Bigipedia – You Think, Therefore We Am
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 12, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Written by you, for you, for free, for money, for us.
Even before Time Magazine picked you as the person of the year (don’t feel so special, they picked this guy one year, and this guy twice), life and popular media were starting to take on these blurry edges. I’ve never understood your fascination with Reality TV; I mean, even a professional writer only has at most 30-some plots at their disposal, and you’re an amateur, so your storyline (like most people) really only revolves around whether you’re happy or not. Plus, you usually die. That’s why I was pleased to discover – amongst our ever-expanding world of user-generated content, the new BBC Radio program Bigipedia. Forget Wikipedia, forget Dickipedia. With Bigipedia, you don’t even have to be able to read! And since 70% of you use multiple forms of media at the same time, take note that with Bigipedia, you can still take some stupid Facebook Quiz or Twitter while you listen. On the other hand, those of you who are American may need either subtitles or a dictionary. The program – since it’s produced by people who actually speak English – manages to seem highbrow in spite of its clearly adolescent, internet-oriented humor. Welcome to Bigipedia – written by you, for you, for free, for money, for us.
So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star Part III
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 11, 2009 by admin in Music
Why Your Band Doesn’t Need A Web Site
 We’re still not sure why you’d want to pursue this. |
Two different musicians asked me recently if a couple thousand dollars was a reasonable quote for a basic web site. I said “Absolutely” and then immediately added “but don’t do it”. Interestingly, both were asking for my expertise (I do have a little) but neither were asking me to do the work. Musicians are cheap bastards. I should know, I’m a recovering musician. So why did I tell them not to bother? Because almost everything you would want a web site to do for your band – streaming music, streaming video, user interaction, downloads, etc – is available as a free service elsewhere, with widgets that you can easily embed not only in a very simple site of your own, but in the billions of pages that are the Internet as well. Ask yourself the rather silly (but oft-overlooked) question: Do I want to spend a bunch of money building a destination site of my own and stuggling with SEO to get people to see it, or do I want my music on my site, several other massively trafficked music sites, and thousands of Facebook, Friendfeed, and other Social Networking pages? So the great thing is that whereas this wasn’t really possible even a year ago, there are a slew of sites now that make this absurdly simple. The embedded player from SoundCloud that’s featured below took about five minutes from account setup to embedding to create. For the record, it’s some soundtrackish dreck I did a few years ago for a benefit CD for Kenya-based Amara Conservation. But we’re not showcasing the music, we’re showcasing SoundCloud. They’re just one player in an emerging scene that is sort of like “YouTube” for audio. Below are some of the other key players.
The Next Civil War: Red vs Blue
[ 7 Comments ]Posted on August 10, 2009 by admin in Politics
It may be the beginning of the week, but it’s the end of the country.
Slate recently ran a How is America Going to End game/survey in which you get to choose the way that you predict the American Empire will come to an end. Well, the results are in, and I have to say I’m a little disappointed that my chosen scenario – the Red vs. Blue Civil War – came in 13th. That map on the left highlights an interesting fact: the whole red state vs. blue state debate becomes a little irrelevant when you look at things on a more granular level. Those aren’t mega-highrises of the future, those are voters by population density. And you’ll notice that most of the spikes are blue. An American civil war may seem preposterous, especially when a crazy Russian academic predicts it, but the re-emergence of the “bubba militias” makes it seem a little less far-fetched in a country that’s been split in two by Rovian/Luntzian politics. When winning is everything, everyone loses. It says a lot when a large group of people (the average knee-jerk, ignorant Republican voter) gets behind a trillion-dollar activity that kills thousands of Americans but violently protests one that is intended to save American lives. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if things eventually got ugly on a larger scale; when you get a bunch of ignorant PBR-swilling yahoos riled up, there’s usually going to be some kind of fight. But I’m not worried. We city-folk have this one covered in spades, and we have maps and charts to prove it. First of all, we all know blue voters are smarter, and all the smart Read the rest of this entry »
Poor Taste In Friends May Inhibit Pervasiveness Of Cannibalism
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 9, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Wherein my girlfriend and I decide who we’re having for dinner.
This piece reads much better if Toto Coelos’ “I Eat Cannibals” is playing. Lyrics below for further pleasure. |
We often say odd things when we’re in love. For instance, in a completely unoriginal moment the other day, I said to my girlfriend: “I could just eat you alive“. Which got me wondering. Could I? Like most of us, when I have a question about romance, I seek the counsel of friends. I don’t know any cannibals though, so I of course headed over to the How Cannibalism Works page at HowStuffWorks.com. This wasn’t very helpful. They started off with a piece about Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal who enticed his victims with charming online dialog like this, and then moved on to things like How The Donner Party Worked. Wanting something a little more guide-like and factual, I tried Wikipedia. Although it was interesting to learn that stories of cannibalism – like so many things that white people say about other social groups – have been historically rather exagerrated to suit some personal needs, at this point I became distracted by the story of Issei Sagawa, Celebrity Cannibal, who was freed four years after being incarcerated for his cannibalistic murder, and moved on to become quite the celebrity in Japan. Sound strange? What do you expect from a country that has an established method for dealing with train groping, a pervasive fascination with tentacle sex, and an entire industry devoted to providing alibis? Anyway, by this time I’d lost my appetite for more information on the topic, but if you’re hungry for more yourself, this rather lengthy LRB review of An Intellectual History of Cannibalism
Google Voice, iPhones, And SpyPhones
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 8, 2009 by admin in Technology
Google Voice is amazing. And creepy.
I just got an invite to try Google Voice, and after giving it a quick test run, I was left a little uneasy. I’m not really a tin-foil hat type, but I’m often reminded of William Burroughs’ remark that “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on”. The uneasiness kicked in as soon as I clicked on the “accept” link, and had to decide whether or not to use one of my existing G-Mail accounts. Should I use my business account? My personal account? I knew that to test the service, I’d be entering both my mobile and land line numbers. Which meant I’d be linking pieces of my Google search history with my e-mail content, two phone numbers, and my name. And storing it all in one place on a Google server. I opted to create a new G-Mail account. In spite of Google Voice’s amazing features, I’m going to have to ponder exactly how to put it to use, because the same things that make it cool make it creepy. You can record calls, transcribe them to text, do conference calls, and even pick up as someone leaves a voice message, just like an answering machine. All in one place. Which is exactly the issue. All in one place. On a Google server. I know we’ll all eventually have shaved heads, a number instead of a name, and be constantly under surveillance like in the George Lucas movie THX 1138