David Emery OnlineTips for a transformed twitter
I am wrong to lament what Twitter once was and should embrace it as a tool I can use. Nevertheless like everybody, I need to be careful how I use it. I do not believe Twitter users will allow the tool to be reduced to a broadcast mechanism for pimping the latest blog post or special offer.
Good to see I’m not the only person thinking along these lines.
Visit ➔Artists, Bands and Musicians on Twitter
As a timely companion to my last post, here’s a Google Spreadsheet full of all the bands and labels that are on Twitter.
Visit ➔Despite iTunes Accord, Music Labels Still Fret
…Disagreements over the timing of the changes also resulted in a particularly tense conversation on Christmas Eve between Steven P. Jobs, the chairman and chief executive of Apple, and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, the chairman of Sony Music.
A spokesman for Apple declined to comment, as did a representative for Sony Music. But chatter about Mr. Jobs’s combative tone on the call ricocheted around the music industry, and it was regarded as another display of his tough bargaining tactics, made possible by Apple’s position as the dominant seller of music.
When Steve Jobs finally leaves Apple – whether it’s soon or not for a while – I don’t see their being major changes in the kind of products they make or the way they do business. What they will lose, however, is Steve Jobs the negotiator. And from what I’ve heard from people that have dealt with him that will be quite some loss.
Visit ➔Sky Larkin on Dopplr
God darn it, why didn’t I think of putting a band on Dopplr? Considering we already generate iCals for most of our bands this should be a doddle…
Visit ➔Web Design+
Welcome to Web Design+. This is, in no particular order, an amalgamation of web-standards solutions for common web development issues and problems — a way to tackle development in the cleanest, most accessible and semantic way possible. By using Web Design+, the aim is to standardise practices throughout an organisation; from accessibility to hacks, Web Design+ covers the best ways to tackle a variety of dev problems.
A great idea in theory, and not massively different from a internal document I wrote a while back, but you’ve got to laugh at something like this that has a section on semantics almost directly followed by a bit on generic classes like ‘clear’, ‘left’, ‘right’ and so on being extremely handy…
Visit ➔Record labels pressure Spotify to restrict service
In a blog post yesterday the startup outlined how it will be removing a number of songs from its catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for many users. The changes are being made because record labels have slapped restrictions on Spotify’s service. It’s a bizarre situation to think of in 2009 but it means that a user could share a track with a friend in another country, but that friend wouldn’t be able to play the track.
It irks me somewhat that people don’t seem to grasp how complicated territory rights are for music. Basically, most releases are dealt with by different labels in different territories, so there’s no way to simply use a track or release worldwide – you have to get agreements with all the appropriate labels involved.
It would be great – and solve so many headaches – if most recorded music was licensed for distribution globally, but it’s just not the case.
Visit ➔2009 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 ➔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 ➔Surviving (the inevitable) Z-Apocalypse
The first thing you want to do when you realise that people are dying, then standing back up, then trying to eat you, is get to a safe place (duh!).
Beautiful bit of illustration-come-design – I wish all of the internet looked like this.
Visit ➔iPhoto '09 and Domain Language
It matters if we call something an Event or a Milestone or a Deadline. And it also goes deeper than that. The names we choose shape our software. They define the way we think about it and the way our customers interact with it.
I was beginning to worry a little that spending slightly too long on naming interface elements was me just being a bit mental; it’s nice to know that either I’m not or at least not alone.
Visit ➔2008 Music Blog Zeitgeist Countdown is ON!
We compiled data from over 700 year-end blog posts, analyzed it, and released it into the wild so everyone can see what bloggers were excited about in 2008. You can listen to full previews of the albums via imeem and browse bite-sized reviews via Musebin. We’ve also shared the data we used to compile this list under a CC license so people can see what we are working with.
The awesome-as-ever Hypemachine music blog countdown has just launched – always a good read and I’m loving their use of all sorts of different services (imeem, Flickr, Musebin) for different aspects of the Best Albums countdown.
Visit ➔Abandoned London
Lovely set of photos of a deserted London on Christmas day.
It looks so peaceful…
YouTube overlay HD ads
I think this is new – I certainly haven’t seen it before; YouTube is now running overlay ads over the top of HD videos. Click the link above to see it in-situ (you’ll probably need to click ‘Watch in HD’), or click the image below for a bigger view:
TUAW goes hands-on with Rolando
This looks absolutely lovely, although I’m not going to get it yet as I’ve just bought Sim City for the iPhone instead (which seems to be pretty good from the 10 minutes I’ve spent with it). It’s very encouraging that there are already got too many games to get for the iPhone – I think it’s very rapidly establishing itself as a very viable platform fo games developers.
Visit ➔2008 Greek riots
Brilliant photos from The Big Picture, as always. From a photographers point a view it’s interesting to note that some of the best photos in the series are technically quite poor – out of focus or very noisy. It’s always worth a reminder that it’s the moment you’re capturing that’s most important, not how you do it.
Visit ➔