Saigo.FM: Last.FM for Roku
About this project
There hasn't been a Last.FM channel for the Roku Media Player in over a year. More than likely, when someone posted the channel as "Last.FM for Roku" it was taken down for copyright reasons. The same thing happened when someone decided to make an unofficial YouTube Roku Channel when the folks at Google (eager to get you to buy one of thier elusive and probably expensive GoogleTV devices) pulled the plug on that.
Then a few months ago (in 2012), someone came up with the smart idea to give Roku users the ability to watch YouTube without calling it YouTube. Thanks to these guys, Roku users have VideoBuzz to veg out on their favorite Internet Videos.
The concept for Saigo.FM (pronounced psy-goh) is to be similar, but instead of being a fool and calling my project "Last.FM for Roku", this unofficial application gets an even better name but with a few added features that hopefully Roku's BrightScript will support like Winamp style visualizations.
Basically, this project is a tri-party mashup mostly made of Last.FM and Roku with Winamp visulaizations or visualizations that behave kind of like the ones Winamp offers.
What does "saigo" mean?
Since "roku" is the Japanese word for "six" which the creators of Roku named their device after, I though giving this project a similar name. "Rasuto" the romanization of the English word "last" seemed tacky. A look in to the local English-Japanese dictionary and a Google Translate lookup later, and we had 最後 meaning "saigo" which literally trans lates into "most behind". (On a side note, the Character Map application in Linux needs to add pronounciation of symbols, especially in the CJK Unified Ideographs sections.)
What are the goals of Saigo
- Create a Roku Channel with BrightScript - I'm not keen on the fact that BrightScript is called "proprietary" when is has a lot of LiSP like qualities to it, but I'll let Richard Stallman submit a complaint about it being that way later. For now, we create a set of
.brsfiles to create a Roku channel. I'll use the Roku API as a guide for this part. - Get Last.FM to work on that channel. - Assuming the Roku uses an ARM architecture similar to that of an Android Smartphone, creating a Last.FM program shouldn't be too hard. Raspberry Pi users might want to keep an eye out here when and if I get it to work.
- Fetch Album Information - I think Last.FM gets the information for album art and artist information from some Rovi website. I'll fleshed out this item on the list some more in the future.
- Add Visualizations - The Roku 2 XS (which I am using) uses a Broadcom BCM2835 600MHz processor with a VideoCore 4 GPU. Think of it as the Raspberry Pi but with a bunch of proprietary software on it. What does that really mean? You have a low-power computing device that doesn't do a whole lot. But why should that stop me from making a program that looks good. The visualization project comes last. I'm thinking color changing fractals if I can get away with it. I figure that even though the processor doesn't have a whole lot on it, it should be more powerful that my first computer back in High School which was a used 68k Mac. If only I could remember the name of that program that produced such colorful screen savers. (It wasn't After Dark. It migh have come on a Mac Addict CD circa 1997-ish. Somewhere.)
Last.FM announced that it is changing protocols. Will Saigo.FM support them?
Absolutely! What better time to start creating a program for Last.FM than with the launch of the new changes. This channel will be 100% ready.
How much will it cost to subscribe to this channel?
NOTHING! This channel will be available for free! You may need to subscribe to Last.FM to get it to work, however.
Roku Channel Code
Coming soon. Early 2013.
Saigo.fm Legal stuff
Since this is a major project, let's clear the air a bit on the legalese part.
Saigo.fm Terms of Service
Saigo.fm's Termos of Service (TOS) are pretty much the same as Last.fm's TOS and Roku's TOS combined. But here are a few other items to note.
- Kindly refrain from reverse engineering this project without shooting me an email. I'm thinking of puting this project under an MIT or BSD license but incase you have the need to hack this, let me know about it. I'd like to see it in action.
- Don't send your lawyers after me if something breaks or if your IP rights were touched by my "programmer cooties". RIAA sued the Peer-to-Peer file sharing network Limewire for $75 Trillion dollars. The GDP of the United States isn't even worth that ammount by a long shot. There's a 100% chance your frivious multi-billion dollar lawsuit because I added a button that violated some frivious IP patent will be laughed out of court so hard the embarassment will haunt you for the rest of your life. So don't even bother extracting money out of me I don't even have.
- Since we're on the subject of Intelectual Property Rights, consider reading the next section on Privacy Policy. Since IP right holders grumble so badly about how their IP Rights are being violated over small nit-picky things, what about the rights of the consumer who ultimately has to make some personal information public only to find out that information is being exploted for "marketing research". This project has a policy for that too.
Saigo.fm Privacy Policy
Saigo.fm's Privacy Policy is pretty much the same as Last.fm and Roku's Privacy policies, except where and whenever they feel the need to surrender your privacy for profit because that is wrong. As for Saigo.fm, here's our policy on your privacy.
- WE DO NOT COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION! EVER! I may be an wiz at developing a website like this from the ground up, but I'm no SEO expert nor do I have an MBA specializing in Internet Marketing and Research. To be honest, SEO is a rather overhyped subject for just adding meta tags to web pages. At any rate, take comfort in my primary objective of just making a program/channel that plays music for your enjoyment knowing that I won't be collecting any of your personal information. I don't keep that sort of data. So your privacy is guaranteed.
- WE DO NOT SELL PERSONAL INFORMATION! If there is no data to collect, there is no data to sell. Pretty simple.
- We value the security of the user Basically, if there is a secuirty flaw, we will do our best to patch it up. There are no guantees on that.
I don't think I need to elaborate any further on these topics. Hopefully I won't need to. I just want to make a good program.
Saigo.fm ChangeLog
Coming soon
| Date | Version | Changes/Events |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Dec 2012 | 0.0a (None yet) | Establishment of this project. |
Resources
Don't forget to check out my other Last.FM project to improve upon shell-fm.
