Net

My Soul Is Craving Culture

Lately I have had an over-dose of blogs and media covering the Web, social networks, start-ups and technology. To cure this I have come up with my own prescription:

• Classical Music Podcasts
• Jazz Podcasts
• MP3 Podcasts
• Ideas & Culture Podcasts
• Science Podcasts
• Free University Courses

NPR and watching interesting videos on the free-open source video platform Miro. Offline line reading: Umberto Eco's: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. The only technical/ web related blog I read follow regularly is Lifehacker. While we are on the subject of reading. What are your life changing books?

Frets On Fire - Open Source Guitar Hero

This is just awesome! Frets on Fire is a game about musical skill and fast fingers. The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible. It's an open-source project with hundreds of songs composed by the community and supports multi platform. In short it is open source guitar hero! How cool is that!

Features: 

• Unique inverted keyboard gameplay style
• Song editor  form making your own tunes
• Compete iwth others on the World Charts
• Supports importing Guitar Hero I-II songs
• Multiplatform
• Open source

Technorati Tags: fretsonfire, games, opensource, guitar hero, music

MX Play - 3D Audio Mashups

Last week I meet with Ruper Dolasia CEO and Marcy Keenan, VP Business development of MX Play - a new and very cool music player based in San Francisco. At first I asked myself, who needs another music player? But MX Play is different from other players out there in that they have really emphazised on the audio quality. The founders have a strong background in working with audio codex and technologies - and you can hear that.

MX Play makes you music come alive with 3D audio. For serious music lovers this is music to your ears. But there's more to it than that. MX Play even lets you mash your own music with videos from YouTube and let's you discover new music as well.

• Mash your music with videos in the 3D AudioSpace
• Organize and import  your music from anywhere
• Browse the web in MX Play and discover new music

Technorati Tags: mxplay, mxplay, music, audio, mashup

Free Classical Music Podcasts

• An Intimate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Each episode of this podcast delves into the history of his career, and what led him to record each of the tracks of his current release Appassionato.
• Bach Podcast from Magnatune.com  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • 60 free minutes of Bach.
• Bach Festival of Philadelphia  Feed  Web Site 
  
  • Live performances of J.S. Bach works performed by various artists for The Bach Festival of Philadelphia.
• Boston Symphony Orchestra Conservatory  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • This educational podcast gives you an inside look at the symphony. Currently you will find a two season overview and recordings of Beethoven and Arnold Schoenberg.
• Classical Performance iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Classical music performances from WGBH's Studio One in Boston.
• Danmarks Radio - Mozart Symphonies  Feed  Web Site
  • For the celebration of Mozart's 250th anniversary, Denmark radio offered podcasts of nine Mozart symphonies by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since the web site is in Danish, your best bet is to access these high quality MP3's through the feed.
• Deutsche Welle
  • Beethovenfest iTunes  Feed  Web Site
    
    • Beethoven's most famous symphonies performed by excellent young orchestras and new compositions by award-winning composers.
  • Classical Masterpieces  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
    
    • Six master composers, six symphonies, a star conductor and a leading orchestra are the main ingredients of this remarkable musical feast.
• Gramophone Podcast  Feed  Web Site
  • A monthly window into the world's most authoritative classical music magazine, featuring an overview of the best releases, news, exclusive interviews with leading figures from the music world, and lots of great music.
• NPR Music  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  
  • Reviews, musician interviews, live recordings from Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and other NPR programs.
• Radio Sweden: Mozart  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Swedish Radio has launched a Mozart Podcast to celebrate Mozart’s 250th birthday. They've been podcasting their own recordings from the 1940-1950s of Mozart’s operas.
• The Concert iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and more from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston.

All free from Open Culture. Have listened to several of them - top quality.


Technorati Tags: Free music, classical music, open culture, podcast, radio

Outsourcing My Life Part 3 - The RunCast

Here's the 3rd episode of Outsourcing my life. This time in RunCast formate. Very shaky but not stirred. Unfortunately the battery died halfway through in parallel with me reaching 90% of my heart capacity. Now I'm off to Rhodes and the greek island called Symi to focus and get things done. I'll be back with a new episode (GreekCast ?) later this week and some more thoughts about global entrepreneurship & ideas for Loic's Le Web 3.1.

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, loiclemeur, netaneljacobsson, runcast, leweb3

Have You Become an iPuppet?

Must say that I Iove this campaign for SanDisk’s Sansa. Very creative and funny and using Apple’s marketing trics against themselves to promote their own alternative.

Check out the mini-site called lilmonsta . Love the creative and copy. Came across this while searching for Maxthon users on MySpace.

In a world of streamlined smooth advertising, this  kind really sticks out and at least graps my attention.

Sansa - Me? I have 3 iPods and a MacBookPro, so I guess I am guilty of being an iPuppet too..

Track BitTorrent Swarm in Google Earth

This is quite cool. By using the swarm plugin for Google Earth you can look up the BitTorrent client that is used by each peer, what percentage of the file they downloaded so far, and their exact location. The only thing is that now it only shows seeds for torrents that contain the word "Borat"... I guess that more useful words are on the way.

If this could track all p2p traffic in China - you wouldn't see any thing on the map except pins.. Via TorrentFreak.

Technorati Tags: BitTorrent, Borat, Google Earth, p2p, peer-to-peer, mp3, mashups, Swarm, Torrents, tracking

Frenzoo- Second Life in Hong Kong

I told you and showed you about HiPiHi - China's Second Life. Hold the fort! Here comes Frenzoo - Second Life for teenage girls in Hong Kong..According to Brand Republic "Frenzoo, an Asia-centric 3D virtual world aimed at teenage girls, will soon come out of stealth mode to connect consumers in a Second Life-like experience.".Via Angus.

Technorati Tags: Frenzoo, HiPiHi, Virtual Worlds, Hong Kong, Second Life, SL

Jerusalem - The Open Source City?

Is Jerusalem the true Open-Source city? I have been invited to participate in a workshop about Digital Society, Policy and the Internet at the beautiful Mishkenot Sha'ananim located in the heart of Jerusalem. The workshop is called " Jerusalem - An Open Source City in the Test of Time". The workshop is aimed to examine: How can we develop a rich and pluralist digital culture? And, what are the conditions to promote the cultural growth offered by the Internet? It is certainly a very interesting concept and Mishkenot Sha'ananim is a very special place indeed. Thanks to Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski, co-founder of Plymedia Inc (on who's Advisory Board I am a member) for inviting me. More about this later.

Technorati Tags: P2P, Open Source, Jerusalem, Digital Life, DRM

BitTorrent Opening Media Store

BitTorrent, is opening up a media store tomorrow, Monday. The download site will distribute more than 5,000 titles from digital movies, TV shows, games and other media. After long having been the bad kid on the block, BitTorrent has finally managed to sooth Hollywood. 

When opening the store on Monday it will offer: Superman Returns, Mission: Impossible III and An Inconvenient Truth. Among the available TV shows are 24 and Chappelle's Show.

The good thing about it is that people will finally be able to download movies without the fear of viruses and bad copies. The question is, will the crowd that has long relied upon BiTorrent for free goodies stay or turn elsewere?

The $15 IKEA Guitar!

I love this story! Zachary created an electric guitar out of an $15 IKEA table! I don't know if it is the Swede or the musician in me, but this is so cool.

Zachary seems to be very pleased himself with this work:

This is one of the most interesting guitars I ever built and it is also one of the best.The action is great, the tone is unbelievable, the neck is super fast, tuning stability is as good as it gets. In short, everything just worked out great on this guitar. This amazingly figured top is from Ikea Furnishings. I bought one of their unfinished end tables for $15 and I can get three guitar tops from it. What a shame that they would use such amazing "tone-wood" for their cheap furniture. Its a sacrilege.I introduce several new things in this guitar. I use DiMarzio Virtual P90 pickups for the first time and I love them. They are powerful and have a lot of guts. Its some kind of a midrange tone which screams Texas blues and Billy Gibbons.

Something about Zachary tells me that he should be a Maxthon user..

The one thing that does not appear from the story is what table did he use? You know all the IKEA stuff carries swedish names. Was it the table Oskar or Rasmus? Anyway, I am eagerly awaiting for the next IKEA hack..

Oh, and if you have checked out the IKEA Hacker go there now - a wonderful blog dedicated to IKEA hacks for all of us who grew up in IKEA land ;)

Technorati Tags: Cool, IKEA, IKEA Guitar, IKEA Hacker, IKEA Hacks, Music, the art of the pitc, Zacharyguirars

BandWagon - Free Backup of iTunes Library

Hyper Happen is letting us know that Bandwagon is about to launch (February 22). Bandwagon offers online iTunes backup (something I have long been waiting for). An in a smart marketing move to get bloggers onboard to spread the message, bandwagon is offering all bloggers who link to them a free one-year account! Very smart. And judging from the comments their blog has generated,  they will have to give away quite some number of free accounts.

I think this is an excellent marketing strategy that others should follow. The key thing of course, is to really offer something of value for free with no strings attached. The upside for bandwagon except all the buzz it will create, is that once you have backed up your iTunes library, you are probably very willing to pay the subscription fee ;).

Oh, and bandwagon is currently only available for Mac.

Technorati Tags: backup, backup, bandwagon, hyperhappen, iTunes, mac, marketing, blogmarketing, puppy, puppy, puppy

Personality Secrets in Your Mp3 Player

A recent study put participants in same-sex and opposite-sex pairings and told them to get to know each other over 6 weeks (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006). Analysing the results, they found the most popular topic of conversation was music. What is it about music that's so useful when we first meet someone and what kind of information can we extract from the music another person likes? In the first week on average 58% of the pairs discussed music compared to 37% of all the other categories of conversation combined.

This is very interesting since it suggests that we probably think that music indirectly is telling something about the others person's personality. To test how good music really is as a measure of personality, a test was conducted that asked to judge other peoples personality based only on their top 10 list of songs. Compared with participants results on a standard personality type test measuring the Big five personality traits: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.  Some of the interesting finding were:

• Likes vocals: extraverted
• Likes country: emotionally stable. On the face of it, this is bizarre really because country music is all about heartache. Either the emotionally stable are attracted to country music or it has a calming effect on the unstable!
• Likes jazz: intellectual

The big problem with this study is however, that the age group tested was around 18 year old. Young people tend to talk about music more than older people. There are other problems as well with this study, however, I find the subject of judging a personality based on his favorite music quite interesting. I guess I would end up as an emotional unstable person based on this study. I hate country music, but loves jazz, classical, reggae and greek music...I guess I suffer from a split personality.. Via PsyBlog

BTW, would be great to combine Pandora with a personality test and then offer people to meet with other's like themselves...Perhaps a more effective way of finding a new partner or friends?

Technorati Tags: Mp3, Pandora, Personality, Psychology, Dating, puppy

Pandora, Last.fm & Maxthon

We just released some great music plugins at Maxthon. One for Pandora and one for Last.fm . Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Last.fm, Maxthon, Pandora, Music, Radio

VC Investments In Chinese Video Sites

ChinaVenture reports that 17 Chinese Online Video sites got $95.5 million in funding since 2004 with an investment peak of $52.7 million in 2006.
Below is a chart illustrating the investments. As you can see WI Harper invested in Radio.cn but missing from the list is Charles River Ventures investment in Wangyou Media in March 2006.

Technorati Tags: Blogcn, Charles River Ventures, China, CRV, Wangyou media

Rastaman Vibrations From A Previous Life..

Once upon a time in the late 80s and early 90s I was a reggae singer and performed under the artist name "MalachI". Check out these recordings from 1990 recorded in Rub-a-dub studios 1990...

Technorati Tags: Malachi, Music, Reggae, Rubadub studios

Chinese Online Video Jungle Review

Danwei has a good updated list on Chinese Online Video sites. For a very good comparison of the services see here. 6rooms is almost identical with YouTube, even their logo is a rip-off.

With more than 150 sites (and still counting), the Chinese Online video market is a jungle. It is hardly likely that any of them will become the next YouTube or become aquiered by any of the big Chinese companies any time soon since they can easily create their own service. CWR also points out that none of these sites are very good at SEM. If you run a query on Baidu (Chinas biggest search engine) no videos show up in the search result. The same query on Google will mostly bring up YouTube results.

I will ask Buddy Ling from WangYou when we meet in San Jose next week what his take on this is. Hopefully we will have time to make a Vlog it too. Anything you would like to ask about Online Video in China?

Technorati Tags: 6rooms, Asian Ventures 2006, Charles River Ventures, China, China Web2.0 Review, Danwei, SEM, Google, Baidu, Video, Videoblog, Vlog, Wangyou, Web 2.0, YouTube

A Chat With Kaiser Kuo - Red Herring China

Click To Play

I just came back from a very cold Beijing and had the pleasure to meet up with an old Maxthon friend and fan - Kaiser Kuo, China Bureau Chief for Red Herring. Kaiser also co-founded China's first heavy metal band - Tang Dynasty and is still very active on the music scene with his new band, Spring and Autumn.

Kaiser talks about how his then 70-year old father introduced him to Maxthon, why he likes Maxthon and shows us his set up of Maxthon 2.0 Beta.

If you like the music and wants to get your hands on it - please let us know and we will connect you with Kaiser. I love the Chinese feel on his heavy metal.

Technorati Tags: China, Heavy Metal, Kaiser Kuo, Red Herring, Tang Dynasty, Vlog

I'm off to Beijing again on Sunday. I am starting to like China more and more even though koscher food it had to find..Besides a couple of intensive days of internal Maxthon meetings (and hopefully shoot some Vlogs with the Maxthon team in action). I also will our meet with and Vlog with our great friend Kaiser Kuo, Red Herring China Bureau Chief, and co-founder of Chinas first real heavy metal band - Tang Dynasty. Tangos, the editior of China Web2.0 Review is somebody I have wanted to meet up with for a long time to learn more about what is going on on the Chinese Web2.0 scene so that will be very interesting.

Time permitted I would love to see some serious Qi Gong Masters and Shaolin performances as well.

If you want to meet up in Beijing please let me know, if not there is always Asian Ventures 2006 in San Jose on December 5-6.

BTW, anybody that can recommend a really good online or CD - course in Chinese?

Technorati Tags: Asian Ventures 2006, Beijing, China, China Web2.0 Review, Kaiser Kuo, puppy, Qi Gong, Shaolin, Tang Dynasty, Vlog

Last year. when I worked on the Anyfilms.net campaign together with Hyper Happen for Samsung Mobile, I covered how the new vide enabled cellphones is changing or is going to change the way movies & videos are produced and consumed. Now PSFK, is reporting about how singer Robert Dickinson, has made a music video of his song "Oceans" on a Nokia N93 phone.

The video is very good actually. This will certainly not be the last one produced by a mobile. Check out the Anyfilms Blog I ran (no longer active though) for more on coverage on the cross-over between movie making and cellphones..

Do you know of other music videos or movie shot on cellphones?

Technorati Tags: Anyfilms, Hyper Happen, Mobile, Movies, N93, Nokia, Rob Dickinson, Spreadsheets

Traveling can sometimes be very boring, especially if you do in on a regular basis like I do regardless of having a good book, and a fully loaded iPod etc. Not so this time. I was privileged to travel beside the master photographer and artist Joel Meyerowitz from JFK - San Francisco.

 

Joel is on a book tour for his recently published book about ground zeo called "Aftermath".Joel was the only photographer that gained access into the site just days after 9/11. He did so out of need and risk of being prosecuted since the site was a crime scene and no photography was allowed there. Nevertheless, Joel felt a duty and responsebility to document all what he saw and experienced there and was accepted by all the people working on the site as being one of them.

 

All in all, Joel spend 9 months day and night at the site, and he told me it totally changed him as a person. We had a really interesting conversation about the human condition, photography, citizen journalism and media disruption.

Joel also told me about a newly open exhibition at Jeu de Paume in Paris featuring his work. Joel works closely with HP and they have put a some of their best printers at the exhibition. For the first time, visitiors can now print their own exhibition catalouges at the museum and chose what pictures they like from the exhibition and in what order. The result is a high quality booklet with personalized content. I like that. The exhibition will be running for 3 months, so I will be able to see it when I attend Les Blogs 3 in December.

Technorati Tags: Joel Meyerowitz, Aftermath, Photography, 9/11, ground zero, art, Jeu de Paume, HP, Lesblogs3,

Here's a handy advice for those of you looking for new mp3 files using Google:

Use this Google search string for searching open web directories containing downloadable Nirvana files. Change "Nirvana" to any artist you like and bookmark the search result for further use. Works great if you don't find it in LimeWire or any other p2p programs.

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Nirvana”

With some very slight modifications the same search string can easily be used to search for ebooks in DOC and PDF format:

 

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(pdf|doc) “george orwell 1984″

 

Or perhaps your looking for some specific video file:

 

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(mpg|wmv) “towelie”

Technorati Tags: mp3, music, p2p, google, search, tech, hacks

Can YouTube move to a peer-to-peer architecture? Asks Ori Cohen, founder & CTO at Skyrider.

I first met Ori and Edward Kozel (Yahoo & Reuters Board of Director) a couple of months ago in their office in Mountainview when the company was called Cright. The had then been in stealth mode for almost to years gearing up to get out of the "closet". 

Skyrider has developed a peer-to-peer architecture that is utilizing the peer-to-peer networks and created some very smart business opportunities.

On Skyrider's blog, Ori has analysed the digital distribution of entertainment-related content and made a number of interesting observations:

• Demand for popular content is compressed into a very short time-frame: a few days at most. During this time, millions of copies are downloaded and physically copied
• Demand for (not popular) “long tail” content continues forever - the more diverse the content (the longer the tail), more users discover and consume it but at a low volume
• The majority of content services (both music and video), provide the content at low quality (mp3 files at 128-192kbs, YouTube-quality videos)

 

Welcome out of stealth mode Skyrider! I met with Ed Kozel Skyrider's President & CEO (currently serves on the boards of Yahoo, Reuters and Applied Networks) and Or Cohen, Skyrider's Co-founder last week in Palo Alto and am really impressed by their technology and the business model.

Skyrider is a developer of a new peer-to-peer (P2P) networking platform who's technology will allow the P2P environment and the web to coexist, creating three fundamental opportunities, including keyword-based P2P search; unrestricted and more dynamic access to content; and an explosion of new applications based on P2P architectures.

The company’s unique platform enables businesses to promote commercialization of P2P through cost-effective content distribution and targeted marketing, and enables consumers to get the greatest opportunity to be creative and connect through P2P networks. Skyrider is located in Mountain View with R&D in Kfar Saba in Israel.

Guess what, Skyrider is  just like Maxthon funded by Charles River Ventures (George Zachary is on their board) and Sequoia Capital - a great company with a very promising future.

Things are certainly changing fast for Chad Hurley & Steve Chen, founders of YouTube. 17 months ago they were sweating in a gararage and today they are the biggest attractioin at an elite media summit in Idaho, according to Associated Press.

Today YouTube's users are watching about 100 million videos a day. Hurley was seen in a private conversation with CBS Corp. CEO Lesleie Moonves. It seems that the meeting ended with Mooves would start posting daily snippets of its programming on YouTube. How knows, perhaps more is cooking...

One thing is for sure, online video's is just getting hotter and hotter - the big question is according to some: will they be able to attract enough advertisers? I think so contrary to some conservative analysts. There might be some advertisers that will find it too risky to place the ads next to some home-made vulgar video, but there are enough advertisers out there trying to reach the audience they have lost from TV.

technorati tags:YouTube, Video, Media, Media2.0, Advertising, CBS

Wired has this intersting story named "The rise and fall of the hit"  saying that:

The era of the blockbuster is so over. The niche is now king, and the entertainment industry – from music to movies to TV – will never be the same.

Long live the disruptive media revolution! Via Steve.

Tags: Media Tags: Longtail Tags: Disruptive

 

If you love Jazz, Fusion and Funk (no smooth Jazz here) and a groovy host, check out In the groove.. Jazz and Beyond, with Ken Laster. It is actually a weekly radio broadcast on WHUS 91.7FM Storrs CT.It airs Saturday 7-9 PM EST. But even better, it is available as a Podcast too! The show is great, amazing mixes all accompanied by Ken Laster's groovy voice. I downloaded the last couple of months Podcast into my Ipod for great music on the road. Naturally I subscribe to In the groove Podcast in My Maxton Podast side bar. One click, and I can groove while I surf.

Technorati Tags: In the groove, iPod, Jazz, Ken Laster, MP3, Podcast, Radio, Tag 43, WHUS

This is priceless! BBC mistakenly interviews a cab driver instead of Newswireless.net editor Guy Kewney! The BBC wanted to interview Guy Kewney about the Apple music / Apple computer decision, but seems to have taken his cab driver instead. Judging from public reactions to the blunder, BBC would probably be better off interviewing wrong persons rather than experts. Just look at the guys expression, when they address him. More mistakes please or what do you say about his answer:

"I am very surprised to see...this verdict to come on me because I was not expecting that. When I came they told me something else and I am coming. So a big surprise anyway."

Nokia is planning to launch a mobile Podcasting application for the S60 N series in July. The initial release focuses on providing a mobile podcasting client that will be able to manual and automatic updates of podcasts over 3G or WLAN networks.  The first release is more of a Podcatcher that an actual Podcasting platform. However, Nokia plans to develope the application to be a mobile podcast publishing platform. Nokia Podcasting Product Manager Steven Stewart "The ultimate focus of the Nokia Podcasting Application is the world of Podcasting… search, discovery, preview, download, listen/watch, create, edit and uploading," adds Stewart. Gizmodo hopes that the Podcasting platform will be released at the same time as these cool devices, N93 & N73, and so do I. Can't wait to get my hands on the N93! Guess if Vlogging will kick off seriously with the N93...

Technorati Tags: Film, Mobile , MP3, MP4, Nokia, Nokia N73, Nokia N93, Nokia S60, Podcast, Podcasting, Gadgets, Tools, Video, Vlog, Vlogging

The disruptive revolution keeps on rocking. Now you can subscribe to PDF's via Itunes. Perhaps it does not sounds like music to your ears but it can be quite useful. Wikinews is already available this way and we can expect many more to come. I find this PDF-casting interesting in many ways:

• Authors and Journalist can distribute their materials directly via RSS - cutting off, or being less dependent on the middle-man
• Anybody can become a publisher (just as with Blogging and Podcasting) no barrier for entry
• Services like NPR can offer transcripts of their programs together with the Podcast
• Artists can bundle their music with lyrics & transcriptions etc

Tags: Itunes Tags: PDF's Tags: Wikinews Tags: Publishing Tags: iPods Tags: Apple Tags: NPR Tags: Disruptive Media

The authours of Freakononics, has this interesting story on their blog , about the Canadian singer Jane Siberry and her ways of selling here songs to the public via a honor system. Basically you pay what you want, but by displaying what other people have been paying before, she skillfully manages to excercise the powerful principle of social proof.

Even more cleverly, Siberry posts the average payment rate for each song as you pull your payment option from the drop-down menu—another reminder that, Hey, you’re more than welcome to steal this music but here’s how other people have acted in the recent past. Methinks Ms. Siberry grasps the power of incentives quite well. This allows for at least a couple of interesting things to happen: people can decide what to pay after they hear the music, and see how much it’s worth to them (it looks like people generally pay the most per song under this option); and it takes the variable-pricing scheme that economists love and puts it in the hands of the consumer, not the seller.

This story reminds me of a certain Italian restaurant (in Italy - can't remember the name) where people pay can eat as much as they want, and pay as much as they want for the food. The interesting thing is that here too, most people on an averagae pay more than it is actually cost in other restaurants making the restuarant profitable. It's a very intersting system letting people pay what they think the goods & products are worth.

Tags: Freakonomics Tags: Jane Siberry Tags: Social Proof Tags: Music Tags: E-commerce Tags: Psychology Tags: Influence Tags: What makes people tick

China Mobile is planning to launch a "central music platform" and work directly with record companies to sell music, ringtones etc to mobile subscribers. According to a China Mobile representative, China Mobile will give some room to other service providers,  Bill Bishop thinks that is bad news for all the WVAS and SP's and I tend to agree. China Mobile will give some room to get started, then the room will very quickly shrink to a closet....

Tags: China Tags: China Mobile Tags: Music Tags: WVAS Tags: MP3 Downloads

Beijing Calling

I'm off to Beijing again on Sunday. I am starting to like China more and more even though koscher food it had to find..Besides a couple of intensive days of internal Maxthon meetings (and hopefully shoot some Vlogs with the Maxthon team in action). I also will our meet with and Vlog with our great friend Kaiser Kuo, Red Herring China Bureau Chief, and co-founder of Chinas first real heavy metal band - Tang Dynasty. Tangos, the editior of China Web2.0 Review is somebody I have wanted to meet up with for a long time to learn more about what is going on on the Chinese Web2.0 scene so that will be very interesting.

Time permitted I would love to see some serious Qi Gong Masters and Shaolin performances as well.

If you want to meet up in Beijing please let me know, if not there is always Asian Ventures 2006 in San Jose on December 5-6.

BTW, anybody that can recommend a really good online or CD - course in Chinese?

Technorati Tags: Asian Ventures 2006, Beijing, China, China Web2.0 Review, Kaiser Kuo, puppy, Qi Gong, Shaolin, Tang Dynasty, Vlog

Singer Makes Music Video on Nokia N93

Last year. when I worked on the Anyfilms.net campaign together with Hyper Happen for Samsung Mobile, I covered how the new vide enabled cellphones is changing or is going to change the way movies & videos are produced and consumed. Now PSFK, is reporting about how singer Robert Dickinson, has made a music video of his song "Oceans" on a Nokia N93 phone.

The video is very good actually. This will certainly not be the last one produced by a mobile. Check out the Anyfilms Blog I ran (no longer active though) for more on coverage on the cross-over between movie making and cellphones..

Do you know of other music videos or movie shot on cellphones?

Technorati Tags: Anyfilms, Hyper Happen, Mobile, Movies, N93, Nokia, Rob Dickinson, Spreadsheets

Traveling with Joel Meyerowitz

Traveling can sometimes be very boring, especially if you do in on a regular basis like I do regardless of having a good book, and a fully loaded iPod etc. Not so this time. I was privileged to travel beside the master photographer and artist Joel Meyerowitz from JFK - San Francisco.

 

Joel is on a book tour for his recently published book about ground zeo called "Aftermath".Joel was the only photographer that gained access into the site just days after 9/11. He did so out of need and risk of being prosecuted since the site was a crime scene and no photography was allowed there. Nevertheless, Joel felt a duty and responsebility to document all what he saw and experienced there and was accepted by all the people working on the site as being one of them.

 

All in all, Joel spend 9 months day and night at the site, and he told me it totally changed him as a person. We had a really interesting conversation about the human condition, photography, citizen journalism and media disruption.

Joel also told me about a newly open exhibition at Jeu de Paume in Paris featuring his work. Joel works closely with HP and they have put a some of their best printers at the exhibition. For the first time, visitiors can now print their own exhibition catalouges at the museum and chose what pictures they like from the exhibition and in what order. The result is a high quality booklet with personalized content. I like that. The exhibition will be running for 3 months, so I will be able to see it when I attend Les Blogs 3 in December.

Technorati Tags: Joel Meyerowitz, Aftermath, Photography, 9/11, ground zero, art, Jeu de Paume, HP, Lesblogs3,

Use Google To Search MP3

Here's a handy advice for those of you looking for new mp3 files using Google:

Use this Google search string for searching open web directories containing downloadable Nirvana files. Change "Nirvana" to any artist you like and bookmark the search result for further use. Works great if you don't find it in LimeWire or any other p2p programs.

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Nirvana”

With some very slight modifications the same search string can easily be used to search for ebooks in DOC and PDF format:

 

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(pdf|doc) “george orwell 1984″

 

Or perhaps your looking for some specific video file:

 

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(mpg|wmv) “towelie”

Technorati Tags: mp3, music, p2p, google, search, tech, hacks

Can YouTube Move To a Peer-to-Peer Architecture?

Can YouTube move to a peer-to-peer architecture? Asks Ori Cohen, founder & CTO at Skyrider.

I first met Ori and Edward Kozel (Yahoo & Reuters Board of Director) a couple of months ago in their office in Mountainview when the company was called Cright. The had then been in stealth mode for almost to years gearing up to get out of the "closet". 

Skyrider has developed a peer-to-peer architecture that is utilizing the peer-to-peer networks and created some very smart business opportunities.

On Skyrider's blog, Ori has analysed the digital distribution of entertainment-related content and made a number of interesting observations:

• Demand for popular content is compressed into a very short time-frame: a few days at most. During this time, millions of copies are downloaded and physically copied
• Demand for (not popular) “long tail” content continues forever - the more diverse the content (the longer the tail), more users discover and consume it but at a low volume
• The majority of content services (both music and video), provide the content at low quality (mp3 files at 128-192kbs, YouTube-quality videos)

 

Skyrider - Riding the P2P Networks

Welcome out of stealth mode Skyrider! I met with Ed Kozel Skyrider's President & CEO (currently serves on the boards of Yahoo, Reuters and Applied Networks) and Or Cohen, Skyrider's Co-founder last week in Palo Alto and am really impressed by their technology and the business model.

Skyrider is a developer of a new peer-to-peer (P2P) networking platform who's technology will allow the P2P environment and the web to coexist, creating three fundamental opportunities, including keyword-based P2P search; unrestricted and more dynamic access to content; and an explosion of new applications based on P2P architectures.

The company’s unique platform enables businesses to promote commercialization of P2P through cost-effective content distribution and targeted marketing, and enables consumers to get the greatest opportunity to be creative and connect through P2P networks. Skyrider is located in Mountain View with R&D in Kfar Saba in Israel.

Guess what, Skyrider is  just like Maxthon funded by Charles River Ventures (George Zachary is on their board) and Sequoia Capital - a great company with a very promising future.

YouTube @ Media Summit

Things are certainly changing fast for Chad Hurley & Steve Chen, founders of YouTube. 17 months ago they were sweating in a gararage and today they are the biggest attractioin at an elite media summit in Idaho, according to Associated Press.

Today YouTube's users are watching about 100 million videos a day. Hurley was seen in a private conversation with CBS Corp. CEO Lesleie Moonves. It seems that the meeting ended with Mooves would start posting daily snippets of its programming on YouTube. How knows, perhaps more is cooking...

One thing is for sure, online video's is just getting hotter and hotter - the big question is according to some: will they be able to attract enough advertisers? I think so contrary to some conservative analysts. There might be some advertisers that will find it too risky to place the ads next to some home-made vulgar video, but there are enough advertisers out there trying to reach the audience they have lost from TV.

technorati tags:YouTube, Video, Media, Media2.0, Advertising, CBS

The Era of The Blockbuster - Niche Is King

Wired has this intersting story named "The rise and fall of the hit"  saying that:

The era of the blockbuster is so over. The niche is now king, and the entertainment industry – from music to movies to TV – will never be the same.

Long live the disruptive media revolution! Via Steve.

Tags: Media Tags: Longtail Tags: Disruptive

Great Jazz Podcast - In the Groove

 

If you love Jazz, Fusion and Funk (no smooth Jazz here) and a groovy host, check out In the groove.. Jazz and Beyond, with Ken Laster. It is actually a weekly radio broadcast on WHUS 91.7FM Storrs CT.It airs Saturday 7-9 PM EST. But even better, it is available as a Podcast too! The show is great, amazing mixes all accompanied by Ken Laster's groovy voice. I downloaded the last couple of months Podcast into my Ipod for great music on the road. Naturally I subscribe to In the groove Podcast in My Maxton Podast side bar. One click, and I can groove while I surf.

Technorati Tags: In the groove, iPod, Jazz, Ken Laster, MP3, Podcast, Radio, Tag 43, WHUS

BBC Mistakenly Interviews Cabbie Instead of Industry Expert

This is priceless! BBC mistakenly interviews a cab driver instead of Newswireless.net editor Guy Kewney! The BBC wanted to interview Guy Kewney about the Apple music / Apple computer decision, but seems to have taken his cab driver instead. Judging from public reactions to the blunder, BBC would probably be better off interviewing wrong persons rather than experts. Just look at the guys expression, when they address him. More mistakes please or what do you say about his answer:

"I am very surprised to see...this verdict to come on me because I was not expecting that. When I came they told me something else and I am coming. So a big surprise anyway."

Nokia Podcasting Application On The Way

Nokia is planning to launch a mobile Podcasting application for the S60 N series in July. The initial release focuses on providing a mobile podcasting client that will be able to manual and automatic updates of podcasts over 3G or WLAN networks.  The first release is more of a Podcatcher that an actual Podcasting platform. However, Nokia plans to develope the application to be a mobile podcast publishing platform. Nokia Podcasting Product Manager Steven Stewart "The ultimate focus of the Nokia Podcasting Application is the world of Podcasting… search, discovery, preview, download, listen/watch, create, edit and uploading," adds Stewart. Gizmodo hopes that the Podcasting platform will be released at the same time as these cool devices, N93 & N73, and so do I. Can't wait to get my hands on the N93! Guess if Vlogging will kick off seriously with the N93...

Technorati Tags: Film, Mobile , MP3, MP4, Nokia, Nokia N73, Nokia N93, Nokia S60, Podcast, Podcasting, Gadgets, Tools, Video, Vlog, Vlogging

Itunes + PDF Subscriptions

The disruptive revolution keeps on rocking. Now you can subscribe to PDF's via Itunes. Perhaps it does not sounds like music to your ears but it can be quite useful. Wikinews is already available this way and we can expect many more to come. I find this PDF-casting interesting in many ways:

• Authors and Journalist can distribute their materials directly via RSS - cutting off, or being less dependent on the middle-man
• Anybody can become a publisher (just as with Blogging and Podcasting) no barrier for entry
• Services like NPR can offer transcripts of their programs together with the Podcast
• Artists can bundle their music with lyrics & transcriptions etc

Tags: Itunes Tags: PDF's Tags: Wikinews Tags: Publishing Tags: iPods Tags: Apple Tags: NPR Tags: Disruptive Media

Jane Siberry, Freakonomics & Power of Incentives

The authours of Freakononics, has this interesting story on their blog , about the Canadian singer Jane Siberry and her ways of selling here songs to the public via a honor system. Basically you pay what you want, but by displaying what other people have been paying before, she skillfully manages to excercise the powerful principle of social proof.

Even more cleverly, Siberry posts the average payment rate for each song as you pull your payment option from the drop-down menu—another reminder that, Hey, you’re more than welcome to steal this music but here’s how other people have acted in the recent past. Methinks Ms. Siberry grasps the power of incentives quite well. This allows for at least a couple of interesting things to happen: people can decide what to pay after they hear the music, and see how much it’s worth to them (it looks like people generally pay the most per song under this option); and it takes the variable-pricing scheme that economists love and puts it in the hands of the consumer, not the seller.

This story reminds me of a certain Italian restaurant (in Italy - can't remember the name) where people pay can eat as much as they want, and pay as much as they want for the food. The interesting thing is that here too, most people on an averagae pay more than it is actually cost in other restaurants making the restuarant profitable. It's a very intersting system letting people pay what they think the goods & products are worth.

Tags: Freakonomics Tags: Jane Siberry Tags: Social Proof Tags: Music Tags: E-commerce Tags: Psychology Tags: Influence Tags: What makes people tick

China Mobile Planning To Launch Mobile Music Platform

China Mobile is planning to launch a "central music platform" and work directly with record companies to sell music, ringtones etc to mobile subscribers. According to a China Mobile representative, China Mobile will give some room to other service providers,  Bill Bishop thinks that is bad news for all the WVAS and SP's and I tend to agree. China Mobile will give some room to get started, then the room will very quickly shrink to a closet....

Tags: China Tags: China Mobile Tags: Music Tags: WVAS Tags: MP3 Downloads