The new MySpace is here
The last couple of years were a rough time for the social networking site MySpace. Once the most popular social networking site available on the Internet, users started to leave it in shiploads to join competing services like Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. While it still managed to keep a sizable amount of users and a top spot as one of the top 250 or so sites in the world, it never managed to catch up with its main competitor Facebook.
MySpace was sold in 2011 for $35 million US Dollars and rumors made the rounds that the new owners would relaunch the site with a new design and focus on what made the site popular in first place, music.
The new MySpace is finally here and open to existing and new users of the service. When you load the main MySpace website you are automatically taken to the new url to sign in with an existing MySpace account or create a new account either by signing in with Facbeook or Twitter, or by entering registration information manually.
You can start filling out profile information right away or skip that step to dive right into the new MySpace design. If you are new to MySpace try the tours page which highlights the new areas and features of the site.
- Discover - Discover new people, music, mixes and videos.
- Music Catalog - Offers artist biographies, songs, albums, videos and events.
- Create Mix - You can create mixes using songs, photos and videos.
- Radio - Seems to work similar to what Spotify and other Internet streaming services are offering. You can tune into a certain genre or use the search to create a new station.
A toolbar at the bottom acts as the main navigation and music player that is displayed on all pages. The focus on music is best highlighted here in the bar as you can also use it to discover artists or search for artists
The design uses as little menus as possible. The toolbar is the only menu that is always displayed, while other page elements are only displayed when they are needed.
Music comes in three different ways. You can play some music fully on MySpace, others only as 30 second snippets or not at all. I'm not sure if there are country restrictions in place that prevent you from listening to some of the music but would say that this is the case.
Verdict
Is the relaunch enough to keep MySpace in the game and maybe even convince new and past users of the service to give it a try? The concentration on music could work provided that what's being offered works. I had issues playing the majority of radio stations which may be because of my location in the world or because not everything is available yet.
MySpace could become a serious competitor for Last.fm and other music streaming and database services, more than it will become one of a general purpose social networking site such as Facebook or Google Plus.
Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?