I’ve got a couple web services I’d like to share.  One I’ve been using for a little while now and feel comfortable talking about, the other I just came across today but am anxious to try it out.

Last.fm is a music streaming service.  It is most interesting (to me) as a music discovery service.  And it’s completely free.  To discover music, type an artist that interstests you into the “Listen to Last.fm Radio” search box.  The service will play random songs from that artist and any other artist with similar tags, many of which you’ve probably never heard.  You can also search by tag (alternative, rock, Celtic, 80s, classical, etc.)  Just type in a tag and sit back and listen.

Last.fm also keeps track of the types of music you listen to, and there is a social aspect to the service as well, but I don’t use that.  It just makes a very convenient radio when I find myself without my own music collection, or when I’m in the mood for something new.

Finally, in my search for ever-increasing control over my online persona (yeah, I’m still not over that facebook thing), I came across chi.mp today.  In light of facebook’s recent content ownership and terms of service controversy, this site interests me.  It is currently in closed beta, and available by invitation only, so if anyone’s got an invitation code, please share the love!

Some select quotes from their website…

“Chi.mp lets you own and define ‘digital you’ and to share different versions of ‘digital you’ with your selected contacts. More than a life-stream or an aggregator, chimp allows you to take control of how you share your self with the world.”

“With chi.mp, you own everything you put on your chi.mp site – your domain, your content, your contacts – everything. With chi.mp, you own your identity.”

“Your chi.mp site includes a granular privacy feature – Multiple Personas, allows you to create multiple versions of you for different visitors when they are on your site. You assign content and contacts to each Persona that you create – this allows you to control ‘who sees what’. For example, people you don’t know see ‘public you’, your boss sees ‘work you’, your close friends might see ‘crazy you’ and your family members see ‘family you’.”

That sounds great to me.

I believe I have reached the “get over yourself” stage.  All of my apprehension about accepting friend requests seems to have vanished.  Actually, it’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve even checked my account and I may have inadvertently blown right past the “forget it even exists” stage.  So I’ve decided that there’s really no harm in just letting anyone who wants to be, be your friend.  I mean, I’m not putting anything really personal out there anyway.  And who would really care even if I did?

So I guess I’m over myself.  I apologize to all of those that I inadvertently snubbed by not accepting their friend requests.  If you really care, you’re welcome to request again, and the next time I’m on in a couple weeks or so, I will accept.  But please, please stop sending me invitations to play games or take quizzes — I’ve wasted enough time on that stuff and I’m not going to do it anymore.  Really.

By all means send me gifts and hugs and … (can you “reach out and slap” someone?  If not, why not?) … but don’t expect me to reciprocate.  I’d love to send all my friends a green beer on St. Patty’s day, but the chances of me actually being logged into facebook are, well, actually I wasn’t, so there you go.

My old church in Port Washington, WI, St. John’s Lutheran LCMS, has started putting streaming sermons up on their web page. If you’d like some excellent examples of confessional Lutheran preaching with the proper balance of law and gospel, I urge you to listen.

Their website is: www.stjohns-port.com.  The sermons are found here.  You can subscribe to the RSS feed here.