Yahoo! Music at Mix06: AJAX YMU, RSS + SLE

Posted by iancr, March 21, 2006 at 3:06 pm, in Yahoo! Music Unlimited. 15 Comments

Yahoo! Music Unlimited Gadget

Acronym city, eh? But what does it all mean?

Mix06 is Microsoft’s big Web-dev gathering out in Vegas, going on now, where they’re showing off IE7 and more. Yahoo! Music is proud to be contributing a couple of works in progress to the festivities this year, a Yahoo! Music Unlimited widget for Microsoft’s Sidebar and Yahoo! Music RSS feeds featuring the SLE extensions used by IE7 and Media RSS:

  • Hopefully by now you’ve heard of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. Any Web site can be a publisher, and you can use My Yahoo! or any number of other sites and applications as RSS readers. Yahoo! Music is releasing a set of RSS feeds and My Yahoo! modules that let you listen to (or watch) top songs, videos, and albums. These feeds support IE7’s Simple List Extensions (SLE) for sorting and filtering. These SLEs actually solved a very real problem for us — when we were creating our RSS feeds we spent a good deal of time trying to figure out the best way to show what is basically a “Top 5 Chart” with RSS, and our feed seemed to look different in every RSS reader. SLE allowed us to specify sort order explicitly, not as a hack. Our RSS feeds also employ Media RSS, so they’re easily indexed by Yahoo! Audio and Video Search. Check ‘em out and add them to your My Yahoo! page now! Thanks to Nelson, Todd, and everyone else who worked on these. More RSS feeds coming soon!
  • Windows Sidebar is an IE-based Gadget platform that comes with IE7. We took some of the work we’d already done for Yahoo! Widgets and decided to give Sidebar a test run. The result is a working Yahoo! Music Unlimited browser and player that works without having Yahoo! Music Engine installed; basically, it’s an AJAX app that runs Yahoo! Music Unlimited, built on Yahoo! Music Web services. This is merely a prototype but I’m sure you can imagine other uses for this. ;) Very cool. Check out a few screen shots here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4. Thanks to Carl Sobeski for pulling this demo together.

The RSS stuff is live and available today, the Gadget is just a prototype we thought we’d share a little early, but both are very cool. We thought you’d dig seeing some of the ways Yahoo! Music will integrate into your life in the future.

UPDATE: You can see the Gadget in action briefly in this video from the Sidebar presentation. Just fast forward to 28 minutes and 10 seconds.

Also, we wanted to give away a little code without giving away the whole Gadget (which isn’t yet ready for public release), so Carl put together a simple demo that lets you seach on an artist name and then browse through album images for that artist. Click here to get the Gadget. If you don’t have Sidebar you can just check out this screenshot.

But that’s not all! As a point of comparison, Carl also built a Yahoo! Widget (the artist formerly known as Konfabulator) of the same demo. Click here to download the Yahoo! Widget version. If you compare the two you’ll notice the Yahoo! Widget outperforms the Sidebar Gadget when scrolling through large numbers of album art (try Miles Davis, for example). This is because the Javascript engine and rendering model in Yahoo! Widgets really rocks compared to IE (on which Sidebar is based). It also looks a little snazzier thanks to the better looking text and alpha-blended images.  The Yahoo! Widgets version also has the added advantage of being Mac-compatible (and XP-compatible, for that matter). Let the games begin! :)

Enjoy,
ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

15 Comments »

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  1. Cool, cool stuff. Any plans in the works for an add-in for Windows Media Center Edition? I’d love to be able to browse the Yahoo Music library from my Xbox 360 Media Center Extender… :)

    Comment by joemorel — March 21, 2006 #

  2. Hi Joe,

    You actually already should be able to browse YME from the Media Center Extender if you install 1.1 and activate “Network Music” it should be available via the extender, no?

    I’ll forward this to Ryan King and see if he can comment on further MCE plans…

    ian

    Comment by iancr — March 21, 2006 #

  3. Hi Joe,

    You’ll be happy to know that there are plans to offer a Yahoo! Music add-in for Media Center Edition. Sit tight and we’ll let you know when it’s available.

    Per Ian’s comment… I’d be interested to hear if you’re able to use the Network Music feature with your XBox 360. Network Music is based on the UPnP protocol and is modeled after Windows Media Connect in order to play to the XBox 360 and other PlaysForSure devices. However, we’ve heard that MSFT has locked down the XBox 360 so that it only works with Windows Media Connect.

    - Ryan

    Comment by rking — March 21, 2006 #

  4. fyi… if you want to see Carl’s Sidebar Gadget… watch Joe Belfiore’s talk and skip ahead to 28 minutes 10 seconds: http://metahost.savvislive.com/microsoft/20060321/mix_belfiore_20060321_300.asx

    Comment by Randy — March 21, 2006 #

  5. Thanks, Randy!

    ian

    Comment by iancr — March 22, 2006 #

  6. [...] Before this, to use Yahoo’s unlimited music product (all you can download and listen to music for $5 per month) you had to download the Yahoo Music Engine, which is their version of iTunes (a client based media player). But based on what Ian Rogers writes on the Yahoo Music Blog, this will no longer be the case. You will be able to listen to music right from a Windows desktop without using the Yahoo Music Engine. [...]

    Pingback by TechCrunch » Yahoo Music - From the Desktop — March 22, 2006 #

  7. Hey, I’ve had a problem with yahoo music. It seems that when I upgraded to version 1.1, it wiped out my licenses and I can’t play the stuff I bought from yahoo. I DO NOT have unlimited, so therefore I pay per download. I have downloaded 41 songs in the last few months that I can no longer play. I’ve filled out the online help form 3 times, I’ve been trying to talk to tech support for over a month (but I might as well be talking to a brick wall because they don’t read my emails), I’ve been upgraded to a “senior care representative” 9 times (most without any kind of reply), and I’ve also asked for my money back several times, and they don’t give it back. I’m just wondering what else to do? I’ve found other people that have the same issue, so I wonder if a class action lawsuit is in order? If anyone can help me, that would be greatly appreciated.

    Comment by oxzk396 — March 28, 2006 #

  8. Ryan,

    I’ve got an XBox 360 and Windows XP. No Media Center.

    I have checked the network music box on YME and *cannot* see the Yahoo Engine from the XBox.

    I downloaded Media Connect 2.0 and pointed it at my downloaded Yahoo Music Unlimted content.

    It indexed that and plays no problem so it seems the 360 is not happy with the Y! UPnP server.

    So far I have not tried any other UPnP server with the 360 so cannot confirm it’s compatibility with anything else.

    Hope that helps and PLEASE post to the blog with any more news on this – it’s one of the top reasons I bought the 360 (I’ve been enjoying YMU for several months now and lovin it!)

    Comment by tgautier — March 28, 2006 #

  9. [...] Also (yeah, I have a lot of open tabs), Yahoo has released a Yahoo Music Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget, so you can use your Yahoo Music subscription without using the Yahoo Music Engine. TechCrunch has screenshots of the semi-transparent widget. The Yahoo Music Blog has more, including links to download a preview (minus most of the eventual features) version of the gadget, or just download the Yahoo Widgets (Konfabulator) version. Curious that Yahoo is helping out Microsoft’s widget platform when they already have one of their own. Will Google play ball? Posted: March 29, 2006 by Nathan Weinberg in: [...]

    Pingback by » Google Partying With The Music Industry Tomorrow » InsideGoogle » part of the Blog News Channel — March 29, 2006 #

  10. please please please please please tell me you are going to have a Windows Media Center 2005 plugin/app/site up for YME ASAP.

    It KILLS me to lose YME functionality on the 2 most used computers in my house (both of which run MCE almost exclusively via the remote control). If you can make a gadget that works, making this work with MCE will be a snap.

    If you don’t have the time, energy, desire, then just say the word and someone will help you whip it up in a weekend.

    PLEASE

    Comment by sirshannon — April 1, 2006 #

  11. doh… I was so stoked to see this post that I completely skipped the comments (and thus didn’t see where you answered my question before I asked)

    can you spare me some shame and delete or just not approve either of my comments?

    thanks and sorry

    Comment by sirshannon — April 1, 2006 #

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