04 Wednesday Jul 2007
Posted in Technology, Website
As a website administrator for several sites built using Mambo & Joomla 
I’ve had to build a few small bespoke components and modules. I’ve started to make the source 
for these available. The first being my email forwarder, the details of which can be found at in the techie part of my website, or accessed directly here.
The code is very rough and ready – but does a job, and it is my intention to tidy it up and improve the componewnt over time.
04 Wednesday Jul 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
A number of bands including the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, New Young Pony Club and Digitalism have gone completely geek and are performing at a digital festival in the virtual world of Second Life. The festival called Second Fest is sponsored by the Guardian news paper and Intel comes complete with multiple stages and a substantial line up over three days. Given the geek element, it isn’t too surprising that the artists appearing have a general electronica bias.
More information can be found on the Guardian site – http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondfest/.
04 Wednesday Jul 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
According to several sites, the Russian AllOfMP3 website that sold MP3 files for a few cents has shutdown, although whether this has been a result of the legal battles driven by the likes of the RIAA and the IFPI is not clear. However a new site MP3Sparks has popped up which reportedly is essentially the same site. Currently the site appears to be down, but this may well be simply a network glitch or pure server pressure. Looking at aom3.org which is a forum about AllOfMP3 the close coupling suggests this is in fact the same people.
The interesting thing is that the domain change may not hide the activity, but is likely held by new organisations which means that all the legal proceedings will have to be restarted from scratch. If this is anything like the Kazaa maneuverings a few years ago to try setup shell companies to frustrate legal processes then the IFPI are going to have some real headaches.
Articles:
03 Tuesday Jul 2007
Posted in General
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
Plato
26 Tuesday Jun 2007
Posted in General
Any parent, who also happens to be a music fan is or has probably been pondering the question Graeme Thomson tussles with in the Guardian blog (Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog – music: Should my kids enjoy my taste in music?) – specifically how do you educate your children in good music?
Graeme, doesn’t arrive at an answer. I did wonder if there is any credence in taking a similar approach that us brits are stereotyped as using with non in English speakers – just talking more slowly and loudly. But a friend of mine with two youngsters seems to be having a degree of success – his wife doesn’t get a look in on what gets played on the HiFi, and he has for as long as I’ve known him tried to educate her tastes. Oh, and music is always playing so the children haven’t really had a chance or need to find anything else musically – although they haven’t yet reached their teens yet, so there is still time for it to all go wrong.
25 Monday Jun 2007
Posted in Music, Music Reviews
Rather than reviewing an obvious release like Ryan Adam’s latest release, I’m continuing with the less known stuff.
Bitter Bitter Weeks latest release Peace Is Burning Like a River have diverged from their more somber sounds in a big way. This is full of bright shiny 60s style guitar work, imagine The Delays swapping their synths for guitars. Brian McTear’s vocals match the mood beautifully with a light and sweet vocal. Even the lyrical content feels more cheerful.
I’ve been listening to this album, both in the car and on my MP3 Player – I have to say it does sound far better when given a chance to breath in an open space than with earphones – even these cracking Sennheisers.
My recommendation is atleast have a listen to the tracks on Bitter Bitter Weeks’ MySpace site. If you’re a Delays fan then don’t waste time – order the album NOW!
Lots of thumbs up from the Monster.
22 Friday Jun 2007
Posted in Music
With the push massively hiked broadcasting fees for web radio stations, a lot of stations are pushing back as hard as they can, with now a ‘Day of Silence’ where normal broadcasting is being suspended completely or a looped programme (in the case of KCRW) explaining what the issue is and the impact on them. The only players who seem not to be getting involved are the biggest, who are probably both the least innovative and can weather the increased costs – namely Clear Channel and AOL (more details –Additional Details Emerge Ahead of Webcaster Day of Silence).
To add to the pain, live sessions that some stations are noted for and attract a lot of good publicity for the artists involved – such as Morning Becomes Eclectic (on KCRW) and the famous Peel Sessions for the late great John Peel on Radio 1, are under pressure. A number of artists are now pushing for performance or royalty payments (more detail here Musicians To Radio Broadcasters: “Clearly, We’re Not Wealthy Enough” and Variety article). The irony is that the artists that I’ve seen involved probably are smallest beneficiaries from such sessions, and I’m sure that the likes of Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey can manage without the extra few thousand that such a change would introduce. But those need and benefit from the exposure of live sessions – the smaller and indie artists like Wilco will lose out on the publicity as stations are likely to cut back or stop doing such sessions.
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:
Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog 