David Emery Online

Last.fm's SXSW Band Aid

Last.fm have done a recommendation service for what bands to see at SXSW this year, based on the music in your Last.fm profile. Very nifty – just wish I was going so I could you it…

1,000 True Fans

Very interesting article on the importance of ‘true’ fans – ones that will buy everything you produce and drive 200 miles just to see you play. On a similar topic it’s interesting to note that the $300 ultra-deluxe version of the Nine Inch Nails album – which was limited to 2500 copies – sold out within 24 hours.

Microsoft's Interoperability Principles and IE8

Great stuff – Microsoft have reversed their decision about all this IE8-behaving-like-IE7-by-default rubbish. Good on them!

The Radiohead Standard

Dreams

Indistr Lets You Choose the Price for Buying Music

Indistr is actually a surprisingly nice site, although slightly hard to browse around. There’s definitely a place for direct artist digital sales, although they’re not going to replace record companies (and their strengths in promotion and finance) any time soon.

Apple to Allow Free iPhone/Touch Apps Without Special Approval?

I do hope this proves to be the case – it would be a big shame to have to go through the hoops of Apple approval (which will no doubt take a while) before getting an app out there. If Apple approval is the only to way to get apps on the iPhone, I’m sure jailbreaking will keep its popularity.

The Broken Web Editor

I still don’t get Wordpress’ popularity – it seems to have so many problems. While Textpattern doesn’t feature the rich text editor Wordpress tries to use at least it, you know, works.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I can’t see this concept (digital insertion of advertising into pre-recorded video) really taking off, as it surely takes far too much work to have a team of animators (badly) overlaying adverts on billboards in the background of every single episode of a program?

Also, why would anyone think this form of advertising actually works? Just because a logo of a film appears in a video doesn’t mean that has any impact on ticket sales at the box office.

NZRN - On the internet.

Beautiful site design – love the cartography-inspired background and the use of a grid.