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TEEMO TEBEST

STATSTER

1 Introduction

Statster1 is a web service which provides a powerful way to stat a user's listening

habits. Statster does this by cataloguing the user's listened albums or records.

After some collected listenings Statster can show the user which albums are her

favorite ones. Statster is also capable of helping users �nd new music.

2 Statster

Statster was born with the premise that music is published mostly in the form

of an album. For this reason, it is natural to obtain information on listening

to albums. In Statster an album means a musical entity, such as a full-length

album, an extended play or a compilation album. Listenings to singular songs is

not recorded by Statster. This is done by a similar web service called Last.fm2

and it is the main di�erence between these two services.

To use Statster, the user can act as a non-registered or a registered user.

Non-registered users may view statistics which have been created by registered

users. In addition to what non-registered users can do, registered users may

submit their listened albums to Statster and thereby create their own music

1http://statster.info/2http://last.fm/

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catalogue. Currently Statster has approximately 10 active users but the amount

is growing constantly.

The principal motivation in Statster and in �statstering3� is generated from the

interest in music and for the desire to get information on how it is consumed.

Statster's main function is to show users information about their listening

history. This information is provided to the user with various visualizations

which have been made quite inclusive.

Statster is mostly based on several main pages which are generated from the user

given parameters. These main pages include artist and album pages, various top

list pages and tag cloud pages. A tag cloud is a visual depiction of user-generated

or system-generated tags or simply words which describe the content of web

sites. In Statster tags are listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is

shown with font size and colour. The parameters to each individual view of a

page are delivered with an URI4 addresses. The URI address can be written

directly to the browser's address bar or more commonly the user can follow

hyperlinks5. For example tag clouds are generated from various data sets such

as the nationalities of artists and the user is able to a�ect with URI addresses

which information is shown. The tag itself is also a hyperlink that leads to

another view in Statster. (cf. Halvey & Keane, 2007)

3 Technology

Statster makes use of several di�erent technologies. All the used technologies

are however compulsory for the system to work. The views are HTML-based,

controlling is done with PHP and data storage is created with SQL. JavaScript

3Statstering means that you create a stat from something.4Uniform Resource Identi�er5Hyperlink is a reference to another location.

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is used to handle some dynamic content.

HTML6 is the mark-up language for web pages and it is used in Statster. With

HTML it is possible to create structured documents which are viewable with

web browsers. HTML consists of various elements such as headings, paragraphs,

lists etc. In HTML one can also de�ne links to other HTML pages (hyperlinks).

HTML also allows embedding images and other objects among the text. (cf.

Raggett et al., 1999)

PHP7 is the main programming language used in Statster. To be exact, PHP

is not a programming language but a scripting language. Scripting language

means that the code is compiled run-time. PHP is a widely-used language that

is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP

handles basically all the functionality in Statster. (cf. Lerdorf & Tatroe, 2002,

pp. 1-2)

SQL8 is a database computer language designed for managing data in relational

database management systems. SQL is originally based upon relational algebra.

In Statster SQL is used as data storage, meaning that all the data that users

send to Statster is saved by using SQL. To be exact, Statster uses one particular

SQL database management system called MySQL. Other commonly used SQL

database management systems are LiteSQL and PostgreSQL. (cf. Beaulieu,

2005, pp. 1-3)

JavaScript is a scripting language used to enable programmatic9 access to computational

objects within a host environment (on the Internet, the browser is the host

environment). JavaScript enables the possibility to create enhanced user interfaces

which are dynamic and capable to react on user interactions. For example

6HyperText Markup Language7PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor8Structured Query Language9Programmatic means that objects can be accessed with programming language.

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when the user is using Statster's search functionality, JavaScript is used to auto

complete the given search string (like Google10 does in its search engine). (cf.

McDu�e, 2003, pp. 9-10)

4 Conclusion

Statster collects and stores user-given content and visualizes it with intuitive

methods which give the user useful or at least interesting information. Statster

is a modern dynamic web service that uses several di�erent technologies.

References

Beaulieu, A. (2005). Learning sql (1st ed.; J. Gennick, Ed.). 1005 Gravestein

Highway North, Sebastopol CA 95472, United States of America: O'Reilly

Media. Available from http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007270

(ISBN 978-0-596-00727-0)

Halvey, M., & Keane, M. T. (2007, May). An assessment of

tag presentation techniques. 16th International World Wide Web

Conference, May 8-12, 2007, Ban�, Alberta, Canada. Available

from http://www2007.org/posters/poster988.pdf (ACM

978-1-59593-654-7/07/0005)

Lerdorf, R., & Tatroe, K. (2002). Programming php (1st ed.; P. Ferguson

& N. Torkington, Eds.). 1005 Gravestein Highway North, Sebastopol

CA 95472, United States of America: O'Reilly Media. Available from

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926103/ (ISBN 978-1-56592-610-3)

10http://www.google.com

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McDu�e, T. (2003). Javascript concepts & techniques: Programming

interactive web sites. 22462 SW Washington St. Sherwood, OR 971402,

United States of America: Franklin Beedle & Associates. Available from

http://www.fbeedle.com/69-4.html (ISBN 1-59028-203-5)

Raggett, D., Hors, A. L., & Jacobs, I. (Eds.). (1999, December 24).

Html 4.01 speci�cation. W3C. Retrieved 12 April 2010, from

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/