Lawyers have presented their final arguments in the trial of Alan Ellis. The prosecution slammed the ex-OiNK admin, saying that the site was set up with dishonest and profiteering intentions right from the start. The defense tore into IFPI and countered by calling Ellis an innovator with talents to be nurtured. Today the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty, and Ellis walked free.

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Congrats!

It’s actually pretty easy once you find out how to do it. By having the artist and album name you can fetch the album artwork from Amazon in three different sizes.

With php5 it’s very easy since it has an integrated xml parser. All we have to do is this:

$url = simplexml_load_file('http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=12DR2PGAQT303YTEWP02&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=Music&Artist=ARTIST&ResponseGroup=Images&Keywords=ALBUMNAME');

Please note that in the url I’ve put ARTIST and ALBUMNAME, which you should replace with what you’re searching for. Doing so, we get an xml file from which we can display the image like this:

echo '<img src="' . $url->Items->Item[0]->LargeImage->URL . '" />';

If we want the large one, that is. If we would like the medium one we would use MediumImage and SmallImage for the small one.

That’s it, it’s very useful if you are organizing your mp3 files or maybe building an online community or something.

Hope it helps somebody! If you find it useful, digg it!

ps: I forgot to mention that if you are using php4 this wont work, you will have to use another xml parser to fetch the image location from the xml provided by Amazon.

Have swing!

I was listening to Epic when I got a message on Facebook. Went to read it and the title freaked me out. Yes, you read the post title right, Faith No More are back.

After some time not playing, Mike Bordin, Roddy Bottum, Bill Gould, Jon Hudson and Mike Patton obviously decided to meet and talk about their past. And in the end, they decided to cheer up their fans by regrouping and rocking on.

Faith No More has always stood out as some sort of unique beast; part dog, part cat–its music almost as schizophrenic as the personalities of its members. When it all worked, it worked really well, even if the chemistry was always volatile. Throughout our 17years of existence, the mental and physical energy required to sustain this creature was considerable and relentless. Though amicable enough, when we finally split, we all followed paths seemingly destined to opposite ends of the universe.

Read the rest at their webpage: Faith No More.

According to Guardian’s article about them, they are setting up a tour in Europe this summer!

See you at there!

May he rest in peace. Sentenced were great, I always hoped they would do some new gigs together but.. seems it isn’t going to happen.

Miika Tenkula, the lead guitarist and main songwriter of the acclaimed Finnish band SENTENCED, passed away earlier today at the age of 35.

Nalle Österman (GANDALF, LULLACRY, CHAOSBREED) told BLABBERMOUTH.NET, “It’s true, confirmed personally by [former SENTENCED] drummer Vesa Ranta.

“The fact remains that Miika had a serious drinking problem for many years which escalated after SENTENCED was buried. They don’t call it King Alcohol for nothing…

“The metal scene in Finland mourns now for one of the most talented metal guitarists to ever emerge from [the country].”

The official cause of Miika’s death has not yet been released.

Read more here.

Another great video from Coldplay. And the song is also great.. if you missed it, it’s from the new EP Prospekt’s March that came out at the end of November 2008.

Buy it now!

Enjoy watching!