This is my favourite site of this year. In fact I could see me wasting so much time on blip.fm that i have limited my access to after seven in the evening (may have to fit kid proof software to reinforce my will).

For the initiated what is blip.fm? It is a site which allows you to search for music, play music and share it through a 150 character message. Integration with twitter means what you are playing is automatically posted to your twitter friends (although there is an easy override if you feel embarrassed about your musical tastes. You can follow people and their music appears on your home page. And friends can send you ‘props’ as an acknowledgement of a track they like, which you can in turn pass on to others. That’s about it.

Why does it work so well? Partly because it features an attractive interface, it works every time and it is a very short learning curve. But above all because it enables something we all like to do – to play music and share it with our friends. And it makes that just a little bit easier. I have spent many happy evenings sharing utube and Last.fm tracks over skype. But this is just so much better. And why am i going on about it? Not i assure you because i am looking for more listeners – although if you want to check out my cool grooves my user name is GrahamAttwell.

Over the past few weeks i have been restling with use cases and requirements for a Personal Learning and Maturing Environment (and in the enxt two days I will try to tell you want differentiates a PLME form a PLE). But it seems to me that blip.fm shows the way forward in helping people do something they want to do in a social environemnt. When we can design sowfatre for learning as good as this we will be making progress.

NB many thanks to CosmoCat and MariaPerif for encouraging my new career as a DJ!