22 Friday Jun 2007
Posted in General, Technology
To press releases to day for SeeWhy, one about the ‘BPM Integration Kit’ with a nice quote from Matt Cumberlidge (SeeWhy Releases Business Process Management Integration Kit). The second is finally announcing Version 3.2 of the product (SeeWhy Adds Advanced Profiling to SeeWhy Community Edition 3.2 ) with a good quote from IDC analyst Alys Woodward.
21 Thursday Jun 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) it would seem that brave move by Apple to sell their music without DRM (iTunes Plus) has resulted in sales increase by 350%, that’s even after there being a few teething problems when iTunes plus was launched.
Although an element of this surge will be novelty factor, even having allowed for that the increase in sales, it is a clear testament to how much people loath the idea of DRM. Hopefully other labels will now follow EMI’s lead.
Another exciting development is that V2 have signed up with WE7 – the new free download site as long as you’re happy to accept small adverts attached to the front of the MP3.
20 Wednesday Jun 2007
Posted in General
Tags
A couple more articles about SeeWhy have appeared in the major press:
19 Tuesday Jun 2007
Posted in Technology
According to Digital Music News it would seem that Sony is going to pull the plug on its online music store (Connect), and on recording facilities in LA and New York. This hasn’t been the first concession to loss of influence in the music space with the decision to no longer develop its ATRAC compression format.
I think a time has come where Sony can no longer see itself as dominating & influential player in this market space, until it can come up with something revolutionary (like the original Walkman, not just evolutionary) in a manner that doesn’t look you into Sony.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/061707connect
16 Saturday Jun 2007
Posted in Photography, Technology
I came cross this cool extension for Flickr provided by http://linuxside.org which give you page view stats on a daily basis for visits to your Flickr pictures. An example of the results can be seen below.
If you have a Flickr website (ours is here) then its worth checking out.
16 Saturday Jun 2007
Posted in Music, Music Reviews
We got to see another fine performance by Tom McRae at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire as he tours supporting his latest album King Of Cards. I managed to capture some pictures with the mobile phone – more can be seen here.
Tom, has over a number of albums proven himself to a fine singer songwriter. But, for me the songs taken on something special when you hear him perform them live. Even last night, whilst suffering ‘man flu’ sounded good, and delivered the songs with passion and emotion that lyrics carry.
Not only does he perform well, everytime we’ve seen him, he engages with the audience joking and telling stories, something that really makes it feel that he is there for you.
This time around Tom’s support was Steve Reynolds, who played a great little set, and went down a treat with the audience (no mean feat for a support artists). All that and playing his guitar while struggling with a broken collar bone. Steve’s performance was engaging enough that we’ve ordered the album (another import).
The final gem, of the evening is picking up a EP of Tom’s that I’d not heard of – The Strongroom Sessions (autographed as well). Having not heard about it, I thought I’d search around for it today on the web and can’t find any reference to it – is his record company letting him down?
14 Thursday Jun 2007
Posted in Music
Following on from my earlier blog about a Crawdaddy article – here is a post from a music fan who has come against CD copy protection resulting in it breaking the CD standard (despite the CD carrying the CD logo) and no warning of copyright protection. After the fiasco with Sony’s rootkits, you’d think that record labels may have learnt a thing or two.
Article here – Some Sort Of Copy Protection Crawling Around In The New Linkin Park CD – Idolator
The important thing is that the blog’s author will no longer buy music (legally atleast) from Warner Brothers.
14 Thursday Jun 2007
Posted in General, Technology
As part of the work I do for SeeWhy I’ve been providing some help to the author Matt Cumberlidge who is writing a book on JBoss’ JBPM which will include details on SeeWhy (and how SeeWhy integrates with jBPM). Matt has just kindly send us a link to the publishers site for the book which can be found at Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM. The book is expected out late July or August.
14 Thursday Jun 2007
Posted in Music
Crawdaddy have written a good piece, albeit scathing of the state of the music industry is in. Using the actions of Paul McCartney, now releasing music through Starbucks rather than EMI, with whom he has been since the start of the Beatles recording career as a proof (backed up by an article in New Yorker by Macca himself).
If you don’t read the article – then just take a look at this quote:
because they [Big Four record companies] care about the marketing more than they care if the act is worth a crap to begin with. As a result, they turn and blame illegal file sharing for the decline in sales, despite the fact there are now mounds of studies showing that file sharing does not hurt sales. Some, like the writer of a recent article published in the Journal of Political Economy, even find that albums being shared on peer-to-peer networks see increased sales as a result of being shared.
The article can be found here: http://crawdaddy.wolfgangsvault.com/Article.aspx?id=1452
14 Thursday Jun 2007
Posted in Music
The record label One Little Indian, the home to some great artists such as 
Jesse Malin, Fluke, Pernice Brothers and many others has started podcasting to help promote its artists. The podcast is done through iTunes (click here),via a direct link from the announcement email(s) if you register for the news emails or via the Podcast Directory. The first podcast includes material from Jesse Malin.
