16 Monday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
The hearya blog has got 5 songs from Matthew Ryan performed in a really stripped down form (guitar and harmonica) featuring tracks from the last couple of albums. Go check it out at – HearYa Live Session 20: Matthew Ryan at HearYa – Indie Music Blog
13 Friday Jun 2008
Posted in General
I’ve never entirely be convinced by the suggestion that using social networking technologies to form a business intranet. That is, until today when I heard a podcast presented by the Chief Technologist of Ektron as part of the SWSX conference. To date I’ve viewed the intranet as needing to be able provide static content (e.g. standard documents such as benefits etc) and a dynamic area for knowledge sharing.
What Bill Cava highlighted is that a large percentage (50%) of people found site searching for information can be ineffective. But by exploiting people’s innate understanding of human relationships and roles. So by leveraging that, you improve the chance of finding what you need. For example configuration information for a VPN, well talk to a system admin as they’ll know where the documentation is, and may well even have links from their profile to the information. This really plays dividends on distributed or larger organisations.
Secondly, social networking sites also have forum style areas where a written exchanges can be posted. But unlike the forum, the participation in the discussion can be more easily configured and dynamically controlled (self organising). But there is also context to the conversation as the social network provides detail about the participants.
Lastly the intranet only delivers value if its used, and to get use it must provide the engage-ability that social networking functionality can offer. As Bill points out we perform web analytics on company business sites, and should we not also do that for the intranet to understand that its value and contribution to the business operation.
I’d recommend listening to the podcast if you’re looking how to improve your business’ internal IT resources, although it is slow slow going to get the nuggets from the ‘cast.
11 Wednesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
11 Wednesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
Jem has finally announced here follow up to 2004’s Finally Woken album. Finally Woken with its Dido-esque styling is probably best known for the albums’ title track and ‘They’ along with the song Madonna recorded ‘Nothing Fails’ which appeared on the American Life album.
The new album ‘Down To Earth’ is to be released in September, with an initial song (Down To Earth) from it appearing on soundtrack to the current Sex In The City film soundtrack.
website – http://www.jem-music.net/
05 Thursday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
Crawdaddy have a fascinating article describing the lyrical origins of Iggy Pop’s most famous anthem – I Wanna Be Your Dog. An interesting and worthwhile read.
04 Wednesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
The Details of Ray LaMontagne’s next album have been announced. The album is to be called Gossip In The Grain and will be released on 9th September 2008. Produced by Ethan Johns at the Realworld Studios. Unlike the first two albums Ray is backed by some of his live touring band.
Websites – http://www.raylamontagne.com/ http://www.facebook.com/raylamontagne
02 Monday Jun 2008
Posted in Music, Technology
According to Digital Music News, MediaDefender an anti-piracy company has used an illegal means to try an shutdown what is a legitimate online media selling service Revision3. Revision3 legally uses bit torrent technologies and as a result of a security hole had servers tricked into acting as a tracker for some illegal content, setup up by MediaDefender by exploiting a security hole according to Revision3. When Revision3 spotted the abuse and shutout MediaDefender it appears to have triggered a denial of service attack (achieved by saturating a web server with too many requests for content). So Revision3’s actions which were correctly taken to prevent their servers from being exploited and used for illegal copying (also the the job of MediaDefender) resulted in the service attack. Reviosn3 has a good description of what the DOS attack is like.
Given MediaDefender’s failure to atleast talk with Revision3 let alone use correct legal channels, has been referred the matter to the FBI as it breaks 12 different statutes including Computer Fraud and Misuse act. Revision3’s news article on the whole event is fascinating insight into how blasé MediaDefender about its actions. Since the attack, MediaDefender have said they’ve updated their policies to first check to see if the server they’re looking at is associated to a legitimate business. Hey, shouldn’t you have been doing that anyway? As Revision3 had said, what if someone had exploited an loophole in security for an emergency service to host a bit torrent tracker which had then been attacked by MediaDefender?
Interestingly most of the information describing what has gone on has come from Revision3, and MediaDefender’s website is particularly quiet on these events.
02 Monday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
Sigur Ros are following what seems to becoming a common pattern of giving away a free download single to help promote a new album. The new single Gobbledigook can be downloaded as a high quality MP3 from their site – Sigur Ros. The new album is scheduled for release on June 23rd in the UK. Sigur Ross also have a website at http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/.
27 Tuesday May 2008
Posted in economy
Protests over fuel prices are starting to kick in again, with a number of convoys around the country on a go slow impacting traffic. More details at BBC NEWS. According to the BBC …
Treasury spokesman said the government understood business and families were “feeling the pressure from high fuel prices”.
But they said the “immediate priority” was to encourage oil-producing countries to increase output, that a 2p-per-litre fuel duty increase had been put back from April to October and fuel duty was “still 11% below its 1999 level, in real terms”.
The fact that the prices are 11% less in real terms, is misses the most crucial the point, which is the rate of change that is the problem, and that if fuel prices are to rapidly correct based on that real terms figures is going to really hit inflation.
27 Tuesday May 2008
Posted in Music
The UK organisations responsible for collecting music royalties have reported here that they have had a record year in collected royalties. Although royalties from physical media sales have dropped by 10% everything else (e.g. public performance, downloads and so on) have been increasing in or near double digit rates giving an overall growth of 3%. The report says …
For the first time, income from broadcasting and online out-performed that of recorded physical product. Online royalties, although still a small proportion of the overall whole (at £10m), grew significantly by 54% year-on-year, largely due to the growth in the legal online music market led by iTunes.
A picture that isn’t too gloomy given the current global economic down turn, although this is only really good news for the artists and composers rather than the record labels themselves.
Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog 