Neuros hacker Guillaumebel has been hard at work on integrating last.fm and he's been diligently documenting his progress on the last.fm wiki page. Here are instructions to try the Beta. Besides the fact that I'm personally a big fan of the last.fm service, two things really excite me about this application. As the tag line suggests, last.fm really is a quiet revolution in the way that we experience music. Virtually anyone that's used last.fm knows it's a vastly more compelling way to listen to music than traditional fm or even satellite radio. It's interactive, learns what you like, enables music sharing, is powered by fellow users, and ad free. It represents another break from the traditional centralized taste-makers and further increases the power of us listeners, and it provides real protection against some of corrupting influences of money in the industry. Its long been a great pc application, but in need of support on a device to bring it to more living rooms.

The second thing that's exciting about this application is how it beautifully illustrates the power of free/open source software integrating new functionality in a device. Look at item five on the Xi menu as an example, it's a feature that will search and fetch the associated music video from YouTube (or some other online video source). In the future, you can imagine that the customizable Xi menu could search your local collection and other services for "music from this artist" as well as share that music with friends, etc. The simple Xi menu is the result of many contributions, from many projects, XMMS2, a youtube browser, etc. What's key is all that functionality is seamlessly integrated into one familiar media playing interface, meaning it allows one handed operation and works with the simplicity users expect of their electronics.

There's little doubt that open electronics will take many forms, from SDKs and closed operating systems, to Linux and GPL applications, but I think the last.fm integration that Guillaumebel has done really shows the integration of a brand new function and service with a simplicity and elegance that others would do well to emulate.