LoudSpeakers

I have spent a great deal of time listening to this record recently. I think it’s fantastic for many reasons, but my love for “Be Careful What You Call Home” really centers around a handful of well crafted songs. As great as those songs are, I regretfully wish the rest of the record to be as good. There are certain songs that I could simply do without. As much as I would like to say that records portray some gloriously conceived theme, I can’t. Bee Thousand does though and anyone who says differently is insane — insane I tell you. Back to Paul Duncan — If one could take “You Look Like An Animal” and replicate it’s genius across the entire record, it would be a masterpiece in my opinion.

Hmmmm. One trip to the city and you could tell that no NYC cabbie would have said this:

“…look gentlemen, you may disregard it all you want, but I know the facts since I just gave a ride to some eBay execs who discussed exactly what would be happening”.

Link-e: How The Skype Rumour Spread

My sentiments exactly.

l-l-l-ink: America’s conservatives take another blow

That made no sense at all.

Linky dinky dong: Everybody Hates Chris

I have to insist that people out there stop referring to me as “The Inventor Of Storage 2.0.” It’s not very becoming of a young, strapping lad such as myself in pursuit of conquering something. I prefer “The Father Of Storage 2.0″ instead. In the end, you can make your own decision.

All seriousness aside, I don’t really blame the storage software vendors for melding solutions together in the manner that has evolved. I recently blogged about ugly people having not-so-pretty children — no offense to all the ugly people that sent in reader comments, but I was really trying to say that the merger of bad companies rarely produces a winner. Successfully merging winning software companies can be a real challenge — they usually fail. The bigger the merger is, the more difficult they are to integrate. That’s integration referring to a process that needs to be integrated, not necessarily business units and products. That’s a different thing entirely.

I have personal issues with Pandora that I am trying to get over. I can’t help it — it’s just the way that I am. I am all about discovering new music, but I’m not sure if I need an algorithm telling me what I might enjoy. I love technology and my iPod. There’s a certain joy and pleasure in discovering music through analog means that I can’t describe. The discovery phase is most of the work, but half of the pleasure. I guess it’s all about where you draw the line. Some people still refuse anything but vinyl.

It’s just too easy. There’s no work involved in discovering new music. In some ways, I don’t want to hear recommendations based upon a certain band. Who’s to say that I want to hear something that sounds just like what I already listen to? Pandora is a great service for people who want to discover new music, but don’t necessarily have the appetite that I have.

Felda Hardymon via David Cowan writes about running a startup business.

Linky link: Who Has Time For This?

Podcasting, social networks, and blogging can become jobs very quickly. Being diligent about creating output is important otherwise you risk losing a base of dedicated consumers. Not all bloggers can make Google Adsense worthy of quitting your day job either. This all comes to me at a time when I am considering joining the podcasting elite, but I need to consider the possibility that I won’t be able to be consistent with it. Yes, one can subscribe to a podcast and just listen when they’re posted, but I would rather post regularly within a dependable schedule if I chose to do it at all.

Blogs and podcasting become jobs when you feel like you need to post. Folksonomy based technologies on the other hand actually contribute in a a very fruitful way to my work and pleasure. I tag stuff all the time in del.icio.us. I don’t ever feel like I need to tag stuff to contribute. Blogging is indeed fun and I like the fact that many people are writing for that very purpose these days, but it should be done without the barrier of perceived work getting in the way. Sometimes I think of it as being representative of my “searchable thoughts.” Don’t worry about retaining readers or anything else — just write because it’s a healthy outlet.

Link: The Return To The Right

Poland’s voters have booted their left-leaning government from power after four years marked by scandal and infighting. Can a coalition of conservative parties led by Law and Justice’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski do any better?

I downloaded NextPage after hearing about them from a couple of podcasts recently on Podtech.net of which they seem to have some level of sponsorship role in. My experience in this particular area leads me to believe that they have something novel and worthwhile, but like any other early release NextPage needs more specific functionality to be truly effective. People collaborate using more than just Office documents. Projects take shape and develop using all sorts of editable and static content. Enhanced file support is surely in their roadmap.

I also think that the cost is out of line for something like user based document collaboration and tracking. As a matter of fact, I think it should be free for limited functionality. If they want any level of adoption by the masses, it will need to be free. So, how are they supposed to make money? Offer some level of accelerated service or similar and charge willing particpants for compelling functionality.

How can I argue that functionality is insufficient but the price is out of whack? Simple. The value of the user network is apparently worth more than cash flow anyway. Skype proves that. $7M in revenue for a $2.6B+ transaction but with 52M users.

The Mona Reels - Meet The Mona Reels
:: The overall record seems a little unbalanced, but there are some really standout tracks that make this record a necessary listen.

The Duke Spirit - Cuts Across The Land
:: Don’t get me wrong, I like pieces and parts of this record the more I listen to the entire thing, but there are just certain vocal qualities that remind of someone that I don’t like that I just can’t put my finger.

Page France - Hello, Dear Wind
:: Is it just me or is there a recent explosion that has resulted in an army of bands that sound a great deal like The Decemberists?

Amandine - This Is Where Our Hearts Collide
:: Leave it to the Swedes to take a classic sound and make it better.

V/A - This Is Indie Rock - The Best Bands You’ve Never Heard - Volume 3
:: I’ve never been completely impressed by records with seemingly insulting titles and this one seems to be no different.

Paul Duncan - Be Careful What You Call Home
:: This is a very good record with some extremely special tracks, but be prepared to spend one complete hour listening to “You Look Like An Animal” on repeat because it’s fresh, so fresh.

The Boats - We Made It For You
:: “We Made It For You” was not made for general purpose listening —- it was meant to be played only when getting your freak on. (psstt: I need vocals in my music)

Celebration - Celebration
:: The forthcoming release on 4AD/XL is a must listen for a variety of reasons, but this could be a late-year-list-disrupter.

Hard-Fi - Stars Of CCTV
:: I might need to give it more time, but my initial reaction is not favorable for the first four tracks, but it begins to get better from there.

Heikki -2
:: I’ve found myself digging many Swedish bands as of late, and Heikki is no exception with their collaboration with the Concretes’ Maria Eriksson have put out a broad yet complete release in “2.”

I was perusing the Yahoo developer site this weekend to see what web services were available for use. I was curious to see if Yahoo Briefcase had any documented ways to access it programmatically amongst other desired functionality. I never got around to finding out about their APIs because I was distracted by Konfabulator. I read about it before in passing, but didn’t really know what it was. I assumed it was some nerdy set of utilities to pimp your desktop up with time wasting uselessness. But I discovered something else entirely. It’s a rather sophisticated JavaScript slash XML based runtime framework for creating widgets. You can create some really useful stuff with this. So, it’s really a nerdy framework to create utilities that could possibly do anything. I like the fact that it can call Windows COM objects as well. It has built-in support for a bunch of stuff like iTunes manipulation. The based Konfabulator installation comes with a bunch of really handy utilities to give you an idea of what it can do. Now all I have to do is think of something useful that I have been wanting to develop and go at it.

There’s been quite a stir over the recent weeks regarding YubNub and internet operating systems. YubNub seems to be down currently, but it presents some interesting aspects of the new age of internet use. It’s sort of a command-line interface that encapsulates a large number of very popular web services. It allows a user to issue commands and get back results. You can create a batch file of sorts that allows commands to be strung together to return specific data. You can essentially write programs with this command-line oriented web interface. The next statement that people tend to make after hearing about the Web CLI usually surrounds an internet OS/GUI. My answer —- we have one already — it’s called a web page. It might be another version of a page that’s used to wrap all that command-line stuff together, but it won’t look much more different that what it already is.

In terms of an internet operating system, the world has been heading towards thin-client workstations for a long time. There are some limitations currently that will not provide for mass adoption for consumers, but it’s not too far off. Windows Terminal Services and Citrix will have a huge hand in helping this materialize. The ThinStation open source project guys have the right idea — implement the thinnest layer possible at the client using lightweight protocols and put the burden on the server as a workhorse. One can still access the local network, file systems, and printers — even sound!

When you combine technologies from XenSource and ThinStation, it makes a rather compelling case for the creation of the workstation service provider (WSP) market. Moms and dads no longer have to worry about virus management and updating dat files. Service packs and patches are remotely managed by the hosting provider. Common applications can be leased or bundled in ASP fashion. All they need is a floppy or a bootable CD-ROM drive, broadband internet access, and commodity hardware to access files. Moreover, they can carry the floppy or mini-CD around with them and access their desktops from most any internet connected computer.

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the use of syndicated content in a business environment. All the talk recently about broad lack of knowledge regarding RSS in the consumer sphere can probably be applied to business as well, but with good reason. Frankly, I don’t think people should really know what RSS is let alone what it stands for. Maybe it’s all about what your “definition of is” is, but content syndication and RSS should be spelled out in a less daunting way.

RSS can leverage the same metastructures that fits into the Storage 2.0 world. Its all based upon the value of data but with transparent access to the end-user. End-users shouldn’t know that the content they’re viewing is syndicated. Tagged values represent the value of data to business users and consumers alike and these tags can be purposed and reused in many ways. Portals are probably the most obvious. My Yahoo!-like internal portals are being used to aggregate information for users, but they typically have very little discretion in what they view and how it’s displayed.

(By the way, I’m perfectly allowed to use words like metastructure in my blog as it’s only read by fellow nerds.)

Bob Pollard is a playa’. He’s been hustling records like a crack dealer on his Rockathon and Fading Captain Series imprints before it was cool to sport really tight jeans that are two inches too short with red high-top Chuck Taylors. Oh — and he’s probably one of the best American songwriters to ever live. He also has a book coming out soon. As if I didn’t have nearly everything GBV and Pollard have pimped over the years, I need to buy a book? Yeah, I have it on pre-order. What’s really interesting about this is that the book is written by Steven Soderbergh. What’s next? Will Julia Roberts guest on the next Circus Devils record?