The fourth and final hack created to launch the PUSH N900 project is ‘Phone FM’ that uses Last.fm and the N900’s built-in FM transmitter to create on-demand custom radio stations that anyone can tune into.

PUSH launch

In the 1980s, we started to listen to music differently. Mix tapes, walkmen, and portable boom boxes allowed people to make personal soundtracks and share them with friends. These days, you can create and share a playlist with just a few clicks. Text your favorite 80s musician to the Nokia N900, and tune in to your playlist on an old school radio.

INSTRUCTIONS

Text the name of your favorite 80s musician.

Tune the radio to the labeled station.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The N900’s Maemo platform uses the D-Bus messaging service to allow different applications to send message and alerts to each other. When you send a text to this phone, it transmits the contents of your message over D-Bus to a Python script. The Python script then uses pylast (a library for communicating with last.fm) to send the artist’s name to last.fm and receive the mp3 files and cover art generated for that artist. The script then controls the screen display and music playback using GStreamer (a library for controlling media playback that is included in Maemo 5.0) and the pygame (an open-source python wrapper for controlling visuals).

Playback to the radio is controlled by the N900’s built-in FM transmitter. The transmitter can be set to broadcast at any frequency, an the phone’s audio will be picked up by any nearby radio set to the right station.

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