David Emery Online2009 NME Awards Shortlist
And while it’s nice to see a ‘best website’ award, isn’t the shortlist an indication of the weakness of the category? Bebo versus Facebook? If you’re going to throw it open to such wide consideration, shouldn’t Google at least be in the line-up?
The lack of a best DJ (as in radio) award seems to be a bit of an oversight, as well: who cares if NME readers like the Mighty Boosh; isn’t the person who slips them fresh music into their ears more, you know, significant?
The best website category is pretty laughable – seriously, who cares which is better out of sites like Facebook and MySpace? Of course, it’s not ‘Best Band Website’ as their are hardly any good ones but that’s a post for another day…
Visit ➔Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 RC1
Microsoft today announced the first (and probably only) release candidate of Internet Explorer 8. In terms of its look and feel, IE8 feels a lot like IE7, though Microsoft has made a lot of changes under the hood. IE8 features a new rendering engine, support for CSS 2.1, and a ‘smart address bar’ that is very similar to Firefox’s ‘awesome bar.’ IE8 has also taken a page from Chrome’s playbook and now opens a separate process for every tab.
Anyone else slightly fed up with all the browsers we have to test in now? We’re pretty much now in the lovely situation of having three versions of IE to test in, each rendering differently to each other and each not rendering in the same way either Firefox or Safari do.
The new version of this site isn’t tested in any form of IE yet, by the way – I guess I’ll test in 7 at some point but there’s no way I’m testing in 6 for anything of mine every again… sadly on the public sites I maintain IE6 is still hovering around 10% which is still a little high to abandon quite yet (although well low enough to feed a more lo-fi experience).
Visit ➔Knotty Pine - Dirty Projectors + David Byrne
From the brilliant compilation 'Dark Was The Night' out on 4AD next month.
Knotty Pine - Dirty Projectors + David Byrne
Visit ➔Voice Of The Fans survey
How are fans keeping informed about fave artists? 68% artist websites and 64% artist email updates. 51% MySpace, almost double Facebook’s 28%. 40% use Google to find info about their favourite artists…YouTube is 39%, artist blogs are 10%, ‘via my mobile phone’ is 5% and Bebo is 4%, with Others at 15%.
Lots of interesting stats – also interesting to see a general disinterest with subscription based models (whether they’re an single artist subscription or overall subscription).
Visit ➔Search Without Effort: The Quick Search Box
One of our goals at Google is to make your search experience as fluid as possible. While much of our work is focused on Google.com, we’re trying to make it just as easy to search outside your browser.
For the last year, we have been working on a new, open-source quick search box. Today, we are releasing our first developer preview for the Mac.
Or: Quicksilver, v2.
Seems pretty good so far – finally a decent launch tool, complete with just enough eye candy and functionality (but not too much).
Visit ➔Flaming Tips
I’ve been at the old records again. Like your Grandad at Christmas who’s been “at the whiskey” he has stashed in his shed, I crept into the loft to admire the new speakers I got for Christmas and stayed there until the only thing I had left to listen to was an old Kasabian 12 inch I’d never got round to throwing out – and all because I’ve been hiding from writing the Tips For 2009 piece.
I get very grumpy about these things now (even, I hate to admit it, the BBC Sound Of poll makes me want to stuff cotton wool in my ears and sleep for a fortnight). But this year it’s particularly irksome because, actually, no-one really has a clue what’s going to happen in music in 2009.
Steve hits the nail square on the head here – last year, I think everyone had a pretty good idea of what was coming but this year it really seems like grasping at straws. Which is great, quite frankly, as there were very few acts tipped last year that I think really made much of a difference in the grand scheme of things – sure, people like Santogold, Vampire Weekend, Adele et al made good records but there wasn’t much genuine excitement.
Also: you are reading Steve Lamaqs blog, already – right? I have a feeling not many people know about it…
Visit ➔