Newsome.Org

Evening Reading: 6/13/09

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:37:09 PDT

iPhonery: There's a lot of buzz surrounding the upcoming release of the iPhone 3G S. It looks like ATT has sold all of its pre-order inventory. A guy at the local Apple store told me today that they have sold a ton of pre-orders, and that next Friday will be a crazy day. Apple has an excellent compilation of "how-tos" for the world's greatest phone. That link is a mandatory bookmark for all iPhone users. Postage is a neat-looking iPhone app that lets you create and email postcards, but then you have to print them to put them on the fridge. Photogene looks promising, though I haven't tried it yet.

Sneaking in the Kid's Room: Everyone knows that I have very mixed feelings about Facebook. When I spend time there, I feel like I'm sneaking into the kids' rooms. It is, however, the only way to interact with a lot of people who don't have a presence on the greater web. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, when the opportunity presented itself, I capitulated to a vanity URL (facebook.com/newsome).

Wild Life Department: Back in the early 70's, my mom and I saw a black squirrel in the woods by the road. It was one of those things you never forget.

The End of the World as We Read It: OmegaMom has a good run-down of some post-apocalyptic science fiction. That's my favorite sub-genre. I'm currently reading and enjoying the Pelbar Cycle books. Here's a pretty good, but incomplete, reading list to get you started.

Sirius XM Deathwatch: So now they are going to jack up the monthly rates even more? Fat chance. My Sirius XM connection is down to a single, stretched thread, thanks to the increasing costs, and the better options via Pandora and Slacker Radio.

Department of Sound: 30 Days Out has a good read on one of my favorite blues singers. One of my favorite later Howlin' Wolf songs is this version of Little Red Roster off of The London Sessions. Also, don't forget that I'm recommending a lot of great music at our sister site GoodSongs.Com (RSS feed). Elsewhere, Cover Lay Down continues to rocket up my music reading list.

Apptic Blast: Here are four great Windows clipboard alternatives. And four alternative file copiers. Finally, here are some good multitasking desktop apps.

I'm a Frayed Knot: Everyone should know how to tie some basic knots. Here's a wallet card. Or for those hip like me, an Evernote card. Speaking of wallets, here's a very interesting iPhone app to keep barcodes from all your affiliation cards. I try to stay unaffiliated, but I have gathered a couple of grocery cards along the way.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: I have recently watched (links to Netflix; 5-point scale): Taken (4)- very good action flick, with great appeal for dads. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (3)- definite chick-flick characteristics, but I liked the music element and that both the main characters were really good kids (Kat Dennings is a lovely young lady; and I noticed when researching this post at IMDB, 22 years old today; happy birthday!). Gran Torino (3)- overacting and the unnecessary verbalization of the obvious makes a great concept only a pretty good movie (nice ride, though). The Dark Knight (3.5)- I avoided this one for a long time because of the Ledger over-hype, but it and he were both excellent, particularly until the last half-hour or so. The Wrestler (4)- I loved it, Mickey Rourke was excellent and, seriously, could Marisa Tomei be any hotter without spontaneously combusting? Slumdog Millionaire (incomplete)- I had really high expectations for this one, but I just couldn't get into it, and didn't finish it before my on-demand time limit expired.

Blessings: I am so glad the fracking digital conversion is over. It was the most over-discussed, non-event since Y2K. And, no, I really don't care if someone (or even 880,000 someones) ignored the deluge of public service notices and screen crawls and is somehow surprised that his ancient television not in any way suddenly quit working. Technology helps those who help themselves, and all that.

Shaken, Not Stirred (but We Can All Realize Our Dreams): I have reached Level 30 in Spymaster, which is as high as you can currently go. As I noted the other day, it's a good start, but the game needs a lot more depth. Follow me if you're a spy, and I will follow you back (as long as you have a legitimate, non-MLM, non-unintentionally-Deep Thoughts-like Twitter account). I'd rather be spammed a thousand times on Twitter than see another absurd to the point of self-parody, uplifting, self-affirmation post. And while I'm at it, do people really think blasting regurgitated quotes ads value?

Crosby, Stills & Nash 1969 Video Footage

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:35:09 PDT

I enjoy listening to great musicians talk about their craft. Here's some interesting footage of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Good stuff.

Is Pandora One the One?

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:31:47 PDT

I've been a fairly consistent user of Pandora since I first read about it on December 30, 2005 (ain't it great the way your blog becomes your personal archive of thoughts, both good and bad?). I have several Pandora stations, a couple of which are over three years old. In that time, I have finely tuned my likes and dislikes and, generally speaking, the Pandora algorithm knows what I like. And given that my music preferences are broad in some ways and narrow in others, that's no mean feat.

The thing that allowed Pandora to map my musical genome is the thing that distinguishes Pandora from much of its competition: the music genome. Pandora figures out what you like, not based on the band or the song, but based on the content and structure of the song. If you think about it, using a mathematical algorithm is a much more logical approach than trying to link together similar artists. I like country influenced rock and roll, with acoustic sonority, major key tonality and steel guitar, among other characteristics. Generally speaking, Pandora knows that I am much more likely to appreciate a similar song by an artist I've never heard than a wildly different song by a band I am familiar with. The difference between the Stones' Loving Cup and Get Off My Cloud is greater than the difference between Exile on Main Street and some of the Deadstring Brothers records.

Another example: while writing this post a great song by Hecla & Griper played on my alt. country station. I know a lot of music, and I'd never heard of Hecla & Griper. Note to the RIAA: thanks to this great online streaming station, I just bought a copy of Songs: Ohia. So put that in yer pipe, and all that. Wow, here's another great song by Luna, another new name. If you like music, it's simply impossible not to dig Pandora.

Recently, Pandora began offering a premium subscription service, called Pandora One. Among the benefits are no ads of any kind (something I'm definitely willing to pay for), a new desktop application (see the photo to the left), high quality 192Kbps streaming, and an extended interaction timeout (you can listen longer without clicking anything before the app times out). All of that sounds very worth the $36 annual fee, and I have gladly subscribed.

But there is one significant drag. Fast forwards. Previously, you were allowed to fast forward (e.g., skip) only 12 songs a day. With Pandora One, the daily limit is gone, but you are still limited to 6 skips an hour, per station. Sure, you can "thumb down" a song and it won't play again, but I take my thumbing seriously, and I hate to taint it by using it as a de facto skip button. Sometimes I'm just in the mood for another song, and I'd like to have unlimited (or at least a lot more) skips.

As I noted the other day, I have recently started using Slacker Radio, in addition to Pandora. It has a lot to offer, and the interface, while not particularly Firefox friendly, is really good. I like the way you can tinker with the new/old, hits/deep cuts, etc. settings. Mostly, I like the fact that with the premium account ($48 a year) you can fast forward as much as you like. If Slacker Radio allows unlimited skips, why doesn't Pandora? Surely it's not about the $12 cost difference? I'd pay at least twice that to add unlimited skipping to my Pandora stations.

At the end of the day, both services have a lot to offer. I find myself listening to Pandora more, because I have been there longer and my Pandora stations are more mature. While I continue to believe that Pandora's mathematical approach works better, unlimited skipping is clearly an advantage for Slacker Radio.

If I had to choose, it would be Pandora by a nose. But fortunately I don't have to choose.

A two (or more) horse race is good for consumers, and these are both strong horses.

Free Pre: Baby x Baby in the Gillmor Nursery

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:32:20 PDT

I used to love the Gillmor Gang, but I don't listen to it much anymore, because I have come full circle and once again think that too many of the core participants are intentionally non-inclusive. I'm not talking about on the podcast; I'm talking about on the internet. Too many of those guys treat the social networks as a stage where they can engage in dramatic dialog with one another, while the great audience watches in admiration.

And I have said over and over that Mike Arrington needs a lesson in personal brand maintenance. Petulant jerk is not the image I'd go for.

And I have not and probably won't watch the rest of the latest Gillmor Gang podcast, so there may be things leading up to this brouhaha that I don't know about.

And, finally, I don't have and have no plans to get a Palm Pre.

Having said all that, unless there's a lot more to the story, Leo Laporte was a massive baby for throwing a gigantic temper tantrum just because Mike asked him if he paid for his Pre. It's a fair and legitimate question. A simple yes or no would have sufficed.

When I have been asked to preview phones and other mobile devices in the past, I have never been required to return them. Generally, after the review period expires, you can keep the device, but you have to pay for a calling plan, etc. if you want to use it. It's probably different for high profile devices like the iPhone and the Pre. Maybe you do have to return it. I don't know anything about some "wink and nod" deal where you get a letter requiring that you return it, with no one actually expecting that you will. If that happens, it's even worse, in my opinion, than getting one completely free. Once someone in that situation says he or she didn't get the device for free, it takes the issue from the realm of an omission to the realm of a lie.

Again, I know nothing about this practice, and I certainly know nothing of the terms under which Leo got his Pre. I'll assume he got a review unit and always intended to and will return it.

In other words, I'm not examining Leo's integrity, because I don't really know him and have no personal basis to doubt it (or vouch for it). What I am interested in is the epic meltdown he had on this podcast.

There is some evidence in the comments to the TechCrunch post that Mike may have been poking at Leo for some time. I don't know if that's right or not, but it's certainly possible given the way Mike relates to most people. But I'm pretty sure that no one forces Leo to do those podcasts. And I'm pretty sure the fact that Mike can be a jerk is not a secret.

And, ignoring for a moment the source, it was a relevant question. Not that Mike was necessarily looking out for truth and justice.

There is another question- about what Mike was worried about at the beginning: journalistic standards or that Leo got a free Pre and he didn't. Questioning someone's integrity is serious business, which is probably what set Leo off. But, again, a better response would have been "no, I didn't get it free. What are you implying." In all likelihood Mike would have hung himself with some tirade, while Leo sat back and watched.

But then again, what do I know. I'm not smart enough to converse with these dudes. I'm just in the audience, watching a couple of babies fight.

Can anyone spare a pacifier?

How TweetDeck Could Take Over the World

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:56:46 PDT

And maybe kill Google, Microsoft and Wolfram Alpha in the process. OK, that was a joke, but since all tech blogs use absurd, over the top headlines in a juvenile effort to attract readers, I thought I'd give it a try.

Back to TweetDeck. . .

I've dabbled with TweetDeck for some time, using it periodically but always finding my way back to my home-grown Content Master. The Twitter part of Content Master, of course, is the excellent TwitterGadget, which does a lot of really neat things that other Twitter apps have surprisingly not implemented. TweetDeck comes about as close as any desktop app I have used. With a few additions, I think TweetDeck could become my Twitter app of choice.

But make no mistake, for that to happen, this has to happen:

First, it absolutely must allow multiple columns of "All Friends," to allow users to better manage screen space. The most important part of Twitter is the river of posts from the people you follow. Having a single column to view this limits you to 6-10 posts on your screen. That is far too few (sure, I could scroll down, but I'd rather allocate more screen space). Users should be able to allocate multiple columns to the river, with new posts appearing in the first column and then moving to next column(s) before they rotate off your screen. This is a must-have feature that should be implemented today. Literally.

Second, how about a Google Reader implementation. There's already a way to add your Facebook data to TweetDeck. Give me a way to access my Google Reader information from within the application and I'd be hooked. Something similar to, but more robust than, the Google Reader gadget would be a great start. I'd be happy with Google Reader. I'd be thrilled if other apps were also incorporated, like Delicious, Read It Later, Photobucket, Dropbox, etc. In other words, make TweetDeck as good for publishing Twitter content as it is for reading it.

Third, once all that additional source data is available from within TweetDeck, allow articles to be dragged from the applicable column (i.e., the Google Reader column), into the Tweet message box. Populate the message box with the title of the article you dropped in there, and populate the link box with the URL, which should then be automatically shortened.

Fourth, provide a way to export all, filtered portions or individual items from your TweetDeck to other services, via RSS feeds. That would allow you to use TweetDeck as the publishing platform not only for Twitter, but also for other services. If I could selectively embed some of the content I read and publish in TweetDeck to my blog or some other site, that would be very helpful.

Fifth, create a top row of tabs for different TweetDeck page layouts, content and implementations. If I could have my Twitter stuff under one tab and my Google Reader and Facebook stuff under another one, that would give me the flexibility I seek. iGoogle, My Yahoo and other apps already have tab or tab-like features, so this shouldn't be hard to add.

That should keep you busy for the rest of the day. What are you waiting on? Time's a wastin'.

New Podcast: EELS #66

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:36:54 PDT

Dave, Mike and I got together for The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show #66 this week. We talked about Dave's Evernote munging (Dave can make just about anything do just about anything), SuperDuper, Casper, Mike's work with the Environment Institute and my amazing and completely accidental bee photo. I even had a chance to rant a little about VRM and the so-called semantic web.

We also talked about good company involvement in the social media stream (Topify, Comcast) and blown opportunities (Evernote, Blip.fm).

As always, we had lots of good discussion, debate and laughs. Read more details here, or give us a listen by clicking here. I'm the one with the funny accent.

If you're into tech, and particularly if you are a developer of a cool app or service that needs a little exposure, drop me a line (see the link in the left hand column) and we'll see about having you on a future show. Trust me, it's a good time.

Spymaster: Big Fun, Twitter Spam or Both

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:23:53 PDT

I don't live on Twitter, so Spymaster, the Twitter-based online spy game, didn't cross my radar until I got a DM from someone I follow inviting me to join her spy network. I followed the link and discovered an apparently easy-to-come-by invitation to Spymaster's public beta. It looked like a pretty well-designed site, so I decided to give it a try.

After signing up, you first decide what spy organization you want to work for. I was hoping for CONTROL (Don Adams version), but it wasn't a choice. So I picked the CIA, being an American and all. Afterwards, you're a junior spy working for the Company.

In sum, the game then involves performing various spy tasks that, if you are successful, result in payment and an increase in experience points. Pretty standard game fare.

As you accumulate money, you can buy weapons and defensive gear- body armor, etc.- for yourself and your spy ring, which consists of your spymasters (those of your Twitter followers who also play spymaster) and your regular spies (those of your followers who do not yet play the game).

As you accumulate experience points, you progress up the spy ladder. I am currently a Level 11 spy. As you move up the ladder, you can perform more difficult- and lucrative- spy tasks and buy better gear, thereby increasing your attack and defense numbers.

You can also assassinate rival spies, though your success or failure rate is tied to the overall strength of your spy ring in a way that is not easily discernable. As a result I have, thus far, generally engaged only in retaliatory strikes and public service first strikes against those who link bomb Twitter by adding a bunch of Twitterfeed posts at one time.

If you are successfully "assassinated," you don't die. You just lose money and perhaps other assets. If the attempt fails, you get a portion of the assassin's money. Thus far, I've made a little net money via unsuccessful assassination attempts against me, but not much. I tend to see the assassination thing as an annoying distraction so far, which is odd since I assume the interactivity of assassinations is intended to be the focal point of the game.

As you accumulate more money, you can- for a price- deposit it in a Swiss bank account, so it won't be subject to loss via assassination. You can also purchase "safe houses" in remote location to generate additional revenue. So far, this has been the focal point of my game, with some success and a little uncertainty. While risk and payment numbers are provided, it is not clear how that matrix works, and it is not clear how often safe house payments accrue. In sum, there should be a lot more detail about some of the game play details.

But the purchase of safe houses keeps my account balance low, which is a disincentive for those who might seek to assassinate me.

There's been a bit of an uproar on Twitter over the game feature that allows players to increase their power by recruiting their Twitter followers to the game, via DMs, and the game setting which increases your payouts if you post certain game events to your Twitter feed. Personally, I haven't been overwhelmed by DMs, so I don't have a problem with that feature. I only post two major game events to my Twitter feed (level ups and assassination attempts), but I have seen a bit too much game related activity in my Twitter stream. So while I wish people would keep their game-related posts to a minimum, I haven't un-followed anyone for posting game-related stuff. Yet.

The big question, of course, is whether Spymaster is a brief diversion or something that will have the staying power to become a permanent part of the Twitter experience. While it's clearly in beta at the moment, it needs more depth to have the permanence it seeks. At present, there's a lot of clicking on tasks, waiting for your energy level to return, and clicking on more tasks. Notwithstanding the "social" nature of the game, interaction with other players is limited and, as far as I can tell, interaction with those in your spy ring is non-existent. On the plus side of the ledger, those of us with game playing pedigrees are conditioned to climb up the money/experience ladder and will probably do so, at least for a while. And the web site is well designed and highly functional.

It's a good start, for sure. But the final story won't be known until we see what else the developers have up their sleeves. There's not enough depth now, but there could be later.

As far as the Twitter spam goes, I have not sent any recruiting DMs, because I am a vocal opponent of anything resembling spam. Given the free for all (and, candidly, already heavily spam and quasi-spam infested) nature of Twitter, I don't consider the Spymaster-related communications spam. But I can see how some people would.

For now, I'm mildly interested in Spymaster. If you want to be in my spy ring, send me a DM and I'll send you a return invitation. Let's go assassinate some geeks, shall we?

Delaney's Birthday Party was Buzzin'

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sat, 30 May 2009 11:56:02 PDT

I wish I could tell you I intentionally took this amazing photo of a bee flying through Delaney's birthday party yesterday. . .

Bigger version here. Flickr page here.

Sound Migration: Announcing GoodSongs.Com

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:34:21 PDT

As I noted the other day, I need a new place to work my music jones. Blip.fm is in the process of being murdered by the music industry and my tech pals don't want to be inundated with music here at Newsome.Org. So what's a lover of the bayou to do?

Develop a new platform to share some great music, of course. Welcome to GoodSongs.Com!

It's such a crazy, crazy feeling,
I get weak in the knees,
My poor old head is a reelin',
As I go deep into the funnel of love.

By combining the Tumblr page I mentioned the other day with a previously dormant top level domain I've owned for a decade or so, doing some template work and adding a nice java-based music player, I've come up with what I believe is the perfect music recommendation site. If you're into alt. country, country rock, blues or just good music in general, you'll like GoodSongs.Com. Give it a listen. Subscribe to the feed. Buy the great, off the beaten path music you'll hear there. Tell your friends. Send me your music so I can add it to the playlist.

They said, Do you remember when you saw her last,
I said, Her skin is cinnamon, her skin is cinnamon.

Note the music player at the bottom of the page. It won't play the audio for the videos, but it will play all of the audio posts in a playlist fashion, with music player controls.

Click on that link to start the playlist

There will be quite a bit of integration between GoodSongs.Com and Newsome.Org, but the flow of music will be greater over there. For years, I have received a steady flow of music via email and snail mail from artists looking for exposure here or on Rancho Radio, our popular alt. country radio station. I plan to share a lot of that music at GoodSongs.Com, along with links to Amazon and other stores where you can buy this excellent music. There are a lot of people making the kind of fantastic music that doesn't get played boring, ad-infested mainstream radio. I plan to be an advocate for that music, but I need your help.

Let's play this one out, until it explodes,
Into a thousand tiny pieces,
What's the story universe,
You are melody in numbers.

Send me music. Buy the music I feature. Wear glasses if you need 'em. And all that.

You know the bottle ain't to blame and I ain't trying to,
It don't make you do a thing it just lets you,
When I'm six feet underground, I'll need a drink or two,
And I'll sure miss you.

Just in case you need a little nudge to add GoodSongs.Com (full RSS Feed) to your reading list, here's a sampler. Links to buy all this music are available at the GoodSongs.Com site.

Steve Pride and His Blood - Welcome to the Big Time
The Gosdin Brothers - There Must Be Someone I Can Turn To
The Buckets - Postmarked Virginia
The Figments - Feel the Fields
Drag the River - Indianapolis
Deadstring Brothers - 27 Hours
The Caution Children - I Know Better Now

You can meet me at ten thirty,
I won't be there I'll be gone,
We can talk like we are friends,
Going over it all again,
Talking about everything I am doing wrong.

Enjoy. And tell your friends.

Evening Reading: 5/28/09

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:20:47 PDT

Brawl is All: It's always a great day when you get a new episode of There Will Be Brawl. If you haven't watched this excellent series, you have a treat in store.

Good Idea, Bad Idea Department: I'd love a reliable pair of wireless headphones to use for our podcasts. At first glance these look pretty appealing. I use a set of Plantronics headphones every day at work and they are great. But I agree with Kevin Tofel on the proprietary thing. By using a proprietary wireless protocol instead of Bluetooth, they guaranteed that I will not buy them. No one should support proprietary when there is a standard protocol that works. I don't want no dang 'ol, dang ol' dangle.

Burn the Monster: Here's the only thing anyone should ever say about HootSuite: Lose that bloody browser bar. I will not click on any link posted by anyone who uses HootSuite. We need to nip this stupid browser bar crap in the bud. Honestly, I can't believe there isn't a massive public outcry over developers tossing this garbage on our screens.

In Other Monster News: I dislike the RIAA as much as the next guy (and I am a musician who gets occasional royalty checks), but I don't think it's productive to assume they are going to be jerks until they act like jerks. I may be proven wrong, but even the RIAA can't be stupid enough to tell school kids not to sing pop songs on YouTube. Can they?

Good Luck with That: On the rare occasions that he has interacted with me, Om Malik has always struck me as a good guy, so I hope this move of desperation works out for him. But I don't think it will. Blogs- even mega ones like his- simply can't produce enough unique content to make a pay wall work. Maybe if we could all go back in time and prevent the news media from giving all their stuff away in the frantic but misguided internet land rush, the subscription model might work. But we can't. If I were going to map out the best hope for paid content, I'd take the Daring Fireball model and charge for full RSS feeds. That probably wouldn't work either, but it more closely approximates the Pandora, Slacker Radio payment for convenience idea. In other words, I'd never pay for "special" blog content, but I might pay for a more convenient way to access content. If you want to see some brave and righteous spin, see James Kendrick's announcement. Again, I hope it works, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Fixing What Ain't Broke Department: I don't really know what Google Wave is or hopes to be. What I do know is that it isn't going to "reinvent email" as the nerd herd is saying, because email doesn't need to be reinvented. It works just fine the way it is, well, except for all the spam. We need to fix the spam.

My Kingdom for an iPhone Version: There is a Windows Mobile version of Live Writer! I cannot adequately describe how ecstatic I would be if someone did a version of Windows Live Writer for the iPhone. I would divide my life into the before and after.

Sookie, Sookie, Sookie: Several people told me that I would love every single thing about True Blood. It finally came out on iTunes, and I watched every single episode of Season 1 in four days. They were right. It's southern and gothic and scary and cool, with great acting, good music and Sookie. It's up there with Millennium as my favorite show ever. I am counting the days until June 14, when Season 2 starts. Highly, highly recommended.

Comcast Sucks: Period. Lately, my Comcast broadband is out at least half the time. It fades in and out like a bad headache. Thank goodness for my ATT wireless broadband modem. I will dump cable broadband at the first reasonable opportunity.

Fail in Waiting: So a day late and several dollars short, Sirius XM is about to dump an iPhone app on the unsuspecting world. And rumors are that they want to charge subscribers extra to use it. That's the most disappointing news since the great Slingbox money-grab of 2009. If Sirius XM charges subscribers extra to use the iPhone app, I hope it accelerates their death at the hands of Pandora, etc. I don't think trying to squeeze every possible dollar from your declining subscriber base is the best way to deal with the car problem.

Department of Sound: Twangville has a take on the excellent new Dexateens record. HearYa has a take on the new Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys) video, in which he is joined by Hacienda. This particular song doesn't do anything for me, but most of Dan's stuff is pretty good. Hickory Wind has a piece on the Chris Gaffney tribute record. Finally, Cover Lay Down, the newest music blog in my reading list, has some excellent Mary Lou Lord covers.

Photo Goodness: Yahoo image search (which also indexes Flickr photos) now allows you to filter results by Creative Commons license. That's a neat feature, but I wonder how many photos have been tagged with licenses.

Apptic Blast: Among the interesting apps I've come across lately are TuneUp (cleans your music collection), Routine Timer (my family badly needs that board game timer), TimeLeft, the AAA iPhone app, Repper (makes designs from JPEGs) and Totally Free Burner (non-bloated disk burning).

The Line Forms Here: How the Man Controls the Social Networking Game

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:09:07 PDT

Toss a bunch of nerds in a room and I guess generations of nerd conditioning combine with nerd DNA and compel them to form a line and then apply their Trekkie logic to sorting and resorting each other. It's like a supercharged version of that video of those two rats. Actually, that's not right. Those rats are funny and you can tell by their expressions that they know they're acting stupid. There's nothing funny about nerd self-sorting. Boring, yes. Sad, maybe. Funny, not so much.

So why in the world someone would want to slice and dice their Friend-fracking-feed is completely beyond me. It's bad enough that I actually have a FriendFeed. God, spare me the unmitigated embarrassment of ever talking about my FriendFeed stats. If I ever start yammering on about the clicking average of my FriendFeed with readers in Tweeting position, please taze me bro' and take me straight to man-camp for an immediate stones transplant.

But there must be a lot of people who, astonishingly, care about this sort of thing, because there seem to be tracking apps for everything. In fact, I guarantee you that somewhere as we speak some pasty geek is working feverishly on a fantasy social networking league. With the first pick in the first round, the Cucamonga Slide Rules take Robert Scoble.

The not-so-hot stove league is not limited to FriendFeed.

You can track your Twitter use various ways. You can theoretically analyze your RSS subscribers (except, of course, for the fact that Feedburner is utterly and completely broken). I guess if you have the time, you can spend 24 hours a day pouring over your social networking post and commenting percentage. Of course that would be profoundly boring, but you could do it. I guess some people do.

But here's the thing. The fundamental purpose of most self-policed lines is to allow those at the front to better their position at the expense of those who can be initially shoved to the back. School children to sports pages- it's all about the line these days. There is- or at least used to be- a fuzzy correlation between line position and success, and so people latched on to the only objective criteria available and suddenly the place in line became the goal, as opposed to the result of achieving some more legitimate goal. In online endeavors, the line often takes the form of traffic, evidenced by subscriber numbers, page views, etc. So people want to find a shortcut to the goal- more traffic. Why work to grow your readership when you can just spam people with the latest get more Twitter followers scam?

And of course as soon as the line is formed, the focus turns to guarding one's position in the line. And the entire system becomes a giant tug of war, often at the expense of merit or content. Or logic.

Adding to the chaos are the ranking/listing algorithms that people trot out to validate their position in the line. No matter how you dress it up, most of these allegedly analytical algorithms eventually come down to the same thing: popularity. Popularity has been the stand-in for authority and value on the internet since Dave Winer invented it. Not only is that a faulty and debilitating correlation, all of these algorithms that spit out the same oligarchical list propagate the falsely established order at the expense of those whose authority is eclipsed by their exclusion. Stated another way, popularity does not equate to authority. To say otherwise is to confuse People Magazine with an encyclopedia.

Python incoming. Surely we all agree that strange applications lyin' in internets distributin' lists is no basis for a system of social networking. Supreme social worth derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical statistical hegemony.

People simply don't need some algorithm or starter list to tell them who is interesting or who they should read or follow online. People are perfectly capable of finding content they like without a helpful nudge from the establishment. The whole idea of suggested reading lists and their ilk- which as noted are usually based on popularity, which is another word for the status quo- are just a confidence trick.

Designed to allow the man to control the game.

Jay Bennett, RIP

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Mon, 25 May 2009 09:52:57 PDT

Jay Bennett, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and alt. country legend died unexpectedly this weekend. Jay was a member of Wilco from 1994-2001, and afterwards released several solo records. He was also a popular session player, appearing on records by Sheryl Crow, among others.

Jay and Jeff Tweedy had a contentious parting, and I hope Jay will be remembered for his epic talent, and not mostly as the dude who sued the Wilco guy. This is a loss for alt. country fans, and for music fans in general.

Here's some great guitar work and harmony on Wilco's California Stars. For those unfamiliar with Jay, he's the guitarist with the longer hair and glasses.

Here's I Don't Have the Time from his solo record Whatever Happened I Apologize.

You can read about Jay and hear lots of his music at his MySpace page. Definitely check out the excellent By the Cigarette Machine in his music player.

Other blogs have more on Jay's untimely passing:

Turn it Up
Cover Lay Down
Backstage Pass
On the Beat

Why the Flock Doesn't Flock

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:48:32 PDT

Sarah Perez wonders why more people don't use Flock, the super-charged Firefox based web browser that has lots of social networking features baked right in to the interface. That's a good question, and after thinking about it, I have a theory.

I think it has to do with the Facebook/geek ratio. By geek, I don't mean someone who swims deeply in the online ocean. I mean the hardcore technophiles, like most of the people who write for and read the big tech blogs, etc. I am a part of that demographic, along with lots of the people I blog and tweet around with. Our population seems large, because of the world-shrinking effect of the technology. The same technology that allows me to be friends and podcast mates with two dudes from Australia also allows people to have and stay in constant communication with like-minded friends all over the world. So while the geek crowd seems large, it's not.

As a result, we make the mistake of thinking that everyone views the net and the associated apps and services the same way we do. But most people clearly don't.

A lot of the tools geeks think are indispensible- like Twitter, for example- have not penetrated the larger population nearly as much as it may appear from our little corner of the net. One celebrity gets a million followers, and others have to match that. Take away the race to a million and the resulting celebrity turf/ego war and Twitter would still be just a popular, unprofitable Web 2.0 application that few of our real world friends have ever heard of. I can still count the number of Twitter users I know in the real world on one hand.

Compare that story to the evolution of Facebook. It was created and grew up out there in the real world, with millions of young people using it daily. As those young people grew up, they took Facebook with them. Then Facebook opened up and the momentum-chasing herd of geeks migrated over there and, on occasion, fooled themselves into believing they had discovered something new and cool. To the original Facebook population, it was neither new nor cool. It was just part of ordinary life, like a TV or a telephone. While the newly arrived geeks began to honk and bray about Facebook taking over world, the young old guard just went about their lives, with Facebook as a utility, but not a religion.

A utility, however, that for most is the hub for their online activity and for many is their online activity. The reason the Facebook walls have survived relatively intact is because the large majority of Facebook users are happy to live inside those walls. Most of them have never even used Firefox, much less Flock. It's this demographic, not the vocal in our browsers but otherwise largely irrelevant geek crowd, that makes Facebook go.

At the end of the day, what this means is that Louis Gray is right when he says the operating system doesn't matter to most people. It doesn't, because for many of them, Facebook is the operating system (for others some combination of Google applications are). They don't need a new or super-charged browser to use Facebook or some other social network, because they use Facebook to do all of that stuff. Which explains why so many of these ancillary social networks seem so Facebook-centric. They know where the biggest population of potential users are.

All these kids need is a way into Facebook, and maybe Gmail. The best operating system and browser to do that with are the ones that are already on your computer.

No Flock required.

Terminator Spoof Two-fer

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:39:14 PDT

With all the hubbub about the cancellation of the Sarah Connor Chronicles and the release of Terminator Salvation, I thought it was time to bring out a hilarious blast from the past. While looking for it, I came across an almost as hilarious recent spoof.

So here are two excellent Terminator spoofs for your holiday weekend viewing.

The Greatest Action Story Ever Told

Hand Jobs for the Future (NSFW)

New Podcast: EELS #65

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:04:27 PDT

Dave, Mike and I got together for The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show #65 this week. We talked about public wi-fi access and licensing, Linux, Tumblr (my review here; my Tumblr page here), Evernote, Read It Later, Linda Thompson's micro-financing of her new record and more.

As always, we had lots of good discussion, debate and laughs. Read more details here, or give us a listen by clicking here. I'm the one with the funny accent.

I'm Not that Kat Anymore: the Strange Adventures of Mystic the Cat

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:05:31 PDT

If you'd like to experience this post in fine, multimedia fashion, click here before continuing (buy @ Amazon).

Almost three years ago, Raina and the kids found a stray mother cat and four tiny kittens living on the hard streets of Bellaire, Texas. Being animal lovers and good citizens in general, they gathered up the family and took them to the local veterinarian, had them checked out, vaccinated and placed in the waiting room for adoption. The mom and two of the kittens were quickly adopted by others, and two of the kittens became our cats. Mystic, an all black cat, and his orange, white and smaller sister, Pipsqueak, joined our family when they were around eight weeks old.

Both cats fell easily into the lifestyle of housecats, meowing their gratitude every time their food bowl was empty. They ran around late at night like possessed lions chasing invisible impalas. They climbed the curtains and sharpened their leisure-atrophied claws on the furniture. They are cool cats and each made friends easily with Lucky Dog. For a couple of years, life went on relatively smoothly, interrupted only by occasional trips to the veterinarian and, for Mystic, one foreshadowing day several months ago when he managed to sneak outside for some brief exploration. A few hours later, he came home and no one thought anymore about it.

Until April 15, 2009, when he apparently decided to give up his domestic life of luxury for the wild and feral life of a stray cat. Somehow, he slipped outside again. Only this time he didn't return. We looked everywhere, and put up posters all over the neighborhood. We even offered a reward. We had several tips, but each of them led to a black cat that was not Mystic. After a month or so, we began to lose hope. Mystic and Pipsqueak turned three on May 15, 2009, with Mystic's whereabouts unknown. Talk had begun about declaring him dead, probating his meager estate of cat toys and treats and, at least according to the kids, getting another cat.

Then came the first big break.

There is an abandoned house on our street, across the street and two houses down from us. That car has been there for years and is two years out of inspection.

Our across the street neighbor (who lives in the house to the left of the abandoned house) mentioned to Raina last weekend that she had seen a black cat, along with a motley group of neighborhood and stray cats, hanging around that abandoned house. I couldn't imagine that Mystic would be living a few hundred feet from us, and ignoring all our frantic calling, not to mention all the posters on all the telephone poles up and down the street. But Cassidy and I decided to take a look.

As soon as we walked into the back yard of that abandoned house, we saw a black cat that looked exactly like Mystic (does that remind anyone of an Alec Baldwin SNL skit?). We called to him, but he casually hopped through a wide open pet door conveniently located on the side of the house. Later, we learned from other cats that this abandoned house is a sort of clubhouse for the neighborhood cats, as well as a few possums and, as the story goes, a raccoon or two. The neighborhood animals refer to the house as the cat frat. You can often hear music coming from inside, and the smell of catnip is unmistakable.

After that, we made regular trips over to the cat frat, and we saw the Mystic-looking black cat several more times. But he would not come to us, and ran away when we tried to approach him. We called the realtor listed on the rusty For Sale sign in the front yard, but she would not confess to having a key, claiming correctly that no one was going to buy that house to live in it. Unless one or more of the cats could find gainful employment. She seemed sympathetic, but did not provide access into the cat frat

Since we couldn't get inside the cat frat to reclaim Mystic, Cassidy and I decided to trap him. We set a humane trap, baited it with a bowl of his favorite cat food and waited patiently like the expert trappers we are. A possum, innumerable squirrels and another cat later, we caught the black cat. Sure, he looked like Mystic, but he was really freaked out and didn't seem to recognize us. I thought about calling Patty Hearst for advice, or maybe one of the cat-obsessed secretaries at my office. Ultimately, we settled for the veterinarian. The cat was a male, was neutered (thereby calling into question the value of the whole cat frat scene, but I digress), and was about the right age. So we brought our wayward kitty home. We put him in a dog carrier and set it down in the house. Lucky Dog seemed happy to see Mystic and Mystic was not the least bit nervous about Lucky Dog. Pipsqueak hissed at him, but we figured that could be because she had been dealing with her fear and sadness at his disappearance. I yelled at Delaney once after she almost got run over, because I was scared.

Or maybe she's pissed because he didn't take her with him.

We don't know what happened during his five weeks away. Did he pull a Chris McCandless and intentionally walk into the wild, only to be returned involuntarily via our trap? Does he think he's in college. Did he get cat amnesia? Is he a Lou Reed fan? Did we not give him enough vitamins?

Very quickly, we confirmed that this was, in fact, Mystic. We let him out of the pet carrier and he fell immediately back into many of his old routines. He and Lucky Dog started hanging out together right away. He immediately found his litter box. He sits on my lap while I work, the same way he always has.

But he's different now. He and Pipsqueak generally ignore each other. If he gets too close to her, she hisses at him. He seems older, maybe a little world weary.

And every now and then, I see him gazing at the door, and the great wonders beyond it. His life on the road was not perfect. He has some battle scars and is much thinner. But across the street, at the cat frat, there is a party going on.

I think part of him misses it. The question is how much?

Morningstar Launches an Uninspiring iPhone App

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:22:57 PDT

Morningstar, the company that, via Bank of America, CarMax and Western Union stock recommendations, recently surpassed Jim Cramer as the single biggest source of my epic stock market losses, has a new iPhone app (iTunes link). The free app offers investing ideas, real-time quotes, analyst research, financial news, Morningstar ratings, company profiles and more.

Notwithstanding all my losses, I am a long-time and more or less satisfied Morningstar subscriber. Everyone has lost money in the stock market over the last year or two, and at least Morningstar isn't brokering the stocks it recommends. I want some sort of stock market analysis, and I still think Morningstar is less bad than just about any other source.

Morningstar's web site is full of data, analyst reports, portfolio tools and news. At the moment, I am pretending I never heard of the stock market, but when my head gets above sand level, Morningstar is my primary investing idea and analysis source.

The iPhone app, however, is no great shakes. The app does not allow access to all of Morningstar's premium content or the stock portfolios and watch lists you have set up on Morningstar's web site. In fact, the app is not even tied to your Morningstar account. As a result, there's very little this app does that you can't get in another, more mature financial app. There is a dearth of content- and there's no reason for Morningstar to be so stingy, given the massive amount of resources on its web site.

On the plus side, you can get access to portions of the Morningstar analyst report for stocks and mutual funds, quotes and the Morningstar rating. If I wasn't a Morningstar subscriber who is used to having all of the premium content accessible, I would probably feel a little better about this app.

A premium app with "enhanced functionality" is promised for "later this year." That's very close to perfectly vague. If Morningstar releases a premium app that syncs with your Morningstar paid account and allows access to a lot more Morningstar content in an iPhone-centric design and has the good sense not to charge paying members for it, they'll have a winner.

Until then, I'd look elsewhere for my iPhone financial information.

Instant Desktop: We All Shine On (with Presto)

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:11:56 PDT

If you'd like to experience this post in fine, multimedia fashion, click here before continuing (buy @ Amazon).

OK, I admit that I generally lump hardcore Linux users in the same category as carriage drivers, pursuit hunters and Wolfram Alpha users- people who make things way harder than they have to be. A few years ago, I installed Linux on a computer I built. Several hellish days later, I wiped the hard drive, grabbed my shotgun and went looking for some penguins to kill. Since then I have avoided Linux the way Cormac McCarthy avoids punctuation.

But at the same time, I get extremely impatient waiting for my various computers to load. Generations of moths are born, live a fine moth-life and die in the time it takes my desktop to boot. And my various laptops aren't much faster. It's semi-bearable at home, but it can be a real drag (pun intended) when I'm trying to access email or the web from the road via my laptop. Windows is never going to get within sight of the "instant on" ballpark, so I decided to look for another solution for quick access to basic laptop functions.

Guess what I settled on. . .

Linux. In the form of Presto (here's the FAQ). Presto is a stripped-down Linux system designed to load quickly on just about any computer. It installs on your Windows hard drive, just like a regular Windows program. Once installed, when you boot your computer you have an option to boot into Windows or Presto. Pick Presto and, presto, you have an almost instant Linux desktop.

I installed Presto on the 64 bit laptop I'm using to test Windows 7. If I select Presto at bootup, less than 20 seconds later I have a completely loaded operating system, with immediate access to the web (via Firefox), email (via Gmail), Skype, and even Word documents (via OpenOffice). There's even an App Store where you can find additional software to install.

Presto costs $20.00, but the fast loading time and preinstalled applications make it worth it for the impatient traveler. I have found that I use it even more than I thought I would. This tells me that speed is king in the new application age. And that the cloud will be good for alternative operating systems, and probably bad for Microsoft.

I'm never going to use Linux as a primary operating system, but for quick access to email or the web, Presto is a fine alternative.

Can Tumblr Be My New Blip.fm?

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:43:27 PDT

Assuming the ominous signs are correct, and Blip.fm is about to go from cool music sharing and discovery service to an RIAA-ravaged skeleton of its former self, I need a new music site to take its place. There aren't any obvious candidates, so I have been looking far afield in search of a new music hangout. While I post regular music-related content here at Newsome.Org, it's not the best place for frequent video posts and short links to good public MP3s.

While it's not perfect, I think I may have found my new thing. Tumblr. Sure, I've known about Tumblr for a while, but until this past weekend I hadn't used it. I signed up on Saturday and spent a little time creating my Tumblr page.

Let's take a closer look.

Registration is easy. Afterwards, you can choose from a ready-made Theme or write (or hack) your own, via a small but functional custom HTML box.

It's a pretty simple exercise to customize your Tumblr page, and add whatever links and other information you want to display. After you get your layout the way you want it, it's time to add some content. This is where Tumblr really shines.

Via the Tumblr Dashboard, from which you manage your Tumblr page layout and content, there are forms to upload or embed text, photos, quotes, links, chat transcripts, audio and video. The cornucopia of sharing options reminds me of all the reasons Pownce was a vastly superior content sharing platform compared to the more popular and celebrity-infested, but feature-challenged, Twitter.

The audio and video forms allow you to either upload an audio or video file or to embed a file hosted elsewhere. Particularly helpful is the ability to embed a YouTube video merely by pasting the URL into the form. The process is as simple as it could be.

An even better way to add YouTube videos to your Tumblr page is via the Tumblr bookmarklet. When you share content with the bookmarklet from a YouTube page, the video is automatically embedded in your Tumblr page, along with a descriptive caption. This is a really cool feature. If Tumblr could add the ability to do the same thing with audio links, perhaps via a right click, Tumblr could take media sharing to a whole new level.

There's a very neat iPhone app, a Mac Dashboard Widget (which I haven't tried) and the ability to add audio posts via your phone, which might be cool to do from a live performance. You can also add posts via email, or IM. And there are a ton of third party apps to explore and experiment with.

One of those third party apps adds one very important feature- the ability to play all of your audio posts in a playlist equivalent.

Once you add some content, you can also edit or delete posts via the Dashboard.

At the end of the process, you get a really cool page with mixed media in one handy place. There is an optional Twitter integration, that will post links to your posts to your Twitter account, and there is the ability to add up to five RSS feeds to your Tumblr page. One thing I do not like, is the layout of the archive page. It's ugly and, well just ugly. And I don't see any way to customize it.

Tumblr also lacks to built-in audience and sharing features (props, listeners, re-blips, responses, etc.) of Blip.fm. This is a big drawback, but if the empty bag holding RIAA is determined to kill the cool services like Blip.fm and all the music sales they promote, it may be that non-centralized locations may be the only way to go if you want to remain relatively unshackled.

While Tumblr has more than enough features to serve as the sharing equivalent of Blip.fm, it does not yet provide the same discovery function. I'm not sure how to address that problem. One idea would be to collaborate on and post a shared Tumblr blog roll of similar music pages (the Tumblr directory doesn't seem to serve a close enough function). A better idea might be to share a Tumblr page with a group of like-minded music fans. That's something I will probably explore if I can find some other folks who like a good mix of alt. country, country rock, classic rock and blues.

In the meantime, check out my Tumblr page for some good music. And if you're an artist doing that sort of music, send me an MP3 file or link and I'll see about adding it to the playlist.

Evening Reading: 5/17/09

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:22:08 PDT

How Not to Catch Tigers: You need to see this video of a tiger turning the tables on some park rangers who (a) captured her cubs and then (b) decided to ride around on elephants nearby. Maybe I'm a sissy, but if I'm out trying to catch a tiger, I want to be on something a little faster than an elephant. Like, say, a Land Rover. Or a helicopter.

This is as Messed Up as Messed Up Can Be: So this lady's diabetic daughter can't see a doctor, but she gets the vapors at her resulting trial and they call 911? I would have suggested she say a prayer or something. I'm a pretty religious guy, and this sort of nonsense really chaps my ass.

Technowhat: Steven Hodson on Technorati's efforts to stay relevant, or at least alive. Technorati had a chance back in the Dave Sifry era, but the train left the station while Technorati was looking for a ticket.

Tis But a Decade: Lost in LaMancha is a very interesting documentary about Terry Gilliam's previously unsuccessful effort to reinvent the Don Quixote story, originally to star Johnny Depp. Now, probably thanks in part to the legitimization of time travel via Lost, it looks like he may one day succeed.

Comcast Complaint Department: For the past week or so, my Comcast broadband connection has become spotty, fading out regularly for short periods. Anyone else having a similar problem?

Science Fiction (Ooh Ooh Ooh) Double Feature Department: Here's Someone's List of the 50 Essential Sci-Fi Films.

King Kahn Department: Any time the king has a new song, you can count on hearing it here: 69 Faces of Love. Yeah, that's pretty tame for the king. If you want less normal king, try Land of the Freak. Buy King Kahn and The Shrines records at Amazon. (via Hear Ya)

At the Edge of the Tech Universe: If just converting LPs to MP3s is not fringe enough for you, here's how to rip a 78 RPM record to a Mac. Unfortunately, the only guy who'd ever want to do that is the dude who wrote that article.

Whose Line Was that Anyway: 100 of the best movie lines in 200 seconds.

Star Trek Department: Popular Science asks if Warp Speed is possible. If not, there's always Ludicrous Speed.

Speaking of Ludicrous: Here's some more ludicrous jargon, courtesy of ReadWriteWeb and its beloved semantic web. I just don't understand how smart people can react so reverently when they see something like this:

If that was coming out of a horn, it would be perfect for a Monty Python movie. Honestly, I think if someone expressed this lint in a complex mathematical equation, some of these folks would literally faint from excitement. Forget all that nerdery, if they want to be all academic and whatnot, RWW should focus only on answering this question. Maybe it will help that the word Harvard appears in the first line.

Let's Kill the Monster Before it Takes Over the World: As much as I fervently wish the Semantic Web concept would disappear off the face of the earth, like most of the other Web 2.whatever concepts, I would be even happier if retweeting was banned by Twitter. Or Congress. Or God. Retweeting is the bastard offspring of three horrible things: laziness, spam and cronyism.

Meanwhile, Back on this Earth: ReadWriteWeb also takes a look at the Feedburner problem. Google is gambling with a lot of goodwill, with the way it continues to ignore the epic problems with Feedburner. Yes, I know there are alternatives, but I also know that a lot of people have built their subscriber numbers using (and in spite of) Feedburner. Google should spend some of the fortune it made on the back of the publishers who rely on Feedburner and fix it. Just fracking fix it.

Department of Photographs: Today's installment in my quest to become an average photographer includes 14 Great Photography Tips and a primer on shooting portraits on a budget.

Snowmen in the Sun: the End of Blip.fm?

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sat, 16 May 2009 08:34:11 PDT

I have written favorably about Blip.fm, the web site and application that lets you share music with others in a Twitter-like fashion. I've been a regular user for several months, and until now have been putting together an awesome A-Z new wave playlist. As with any fun online music service, however, there's always been a concern in the back of my mind that, like Frosty the Snowman, Blip.fm was too good to last. And it looks like the melting has begun.

Jeff Yasuda, the head of the Blip.fm development team, has announced that some changes are coming. And none of them are good.

First of all, the music available at Blip.fm will soon be coming almost exclusively from Imeem, another music discovery service. I've never used Imeem, but a quick look tells me we are talking about a severely reduced universe of songs. A search at Imeem returned exactly one Star Room Boys song, compared to the twenty or so you used to find at Blip.fm. And not a single Steve Pride song. How can you consider yourself a music service and not have a single copy of, say, Welcome to the Big Time? If you want to hear the best alternative country record ever made or ever to be made, go buy Pride on Pride.

While you may not have to visit Imeem to stream the songs via Blip.fm, the interface at Imeem is about as fun as a root canal. Compared to the simple elegance of the Blip.fm site, it is a chaotic mashup of train wrecks. In sum, I have zero interest in Imeem as a service, and the resulting reduction in available songs will materially diminish the fun factor at Blip.fm, especially for users like me who look for old or obscure music.

Adding to the pain is a new limitation on adding songs from public locations. Currently, if you know the URL for an mp3, you can easily add that song to your Blip.fm playlist. Under the new plan, public mp3s will be limited to "legitimate bands and labels approved in our systems." There's a sign-up form at Blip.fm where I suppose labels and perhaps independent artists can sign up to get their music included in the new database.

There are other changes. The Blip.fm widget, which was crappy already, will only list the song but will not generally play it.

And, as the biggest bummer of all, current songs on your playlist will be replaced, where possible, by content from the Imeem catalog, and any song not in that catalog will "temporarily" cease to play. I don't know what that means for songs that aren't and won't be in the Imeem catalog, but it doesn't sound good for my new wave playlist.

There are promises about forthcoming new partnerships that may allow additional content, and I hope that happens.

But until the music industry as we have known it dies and is reborn as a direct artist to consumer market, the Blip.fm's of the world are like snowmen in the sun. You better enjoy them while you can, because it's only a matter of time before they melt.

The Jim Jones Revue, Rocked, Rolled and Reviewed

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:52:30 PDT

One of life's great pleasures is discovering a new band that really blows you away. I had one of those moments today when, thanks to 30 Days Out, I discovered The Jim Jones Revue.

Start with the true father of rock and roll, Little Richard. Add big helping of vintage punk rock attitude, and a hard charging, rip-roaring, garage band-style blues vibe. Then crank up the volume, toss your head around wildly and start digging The Jim Jones Revue's self-titled record. Released last year, this record completely and relentlessly rocks. From the first second of the first song, Princess & the Frog to the last second of the last song, Cement Mixer, this record simply doesn't let up. Unadulterated rock and roll. It sounds like The Black Keys on some Carlos Castaneda-inspired mushroom trip. And I mean that in a good way.

Need to hear it for yourself? Take a listen to Hey Hey Hey Hey. If that doesn't rock your socks off, you must be barefooted and deaf.

If you like rock and roll, go buy this record right now. And turn it up.

While you're at it, imagine for a moment that you're back in the golden era of music videos, watching 120 Minutes, and this comes pouring out of your TV.

Not too shabby, huh?

Evening Reading: 5/12/09

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:04:21 PDT

Mashup Department: Kill fire ants by turning them into a horror movie. I wonder if Lou Diamond Phillips is in it?

Literary Acumen: Impress your friends by interpreting nursery rhymes for them.

What's a Blog, Again: Prob Logger (I know, but that's a cooler name) has 10 ways not to promote your blog.

This Reminds Me of Something: Task.fm looks like a neat little Twitter inspired idea that takes more time than, say, adding the event to your calendar. But these days, it's all about the 140.

Fancy Jargon Department: I'm over Wolfram|Alpha before I even see it, simply because it calls itself a "computational knowledge engine." One thing I've learned in my 15 years or so online is that really cool stuff doesn't need fancy jargon. There is generally an inverse relationship between fancy jargon and usefulness. The (ugh) "semantic web" is the best example of this. If you want to feel semantically smart, here's more on the so called Google killer.

Nerdywood Squares: Google took a quick break from being killed by Wolfram to work on Google Squared, which extracts data from web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. Here's a news flash- for 99% of the population, Google search works just fine. There are far too many people trying to fix what ain't broken. Here's a screen shot, which doesn't really get me all that excited.

See Google Blogoscoped for more

It Just Does Department: Popular Science looks scientifically at just exactly why shit happens.

Keep Photography Beautiful: Tintii looks like a cool application for photo manipulation.

Department of Musicology: The "B" Side did a cool thing for Lattimore Brown. You need to read that story, and watch the EconoLodge & Holiday Inn rehearsal videos. And especially the video of his appearance at the Ponderosa Stomp Music Conference.

That Micro-financing Sound: Linda Thompson is using micro-financing to raise money for her next record. You can get a free MP3 if you're willing to give out your email address. I donated a little bit. For $5000, she'll actually record one of your songs. I wish I could afford that. I'd ask her to record When You're Sitting at the Bar (which she could clobber). If you aren't familiar with Linda's work, just listen to the very excellent Walking on a Wire from 1982's Shoot Out the Lights.

Evening Reading: 5/10/09

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:46:20 PDT

Department of Holidays: Happy Mother's Day to Raina and all the other moms out there. Here's my post from two years ago about my mom.

Dollhouse Department: I was pretty underwhelmed by the first few episodes, but the show really grew on me. I thought the season (and likely series) finale was excellent. io9 has a good recap, an argument that Dollhouse is Joss Whedon's greatest work, a theory on why everyone in the Dollhouse may be a doll, and a faint hope for a spin-off. I still prefer Firefly, another great show canned too early by Fox, but I hope we see more Dollhouse.

Drag and Drop Encoding to Go: EncodeHD promises a simple drag and drop application to encode your video for playback on your device of choice. iPhones are supported, of course.

MediaSmart Server Department: Thankfully, HP has decided to do the right thing and push the new software to the first generation servers, like mine. No space shuttle required.

Blip.fm Department: Thanks to @accepta for being the first (to my knowledge) to blip of one of my songs. Lots of my songs are available via the Blip.fm search box, so please blip away!

Department of Stupidity: I have and will continue to raise a vigorous defense against those who continually criticize everything Christian, but crap like this does not help my cause. It's important to remember that there are extreme views in every organization and in every faith and those at the edges do not represent the generally quieter and more rational majority.

Speaking of Church: The United Methodist Church has smartly adopted a social media approach to its web site.

Cool Video Department: Here's a neat time lapse of a ship moving through Houston at night (via A Welsh View).

Photography Workflow: Thomas Hawk describes how he manages his massive photography jones.

More Awesome Photography: I can't describe how much I dig Joshua Hoffine's horror photography. You have to check this out.

Publish or Perish Department: Here's a list of 20 top print on demand services. And here are 6 ways to publish your book.

Hunting for Real Men: I have no respect (to put it mildly) for those dudes who go to Africa and shoot lions and elephants and whatnot. They should stone up and do it this way.

Nerdy Pop Quiz: Here's a list of 64 things every geek should know. I only know about half of them, so maybe there's hope for me yet.

Fab Four Department: 30 Days Out has some Beatles rarities. Check out this rehearsal take of "I'm Only Sleeping."

Jobs I Don't Want Department: And last, but definitely not least, if you want a new job, maybe you too can be a snapping turtle hunter.

New Podcast: EELS #63

noreply@blogger.com (Kent) — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:55:08 PDT

Dave and I got together for The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show #63 this week. Mike was off doing some sort of real work, so we just talked about him instead of to him. Among the many other topics we covered are Roy Blumenthal's excellent art, Wikipedia, Twitter, my excellent experience with Microsoft's Live Writer developer support, the very useful Topify and Pogoplug (my review here).

As always, we had lots of good discussion, debate and laughs. Read more details here, or give us a listen by clicking here. I'm the one with the funny accent.

If you're into tech, and particularly if you are a developer of a cool app that needs a little exposure, drop me a line (see the link in the left hand column) and we'll see about having you on a future show. Trust me, it's a good time.