Thanks Man Video by Kodak

All of the summer/fall fruits are starting to pop-up over the net. Get your free gift courtesy of the Kodak Gallery Thank You Man campaign orchestrated via O&M with assist from folks over at Green Card.

Schmooze Cruise with Jonesey & X-Ray burns

if you don't have your tickets already for 4 hour cruise with WFMU's Glen Jones and X-ray burns you are missing out. This coming Sunday 10/11 leavin' from east 23rd at high noon. Jonsey is celebrating with a live broadcast taking fans around Manhatten. There will be snacks and cash bar and maybe a naked dance by Jonsey himself (could be bad). get your tickets while they last from brown paper bag tickets. I'm going and I never do anything this fun. Come rock the boat.


What: The IBJ Schmooze Cruise around Manhattan, plus live broadcast + snacks + cash bar.
Where: Aboard the S.S. Jewel, departing from New York Skyports Marina, 2430 FDR Drive, East Service Road (at E. 23rd St), New York, NY.
Why: This Part of radio legends Glen and X. Ray's 2009 Marathon victory lap which included convincing their very brave Station Manager Ken to let them host their very own booze cruise. This is the first-ever IBJ Schmooze Cruise and could be the last too!

Mac vs PC vs the google Browser price point

Ah the age old question which one is better? Mac or PC? Ok for the last time. Macs are good for designers who have no sense of organization and PC's are good for business types who have no creativity. Enuf said. Funny article on Mac calling PC that their Best Buy TV ad is unfair where the user ends up buying a PC well because it's cheaper! HAHAHAHA! It is time to make nice guys

Everybody should be watching out for the Google OS which is really a browser. It's going to get ugly as Microsoft only makes about 15 bucks net according to the WSJ and that price is going to drop. If you're paranoid, and you should be, Google already has too much information on you and will now try and drive the cost of your hardware/sfotware too. Google would only release an OS because they want to improve the world. Right? Watch your back PC and MACs.

Sony BMG screws the Emusic indie pooch

Well unless you have been under a rock and not paying attention there has been some wheeling and dealing going on behind the emusic scenes with Sony/BMG. Like gasoline the cost of your online music is "slightly" going up to give you better service. Whaaaaaaaaaat? You mean double right Emusic? Early this year iTunes started charging a premium for some artists (1.28) and slightly less for other. Emusic is raising prices on average of 100% as they bring on the Sony/BMG catalog for releases that are two years or older. Ok fine but do i really care about Stevie Ray Vaughan at this point? Gimme Anti Records or nonesuch releases. If this is part of that plan. cool. If not it sucks.

To put it in perspective. My previous music download subscription account afforded me 65 downloads a month for $14.99 us dollars. Basically 23cents per track. The new plan I'm being forced to subscribe too is the same monthly fee for 37 tracks which is roughly 40.5 cents a track. Which is just about double what I was paying or 100% more!! I think gas prices are somehow related but we have not been able to figure out the connection yet. For albums with 12 or more tracks they are going to offer on select releases only a flat cost of just 12 download credits. The albums that already have this is limited so would be a good move by indies to think Nice Price but time will tell since all of your basic customer service plans details have not been released in full yet. You know I would have been fine with a slight increase but this is pretty harsh just so i can get me some Alicia keys. C'om on! Why not have those pop artists make better music or phase them out entirely. emusic has had over 250 Million downloads since it's launch by mostly independent artists (Remember last year we enjoyed the rolling stones on emusic for a spell).

Basically now you get 3 albums with of an avg 12 songs or more per album for 12 download credits, as opposed to 5.5 albums on old 65 luxurious download plan. Which is a 128% decrease in my subscription service. Bah hum-bug.

I'm also supposedly getting a +15 free booster track. Some legacy user with larger download plans (I imagine) will get a 25 booster pack. i wonder if this is every month or a one time thing? Because that would make it 52 tracks and 28cents a track which would be a fair rent 10% increase landlord. For those not grandfathered in the deal sucks or a least to begin with but still better than the lower 78 cent download price. I'll imagine it's a one time thing and will stick it out but the minute I start to notice the indies start to fall beneath promotion line I'll move on. I'm warning you emusic despite the single thread response the corp strategy has been to shoot the pooch first, watch them holler before responding. The internet is good like that.

Some of the Artists that are part of the Sony catalog will satisfy a lot of the alternative crowd who care about The Clash, Uncle Tupelo (sorry no wilco) and lou reed if you don't already own the damn cds!. For the older crowd you'll get Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke along with some classic rock Jefferson Airplane, Meat Loaf, Stevie Ray Vaughan, foo fighters, ben folds and some forgettable stuff as well, like kings of leon(my pov anyways), Rage against the machine. This of course is a partial list. Emusic is still the best deal out there for legal DRM free music.

What does luck have to do with it?

So the other day I'm about 4 houses away from mine and the front right wheel feels like it has a flat. Sort of turns right really hard so I mandle the steering wheel to bring it on home so I can at least be broken down in front of my home. When I jump out of the car all the wheels have their air except one is turned all crooked as if it's almost detached. Yikes! Now 10 minutes prior I was jamming down the Garden State Parkway going my usual speeds. eh-hem. What is wrong with this picture? Ya 10 minutes prior I could have bit the dust hard. Now for the fun part the guys who had replaced my struts and full front alignment are to blame. They blamed wear and tear from redoing my alignment twice before. BS. I'm very lucky to telling this tale. They didn't charge me for the redo and got it done faster than I've ever got car services. I won't drop names here because they are nice enough guys but luck has not been on my side lately. I suppose though having this incident happen to me so close to home was lucky. So next time you're a little stressed think of this simple story and don't stew over the small stuff. Life is really friggin' short. Timing is everything.

Social networks for Haters and the Karma Police

Totally odd premise for a social network site (based out of Pahrump, NV?) that is attempting to manage social karma called ventma.com by inviting the public to identify whistle blowers, call out sneaks or shall we say liars, cheaters, grifters, rapscallions, scallywags, scoundrels, shysters, sneaks, etc. Really for those folks who walk on water but on the other hand an attempt to socially level the playing field in this new age of transparency. If you're called out there seems to be a option to defend yourself. Booya for the haters and the over conscious social well adjusted individuals who always gotta be right. Some of the counter points for keeping lets say marijuana illegal, idiot managers, and are juvenile so if you're looking to get into a argument this is the place to do it. People can list their un-interests and of course see what Ventma's CEO Ryan Breen's life philosophy which is kind of short dude and not so revealing. Here's their over all premise:

All the social networking sites today are for finding and making friends. But lets be real, not everything in life is honky dory. The economy, the weather, greed, deception are all too real in today’s world. Because of these things, people act out in many ways. Some violent by action, some verbal and some self inflicted. All of these are a result from bottled up emotions. What if these people had an outlet to diffuse their anger before it came to that? We hope that as a result of Ventma.com we can accomplish just that. Even if we help just a few people this way, we will be satisfied.

They are looking PHP and Flash Developers as I guess the Hindi company they hired to do some of their work did not have karma on their side. I did find various bugs for the login and lost pw process which is problematic as could not login (PC/Firefox/Flash10)! I was seriously going to post about U.S. Companies outsourcing work to other countries in these messed economic times. Ahhh, that does feel better see! Support America's work force dummies that site would have been working properly or they should give me buzz and I can have my guys fix this site in a jiffy.



I much preferred hatebook.org when it was still active because there was no privacy at all. Everything you posted or emailed to another individual was open to all users. They say they are coming back but we'll see what happens. On the other hand there is nothing wrong with being straight up hater for everything even things we know are right. There I go being all socially pompous.

Download some hate:
Liar - Built to Spill - mp3 from you in reverse
Cheater - Bubblegum Thunder
Hateful - The Clash - London Calling
Hate Paste - Archers of Loaf

Google open source Andriod phones are coming

As confirmed by the NYT blog yesterday Google expects up to 18 Android phones to be available on the market by the end of the year. Developers can get their motors running and download Android 1.5 SDK stack and you business types can start marketing. Apparently the open system is going to have 3 working business models and they are already are offering several working applications.

First: The obligation-free option: where manufacturers can download a free version of Android and load it onto their devices and provide access to as few or as many apps as they want. But the manufacturers cannot pre-load popular Google applications, like Gmail or Google calendar. Which seems sort of limiting if you ask me but will keep big brother out.

Second: The small strings option: Basically this is is the same as Option 1, but the manufacturers need to sign a distribution agreement to include on the phone Google applications. Of the 18 to 20 phones coming out this year, 12 to 14 will more than likely subscribe to this option according to Mr. Andy Rubin the director for Mobile Platforms for Google. Remember when your PC always had to come with IE. Same idea.

The Third: The bigger strings option or the no-censorship version: These phones Google calls “The Google Experience.” They are differentiated by having the honor of the “Google” logo on the device and will include a range of Google applications that the carrier and handset maker agree to leave on the phone. They also must not to censor access to the Android open developer market. The risk being that if the shaken baby is suddenly recreated by some dumbass developer it must not be forcible removed. It must remain as part of the applications available for consumers. This is not about taste. 5-6 manufacturers are going to go for this relationship model.

How Clients are in real life situations with Vendors

This video short called The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations is very painful to watch and all too familiar. Negotiating more for less is one of the things that is ruining our technology economy. Similar to the issues associated with outsourcing everything. Chipping down your vendor all the time is not the way to go. I've been in this situation where you have to explain to some Clients that you indeed can't always get what you want for the same price. Just because they either F'd up or want more service for whatever money they have in their ill conceived budget or crap they changed their mind half way through the meal and ordered a new entree for the price of one meal. Time is always your best defense in these situations along with some pre-budgeting or allocating hours for the unknown. Let them know that you'd love to do something but we've run out of time or will need to devote more time because of their cascading changes. Now what makes it worse is in our job market with hundreds of well qualified candidates selling themselves for the same job these days there is a potential and the risk of underselling. With glut of great talent, I fear there is a lot of under bidding happening, with the same sort of self deprecating mentality. This is the opposite problem post 911 where folks were totally overpaid and had zero experience. So for the duration its a once again a buyers market, not a sellers market, where people will be perceived as effective individuals even though their requests are so ballsy it's hard to imagine them being able to sleep at night, and forget about having them understand caveats or roadmap for their requests. That's when the client turns deaf too!

Facebook updates their insight profile analytics

If you have a "public profile" as a Artist, Brand or organization on Facebook and if you click view more and then view insights a whole bunch of new stats will come-up that are much like your basic web site analytics but now you can see the age demographics broken down by how many wall posts, comments, sex and like flags. You need some action on your page for the whole display to work by real users other than just yourself. I think the bar is low but definitely needs to be recent so you can see weekly metrics according to FB. The old insights page was ok but in an effort to encourage self managed advertising this tool was destined to evolve and it has.

The idea seems to be geared to give you the controls to spend money to promote your public profile. I had no clue this was here but then again I was not paying that much attention. Then again ignoring my millions of fans would be bad especially if you have access to them all in one place! This whole marketing ploy is starting to make sense just when everybody is getting ready to jump the shark to tumblr, blip and twitter. I'm still a fan because the masses seem pretty happy and it's simple to participate and not as cluttered as that myspace of a eyesore. I just need to figure out the meaning of post quality score and I'm also digging into the active fans stat and see what that is about. If anything this info will just reconfirm some of the info you might already have know beyond the very high-level info like number of fans. This gives your fans "activity". Lets see how we do over the next months as we prepare the slow wire and eastern anchors to play some shows this summer. Now if Last.fm, which I am a huge fan of as band litmus test, or if the big black box known as myspace did this we would have a real competitive landscape and give the artists more power.

We're also giving Sonic Bids a test drive over at the HeadPhone Music HQ. I've never been too keen to fork out money to get noticed so that is the only thing that is keeping me on the fence. A open commerce market model might be better for the little guys but sonic bids does aggregate your last.fm and myspace friend counter which is a good start but the google buzz tool they include is pretty insignificant as it contains a bunch of unspecific noise. Now if they can tie the user interactions into video plays and song/video plays this will all be rocking info to have. The only thing it does not do is help you write good songs and make the folks listen and like your music. That's the hard part about marketing music ain't it?

Sample some Headphone Music Tracks:
Crossed Wires by The Slow Wire
Release the Dogs by Eastern Anchors
Bradley Wake-Up By Aviso'Hara from Our Lady of the Highway

Westfied Memorial Day Parade 2009

This years parade started around 9:45 and lasted what seemed like a whole 25 minutes. We got there way early so if you get there around 9:30 that's plenty of time to get a decent spot. If you like short parades this one is good for the kids. In fact it seemed that all of the kids were in the parade with the Cub Scout, Brownies and Marching Band, etc. There was a strong show of the police force marching with machine guns which I did not think was appropriate at all but over all the crowd was not too bad. There were no vendors either which was also good so you had to go support the local merchants for your breakfast foods.


Waving Flags



There were even pirates?

The Slow Wire is playing this summer!

Listen to some music by The Slow Wire on last.fm. Catch this new jersey indie rock band as they come out of hiatus. There is a whole untapped batched of new songs coming...

Fri June 19th @ The Crossroads, Garwood, NJ 8pm early set
Fri June 26th @ Automata Chino, Jersey City, NJ

Enjoy some Free # One Hits:
Super Glue - from Analog.living on AmCITY!
You've Got Moxie - from the Golden Age of Treason - Headphone Music

Fan The Slow Wire on Facebook | Myspace

Summertime summertime mexican food and beer

Nothing beats a cold brew and a simple pork, rice and bean meal in the summer time. When sun is out and you add some rocknroll to the mix like the cherry blosom clinic on wfmu.org and you are golden. Seriously looking forward to hearing THE DAMNED live on the radio today.

The social network access stratrosphere

Are you confused as to what to tools use for what for all these social networks? Why so many widgets and sites to help you manage your life in virtual life? What? I know you thought you already had a handle on life post DOT COM but why not just download another piece of waste (software). It's free to try it kid.

Well you are not alone and quite frankly we predict this wild wild west to continue growing like the crazy weed; as the business verticals (business, sports, entertainment, news, technology, etc) figure out how to get your money. When a clear dominance is re-established and the footing is set we'll all continue to get sucked in like we did with the early days of television and radio. Well ladies and germs we are getting there and the train is moving fast as rapidly as language will permit early adopters and tastemakers to speak and give their opinions. Separating the old business paradigm and connecting life and work in new and innovative ways is what is being created here in this entangled but awesome intraweb.

There are many ways to look at the confounded paths of web trends and analytics. The first is by site traffic which clearly depicts in the graphics how we are using the paths and who has the largest audience but what does it mean to you? The information architects are using the analogy of a crazy train system to define these web trends. Go over there and download the whole map it really is very impressive. Each node with it's own business model. The slice I like the most is the key right below which breaks down all the different social factors that help define success of a trend. Not as straight forward as the concepts are mostly opinion based but the way they did it expresses scale and levels of success. Not monetization necessarily, as that is the end game, but the relationship between all the different properties in the web stratosphere. I tried to get at the issue by thinking of life in terms of the taxonomy of people in my FB notes a few months back and when everybody was posting random photos. Enter social networks to help you organize these ideas and abstract concepts any which way you like to add to the confusion. Everybody would like to tag and categorize stuff but not everybody is good at it.



This key is not everything you need of course but just a understanding of the different types of the intellectual capital that is exchanging at such a phenomenal rate. I'm thinking interactions should work just like a coupon so you can buy something or get something out of the "free" exchange of traffic. You see it happening subtlety on blip.fm where you can give points to users that you can then pay forward or rating videos on youtube. The credit is meaningless of course but what if it weren't? What if that were real money? Would it retain it's value and become virtual spam? Of course it would. The challenge would to figure out how make a smart algorithm to filter a thinly veiled popularity contest or paid linkage. Which is why I like being able to accept friends like on my last.fm itunes playlist or FB account. Not a lot of meaningful interactions happening on last.fm that I can tell. The site is mostly for playlist junkies. Although, I'm sure that is going to change as destination commerce types integrate more with middleware (twitter, tumbler).


As a side bar see the review stalker post that asks the question what if music were free? Which is just one of the verticals that is trying to organize commerce like we have been used to since the invention of buying music not renting for live performances. Basically somebody invented a additional layer just like a new product or brand you can buy at the grocery store.


While these ideas are being exchanged and traffic is being counted by the man (google & yahoo). They are the deciders as to what gets counted for your point of entry in a search. I'm seeing regular advertising running so fast to get intertwined and in front and become a part of the audience building and point of entry process it's scary. This must scare google a little bit being that twitter recently passed on a very large offer. What is curious is that for a lot of start-ups there are no blatant adverts yet mainly because they they have the luxury to be in their audience building mode 44 Million goes a long way. Although 1 Billion sounds good. Think of how many hamburger have been sold?

Which brings up a issue with so many people asking you to take action. Do you really care? How do you measure that effectively? You would think they should know what you like and why shouldn't they? They know people need to work and shop to eat and if the marketeers are not there making noise nobody is going to visit their store. But the question becomes how is having a tumblr account going to help me help them? Ok it is yet another aggravation to figure out but that is half the fun but lets think. What is your in point? What is in "it" for you?


Music to help you understand social Media:
The Thieving Magpie - From Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange
How to skin a cat - Husker Du
Me & You, Remembering - fIREHOSE
Lost in the Supermarket - The Clash
Drug I need - Poster Children

Join My Brute Dojo

Interesting Flash Game called My Brute that lets you create a character then you can go fight other users on the site. I don't think you can control how you actually fight by pressing the keys the action just happens. Sort of weird but fun none the less. Go ahead and join my dojo and get your aggression out.