Everybody’s got an opinion on how all this social networking stuff works. You mess with it long enough, and you start to see trends or patterns. I can’t help but wonder what it means and how it fits into the ongoing narrative of human civilization. Do all these fancy toys and technological innovations change anything? I’m thinking Ms. Boyd may not have all the answers, but she’s got insane credentials and she’s working hard in this field. So, I’m in.
Added @zephoria to my Twitter feed and apophenia to my RSS feed. It’s dense, but it looks red hot.
Back to the whole music/social networking thing. Before the current incarnation of iTunes was released (that would be version 9), there were rumors that part of the update would include a social networking element that would allow iTunes users to post music to FaceBook, Twitter, etc. Well, that never happened, and the current version of iTunes is pretty similar to the previous version.
But social networking and music is still a fertile area for development. Last.fm has been around for a while and features a clunky, Facebook style interface. The best part of Last.fm is that it can, if you wish, track everything you listen to on your computer by means of proprietary technology called Scrobbling. That’s great fun for seeing what tunes you and all your friends are listening to. There are also discussion forums and lots of news and gadgets to keep you interested. The one thing that’s really missing from Last.fm is music. The social part is there, but the users have to supply their own tunes.
Blip.fm does it best, as far as the social aspect is concerned. Users select music from the Blip database (which is really just a feed into Youtube and Imeem. But for each selection, other users with similar tastes are suggested. The genius is with Blip’s ‘props’ system. You give props to other users/DJs and get props back. This means there is a currency that you exchange with other users in order to tell them that you like what they play. You try to accumulate more props and also ‘listeners’ (friends) as you go forward on your musical exploration. It is a great way to get connected with people who like similar music.
The other thing that Blip does extremely well is interface with existing social networks. The actual Blip interface itself looks just like Twitter and even uses “@” and “#” in similar ways. Also, you can tell Blip to broadcast your selections to your Twitter feed or Facebook page, thus allowing you to share music with other, even if they are not in your Blip social network.
The only problem with Blip is that there is not very much music, and a good portion of it is amateur video from Youtube. Songs are incomplete, of inferior quality or different versions. And it’s basically impossible to know which version is going to start playing when you blip it.
Along comes Lala.com. This is the most extensive collection of music I have seen on the internet and it’s delivered to you in a cloud-based interface that is identical to what you are used to looking at with iTunes. Lala succeeded in a lot of ways. Firstly, if you could be bothered to take the time, you could upload your whole music collection and listen to it anywhere you could get online with a computer. You could broadcast your selections easily to Twitter or Facebook. And there was even a social networking aspect that allowed you to “influence” other users and share selections. While the architecture of this social networking fature seems pretty slick, users just didn’t seem that interested, which I though was a shame. The culture at Blip was that you would almost always ‘follow-back’. At Lala, it seems like no one cares.
Another nice aspect to Lala was that it offered something to sell, thus negating the need to have tons of ads, like we see at Blip. At Lala, you could pay ten cents for a ‘web’ song meaning that you could listen to it online as many times as you wanted. Or you could buy a song for $.79 ($7.99 for most albums) and have the mp3 DRM- free to do whatever you want.
So now, Apple has purchased Lala, at a discount rate, and no one seems to know what will happen next. Of all the music/social/media/networking applications in the cloud, this was the one I liked the best, so I am hopeful that Apple doesn’t just stick it in the trash.
It is shaping up to be a monstrously busy week. So far, Monday and Tuesday have been crisis management. Each day featured an unanticipated issue that came up and had to be dealt with immediately. As a result, very little other work has been completed, and tomorrow I will be in scenic lower Bucks County for depositions that will almost certainly take all day. There are four witnesses scheduled. That takes us to Thursday, which is a heavy Court day, which means that the work will continue to pile up. And then, somehow, Friday is clear. For now. Even if that stays true, I will still have to spend time in the office over the weekend. Right now my space looks like a bomb hit it and I can’t find my desk.
So, here’s a quick look at what I’ve been thinking about in my non-work moments:
Even though I use a Mac computer all day every day, I feel like some Apple adherents are a little too defensive/threatened/insecure, especially about Android. Here’s my quick meditation from earlier today.
More Android stuff – Apps are not taking off for the OS and that’s at exactly the time when more Android phones are penetrating the market. Good news for Apple. Open source is so decentralized that it seems hard to control app development. (via GigaOm)
We could be looking at a remake of Disney’s ‘The Black Hole’. My first reaction is pure joy, since I’m a huge fan of the original, but then I think about my Prisoner experience over the past couple weeks. That ‘reboot’ needs its own entry here, but the original in that case was brilliant, which meant the remake could only be worse. In the case of 1979’s The Black Hole, it’s hardly a masterpiece of modern sci-fi, so I remain optimistic about a possible update. (via io9)
Speaking of remakes, here is Aliette de Bodard’s take on the Battlestar Galactica finale. Even though it aired some time ago, this is your chance to have a discussion with an insanely talented sci-fi writer about our beloved Frakking series. I haven’t even read the review yet, so more about this later.
There is, of course, a lot of other stuff to get into, especially the Prisoner remake, but the hour is getting a bit late for me and there is a sleepy Basset Hound who needs to go walkies.
Let me start with a disclaimer: I have never owned an iPhone. So, when I talk about comparing iPhone to Android, what I really mean is iPod Touch. So I can’t give opinions about call quality or even the feel of an iPhon handset. All I want to talk about here is the two operating systems. I have spent a long time with the Touch and use it extensively for work and play. I have access to wi-fi at home and in the office, so I’m able to send lots of email, browse the web, get Twitter and Facebook updates, and even work on this blog from the iPod.
For a long time, I wanted that same level of functionality on the road. That meant getting into one of the established smartphone devices. I had a Blackberry Pearl 8130 which was bad for so many reasons. No proper keyboard, no html browser, no wi-fi, etc. I knew the iPhone OS inside and out and had a great relationship with iTunes and the iTunes shop. App development for the iPhone OS is outstanding, and many of the selections are well worth the price. As I have previously described, BeatMaker is pretty much pro-audio and you can hear for yourself what Fretbuzzdotnet has been up to with SoundGrid.
So, why not just get an iPhone? After all, everybody’s doing it. I guess it was that very fact that made me suspicious. I have also been lectured by smart friends and family members that the way Apple does business doesn’t make sense. If Apple would license the iPhone OS to other hardware makers, the sky would be the limit, just like with the apps. Instead, Apple locks everything up in its own hardware and its own software to keep firm control. I hate to say this, but it is a bit fascistic.
Along comes Android, open source, digital democracy. The first phone came out a year ago there hasn’t been much excitement during that time. While Apple has marched on with millions of downloads and lots of updates for the OS, Android is, only now, starting to look like a contender in this market sector. This Fall a number of Android devices are coming out on several different manufacturers’ handsets and carriers’ networks. Meanwhile, Apple stays locked in with AT&T and one lonely device.
When the Blackberry contract came up for renewal, I knew I wasn’t getting another. I was very comfortable with the iPhone, but curious about Android. Many months ago, I heard of HTC’s Hero, which was going to have a specially customized version of Android called Sense, and it just looked beautiful. The idea of an open-source OS is great for developers, but I needed something that I could work with easily out of the box, and Sense on the Hero seemed to fit the bill. Now, all I had to do was wait for an American carrier to pick it up.
One week ago, my wait ended. I am the proud owner of an HTC Hero on Sprint.
It’s only been a week, but I’m a pretty happy boy. Sense is everything it was cracked up to be. Stunning to look at and highly customizable. The camera leaves a bit to be desired, but works well enough for a cell phone and it’s so much better than what I had on the Pearl. The wi-fi is not nearly as speedy as on the iPod Touch, but that’s not an Android issue. HTC has sort of overpacked the Hero with stuff that stresses out its ho-hum Qualcomm processor. The slower processor makes sense because the battery life is already shortened by the big, bright screen.
I’m not giving up my iPod Touch. Android Market is on its way, but free-for-all means that there’s a lot of nonsense to sift through in order to get your paws on the killer-app. Apple’s rigid control over developer submissions means that there’s a slightly higher degree of quality and fit-n-finish to what I’m seeing at the iTunes App Store. Also, I buy most of my apps from a computer and not a phone. I miss being able to browse on a computer when looking at what’s in the Android Market. Finally, I don’t know if this is true for other Android phones, but the Hero does not permit apps to be saved to the memory card.
For the moment, the apps are better on the Apple, but I am so excited to be part of the Android revolution. It was easy to set up all three email accounts and I have instant and any-time access to Twitter, Feacebook, Flickr and any number of other services in the cloud. The Google integration is stunning. I update contacts in Gmail from a computer and they automatically show up on the phone. Same with calendar entries. The syncing is seemless. Android’s browser needs some work, but I’m still mucking about with version 1.5. 1.6 is already available on some phones and 2.0 was recently announced. Hopefully these newer versions will bring a better browser. Safari for iPhone is still the best I’ve messed with.
Android’s customize-ability is it’s true genius. The more a device can be made my own, the more likely I am to have a strong feeling about it. With Apple, you can only change the lock screed – with the Hero, you can change everything. As I spend more time with this thing, I’m sure to find more faults and more to be excited about, but for now, it’s a lovely OS and it’s fun to use.
UPDATE: Verizon takes the gloves off as it gets ready to roll out its Android powered iPhone killers – OUCH!!
Starting to mess around with Brizzly a bit. I’ve never loved Tweetdeck, mainly because it’s a pain in the neck ti have another application to sift through on the desktop. I had tried widgets and just depending on the actual twitter page, but the beauty of twitter is that it’s not about the page. Indeed, the functionality of Tweetdeck, running Adobe Air, is far beyond what can be done on the so-called twitter page.
So, he cool thing about Brizzly is that it’s not a separate application – it’s a webpage, reminiscent of a super-dumbed-down Facebook page. Still no ads. Very easy group management, including new group formation and simple add/remove options for all ‘friends’.
But the Twitter page stuff is here too, but enhanced. Trends each have their own ‘why’ function – which is actually now available at your Twitter page. But a Twitter page does not have built-in instant messaging that even allows for a Google-chat style conversation.
Brizzly has a way to go. There is no customization of the user’s home page and you can’t access a list of your followers or who you are following. That wouldn’t be such a problem if you could get to a Twitter page in another browser tab, but you can’t. It seems that working in Brizzly locks you out. That’s a big difference compared to something like Blip.fm, where you can have several windows open at once. I realize that’s all within one web app, so maybe the issue is on Twitter’s end, but it’s no problem to have a Twitter page and Tweetdeck open at the same time.
One other early impression is that the group management system is nice and simple, but doesn’t go far enough. I would like to be able to highlight certain groups (as I can now) but also exclude certain groups, basically a filter that lets me save values.
In following certain Blip.fm DJs on Twitter (which is highly recommended) I notice that my ‘in-box’ is almost always full. I imagine others who follow several thousand accounts must exponentially larger problems. The answer is to be able to make a defined group or set of groups disappear with the click of a link. Allowing the user to see only the most important messages.
You can do this now if you think about your Twitter in-box in groups or categories whose importance is arranged from top down. But that’s not how I classify the accounts that I follow. There are music feeds, news feeds, personal friends and family members, people I follow from Blip and random follows that I have had interest in along the way. It’s easier for me to group out things that I don’t want to look at.
But all this may be part of the premium service that is being offered to help convince Twitter’s high clientele that they should pay huge sums for monthly service.
So, Brizzly is nice. I;ve only just started messing with it, but I’m impressed by the interface. Photos and videos are embedded right in the timeline – which is terrific to look at. I’d like to see a built-in bt.ly resource, or something like it. Tweetdeck’s automatic service is really nice. But photo upload is just the same and it seems to work just as well. And the ‘mute’ button is helpful for temporarily suppressing the tweets from a particular user.
Best thing to do is play with it for a while. See if (maybe) more features come along. See if (when) another interface by a competitor comes along.
The idea of social networking mixed with music is something I’ve been doing since before the Internet existed. In high school and college, I often made connections with people based solely on a shared love of music. And then we would start the process of sharing and educating and expanding. It goes on and on to this day and, hopefully, for the rest of my life.
So the idea of a computer-based social network platforms based around music is a no-brainer. But I’ve also been a bit slow on the uptake for how these platforms work. I never had a MySpace page and my troubles with Facebook are well-documented.
Things changed a bit when I got brave enough to start posting on the Progarchives forum. This was a great idea for (a) wasting time and (b) getting news about prog fast. I wasn’t looking to make friends and didn’t. Some of the other posters had a display at the bottom of their posts which showed what they were listening to. In order to do the same thing, I got an account with Last.fm. This looked a lot like Facebook, so i dodn’t get into the social aspect – no friending for me. But at least it cataloged all my listening habits, which I thought was pretty cool. But there was one more step getting that information integrated with the ‘signature’. Apparently, I had to join something called Twitter.
So, in March of 2008, I created a Twitter account, solely for the purpose of making images like this one. Between March of ’08 and June of ’09, I tweeted exactly ten times. Since then, it’s been about 560. Suffice to say, I like Twitter. It’s beautifully disorganized; the users make the rules; there are no ads; and it’s a good syndication tool for blog posts and other important pieces of information.
So this brings me to the recent discovery of Blip.fm. It’s not perfect. It has ads (ugh!), it runs slow, the musical selections are surprisingly limited, and the posting of track on my various websites (and Twitter) is not nearly as elegant as what I can do with Grooveshark. But where as Grooveshark is useful and more comprehensive, Blip.fm is downright fun.
It’s a game. You’re a DJ and you’re trying to get listeners. In that regard it’s a bit like Facebook and Twitter with ‘friends’ and ‘followers’, but there is an extra element of silliness at Blip – ‘credits’ and ‘props’. In addition to seeking listeners, I’m also seeking props. Other users (DJs) give me props if they like my selection. I can get credits by getting props (1 = 1) or by getting other DJs to reBlip my selections. So, I’m looking for artists with similar taste, or with taste I want to learn more about (I’ve discover Chali 2na!), and I’m bouncing around, blipping selections, re-blipping, giving out props, adding listeners to my favorite DJs list and hoping to get added to others.
So far, I’ve connected with some pretty impressive musical tastes and I’ve even accumulated a few props and listeners. It’s all good fun, and it’s built to look like Twitter, so the interface is pretty easy for me to get started. I still need to have continuous playing (listen while you search) and an iPhone app and more complete selections (like Grooveshark), but I’m still having a blast. Wanna see what I been blippin’?
Somehow, many years ago, I became dissatisfied with my old Netscape browser and had no desire to support Windows in any way, shape or form. I was stuck with a Gateway laptop running Windows, but that didn’t mean that I had to succumb to Internet Explorer. At the time, I was already worried about how much RAM browsers ate up and I couldn’t bear to have the computer running any slower than it already was. Firefox, as you may recall, didn’t exist yet.
And so I discovered a plucky Scandanavian company making a free browser that advertised the smallest RAM footprint. It also offered something called tabbed browsing years before any of the big boys even knew what that was. I loved my old Opera 6 browser and stuck with them right up until the beginning of this year, when I was finally able to switch to from Windows to Mac.
At that momentous occasion, I remember looking into Opera and finding that it wasn’t really up-to-date for the Mac platform. Today, that changed. Opera 10 is now available for Mac. I have downloaded it and done some test browsing and it looks like my plucky little friends from Norway have got it right. I am very excited. The Fightins does not crash and Fretbuzz.net is no problem. I read both of these sites regularly and they both crash Firefox. On Opera, it’s no problem. Legal research on Lexis will still need to be done on Safari because I can not see the tables of contents on Opera or Firefox, but I’m still better off than I was. Firefox is going to be retired and Opera will become the default browser as soon as I can learn to export bookmarks.
I would have thought, “No way!” Apple likes to be in its own little world, with its own little file protocols and its own OS and everythings locked down nice and tight. Of course, given the success of iTunes, maybe Apple is not too worried about letting me buy songs from Rhapsody while I’m strolling around town. It’s bold, and it looks like its actually going to happen.
OK, American cell phone companies. This is your big chance. PLEASE CARRY THIS PHONE!! I once said I wouldn’t go for the virtual keyboard; I take it back. It was an excited utterance. I didn’t have all the facts. If I can have the Hero, I’ll be OK, even with the virtual QWERTY. HTC’s build of Google Android is so lovely, I can’t stand it. One thing, VerizionWireless – I’m not talking to you.
