Net

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

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