Presenting the experimental BBC Radio + last.fm widget

Chris, the other half of the BBC Radio & Music R&D team has built an intriguing new widget to connect up BBC Radio with last.fm. You can read more over at his blog.

It is a Yahoo! widget that lets you listen to the BBC's live radio streams (Radio 1, Radio 2, 1Xtra and 6Music) and then post what is being played to your own last.fm listening profile. If you really like that radio station then you can just let it automatically post everything that's played while you're listening. Or if you'd prefer some control you can use the "Manual" mode and just hit the plus button to manually post what's now playing.

The other cool feature is that it uses last.fm's recommendation technology to show other recommended artists based on the one currently playing - useful if you like that artist but also potentially useful for context if you've never heard of the artist that's playing.

It also looks really nice, subtly including a band photo, your last.fm picture and the radio station logo. Well, not that last one 'cos we're not allowed to include that, but it would if we could. There's a nice picture of a radio instead.

You can download the widget here, but be warned that it is experimental and we cannot guarantee that it will work reliably (or at all!).