The recent public feud between Madonna and Lady GaGa isn’t anything new to the material girl. She’s endured copycats and clones ever since day one when she started back in the early 80s. Here are a few of the ones that I remember and actually liked. Obviously, none of them had careers as successful or as long as Madonna. Some of them still perform shows and have fan bases from the 80s who enjoy reminiscing about their club days.

Let me start with my favorite clone.. Alisha who had a few hits so she wasn’t a one-hit wonder like the rest.
Baby Talk

All Night Passion

Stargazing

Here’s Nocera who also had a couple of hits. She wasn’t only Italian like Madonna but actually from Sicily.
Let’s Go

Summertime Summertime

Regina had a hit called Baby Love that not only sounded like a Madonna song but the music video reminded me of Borderline.

I just can’t get enough of “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye and Kimbra. It’s currently a big smash all over the world reaching number one in several countries including the UK. The weird thing is that most people in the USA didn’t hear it from him first but instead by another artist called Walk Off the Earth which did an interesting version which went viral because of the unique music video that had all five members playing one guitar.

Here’s the original version by Gotye and Kimbra

Here’s the Walk Off the Earth version that went viral

Here’s Gotye talking about the song

“Somebody That I Used To Know”
(feat. Kimbra)

[Gotye:]
Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I’ll admit that I was glad it was over

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

[Kimbra:]
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I’d done
But I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know

[Gotye:]
But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
And you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

[x2]
Somebody
(I used to know)
Somebody
(Now you’re just somebody that I used to know)

(I used to know)
(That I used to know)
(I used to know)
Somebody

I love Nick Wooster’s sense or style and class in everything he wears and does. He loves the classics but also mixes it up with cool hip new things to make it his own. He’s one cool dude and looks great no matter what the occasion. Checkout his advice on how men can build a good wardrobe in time and how to be suitably dress for any occasion.

A CONVERSATION WITH NICK WOOSTER from Men In This Town on Vimeo.

Get Suitably Dressed from Gilt MAN on Vimeo.

Here’s an old drawing I did many moons ago. I called it “Man and Machine”. I think what I was trying to convey is pretty clear. Even as a young man long before this golden age of the Internet and gadget nirvana I wanted to comment on the relationship of Man and technology. I found it humorous that the very machine we created to help us would in turn need our help.

Google Plus continues to grow with over 60 million users after six months and they keep adding new features little by little. One of the most important features that I am hoping to see soon is something called Public Circles. Let me explain why I think this will become important for the future of the social network. Take a look at this PaiChart (Infographic I made).

Right now, members can publish several different types of posts.

1.  Private Messages. Members can send messages to another individual member (or several at a time). These are like direct messages on Twitter.

2.  Public Stream. All posts sent to the public stream  appears in everyone’s stream that happens to be in any of your circles

3.  Your Circles. You can send messages to one particular circle or several at a time or all of them at once.
This means only the people you’ve added to those circles will see those messages.

4.  Extended Circles. This is a little tricky but basically it means you don’t know who’s going to see your messages
due to the fact that messages will be sent to the circles that belong to the people you’ve added to your circles and so on.

5.  Public Circles (Not here yet). I would love to see public circles because it would allow members to send messages to a particular group
of members curated according to a particular topic. We could use #Hashtags to target the public circles we want to send messages to.
For example, if I post something with the #Photography hashtag then only the members who’ve subscribed to that public circle will see it
and not everyone in your circles.

Why not just stick with regular hashtags then? Well, because the downside to hashtags is that they are always public so everyone in your circles
sees every post you send with hashtags to the public stream which could be annoying to many of them. Being able to isolate where the messages go
could be very useful.

Another benefit to Public Circles is the fact that they would be self-curating as people could add/remove themselves at any time. If you get tired of seeing posts about     photography then you can easily unsubscribe from that public circle. There could be other topics you want to try instead.

As for managing these public circles, that’s something that has to be ironed out. Google could assign moderators to monitor each public circle or the members of public circles could vote for and elect the admins. We should also be allowed to create our own public circles which could be about topic under the sun. They would be like Twitter lists.

I know Google has Sharable Circles where we can curate a circle and then share it with others who can then copy them to their own collection of circles. That’s totally different than public circles because this involves a lot of manual manipulation for each member. We have to add/remove each member to each circle where as a public circle has people adding/removing themselves. Of course we can still maintain our own private circles if we choose to do so.

Basically, public circles would be like the new age hashtag where members can subscribe and unsubscribe any time they want. There would/should be a directory of every Public Circle available for all members too. We should be able to see who’s in each public circle as well. We can choose to join the public circle or create our own based on that public circle like we can do with sharable circles.

What do you think of the idea for Public Circles? Wouldn’t you like to be able to subscribe/unsubscribe to self-curating public circles as well as create your own? This could be invaluable for brands and businesses too.

Here’s an episode of the new version of The Outer Limits which ran again from 1995 to 2002. This one was called “Stream of Consciousness” and aired in 1997. It was truly a prophetic tale as it depicted how dependent the world would be on the Internet which they called The Stream. This was a time before the web exploded into what we all know and love today. AOL was king and our connections were all based on slow dial-up modems for the most part.

In the story, due to a brain injury, Ryan Unger cannot enjoy the benefits of a neural implant that allows other people to tap into The Stream — a direct connection into all human knowledge. He tries, unsuccessfully, to keep up with everyone else by using a long-forgotten skill: reading books.

Unfortunately for the human race, the Stream has been erroneously programmed to crave information instead of knowledge. Soon, it begins to turn the human race into its slaves to attempt to locate and process every single bit of information, a process that will lead to the human race’s extinction as people stop doing everything to obtain the desired information.
Ryan’s injury keeps him from falling under the sway of the Stream, leaving him the only person who can stop it. The Stream will not allow itself to be shut down, however, and it commands the humans under its control to defend itself from Ryan. In the end, Ryan succeeds in shutting down the Stream and saving mankind. Cut off from the mental crutch humanity has used for so long, the entire population (save Ryan) are reduced to a child-like mental state. Ryan finds himself needing to teach mankind the old ways of acquiring information again — from books.

Opening Narration
“We quantify our world in order to learn. We break it down into facts, numbers, information. But how far dare we go before we destroy its mystery?”

Closing narration
“We make tools to extend our abilities, to further our reach, and fulfill our aspirations. But we must never let them define us. For if there is no difference between tool and maker, then who will be left to build the world?”

Here’s a link to SynchTube to watch it with others online in real-time

http://www.synchtube.com/r/Vtci

Frank Capra is my favorite movie director of all-time which makes Robert Riskin one of my favorite screenwriters of all-time because he penned most of Capra’s best work for the screen. The best of their films together included:

• It Happened One Night (1934)
• Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
• Lost Horizon (1937)
• You Can’t Take It with You (1938)
• Meet John Doe (1941)

• The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
• Magic Town (1947) also producer

Every once in a while I hear something that grabs my attention no matter what I’m doing. That happened today when I had the TV on in the background on HBO and it played a promo of movies coming up this year and the music just caught my attention. I whipped out my shazam app and it found out the name of the song and artist, “All at once” by The Airborne Toxic Event. I just loved the song so much…the music and the lyrics. It’s such a rare treat when it all clicks together like that. Here are a couple of different versions of the amazing song.

Here’s the black and white performance video of All At Once by The Airborne Toxic Event

Here’s the recorded version with lyrics

“All At Once”

We were born without time
Nameless in the arms
Of a mother, a father, and God
When the world would wait for us
A thousand years in the crush
Of our eyes, fearless, and awed
So quietly, we’d fade into sleep
With nothing on our mind(s)
Hoo, hoo, hoo..
And then we longed to be loved
In the rush, we become
Some things we thought we’d never be
We were surprised by how hard
Left wary and scarred
From the nights spent feeling incomplete
And all those evenings swearing at the sky
Wishing for more time
All the promises we broke when we tried
Just wastin’ all our time

Hoo, hoo..

We grow old all at once
And it comes like a punch
In the gut, in the back, in the face
When it seems someone’s lied
And our parents have died
Then we hold onto each other in their place
And I feel the water risin’ around us
Maybe that’s okay
Yeah, I feel the world changin’ all at once
I guess it’ll be okay

Hoo, hoo, hoo..

And we all had one hope
There was someone lookin’ down
To return our bodies to each other
And the ground

Social networks like Facebook and Google Plus are battling it out right now for supremacy and video chat has become one of the fiercest battlegrounds. Google has taken the lead with its hangout feature which supports up to 10 video participants at the time while Facebook has improved its chat feature by adding video capabilities.
I believe the next battle will involve improved audio capabilities as the world becomes ever mobile and on the go. Being able to communicate verbally on mobile devices hands free while driving or doing other things has become increasingly important.

In the past, there has been social networks based on audio communication (hence my term SocialAudio). The best of them all was a service called Utterz.com which came out before the age of the iPhone and smartphones hit its stride. They were smart by allowing their members to use any cell phone which then posted their audio files online so it was both a mobile and web social network. You could also listen to audio posts while driving hands free. You can also reply and cycle forward and backwards thru messages of those you were following and even from the public timeline. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they were never able to become as popular as Twitter or Facebook and vanished.

If Google integrates Google Plus with its Google Voice product then they could provide the most impressive SocialAudio network ever. Since they’ve already started integrating G+ with their other products, this is not that far fetched. Users would be able to communicate via audio in real-time or via recorded messages any time any place.

In the mean time, there are some other services that operate in the SocialAudio arena. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

• Cinch.fm is the most well-known because it is backed by the folks from BlockTalkRadio. Google can look at their design for good ideas.
• AudioBoo is an excellent mobile app that lets members record audio messages and post them on its own network. You can also use its BooMail to post messages that way.
• Shoutomatic is similar to cinch in that its users can post audio messages and cross post to other networks. One of its most popular users is Clayton Morris from Fox news.
• SoundCloud is different than these others because it isn’t actually designed to be a communication network but it is a social network where members share audio files, usually music but it also includes many other forms of sound. Many share their podcasts or just record audio messages. I can see them adding features that make it more of a SocialAudio network very easily.

Here’s a video demo he did about Shoutomatic.

Here’s a demo of AudioBoo

Intro to Audioboo from Mark Rock on Vimeo.

Breaking Glass (1980) is a favorite film starring Hazel O’Connor who wrote and performed all of the original songs. This was like the punk version of Bette Midler’s The Rose which came out around the same time. Both stories were similar in that they followed the rise to fame of a female music artist and the disillusionment they encountered personally once they reached the top.

Hazel has a wide range of songs in the gem of a movie. She has some high tempo stuff and soft ballads (My favorite being WILL YOU) and everything in between. The movie starts off with her “Writings on the Wall” and just sets the tone of what’s to come. You should check it out.

Here’s the opening and closing sequences as well as the song “BIG BROTHER”

Here’s my favorite track from the movie, “WILL YOU”

Here’s the concert performance for Eighth Day including her Tron outfit and laser show. Hey, it’s 1980.