Stuff Behind the Counters

While the very public MusicIP launch was going on last week, there were a few other projects going on behind the counters as well... I received a phone call that the Scorched Earth project is well in motion (with accompanying video). Also, work is in progress for another new project which will be open to the public just as soon as humanly possible. I'll be pouring out clues in my blog, because it's fun to do. So bring your hardhat, pull up a stool, and wait for the construction to be completed.

Dealing with Superabundance

Well, we made it back from SXSW 2006, and the topic on the top of my mind is superabundance. Anyone who was at SXSW probably knows what I'm talking about - music, music, and more music. That's great, but how can you decide what to see and hear when there's so many options? Ok, ok, yes, this is a shocking subject for me to be covering. Obviously that's what MusicIP is all about. This post is more specifically about what worked and what didn't work at SXSW. - We added a nifty feature to the SXSW website, so that artists who had made sample tracks available also got a "Other songs and SXSW artists you may enjoy" link to similar sample tracks available. This was a cool little feature, but depended on the specific tracks being made available, and knowing where to enter the system. (You had to start your search from an artist that was listed on the SXSW site, and that had a track available there). - Right before the show, we updated the "Discovery" window inside MusicIP Mixer to show recommendations based on playlists in your collection. This was easier, because you could start from music you own and know, and access related bands you didn't. Still, you had to go to the extra step of making a mix, and you didn't know who was playing when or where without clicking through to the SXSW website. After a long day working the convention center, if you've got four people walking down 6th Street trying to decide which direction to head, it needs to be even easier. (For the record, we took the easy road of assigning a "Team Leader".) Some things I'd like to see next year (or maybe at NXNE): - Some way, preferably from a phone, to get personalized recommendations and directions about what's playing right now. SXSW did have a service to find bands from text messages ("Where are the Brakes playing"), but not the ability to say something like "Music like Morcheeba, within 90 minutes and 6 blocks". - Some way to created a limited, targeted show guide. For instance, compare my collection and listening habits to the bands out there, remove stuff that doesn't match, and just show me what's left. - And some way to do that with multiple users - sync up our iPods, and find the best recommendations where our musical tastes overlap. That's just for starters. Hopefully we'll be at SXSW next year, with even more cool stuff!

It's Time for MusicIP

Today's the day MusicIP launches as the new face of the MusicMagic technology. I'm in Austin, TX waiting for SXSW 2006 to begin, so I can start telling people what we've been up to. This is going to be fantasic. Listeners, Artists, and Enterprises will connect in a revolutionary way... today.

Oscar Buzz

Normally, I don't worry too much about the Oscars - this year, however, it seems I've got a relative up for an award. So here's hoping Amy Adams gets the Best Supporting Actress nod for her role in Junebug.

Getting It Right

In contrast to iTunes, who's lousy affiliate feedback I documented in an earlier post, I just received this unexpectedly pleasant email from the Amazon affiliate program:

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Hello Associate, We noticed that you were accepted to the Amazon.com Associate Program several weeks ago but have yet to refer an order. Here are three quick and easy steps to help you get started: ... We hope this information was helpful, and thank you for your participation in our program.

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I'm not entirely sure what this means, since I thought I already had some affiliate links in this blog, but maybe in just means no one's clicked on them? In any case, it was nice to get a pleasant "how's it going, glad to have you on board email", even if it was automatically generated. Kudos to the Amazon affiliates team.

Compare and Contrast

Two news stories popped out at me this morning from my Slashdot feed. 1. Microsoft Claims Worlds Best Search Engine Soon Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months. 2. Wikipedia Reaches 1,000,000 Articles The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia. I'll leave it to you to decide which story is more interesting. For me, I'm keeping my eyes on projects like Creative Commons and MusicBrainz.

Taking Aim At Target

Or.... "Why the Music Industry Needs To Wake Up" Awhile ago, I got some nice new speakers for my work computer (Logitech X-530 if you want to know, thanks for asking). Wanting to have some fun with the 5.1 speakers, I thought "Hey, why not grab a music DVD and see how it sounds?" So off I head to my local Target, and pick up a recent DualDisc with 5.1 audio on one side, and regular CD audio on the other. Bring it in to work, pop it into my external DVD drive... uh, oh... what's that funny noise? Not music, that's for sure. Thus, I found out the hard way that DualDiscs aren't compatible with all DVD players. Sigh... no 5.1 audio goodness for me. Luckily I kept the receipt, so I truck back into my local Target (yeah, ok, so I'm not entirely naive here - I'm expecting some problems). Local clerk, says "Sorry, we can't refund an opened CD, I'd be happy to replace it". Says me, "Spiffy, but a DualDisc is a DualDisc, and a new one won't do me any good. If you can't fix this, can I talk to someone higher up?" Next person, "Sorry, the State of California says it's illegal to accept returns on CD's for copyright reasons." Says me, "Next please. Preferably someone who won't start spouting lies?" Next person, "Yup, sorry, you're screwed. Take it up with the company if you like." Ok, let's give that a shot. Here's an excerpt from my first response:

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I'm sorry for any disappointment, but we don't make returns or exchanges of music once they've been opened, unless the item is defective. Defective music items can be exchanged for another copy of the same title. In order to prevent fraudulent returns and keep prices low, we can't make any other return or exchange if the item has been opened. Great products. Great value. And a great shopping experience - every time you visit our stores.

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Hmmm.. the product is clearly defective, but they'll only exchange it for defective product. So much for "great value". Did I mention that it's a lot easier to just download the tracks from the internet than trying to buy/rip/return a CD? For Pete's sake (Hi Pete!) if I was trying to steal the music, I wouldn't have bought the disc in the first place. I fire one more email off, including the following rant, among others: "I can appreciate your concerns, but the simple reality is you have sold me something that will not work, and you are not willing to stand behind the product. In this case, we have a Poor Product, with a Poor Value." And back with the response:

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Problems relating to the width of DualDiscs is a known issue, and for help with your DVD, you'll want to call the manufacturer, Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

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So we have a confirmation that they sold me defective product, and intend to do nothing about it, because I might in fact be a criminal trying to steal something from them. Who's the criminal now? Seriously, could the record labels try any harder to make me not want to give them my money?

Scorched Earth: The Movie

Nope, this isn't the "big announcement" I was teasing about a few weeks ago. But it is definitely post-worthy. Andrew Kepple has created Scorched Earth: The Movie. This is a Flash movie inspired by Scorch, and it's hilarious. Good job, TmsT!

A Little Link Love for Canada (Those Arrogant Worms)

I suppose this blog has officially reached it's high watermark with the previous post. It's all downhill from here... A quick business trip to Canada this week, and lots of cool ideas written down for work, hasn't left me with a lot of energy for blogging. However, not wanting to let my blog get too stagnant, I thought I'd tip my hat to our Canadian friends, and give a little link love to the Arrogant Worms, a Canadian band who just released their 11th album, according to their website. I just picked up their Greatest Hits CD, and am enjoying it (think Weird Al, without the slick production, eh?)

Must Be Something In The Jeans

"If there could ever be such a thing as a perfect article of clothing it simply has to be a pair of perfect blue jeans." The Denim Love Affair "Three quarters of women say they love denim and that it’s a major presence in their wardrobe." Denim and Women: The Love Affair Continues "My jeans make me so happy I could cry" Jean Girl: Sonnet o' Jeans

Make Up Yer Mind Already...

Walking through the CD section at the local Target, it's not an unusual occurrence to see stickers like this: "Includes 2 Unreleased Tracks" Uh, hello? If it isn't released, what's it doing here on a released CD? Sigh. (One suggestion: "Includes 2 exclusive tracks.") Browsing through MSNBC, I came across this bizarre quote from Mario Batali: "I'm not going to tell anybody, but of course I'm worried," Batali said in an interview. Good news, Batali - I'm not going to blog this.

Return of the CAPTCHA rant

A while ago I ranted about those annoying online tests you have to take in order move around the web (type in the phrase you see). Since then, I've learned they have a name: Captcha (Thanks, Kevin!), which apparently stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". And yes, there's a patent. Apparently I'm not alone - there's a particularly heinous example blogged by Seth Godin. How many collective hours have we humans wasted taking CAPTCHA's? (Computer Automated Process To Consume Human Awareness). Why not take scanned images, say from Project Gutenberg, and let people do the matching on that? Then at the end of it, at least we've created some value. (Insert witty comment about a million monkeys and Shakespeare - nah, too trite.) Oh yeah - that wouldn't prove to the computer that we're actually humans. It seems only wasting our time will do that.

Treating (Ex)Customers Like Crap

Here's an excerpt from an actual piece of mail I received regarding Time magazine. We had a subscription sometime last year, and decided not to renew it (personally, I prefer The Economist). It's been many months since we let the subscription go. So, we get a piece of mail labelled "FINAL NOTICE", looking like something you'd get hand delivered by a beefy Italian named Guido.

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SERVICE CONTRACT SUSPENSION

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URGENT NOTICE: FOR WHICKEN Your renewal instructions are past due. Your delivery contract has been suspended until we receive your authorization to continue. Detach the Re-order form and return at once with your remittance.

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Sorry, Guido, I don't want to renew ok? Please don't break my knees.

Wistful Longing

I just put another playlist up on FIQL: Wistful Longing. I tried to keep out some of the more obscure stuff so it's easier to find the tracks to recreate the list. I started this list by making a mix based on "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt. The theme of wistful longing seemed to come through so well that after some fine tuning I decided to put it up for others to enjoy. It's not exactly pick me up music, though. (Well, the Shatner track is pretty funny...)

CoverFlow

If you have a Mac, and a music collection, you owe it to yourself to check out CoverFlow. This is a very cool app that enables you to flip through your cd collection virtually. It's a beautiful bit of eye candy. Kudo's to the author! Of course, it's album-centric, which is fine sometimes, but I think music needs to be free to be listened to in different ways.

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This post is coming to you from the free blog posting tool Bleezer by Larry Borsato. It's written in Java, so you can run it on Windows/Mac/Linux. We'll see how this works. One nice thing is builtiin tagging support (hopefully you'll see the links somewhere in this post - any more importantly, so will Technorati).

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Valentine's Day Playlist

Well, sort of... I've put a new post up on FIQL, you can download it here (hopefully the script will work now). (If not, you can download it here). This playlist starts out with the usual set of love songs, but halfway through hits "It's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate". From there on, it skews to songs of disappointment and bitterness. This list was created with the assistance of waypoint mixes inside MusicMagic, which let me control the acoustic flow between different songs. Thanks to Mike at FIQL for adding XSPF support - that made uploading my playlist *way* easier!

Feed Me

Thanks to FeedBurner, this blog now has an RSS feed (over on the right hand side). Too lazy to look for it? Ok, try this. For some reason, though, IceRocket doesn't like it...

One of my pet peeve(s)

Arg!! Just look at the preceeding post, and you'll see my moment of silence is followed by the line "1 Comments" (assuming no one else chirps in between my now, and your now). C'mon guys, this isn't rocket science. English has this concept called "plurals", and it doesn't apply to the number one. Nope, never has, and never will. Even my debug statements get this right. Watch how simple it is: Code written by lazy people: printf("%d comments", numComments); Code written by people with a clue: printf("%d comment%s", numComments, numComments == 1 ? "" : "s"); Please, please, please get it right! (And don't use localization as an excuse - if you're going to the effort to localize an app, you should have taken care of this a long time ago. Yes it takes two strings instead of one. Get over it.) Okay, I'm officially too uptight. Rant over.

A Moment of Silence

Starbucks is dropping Chantico, an indescribably tasty chocolate drink. Sigh.