David Emery Online

Rupert has balls

Companies that are ruled by task forces don’t act like him; they overthink to convince themselves they’re making smart decisions. News Corp. underthinks.

‘Overthink’ can be such a killer; you think you’re doing the right thing by planning, more planning and lots of research but you end up spending all of your time planning and no time actually executing. Sure, some planning is needed but not too much.

And for the record I’d be surprised if News Corp. removed themselves from Google, and their pay-wall strategy isn’t going to work (for news, at least).

iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for Developers

Here’s everything you need to know to create a rich, interactive experience around your music and movies. All right in iTunes.

Apple have released all the specs, templates and a load of documentation for the iTunes LP format, which is nice. Skimming through them I see lots of “don’t use JS for animation, use CSS” – nice to have a HTML5 + CSS3 based platform to develop for…

Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design

What follows is a frankly massive essay in note form. These are the notes I made to justify the aims of Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design – a presentation I did for the FOWD Tour in Leeds, September 2009. Thus, there is a vast array of ideas, conclusions and speculations with regard to the future of our industry. Take it with a pinch of salt, and think of this as a conversation, and not a manifesto.

Very interesting stuff – well worth a read.

The future of audio: The UK Radioplayer

It’s a really exciting development and a result of focussed, collaborative thinking within the radio industry. It’s a simple, compelling proposition for listeners, and I would welcome any comments on the project.

This looks pretty interesting – an standards-based, multi-station online radio player. Basically like the iPlayer Radio, but open to other stations. What I’d really like to know, though, is whether it’s open to people that aren’t radio stations – could Hype Machine have a station on this, for example?

Roundtable Discussion: The Role Of The Record Label

Last week, I had the opportunity to chat — and, by chat, I mean “chat via the Internet” — with a handful of independent record labels’ owners and managers. I wanted to discuss the role of the label in a time when fewer people seem to know or care what labels their favorite musicians or bands are on. Furthermore, and perhaps this has always been true, we may not even know what exactly a label does.

Interesting stuff (although – obviously – a quite US focused view on things).

Two Door Cinema Club - I Can Talk

I really like this new video by Two Door Cinema Club (and the song’s not bad too). Obviously made for the internet (as all that strobing won’t be allowed on TV) but not in a slightly-rubbish lo-fi way:

Dynamic Design

U Got The Look - JEFF the Brotherhood

JEFF the Brotherhood are a two piece (always a good start) from Nashville, Tennessee half of which used to be in the wonderful be your own PET. Half of two does indeed equal one and that one in question is Jamin who used to do the drumming duties in byoP, and is joined by his brother Jake on guitar and vocals.

They are totally my new favourite band, at least forthisweekanyway:

Google’s Music Onebox Launches, Powered By MySpace And Lala

Onebox will let users stream songs directly from Google’s search result page, and will also include additional content like tour information and music videos […] The new feature is being powered by two entirely different services: Lala, the innovative music site that lets people buy ‘web songs’ for ten cents, and iLike, the popular streaming music and artist hub that was recently acquired by MySpace.

Dear Google,

Hope all is well at Google Towers – I’m sure the revenue share you’re getting from iLike & MySpace must be a nice extra bonus on top of all your adsense cash.

I was wondering though; any chance of making it so we could populate the ‘Onebox’ content ourselves, based on putting content on musicians websites? Maybe even – and stop me if I’m talking like a crazy person – we could put it in the html (maybe in a specific format to make it easier) and you could somehow read that html, on a regular basis, and use that to populate your search results pages?

Just a thought – maybe that’s too difficult for you guys to figure out.

Anyway, keep on with the good work,

- David

After the Deadline – Open Sourced!

After the Deadline, an intelligent checker for spelling and grammar, is now free software. The server software is available under the GNU General Public License.

Very nice work from the people that make Wordpress – particularly interesting is their jQuery API which makes it very simple to add a spell & grammar check to a textarea.