experience that most of my music income is not generated from the record sales themselves. Artists actually make most of their money from publishing, from merch, and from gigging.

Selling records is now a promotional tool that should be used to help the other areas of your music revenue. More plays = more exposure = more ways to generate revenue around your music. Streaming is great for artists once you embrace it. Simple.

As a startup founder
As a tech startup founder, we make music apps like Discovr for iPhone and iPad. Our job is to make it easy for you to find new music that you’ll love. Once you find new music, streaming services like Spotify and Rdio make it possible to consume that new music in a fast, affordable, easy way. Alternate modes of consumption are great for both music artists and fans. More music = more better.

As a music fan
As a music fan, I have a room full of crates of vinyl records. And boxes of CDs. And hard drives full of mp3s. And yet, I’m now using streaming services to listen to music throughout the day. It’s just easier and more convenient. I can listen to music anywhere, and I get constant access to new music that I’ve never heard before. I haven’t sold my vinyl, but if you’re a music fan, streaming gives you access to such a massive catalogue of music it will blow your mind.

As an Australian
As an Australian, we’ve been waiting for streaming music for a long time. We may not be huge in population, but I’m incredibly proud of our musical heritage. What’s great is that we’re seeing more and more Australian catalogue being unearthed by the streaming services and this is awesome for all Australian artists, music fans, and the industry in general. Both Rdio and Spotify have done a lot of work to represent local music, and while there’s still a long way to go, the depth and breadth will probably surprise you.

I say yay to streaming music in Australia. What do you think?

In particular, we wanted to highlight one person that has had a huge impact on the music hacking scene – someone who pushes the boundaries of technology, someone who shares their knowledge with the community, and someone who embodies creativity and passion for music and tech. This person deserves a place in the Music Hacker’s Hall of Fame.

In the world of music and tech there is one person who stands out. He is one of the grand masters of the music hacking community. His name is Paul Lamere.

You can find Paul at just about every Music Hack Day, and his hacks are always technically challenging, forward thinking and fun. Paul is also the Director of Developer Platform at the Echo Nest where he leads the way for hackers to create new applications around music.

Paul is one of the nicest, most generous people you’ll ever meet, and he’s been a huge inspiration to us and other hackers all over the world.

For his passion, for his hacks, and for his kind and generous nature, we award Paul with a music hacking trophy and a place in the Music Hacker’s Hall of Fame. Give it up, for Paul Lamere!

You can follow Paul on Twitter, and read his blog at Music Machinery.

Make sure to check his hacks. There are too many to list, so here’s a few to get started:
Midem Music Machine
Six Degrees of Black Sabbath
Paul Versus Billboard

Plus some great hacks Paul did with his daughter Jennie:
Bohemian Rhapsichord
Jennie’s Ultimate Road Trip

We’ll see more people inducted into the Music Hacker’s Hall of Fame soon. There are lots of people who have contributed hugely to the music hacking community. Who will be next?

One of the important design decisions I made when building RocketPants was related to versioning – I believe it’s important in practical terms to version an API (within reason) but I strongly disagree with using custom content types to do the versioning for most things.

But why?

My argument for this boils down to a couple of small, key factors:

1. Discoverability

This predominately applies to public facing APIs but I believe it’s still important for general APIs as well. Discoverability of an API in this specific case refers to the ability to use a browser just like any other API client. AKA, I should be able to take a URL, type it into my browser bar, and see the body of the response. With the help of a good browser plugin or two (e.g. JSONView in Chrome), I may even get a structured and highlighted view of the data.

Doing headers is typically an extra step in most command line clients / http libraries (albeit not a hard one) but in most browsers it’s either quite a task (e.g. requiring an extra plugin) or just not possible.

I believe Echonest is a fantastic example of this – their API docs include links to example requests that work as in your browser, making it super easy to get started and to play around with the data, despite being versioned.

2. The Difference In Changes

My second issue refers to changes in side effects – specifically, in non-GET requests. Whilst the Accept-based approach still works as expected with HTTP caching and the like (since they’re used for normal content negotiation), but when different controllers implement different versions of the API call (e.g. creating something in version two has a different result than version one), your API will not function as expected.

Hence, the Accept based approach works for just different representations of the data, but when you change the logic, it starts to cause trouble – using a different endpoint completely (as signified by a different path) means it’s functionally a different resource and hence you expect those actions to change.

An aside: v1 versus 1.

This is a small one – I consciously chose to use /1/ in the generated paths for RocketPants over /v1/ for a number of reasons after talking to other developers. These primarily were based on the fact that A) it’s easier to scan (although only marginally), and B_ .to_i in ruby (and similar number conversions) work as expected with no surprises – the v adds no extra information but potentially offers confusion.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I believe you should choose the solution that feels right to you. My personal experience consuming and building APIs has led me to prefer this approach (and to be honest, if it was an ideal world, you’d probably eschew versions in favour of backwards compatible APIs with a decent deprecation time period), but for most cases I believe it’s more pragmatic to use versioning in the URL than it is to use header / Accept based versioning for the reasons above.

This is a BIG DEAL people!

Hackers will have one-time access to a range of exclusive data, including:

• Hottest 100 metadata from 1989 to 2011, including Rdio track ids and Echonest metadata. Hackers can query artists and tracks, and also the Hottest 100 ranking for that year.
• The ability to peek into extensive information about the Triple J Unearthed competition – 80,000 tracks and 36,00 artists who’ve submitted entries to Triple J Unearthed.
• Information about each weekly feature album on Triple J.
• Data about what’s on the radio now and what has been recently played.

If you’re coming along to Music Hack Day Sydney and this is the sort of data you’d love to hack on, there’s even more motivation. With thanks to Triple J and Otis Eyewear, we have a prize especially for the best hack built on the api.

Go forth and hack!

Wanna soak up the geek vibe and get caffeinated with code wizards and design lords but don’t know the different between a repository and a suppository?

Fret not, Hack-ling! You can join the team as a Music Hack Day Sydney volunteer!

Many hands make light work and in exchange for your faithful service, we’ll feed, water and entertain you AND give you a dope tee shirt. Winning!

Register your interest with kristy@filtersquad.com now.

Woo!

There’s a shedload of interesting humans already signed up for Sydney, and they are coming from near and far to share the experience.

One such human is Syd Lawrence; he’s making the epic trek from London just to join us for the first Aussie MHD weekender. He’s a freelance developer, part-time University lecturer and we hear Syd’s fans like to speculate as to whether or not he actually sleeps, because a new hack seems to appear on his blog every few minutes.

Syd has hacked the sh! out of the last few London hack days and if you don’t keep your eyes on the prize, his wizardry might sweep the MHD Sydney prize pool. Start hatching your hack plans people – you’ve been warned! ☺

Read more about Syd:
Sydlawrence.com
@Sydlawrence

Guest Blog by Syd Lawrence

What is a Music Hack Day?
So, are you into tech? Are you also into music? Well let’s make something interesting to do with music and tech!

I’ve been to heaps hack days and, in my experience, this is generally how it goes down…

A whole bunch of developers, designers, tinkerers get together in a room seeing what they can come up with if they really push the boundaries. All of them work on fun and interesting projects right throughout the night.

Some people will be working on projects all night long, others will decide to wimp out and go back to a bed, but bear this in mind; those 8 hours you are asleep? Yeah, someone just finished another hack in that time.

Sponsors come along, provide you with some APIs to use and some assistance throughout the weekend. There’s food and drink to make sure you are watered and fed. And there are even prizes for the best hacks!

Why you should attend
Are you in a full time job? Wish you had more time to play? Yes, you! You should definitely attend.

When was the last time you tinkered with something new?

Have you tinkered with a Kinect yet? How about the SoundCloud API? Or perhaps you wanna create a custom Rdio player? Right then, well now is your chance!

Hack days are the perfect opportunity. You get to tinker with new technologies and you are surrounded by many brilliant minds working on awesome things. Everyone is there to help.

Or perhaps you just want to check out the Red Bull HQ ;)

Oh, and you basically get free food and drink for a full weekend!

What kind of stuff gets made at Music Hack Days?
Many different things have been made over the past few years at Music Hack Days.

From Kinect hacks, Arduino based hardware hacks, through to high-level web apps, or mobile interactive installations.

Funny hacks, useful hacks, hackety hacks. You name it, let’s make it!

My personal top 5 hacks
CTRL – Interactive Music Installation
Tourrent Plans – Better concert tour planning with science!
HearMyFace – A face expression based midi controller that injects true expressiveness into your music.
Midem Music Machine – Web based 3D animated audio visualisation.
Drinkify – Never listen to music alone again!

***

So, if all of that didn’t get you excited, maybe this video featuring Syd and fellow pommy hacker Paul King, will. It was shot by Pauline de Zeeuw at Music Hack Day London, December last year.

And if you haven’t registered yet, get your rear into gear and sign up here! (We promise we won’t let Syd win ALL the prizes!)

See you soon.

Contemporary artist, habitual tinkerer, electronic music lover and maker; David Spencer will join the Music Hack Day touring party from sunny Western Australia to create live art hacks at Red Bull Australia HQ.

You should Google him – he’s a cool guy and people go nuts for his paintings.

David Spencer "For the love i know"

David Spencer "The Twittering machine" (diptych)

David Spencer "Wool stories" (Fremantle street art)

Dave will be on deck to collaborate on projects and create sculptural pieces for the MHD Winners’ Trophies out of repurposed objects, hardware and pretty much anything you leave lying around.

We’re not sure what exactly is going to happen. We’re just going to keep throwing more awesome in the Music Hack Day pot, give it a shake and see what falls out.

See you there!

spencertive.com
@Spencertive
Spencerbook

It’s the first showing in Oz for the global Music Hack Day, and a solid list of local and international sponsors have thrown their support behind the event, generously providing prizes, API access and support and sustenance to keep the hackers doing what they came for.

Music Hack Day Sydney Sponsors

API Partners will have the opportunity to deliver 5-minute demonstrations to the group, which will consist of developers, UI/UX designers, hardware tinkerers and creatives from various fields. Some will have the opportunity to offer extended optional workshops to those looking at working with their product.

API partners include:
The Echo Nest
Rdio
Sonos
Rovi Corporation
Triple J
Musixmatch
OpenTok by TokBox
SoundCloud
7Digital
OpenEMI
Shoudio

Prizes are generously donated by the API partners and will be awarded for the best hacks featuring the API for each category.

In addition to API partners, Music Hack Day Sydney welcomes the official involvement of sponsors contributing to the overall prize pool, including Amazon Web Services, Otis Eyewear, ThoughtWorks and Github.

The good folks at Red Bull are lending us their epic crib for the weekend, the fridge is well stocked courtesy of Asahi and our friends at The Sound Alliance and EMI Australia will be sending in the pizza delivery person.

Music Hack Day is lovingly hosted by Filter Squad and is happening over the weekend of 28/29 April at Red Bull’s Australian headquarters in Alexandria, NSW.

There’s plenty of news still to come, so stay tuned -

Sydney.musichackday.org
@MusicHackDay
@Discovr
Music Hack Day Facebook
Discovr Facebook

Do you have one of the Discovr apps and want to find another? We have you covered:

Double tap a node and, you guessed it, find our more about one of the Discovr apps.

We hope you like it as much as we do. We expect the app to be submitted and approved by at least the year 2052.