11.30.05

Q-Unit: Queen, 50 Cent Mashup

Posted in Social Media at 11:39 pm by

Q-Unit – the mashup between Queen and 50 Cent. Get your copy while its available.

Open WetWare

Posted in Social Media at 11:38 pm by

Today I came across OpenWetWare a wiki devoted to:

promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering. OWW provides a place for labs, individuals, and groups to organize their own information and collaborate with others easily and efficiently.

Wikis have already proven extremely valuable in organizing information on encyclopedia-type info. Why not the more in-depth sciences?

New Orleans to have City WiFi

Posted in Social Media at 11:29 pm by

In an effort to jumpstart city development New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, announced that they will be rolling out a municipal wireless network. Fantastic idea although I hope it doesn’t distract from the bigger issue of finding people housing, employment, and community.

“Now, with a single step, city departments, businesses and private citizens can access a tool that will help speed the rebuilding of New Orleans as a better, safer and stronger city,” Nagin said in a statement. “This is how technology fuels collaboration, allowing our best ideas to come together so we can speak with one voice.”

Robertson Launches Oboe

Posted in Social Media at 11:24 pm by

Holy Crap! Two Michael Robertson postings in less than month! Before, I mentioned how he’s packaging open source software for sale at retail outlets. Today, he announced the launch of Oboe an online music locker.

You can store all of your own music, making your entire music collection playable from any browser in the world. Plus you can also sync that entire music collection and playlists to multiple computers with a single mouse click. Oboe is the jukebox in the sky that can store all library for safety, playback and move your music to any location for offline playback as well.

Anyone familiar with the failed original MP3.com remembers it was their music locker server that doomed them to the RIAA ire[/url]. Not quite sure how they will make it work this time around. Still, its a fantastic idea. I definately would pay the $40 a year to have web based access to all my music.

Dean Gray Tuesday

Posted in Social Media at 11:12 pm by

Remember Grey Tuesday? The act of civil disobiedence held to distribute the DJ Danger Mouse mashup around the web? The Downhill Battle guys are back – this time announcing that Dean Gray Tuesday will be December 13th.

What is the Dean Gray album? Its the mashup of the Green Day American Idiot ablum. You might have heard the leaked combination of ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, Oasis, and Aerosmith on the radio. Now the entire album of brilliance will be available – if only for one day only.

I’ve signed up to host the files here at mutednoise – I’ll keep you updated.

Mawzer: Lego-Like Music Controller

Posted in Social Media at 11:04 pm by

Ladies and gentlemen music makers, I call a droolworthy alert. The Mawzer Controller lets musicians assemble their dream midi controller from over 8 different Midi modules.

What’s more you’re not locked into the configuration you order. Any setup can be disassembled and put back together as the situation requires. Smaller table at the venue than you thought? Drop off those three sliders you never use.

When I was still working for Digitech I drew up plans for something similar. However, it was nothing more than napkin doodles. Big bravo to Mawzer to bringing a great idea to life.

Laptop Battle in Philly

Posted in Social Media at 10:58 pm by

I’ve previously checked out the Seattle laptop battle scene. I’m glad to see that these things are still happening including this upcoming event in Philly:

They’ve got some serious judges involved: recording faculty from Temple University, electronic musician Charles Cohen, and the music promotions director for Urban Outfitters. Some of our favorite sponsors, too: Ableton, Grooves, Novation, Focusrite, etc.

Laptops are becomming uber common. It feels like we need to have Blackberry battles to be cutting edge now. Still, I’d love some post-event video/audio… Anybody know of anything similar going down around them? And has the PSP, supposidly a ‘powerful’ multi-media platform, gotten any music making software yet?

TV a la Carte?

Posted in Social Media at 10:51 pm by

A new report by the FCC proposes that cable tv watchers should be able to pick and choose the channels they get to watch. I’ve long said that this would be absoluetely fantastic for my household – we’d be interested in Comedy Central, TLC, the Discovery Channel, and not much else. The reason that the FCC says changes are needed are to protect the children (would somebody think of the children) – the Disney Channel, after all, doesn’t make sense when bundled with MTV. I think that’s a little over the top. Any cable provider or satellite TV service I’ve heard provides some kind of programmable controls to lock out undesirable channels. We can’t govern what should be the responsibility of parents.

Several parent and consumer advocacy groups, including the Parents Television Council and the Consumers Union, have urged Congress to consider legislation that would require a la carte options for television. These groups believe that allowing consumers to subscribe to individual channels instead of purchasing entire packages would lower costs and provide parents with more control over what programs their children watch.

Of course, this issue would be moot if more cable networks didn’t adopt such forward thinking iniatives like Motherload.

11.29.05

Ode to Gmail…from the Sims

Posted in Social Media at 3:52 pm by

How remix culture is this? An original song that uses moon-lander footage and the Sims 2 game engine for a music video and hosted for free on Google Video.

I believe now I have seen everything. ;)

How to do an Online Music Store

Posted in Social Media at 3:30 pm by

The EFF’s Fred von Lohmann has a review of Jane Siberry’s online music store. Siberry, a Candadian singer-songwriter, takes a radical approach to selling tracks (hint: it’s consumer friendly!):

All of her songs are available as plain MP3s, which means they will play on your iPod and are not loaded with DRM restrictions (much less evil rootkits).

And you pay whatever you like for them. Yes, you set whatever price you like. Options include:

* free (”gift from Jane”);
* a standard price (CAN$0.99);
* self-determined price – pay now; or
* self-determined price – pay later (to facilitate try-before-you-buy).

When you purchase the song, moreover, you can select up to 5 people to whom you can email a link to the song.

It makes me a fan and I haven’t even listened to her music yet.

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