Pluto Strikes Back is a funny wacky little game.
Based on the recent declaration of Pluto being a "dwarf planet", the plot is about revenge:
The game requires no installation (just unzip the downloaded file).What happens when a planet living on the edge loses its identity? It goes mad and releases its fury on to the unsuspecting solar system.
Mouse - Controls the bat.
Esc - To quit the game.
Alt + enter - To toggle fullscreen.
View sample gameplay (on YouTube.com).
[via TIGSource]
Up until recently I've relied on Pandora as my music discovery service, but last.fm has so much more to offer that it puts itself in a whole new category.
Pandora's box still serves as the best personalized streaming radio, but as far as music discovery there is allot to discovery on last.fm.
I'll try to briefly describe the stuff last.fm can do for you, what you can do for last.fm and others like you.
Basically last.fm is ALL about the users.
Users interact with last.fm either trough the last.fm website or the last.fm application. Both allow the user to tag music, and inform last.fm what music you listen too using scrobbling.
This allows the miracle of social tagging - you don't need to trust reviews, publicity or popularity to find good music, trust what millions of people around the world are listening on their computer and learn about similar music using the tags they mark it with.
last.fm doesn't need to update it's databases with new artists, songs and albums. It doesn't make subjective choices of who is better. The user without even lifting a finger does it all simply by listening to music.
Albums, tracks and artist and cataloged automatically when last.fm scrobbles the user's music.
Artist from all over the world, popular and not, with listeners counting from millions to just you and five more people, are all listed in last.fm, with info about them added by the users in a wiki-like style, and their tracks and albums are displayed by listener popularity - so if you are interested in a new artist, you can check his best songs first.
Also, for most known artist, last.fm allows you to listen to 30 second samples of the song, online from the the artist's page.
Say you like Evanescence's new song Call Me When You're Sober, you can listen to all the other tracks on their The Open Door album.
You can also see the album is tagged Gothic Rock. Tagging applies to the artist, an album and single tracks separately, so you no longer see genre branding like "rock/pop" for an entire artist who's work differs completely from album to album over the years, and you can see what artists are related to every specific tag.
Also in the artist's page you can find similar artists, tracks charts based on what users are listening too, future events, photos and bio, all based on user input.
So who is this magic user that makes last.fm what it is ?
It's you !
After you register (for free) and use one of it's scrobbling methods (either using it's own program, or a plug-in to your favorite player) you become an active contributer to the community. When you listen to music you tell last.fm what music you like. when you tag songs, albums or artist, you tell last.fm and the world what this music is all about.
The more music you listen to, the more last.fm understands your taste and offers you new music suggestions at your dashboard.
This dashboard shows what your friends (who you made contact with on last.fm) are listening to, what your neihbours (users with similar taste) are listening to, new artist you haven't tried yet which last.fm believes you will like, full length tracks you can listen to and more.
At every users's page (see mine for example), you can see the last tracks he listened to (and even publish them using html/rss), his favorite tracks and artist and more. If you are a user of last.fm as well, you can see how much your musical taste matches with another user based on the similar artists you listen to.
Users can message each other, blog, participate in groups and even recommend music to each other or to whole groups.
There is so much to cover on last.fm, that there isn't enough room on this page to go trough it all.
If you are a devoted music listener, no matter what your musical taste is like, you will enjoy using last.fm. You will also be glad to hear last.fm supports extended languages such as Hebrew and Chinese.
Lennon Murphy is one of my favorite rock singers. She is very little known, and that's a shame, because she is amazing !
Listen to "My Beautiful" (a.k.a. Where Do I Fit In), or it's acoustic version (YouTube.com)
And to "Break Of Your Car" (YouTube.com)
Find out more about Lennon on her official website.
Titanion is a great looking space shooter, with multiple enemies to destroy and incoming missiles to avoid.
This inde game was developed by Kenta Cho (ABA Games).
(TIGSource.com)
Anathema is basically a black/death metal band, which is not my most favorite style of music, but their newest album - A Natural Disaster is truly spectacular.
It is nothing like their earlier albums and doesn't sound anything like death metal. It somewhat resembles the sound of Radiohead / Air / Massive attack.
This album would be appreciated by anyone who loves alternative metal music.
Listen to some samples on Last.fm:
http://www.last.fm/music/Anathema/A+Natural+Disaster
Or view some clips from their live show at Poland (2004):
A Natural Disaster (YouTube.com)
Forgotten Hopes (YouTube.com)
Closer (YouTube.com)
Flying (YouTube.com)
FragileDreams (YouTube.com)
Edit: I absolutely admire Anathema. Their metal guitar performance combined with doom lyrics are amazing, listening to these little master pieces takes you out of your usual daily state like being hit by a truck.
The only thing I dislike is the deep throat screams present in their older songs, it's totally unnecessary.
Since around 2002 this video of diet-coke mixed with mentos has been going all around the web.
It's worth a watch if you haven't seen it yet.
Watch it on Google Video.
The Google Video guys even went as far as posting it on the official Google blog.
And in case you were wondering, read about how it works.

"The Blob" is an independent game, developed by nine students from the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands.
This game is about pure fun, the controls are simple, you can't die or lose and the feel and look of it are just as sweet as candy.
Read the developer's post on the Why's and How's of the game.
Or just download and enjoy it right away !
Most people have heard by now about Pandora's Box.
The one with music in it, not the one that unleashes pain and sorrow on all mankind.
If you have no idea what I'm am talking about, you MUST check out pandora.com and read about the Music Genome Project.
Pandora's Box is one of the best things that happened to music in the last few years. With major record labels suppressing new artists, Pandora's Box really lets you find new music you love !
The annoying thing about Pandora's Box is it's flash based interface, and the fact you must keep a web-browser open to play it.
The Pandora's Box Preview application lets you control Pandora from your task tray, and gives extended controls missing in the web-based Pandora, such as:
- Pause, play next song, mark "I Like" or "I Don't Like" by right clicking the task tray icon.
- View lyrics of the currently playing song.
- Auto save your "I Like" songs into a file.
- A small notification window shows when a new song is played.
- Global hot-keys.
Download and read more about Pandora's Box Preview, in Dan Mackey's Blog, creator of this free application.
