I started playing with the Songkick APIs a couple of weeks ago. Songkick is a lovely service I've been using for a couple of years, that tells you when your favourite artists are touring nearby. In much the same way as Nike+ and Kindle, it's made a big difference to my life by stimulating a specific behaviour: getting out to see live music.

The API lets you query their mahoosive database of gigs and artists fairly simply - I've open-sourced a Java library which I've written to access their REST API, and wanted to use it on a Real Project to prove to myself that it actually worked for something useful.

I've rarely gone to gigs by myself. It's always been a social experience for me, and nowadays in my late 30s I quite enjoy catching up with an old friend by heading out to see someone from Our Youth play live. A couple of long journeys and a lazy Saturday in Barcelona gave me a chance to finish SongkickFor2, a little web app which helps you find a gig to go to with a friend. It's pretty simple: tap in your and your friends' Songkick usernames, and get back a list of upcoming concerts you both might like. I link through to the Songkick pages for these concerts, where you can buy tickets.

The sole reason this app doesn't look dreadful is the markup, CSS and aesthetic mastery of Dom, whose flat I'm staying at and who I worked with in the early years of Good Technology.