David Emery OnlinePitchfork.tv: The National - Terrible Love
The Brooklyn rockers bring their big sound to an abandoned castle overlooking New York's Hudson river.
This track is just astonishingly good live:
Visit ➔Understand The Web
Perceptions of the web is changing. People are advocating that we treat the web like another application framework. An open, cross-platform, multi-device rival to Flash and Cocoa and everything else. I’m all for making the web richer, and exposing new functionality, but I value what makes the web weblike much, much more.
A must-read article on the state of the web today; I could quote practically every paragraph.
I remember a while back Khoi Vinh lamented that there are no ‘masterpieces’ on the web; no culture-defining works that will last the test of time. I’m sure he was referring to design when he wrote it (the particular post escapes me), but that’s a fallacy that touches on the same points made in this article; the web isn’t like print graphic design, just like TV isn’t like theatre or photography isn’t like painting. The same is true of the web and applications – they’re similar but different mediums.
I’d argue that YouTube is a masterpiece just as much as the Mona Lisa or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a totally different kind of thing, and that’s the whole point.
Visit ➔HP buys Palm
HP has just announced that it's acquiring Palm to the tune of $1.2 billion, which works out to $5.70 per share of Palm common stock. The deal is planned to close by July 31, which marks the end of HP's third fiscal quarter of the year. Current Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is "expected to remain with the company,"
A very smart move for HP; they can’t be happy being shackled to Microsoft for operating systems and WebOS is a great OS in the making.
Interesting also that this comes the day that the Apple WWDC is announced, which for the first time has abandoned having a Mac app design award, instead focusing on iPhone and iPad awards instead. Mobile OSs are the future – both Apple and HP know it.
Visit ➔Spotify Goes Social
In its newest app update, and the biggest since launch in 2008, Spotify users will now be able to connect to their Facebook page and import friends from their profile who are also registered Spotify users. Connected friends will become visible in the Spotify browser, and this opens up a whole new landscape of interaction and activity which can now be published simultaneously to users’ Facebook profiles and within the Spotify browser in the new feed section.
The social features in the new version of Spotify are pretty nifty – I already know plenty of people that share playlists so this is a perfect enhancement to current user behaviour.
What’s far more interesting – at least from my point of view – in this update though is the ability for Spotify to play, store and manage local files. At the moment I pretty much don’t use Spotify because the large proportion of music I listen to isn’t on there (music from blogs, pre-release albums etc), so this new feature makes it a lot more attractive.
If I didn’t have to pay £10/month for the iPhone app I’d ditch iTunes…
Visit ➔M.I.A. - Born Free
Director : Romain Gavras
This is one of the best videos I’ve ever had the fortune of working with (although please note, it’s very NSFW and not for the faint hearted):
This is what happens when you make videos for the internet, not for the TV – it doesn’t need to be lo-fi, cheap and easy. If anything, it can be better.
Visit ➔British recorded music sales rise for the first time in six years
Record labels, which have faced a slump in CD sales and a long-running battle against internet piracy, experienced a rise in income from music sales from £916 million to £929 million in 2009, the British Phonographic Industry said.
The surprise increase marks the first time that the growth in income from digital services such as iTunes has outweighed the decline from sales of CDs. Income from digital singles and albums leapt by 53 per cent, to £154 million, while physical formats dropped 6 per cent to £740 million.
Yep, sure looks like the recorded music industry is dying, doesn’t it?
In a slightly less flippant way, what this article really shows is the pointlessness of looking at overall industry figures like this; acts like Susan Boyle and Lady Gaga skew the figures massively and hence obscure how the majority of the industry is doing. And a lot of it is doing alright, and has been doing alright throughout the ‘downturn’.
Visit ➔Why All Those Records (Gaslight Anthem, Crystal Castles, Hole, Etc.) Leaked On Monday
Because PlayMPE--"one of a handful of technologies that record labels use to distribute advance, watermarked albums, to blogs, magazines, and a variety of other publications," reports AbsolutePunk.net--was hacked last week. PlayMPE is the preferred industry vehicle these days as far getting records to critics ahead of the official release date. But all it took was one clever teenager to get himself on the company's distribution list, and the rest was RapidShare history.
Ouch.
Visit ➔Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch
This clip is raw from Camera E-8 on the launch umbilical tower/mobile launch program of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969. [...] The camera is running at 500 fps, making the total clip of over 8 minutes represent just 30 seconds of actual time.
Awesome (in the true meaning of the word):
Visit ➔