Comments on: Coincidence?

By: frik---

frik--- — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:55:59 +0000

Nick, first of all thanks for the guide you provide.

I’m an old winamp user since 1997, and I’ve used really often its visualizations connected to a projector as a simple visual show in dance parties (yeah, simple BUT AMAZING for all the people looking at the visuals, always in sync with the beat, or the frequencies that DJ are playing at the moment)

I have ALWAYS UN-checked the flag “yes, allow anonymous statistics” during the setup, thinking about “WTF they want to know of my user habits?”

maybe this answer to my paranoid-induced choice?

Or, as Dan politely writes: “s that merely a coincidence, or does Gmail monitor what music is being played by a user?”

Maybe Winamp (read AOL) has some kind of deal with Google?

up to you…

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:24:05 +0000

I made a short guide to installing winamp with better privacy settings, might be of interest.

By: Tendron

Tendron — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 03:59:51 +0000

It could be that your mp3′s ID3 tag included a code that would make Winamp open a particular url, but you’d have to be using an older version of Winamp for that problem to occur.

By: Bruno

Bruno — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:51:34 +0000

Kristian > They’re doing that: http://www.google.com/trends/music

By: Kristian

Kristian — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:54:04 +0000

I know the Google Talk client software (windows only) can detect the music you listen to and they ask for permission to record it, though I haven’t an inkling what they’re doing with the data.

By: mako

mako — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 21:37:39 +0000

Many people seem to really like Amarok.

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 11:19:44 +0000

What email were you viewing at the time? Gmail only gets information from (a) your email content, (b) its advertisers, and (c) whatever RSS feeds you subscribe to.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:43:14 +0000

I’m pretty certain that it’s a coincidence. I can’t think of any way that a site could gather that sort of information.

It just shows that you regard Google as the sort of company that could gather this information though, and utilise it well. It’s part of the social conscience now that Google are ‘the information people’.

I uploaded my calendars to Google Calendar recently, but didn’t feel entirely comfortable about one company holding that and all my email/search habits as well. How easy do I really want to make it to market to me?

By: Jerome

Jerome — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:49:45 +0000

Hehe, this would be interesting to know indeed!

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:39:37 +0000

Yeah, I know, I’m living in 1998. Thanks Adrian for the Foobar2000 tip, I’ll try that out, also will try amaroK to replace Rhythmbox or whatever it is that comes with Ubuntu.

As Paul says, repeatability is a test of the Gmail thing. I’m fairly persuaded that it’s a coincidence, but we’ll see…

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:16:27 +0000

Coincidence. But imagine if Google bought Last.fm…

And I recommend the neo retro Foobar2000 instead of the genuinely retro Winamp. Actually I recommend Amarok, but you’d have to be using Linux.

By: paul haine

paul haine — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:46:56 +0000

If it happens once, it’s probably a coincidence. If it happens regularly, it’s probably not.

Winamp’s so retro.