Academik

Universal has signed a deal with Spiralfrog to offer free music downloads to anyone in the US and Canada. The service will launch in December and will be ad-supported. They aim to offer a simple, easy-to-use, free alternative to iTunes. – Finally the music machines are getting the point – they’ve been doing this on radio for years it’s about time they got with the program on the web.

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Product Description
Maison ‚Äì House ‚Äì is a nice concept. It‚Äôs an influential musical genre. House is a thing with walls ‚Äì or just earplugs. Because it‚Äôs home-made. Kitsun?©‚Äôs house, they say. House of Kitsun?©. Kitsun?© house. A series of tracks which don‚Äôt play games. Which you can listen to quietly, while reading Francine Prose‚Äôs latest book. Or loud enough to tear your t*ts off during a party full of sex-starved girls or because you don‚Äôt want to hear these kids in the train. Or in a smoky disco, in a four-star tropical camp-site, in the car Grandma gave you or in a full-fledged limo worth the price of four original prints by Cecil Beaton. Because it‚Äôs the new kids who are building this new house ‚Äì a soon-to-be palace which is still a hut. This house has been filled with familiar faces since Summer 2001. Friends, suppliers. Families, musicians. And a few fictitious faces, because we don‚Äôt have that many friends and suppliers, you know. Faces get old, they grow beards, they make kids, but they are never erased. So, for Kitsun?© Maison, 461 friends, suppliers, musicians and family members are featured on the credits. This compilation is pure genius. Brand new, unreleased and full of new names… people with class and talent.

The best CD description I’ve read in a long time… soon to be purchased and enjoyed over and over and over…

So last night a co-worker and I went to see Ed Bangers sensation Uffie - the pop/dance darling of Paris. Short, cute, and with a throwback style (short jean shorts, a white top, and adidas jackets that was purple blue and green) that makes me wish the eighties were here – Uffie came ready to… well Uff.

She flows/speaks over poppy progressive dance electronic beats and breaks with vulgar tongue in cheek lyrics. Think a mix of the streets with peaches. The show was at the Rickshaw stop which turns out to be a great place for a concert. Small enough to be intimate and large enough to allow ample room for frolicking.

After chatting with some X-handed girls from LA and grabbing some Rockstar&Vodka I proceeded onto the dance floor. The tunes were great at this place and in no time I was coerced by my hands and feet into unassuming convulsions on top of a speaker next to the stage. Just as I was about to have the crowd join me in a rousing chorus of Daft Punk is playing at my house, a large bouncer made me get off – I almost had them!

Uffie came out for literally – maybe 40 minutes – to sing Pop the Glock and Ready to Uff and then she disappeared off stage. My co-worker disappeared with a friend of his and I was left in a fit of dancing – maybe the place I love most in life? The crowd was great – a little young, but that was 2 be eXpected – definitely very funky and hipster. The place was great and apart from the concert, the DJs did a great job of keeping the crowd dancing – a nice change from the general wall-flower crowd of most bars. Definitely will make the Rickshaw a bad habit of mine.

I wandered home in the company of friends from Dallas on the phone – grabbed a patty melt from Mel’s Drive-In and then came home. It was a wonderful night – one of those nights that you know start to finish is going to be good!

So for my job I have to look over a lot of websites and new computer products… These are some of the best.

Hullo – Hullo lets you make phone calls over the internet. Woohoo! Big deal you say. It is a big deal. With hullo you put in all your phone numbers and it will find you when you get an incoming call. Not cool enough? When you call someone, Hullo will call your mobile/home/office phone – when you pick up it will dial the other person – no goofy computer headsets. Still not convinced? You can put as many people on the line as you want by dragging and dropping their names onto the conversation – I had 4 people on the line last night and the quality was fantastic. Check it out!

Farecast – buying airline tickets is a pain in the butt. And if you think that sites like travelocity and expedia are working on your behalf then you’re kidding yourself – it’s all about that paper! But farecast is definitely on your side – you can get ticket information from major airlines for a specific flight and it will tell you the average price of the ticket over time – when it will be lower and when it will be higher. You can think of buying a plane ticket like playing the stock market – farecast gives you a view of a ticket’s performance and when it thinks the best time to buy is. Check it out!

Netvibes – Netvibes is a French company that wants to be your new workspace. If you read blogs/news and listen to podcasts this site is wicked. Basically you have a home page with whatever you want on it – weather, news, email, podcasts, blogs, photos, shopping, notes, everything – think of it like your personal gmail or yahoo page on crack. It’s totally Ajacked so the interface is really easy to use and instantaneous. You’ll have to check it out to see what I’m talking about. I use this to listen to podcasts at work – I can listen to them through my browser (stream them) without having to download.

HousingMaps – This site is a mashup between Craigslist and Google Maps. You get all the craigslist listings on the right and a map with all of them on the right. Totally great if you are looking for a new place in a certain area or want to know how much things in a certain area are going for. Works for buying and renting apartments/houses/duplexes/condos.

That’s all for now, hope you enjoy and feel free to share the cool sites that you use on a regular basis.
I’m listening to the latest podcast – get it here!

I was looking on the IRS website today and saw

this headline…’huh?’ I thought. I started reading about their ‘outreach’ on the website and I think it’s pretty hilarious. Celebrities will now have to pay taxes on the gift bags that they receive at places like the Academy Awards – some of those bags have like $20k worth of items in them. After doing a quick search on the net bags have included high thread count sheets, RAZR mobile phones, well just read this excerpt…

“Tech goodies in previous year’s baskets included a Samsung high-definition television set with one-year subscription to satellite HDTV provider Voom and a TAZ I personal video and media player from Tight Systems.

The freebies aren’t limited to the Oscars. According to published reports, presenters and performers at last year’s Teen Choice Awards received a Sprint PCS Vision phone from Samsung; and TiVos were given out at last year’s Independent Spirit Awards.

Past Grammy gift bags have reportedly included a 20GB iPod from Apple Computer, a Siemens mobile phone and a Logitech digital camera. Last year’s American Music Awards’ bag included a Sirius satellite radio. And Hewlett-Packard gave away cameras in the goody bags handed out to some attendees at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards.”
taken from here @ 7:38 am.

Now they’re going to have start paying taxes on all that stuff. Haha suckers – the seat on my couch ain’t looking so bad after all.

Today in my usual perusing (watch) of tech blogs I’ve run into a number of networking tutorials which I think are really important. In addition I’ve also found several resources for utilizing Linked In including a blog dedicated to just that. Take some time to read Networking 101 which I think can make a big difference for anyone.

Networking 101 – A blog post by Seth Levine, a venture capitalist, that will be a great tool for meetings both with clients and contacts.

1) Left to their own devices, people tend to ramble . . . ramble . . . ramble. The conversation lacks focus, direction and purpose. Sometimes this is fun; most of the time it’s a waste of time.

2) ) Most people don’t seem to know what they want to get out of meetings like these. This clearly contributes to the rambling – there’s no focus because there’s no clear end point or goal.

To speed things along a bit, I’ve been starting these meetings of late with a simple question: “What do you want to get out of this meeting”

At the bottom of his post, please make sure to read his previous post – Networking 101 (the original).

LinkedIn – Richard Upton is a senior applicatons manager at Sony who seems to live by Linked In. He has a few beginning tips here as well as an entire blog dedicated to utilizing the service! There is also a Linked In Power User Forum that I have not had a chance to look through, but seems like it could be a good resource.

I just found this really cool site called Farecast which tracks the prices for airline tickets to and from particular cities. It tells you when is the best time to buy and gives you a great number of options on selecting flights. Check it out http://www.farecast.com/

One of the nicest parts about living in SF is access. I’ve got access to music,arts,words,images,and people that are extra-ordinary. Tonight was one of those nights – Mouth Off is one of those events. Like Artist’ Night Out in DTX it is a place where I find friends, friendly faces, food for my frontal lobe and intellectual pabulum. I met Amir Sulaiman tonight at Mouth Off. One of the best spoken word poets in the country – he does this for a living folks – he pays his rent with money he earns from speaking and performing and selling his CDs. And as angry as his words are, as soon as he steps off the mic, he seems more like a teddy bear than a man with a mean mouthful of troof.

Tonight I had the opportunity to get up and speak some troof. ‘Say Yes’ by Andrea Gibson which is posted on her page and here under the ‘words’ page. It is only the second time that I have performed spoken word poetry – and the first time that I performed Say Yes.

My legs shake uncontrollably, my voice quivers, and my heart pounds as if it has grown to fill my entire torso. I misspeak and then I close my eyes – how can I not know this poem? These are the words I have said hundreds of times, the words I speak every night before I go to bed to remind me that ‘the purpose of life is to give ourselves away.’ And yet the words take their time escaping my throat at times. I close my eyes and pull the covers up to keep my vocal cords warm and the fear goes away.

The words crescendo and I open my eyes to connect with the gaze of my peers and the words splatter from my mouth as if I was pouring a bucket of lessons onto the walls. I have no fear. I know what I must do. I am simply nervous. This too shall pass. I continue the words that give me such power every day; I’m happy to give, to share these words and ideas in the hopes that it will move people to action. To be engaged. To be interested.

If you’ve never been to a spoken word event you should. You will connect and it will open your eyes. Let me know if you have any questions about spoken word/slam poetry and I’d love to help you find an event in your area.

-academik

Track50 is a new way to keep tabs on the live music you want to see. You enter your favorite bands, and they’ll notify you when they are playing in town. They search multiple music sources, so you can enter both local bands and big mainstream names. Only the bands that you specify are tracked, so you won’t receive SPAM Newsletters profiling random bands like on MySpace. Check it out – www.track50.com

So last night we finally had our networking event, Tech Connection 3, at work. The event is for start-up tech companies to demo their products. We’ve been working on the event for at least a month – finding a location, looking for sponsors, organizing the companies, and marketing the event to a number of different groups. So it took place and it rocked!

We had it at a cool bar in SF called BOCA – the Bar of Contemporary Arts. Apart from a loud crowd and perhaps music that was too loud, it went off without a hitch. We had 5 start-ups demoing their products including Soonr, 411Sync, 4Info, Vpod.tv, and Plum. Soonr won a bottle of champagne for being the best demo, and a new friend of mine won a raffle for a free membership to Flexcar and a bottle of Riesling.

FlexCar and a couple other companies offer this awesome service called ride sharing – basically you pay a monthly or annual fee and you have really cheap access for as little as an hour or as long as a week. PLUS THEY PAY FOR GAS! It’s $9 / hr for hourly use and you can find them for $140 for a weekend! I’m signing up today. This is great for large cities where it’s expensive and annoying to own a car. However you can’t always get everything home on the bus from Ikea or the grocery store. Plus the cars that you get are recent, and many of them are hybrids. Did I mention you get free gas? $140 / weekend – unlimited miles – unlimited gas! Sign me up!