Jam are big fans of the breakthrough act in music consumption Spotify. This blogger is obviously a fan too having come up with a lovely way to share his music collection. Having burnt all my CD’s during the rise of the MiniDisc sadly this is not an option for me.
Moog (pronounced “mogue”, like vogue) is probably the most well known synth manufacturer in the world. The company started tweeting about a month ago, so I thought I’d mark the occasion with a post about the brand.
This company produced one of the most influential bits of kit in pop music history, the “Mini Moog“.
You can probably hear a Mini Moog (or another synth based on it) in any genre of contemporary music. It’s the noodling sound on prog rock, but it’s also the massive bass line in hip hop. It’s got such an immense sound that the only other things you only really need are a rapper and a drum machine.
Despite going bust during the ’80s, Moog now makes things like the Moog guitar, the Little Phatty (I have one of these and it’s amazing) and the Moogerfoogers.
ShareThinglink calls itself a “conversational product catalog”, but it’s basically a social network based around products.
It’s currently in private beta, but allows its members to upload images of design pieces in the hope of creating a sort of user generated product catalogue. Users can then comment on designs, “like” them (imagine that!) and add chosen designers and brands to their favourites.
I guess the aim is to eventually develop a network where design fans (for want of a better phrase) can interact with designers and brands, creating a product catalogue that maintains itself. Forming a catalogue in this way ensures that it stays at the leading edge of design.
This is where things get really interesting; Thinglink isn’t just a design social network. Its catalogue represents the coming together of a wiki (with input from both the general public and creators in the industry) and the social aspects of the networks we’re now so familiar with.
It also represents the opening up of a sector that can be quite exclusive. Just as soon as it gets out of private beta (I’ve got a couple of invites going if you’re interested; just comment!).
The Information Architects have released their latest Web Trend Map to give you an overview of the internet in 2009. They mapped the 333 most influential web domains and the 111 most influential internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map. The height of a station refers to its traffic, revenue and trend. Its width represents the stability of the company behind the domain. Click here to see a full size version.
A great piece of work I’m sure you will agree, great for giving a snapshot of the internet in 2009.
Via: Today and Tomorrow
ShareThe delicate line between art and pornography has been hotly debated ever since mankind evolved from monosyllabic grunts towards today’s more eloquent perversions.
It would appear that the delicate line forms a silhouetted easel.
‘Pervert/Artist’ – Wilhelm Staehle, Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre
via constant seige
ShareIf you weren’t scared of clowns before you’ll be wary of them now in this awesome mini-thriller from Tribal DDB and Stink Digital for the launch of the new Philips cinema telly. See the full version at www.philips.co.uk/cinema
Looks great- not sure my living room is big enough for one though, despite what my husband might think.
ShareI don’t know what kind of music I’ve been listening to, but I just got served an ad for MTV and the Bodyshop’s safe sex Yes Yes Yes campaign.
The ad is for the blog, where you can find Spotify playlists from bloggers and presenters, whilst the microsite links to a MySpace page, Flickr group, Facebook Cause and Twitter account. You can also sign up to the safe sex pledge; pledgers are then totalled up and global regions compared.
It’s all quite interesting, and good to see brands make use of different channels, but the pledge numbers are quite disappointing. Maybe it’s early days, or maybe spreading the brand message across several channels dilutes it. A concerted effort in one network may be a better approach.
Hobnox “is an online entertainment and publishing platform, a network for creatives and their fans. We unite broadcast-quality web media with cutting edge community-enabling technology.”
Which is great.
But even better is their daringly named “Audiotool”. It’s basically a web app that allows you to interchange bits of virtual gear and create beats.
There’s a couple of drum machines (Roland TR 808 and 909 emulations), a bass synth (Roland TB 303 emulation), a single sound/single mode Tenori-On clone and several effects packaged up to look like Boss compact pedals. They all sound pretty good.
You connect all the bits of gear up visually, not unlike Propellerhead’s “Reason”, and program it all in the same way you would in real life. Which is where it becomes a bit limiting. Unlike Reason, there are no sequencing facilities beyond that on the equipment meaning that if you want to make an ambitious tune, you’d better be good at making on-the-fly changes.
Still, it’s free and could be really good for creating some short loops ready to be dropped into another piece of software.
Over the last 90 minutes the ‘09 – ‘10 budget has been announced and this year it’s got a lot of live coverage with fact and opinion flying around cyber-space as Alistair Darling made his announcements.
The BBC used its live text and video tool to report on the budget. Not unlike the Guardian’s live coverage of the G20 protests, this provided short updates as soon as the “action” happened, allowing readers to follow events closely. The BBC also posted updates from members of the public, who submitted comments via email, text and twitter.
On a more corporate note, KPMG tweeted the news, offering their followers the firm’s financial expertise. Which is a nice touch; the brand can offer a useful point of view about an event which clearly generates a lot of interest.
I’m keen on short format news and major broadcasters adopting this way of reporting as it reflects the way that most people read text on the internet. Condensing a story/point into 140 characters makes it much more digestible and importantly, much more shareable.
Since we twittered about it yesterday I’ve been playing with the rather sinisterly titled We are hunted website which is utilising buzz to create a chart of the hottest new artists and songs. In their words they “aggregate social networks, forums, music blogs, Torrents, P2P Networks and Twitter to develop a daily chart of the 99 most popular songs online”. A great concept and really well excuted as the site looks really good and appears to have some science behind it, the geek in me has taken them on their offer to find out more about how it all works.
Their is certainly a great variety of music related sites and applications out there nowadays. For new and possibly unsigned acts their’s Myspace and Bebo, for finding music to fit your specific taste their is Last.fm, for on demand music their is Spotify and now to find out the music with the most buzz on a particular day, week or month then wearehaunted.com is the site to go to.
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