Snapp Radio is a mashup of last.fm and flickr - it serves up flickr images based on the mood and the theme of the song.  In general, it does a good job of giving you songs that are related to mood or theme of the song.  Unfortunately, this means that sometimes, the pictures that get served up can be rather raunchy - start listening to some old time grungy blues, or punk and sooner or later you'll be seeing pictures that are definitely not safe for work.  When I started this project I was under the impression that Flickr was pretty much a PG-13 venue - but since working on Snapp Radio I've learned that it sometimes veers into the R or even NC-17 territory.  And so I needed to write a  porn filter.  

The first thing I learned about writing a porn filter is that it is rather inconvenient to do this at work.  Here's the work flow:

  • Fire up snapp radio
  • Start listening to some suspect music (punk usually does it)
  • Watch the pictures
  • Wait for a Not-Safe-For-Work picture (it won't be long)
  • When one arrives, click on it to bring up the Flickr page for the picture so you can examine the tags to add them to the filter

At this point it is likely that one of your colleagues (Nicole or Joan perhaps), will walk into your office to chat - and notice that your screen is covered with some questionable photos,  the punk music is blaring and you have a sheepish look on your face.  What to do?

After suffering through such embarrassments I eventually compiled a list of words that I can use to filter out most NSFW images - keeping snapp radio safe for all those work  bound music listeners.
 

 


Comments:

Is it possible to do the reverse for when you'r NOT at work? That would be cool too.

Posted by Mike on November 13, 2006 at 08:28 PM EST #

Thanks for bringing up this topic!!! Although I am not familiar with the acronyms PG-13,R,NC-17, I guess it is rather a tough job .. did you think about reverse-engineering the aksimet plugin ? just a thought ... keep on rockin! I love snapp radio and will present it on friday here at our openhouse day at the university! ...no I will not show punk examples :)

Posted by Stephan on November 15, 2006 at 03:19 AM EST #

Cute - if only I had such problems at work.

Posted by Dave Levy on November 15, 2006 at 07:17 AM EST #

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