JBoss World Orlando 2008

17 Sunday Feb 2008

Posted by mp3monster in General, Technology

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We’re back from JBoss World in Orlando now – and a few pictures of the trip can be found at Flickr: JBoss World Orlando. A very busy trip indeed with only an hour in the sunshine at the end of the conference before heading back to the airport. For SeeWhy initial impressions are that the conference was a success, but it is still early days to really tell. Thankyou to all who came to see our stand and talk about Event Driven BI and the new jBPM BAM solution. Plus a special thanks to David Barnes at Packt publishing and Matt Cumberlidge the brilliant author of the book Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM.

Links to articles mentioning SeeWhy from JBoss World:

del.icio.us tags: JBoss World, Orlando, Conference, SeeWhy, BAM, Event Driven, BI, jBPM

Laptop & The Presentation

14 Thursday Feb 2008

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Over the years the number of people who attend conference presentations and have laptops out to take notes has grown and grown – understandable given how laptop prices have dropped. But watching a presentations here at JBoss World Orlando, has left me thinking that there is an opportunity to be had in terms of allowing peoples laptops to show and record what is being shown on the presenters screen, and allow the laptop user to annotate as things went along. After all if you’re in a medium sized conference suite amongst a see of upright laptop monitors it can be hard to see the presenters screen clearly. The basic idea isn’t exactly new either after all web meeting tools such as GoToMeeting pretty much do this. The only difference is that the server would need to run on the presenter’s computer equipment through a local wireless hub.

del.icio.us tags: conference, presentation, GoToMeeting

Rendition

13 Wednesday Feb 2008

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I managed to catch a film I’ve been meaning to see for sometime on a flight to Orlando, that being Rendition (IMDB here). The film certainly lived up to expectation, with a fine performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, and brilliantly muted Reese Witherspoon. The heart of the story is the question of whether Rendition achieves anything? As Douglass (Gyllenhaal) says in thevfilm : In all the years you’ve been doing this, how often can you say that we’ve produced truly legitimate intelligence? Once? Twice? Ten times? Give me a statistic; give me a number. Give me a pie chart, I love pie charts. Anything, anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies.

Recommended viewing.

del.icio.us tags: Film, Jake Gyllenhaal, review, Rendition

Baftas & Grammys

11 Monday Feb 2008

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Whilst in the UK the British Oscars (the Baftas) have been award the US have been celebrating music with the Grammy’s. It looks like Amy Winehouse has cleaned up pretty well with (ironically) Rehab (from the Back to Black album). Its good to see that Alison Krauss and Robert Plant also picked a gong for their work together – a stunning album in the form of Raising Sand.

On the Baftas side, again music inspired films did well with gongs going to La Vie En Rose (also called La Mome) which is about the life of Edith Piaf – a little justice after having part of the film slaughtered for a mobile phone advert. Plus Control the bio of Ian Curtis of Joy Division.

Full the full list of nominees and winners in 110 categories go to http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/ and for the smaller number of Baftas here.

del.icio.us tags: Baftas, Grammys, awards, music, amy winehouse, Robert Plant, alison Krauss, control, Edith Piaf

Delays next single & album release confirmed.

09 Saturday Feb 2008

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Exciting news! The Delays third album and first for Fiction records will be ‘Everything’s The Rush’, out 28th April. The first single from the album is ‘Hooray’, out 21st April.

Music ‘beats faster’ in the north

06 Wednesday Feb 2008

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It must be a slow news day, as the following new item about differences in music preferences have a geographical factor made the main news bulletin. The BBC news site has the details at ‘Music ‘beats faster’ in the north‘.

del.icio.us tags: Music, regional differences, beats

new Jesse Malin album

05 Tuesday Feb 2008

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Jesse Malin is following Cat Power with a Covers record called "On Your Sleeve" to be released through One Little Indian in April. The CD will have 14 tracks with three more via iTunes.

Jesse will be on the road again in the coming months to promote the album as well.

More info about Jesse Malin on his website or MySpace.

del.icio.us Tags: Jesse Malin,CD,album,oOne Little Indian,music

Jools Holland – Bare Faced Lies

30 Wednesday Jan 2008

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I’ve just finished reading Jools Holland’s tremendous autobiography – Barefaced Lies and Boogie-woogie Boasts. Its a brilliantly engaging book, describing his slightly unconventional childhood, through how he came to meet Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook to help form Squeeze to the development of his Jazz Orchestra and how the tremendous Later… TV series came about and is driven.

Each chapter is relatively short, and you find yourself wanting to ‘just read one more’. Jools doesn’t dish dirt on anyone, but then I don’t think having read the book he sees dirt – but just the best of unique individuals. That is not to say the book isn’t insightful, as he describes the life on the road with some of the hilarious adventures such as chatting to one of The Ramones while they’re given a little ‘oral relief’, and tackles some difficult times such as the tragic death of Paula Yates.

The book also communicates Jools’ immense passion for music with a perspective a bit like that of the late John Peel – that being of a huge fan.

del.icio.us Tags: Jools Holland,piano,music,book,review,Squueze,Chris Difford,Glenn Tilbrook

Amazon MP3 to go global

29 Tuesday Jan 2008

Posted by mp3monster in Music, Technology

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Horrah, Amazon have finally announced that they are to expand their MP3 store to work outside of the USA. Although no explicit time line has been specified the hints are that it will happen in the next year. given the demographics I’d imagine that the European stores will be the next to receive the MP3 store.

The press release can be found here.

The real excitement for this announcement is potentially very interesting opportunity exists with Amazon, that being their infrastructure for the Marketplace means that very small indie artists and labels could play on a fairly level playing field with the major labels.

del.icio.us Tags: Amazon , MP3 , store

Monster’s YouTube Channel

29 Tuesday Jan 2008

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YouTube tends to be associated with personal video clips of chunks of broadcast programmes illegally shared. However more academic material has been posted. The quality of this material can be variable, for example: