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Hallelujah! New (to us) Neutral Milk Hotel songs
Yeah so today is my birthday and I can't imagine a greater gift from the internet than some newly released, previously unknown NMH songs. The story is that a girl named Shannon moved into Jeff Mangum's old house as he was moving out, and a roommate gave her some demo tapes that had been recorded there. She didn't realize that many of the songs on there haven't ever seen the light of day until very recently, and is in the process of making them available online as mp3s. As I'm sure you know, NMH is quite possibly everyone's favorite band, and in light of the fact that we quite likely will never ever ever see new material from Jeff, this is a big deal. You can read the complete story here, with links to some of the songs. My favorite one so far is "Now I'm Going Down" (uncomfirmed title).
MP3 Neutral Milk Hotel - Now I'm Going Down (from Shannon's Arty Arty)
Technorati Tags: music mp3 neutral+milk+hotelAndrew Morgan
If John Vanderslice, the entire Elephant Six collective and the ghost of Elliott Smith had a love child, they would name him Andrew Morgan. Misadventures in Radiology gets a lot of comparisons to Pet Sounds, with good reason. The more I listen to it, the more I'm hearing. This is very lush chamber pop at it's finest.
MP3 Andrew Morgan - Misadventures in Radiology
Technorati Tags: music mp3 andrew+morganApps I am looking forward to: Songbird
At first it only looked like a black iTunes, but Songbird is really looking interesting. All I have to go on are the screenshots and this post at TechCrunch, but I am eagerly awaiting the December public beta to see what's under the hood. Since it is XUL based and more open than iTunes, expect a large number of plug-ins and extensions to really do some wild new things in the frustratingly stagnant world of media players. Seriously, I've been trying to get rid of Winamp and iTunes for years, but nothing has even mildly impressed me (foobar was close, but I don't have weeks to spend fiddling with software to make it work like I want it to). At this point, Songbird has a very low bar to clear to become the best of breed media player.
Technorati Tags: music mp3 software media+player itunes winamp songbirdSo what do you do when the big guy beats you to the punch?
I have this little project I've been working on in my spare moments the past few months. It's called Monocle, a semi-social bookmarking application designed to be used in groups such as companies, classes and other self-selecting organizations to help find and share relevant information on the internet. Today I found that IBM has developed exactly the same thing. Here's a screenshot of mine (I have to of course warn that it is still pretty early on in development) and here is a screenshot of Dogear. They are uncannily similar, although they both admittedly owe a large amount of credit to del.icio.us.
So anyway, here's my dilemma. I am just a single person working on a project in their free time. IBM is a little larger. It's obvious who has the advantage here. Do I cut my losses and chalk it up as a good learning experience? Do I go ahead and keep working on it and watch it get crushed? Or do I pretend that I stand a chance against Dogear and IBM, "put my head down and power through" (to borrow a phrase from Michael Bluth), and see where this goes?
I'm probably going to do the foolish thing and ignore the 900 lb. gorilla that is going to crush me. I know the industry is full of examples of smaller startups outdoing bigger companies, but that's little consolation right now.
I'd be interested to hear any stories of people who have started out on some grand project only to find a GYM-level company roll out the same product.
Technorati Tags: web+2.0 dogear IBM social+bookmarking webdev technologyAdem
This isn't the newest record on the shelves (it came out all the way back in March of 2004), but Adem's Homesongs deserves all the attention it can get. Produced by Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, Homesongs is pretty much the perfect record to listen to when your lover leaves you. If you make it to the end of the record, you'll be ok. Also, there is some controversy at Wikipedia regarding Aden's status in the "nu-folk" movement. Nu-folk fans of the world, grab your brass knuckles and take a stand!
MP3 Adem - These are your friends
Technorati Tags: music mp3 adem nu+folkCracklin Moth
Every year about this time (a little before Thanksgiving, soon after I wear a coat for the first time) I get into a really deep alt-country kick. Even more so than my usual alt-country kicks. This year I've been listening to a lot of really great new bands, probably the best of which is Cracklin Moth. Like many great new bands of the genre they are from all over but ended up in Chicago and have strong similarities to other Chicago transplants like Jeff Tweedy and Will Oldham. Plus there is some great steel guitar in there, and you just can't ever have enough great steel guitar.
MP3 Cracklin Moth - One Little Smile
Technorati Tags: music mp3 cracklin+moth alt countryTiger Saw
Under a big crunch today, but I wanted to get Tiger Saw up before the weekend hit and I forgot. Songs:Illinois has a nice little write-up about them. This song has been on repeat all morning.
MP3 Tiger Saw - Sing
Technorati Tags: music mp3 tiger+sawNew Beck video finally online
Sony may be the devil incarnate making rootkits that destroy your computer, but they make a damn fine dancing robot. Beck managed to get all four working Sony QRIO robots in one place for his new music video "Hell Yeah," which is now available for viewing on his site. I've been saying it for years but Beck is the hippest man alive.
The best iPod accessory ever
If this was fake, it would be the best iPod accessory market spoof ever. But it's real. You have to respect an iPod add-on that costs five times what your iPod cost you, and also defeats nearly every benefit of owning an iPod in the first place.
Technorati Tags: iPod music technology Apple mp3Yahoo Shoposphere
Yahoo today announced the launch of Shoposphere, a pretty brilliant little site that makes what are essentially consumerism playlists. I say it's brilliant because I have been kicking around an idea like this for a while and now I don't have to actually make it myself. According to TechCrunch they will soon be adding some form of revenue sharing, which could really help Yahoo Shopping get a leg up on stores like Amazon (if they do more with it than Amazon has with their Listmania lists). What I'd like to see this turn into is a bunch of expertly-filtered stores such as a CoolHunting store, a Phillip Torrone store, a Richard Simmons store, etc.
This is also a great tool for smart marketers who want to help create customer evangelists. If someone has a popular store of adventure products, wouldn't it be smart to maybe send him your new hydration back to test? The downside of this is I'm sure that in about two seconds some marketing genius will create a store touting the praises of their products fake blog style. You take the good with the bad though.
One final thought: I haven't heard anything yet about any tools or APIs to expand the features of Shoposphere. This is pretty reasonable since it has been live less than 24 hours, but I hope there are some in the near future. Lots of potential here to disrupt the online shopping experience.
Technorati Tags: yahoo shopping shoposphere web2.0 internet