Google's Marissa Mayer on sharing information

Love this from Google's interface guru Marissa Mayer:

Be an information fountain.
Tell everyone everything, the more valuable the better.
Sharing leads to connections.
Connections lead to collaboration.
Collaboration leads to creativity & innovation.
Creativity & innovation are what change the world.

From her 5/16/09 Commencement Address at the Illinois Institute Of Technology:



See two other 2009 commencement speeches from Google execs here.

Blackberry Music - Slacker vs. Pandora

If you have a compatible Blackberry, you're going to want to try out the free streaming music services from Slacker and BlackBerry.

Slacker's app has been out for a little while (and just got a version update), Pandora's is just out.

My take?

Slacker: the "now playing" screen has the album art for the cut that's playing, plus images in the background of the last 2 items that played, and the cover art of what's coming up:








Pandora: just the album art for what's playing:








Slacker: Shows you the name of the next artist that's coming up, Pandora does not.

Plus Slacker will show you the artist bio and an album review too (an option when you hit the button to the left of the track ball).

Both services allow you to give input on what you like and don't like, but Slacker's controls have a bit more finesse.

Pandora seems to load a touch faster.

There are graphical ads on Pandora, and audio ads every few songs on Slacker.

The audio coming from Pandora seems to play a bit louder at max volume?

Both do a great job of streaming surprisingly great sounding music on your BlackBerry. Slacker for BlackBerry just seems more polished.

Both are FREE - so how can you lose? -TT

Seth Godin notes from CRS 2009

Thanks to Mark Ramsey for posting my notes* from Seth Godin's presentation at CRS 2009 in Nashville.

* (my notes are from my Tweets from CRS, hashtag: #crsnash).

Now HERE'S how you make $$ in the Music Biz: Rascal Flatts + JC Penney

"Rascal Flatts is teaming up with retailer JC Penney for a wide-ranging marketing and promotion deal which includes tour support, merchandise, advertisements and in-store play, Billboard.biz has learned. The deal kicks off with the April 7 release of the band's "Unstoppable" (Lyric Street) and will continue for at least two years, with an option to extend for additional years at the end of the term."
Rascal Flatts Partners With JCPenney

Season 2 of Clone Wars coming

My son and I have had a blast watching Cartoon Network's animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series together. Variety reports there will be more to come.

Customize Your Own Keith Urban Video

The technology behind this works very, very well. Have fun with it!

Air Traffic Pros - Flight 1549

For years this has been my favorite exchange of pilot-to-tower communication:



But that's now a distant second to this (trouble starts at 2:23):



Listen to it along with this excellent overview of what happened from this piece in Vanity Fair.

More here.

The Wonders of Football's Yellow First-Down Line

Whew, it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes effort to make that yellow line appear (click the image to play):

Microsoft Songsmith - Your Digital Accompanist

The press release says: "Songsmith software automatically composes accompaniment music for whatever tune a singer belts, hums or whistles into a microphone, regardless of skill level."

Besides the singing "family" bit in the demo, this is pretty amazing.

You can use the demo download for 6 hours for free. I don't see any restrictions in the EULA on using the final musical output, do you? Update: nope, the EULA says you can't use it for commercial purposes without permission.

Dierks Bentley On A World Stage

What a GREAT job Dierks Bentley did at the recent Nobel Peace Prize concert in Norway:


A better quality video is HERE.

Updated version of "Did You Know"

Quite worth the 5 minute running time:

Turning the iPod Touch into a phone | Apple - CNET News

Turn the iPod Touch into a phone!

"WHAT DO PEOPLE SCREAM when they SEE YOU COMING...?!"

Ha - so clearly more than a little borrowed from Monsters, Inc. here, but it still looks funny:

Beatles video game is coming

How amazing is it that 40 + years after their first hit that The Beatles are still in the center of pop culture?

"Every member of the Apple team -- Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono Lennon have been part of the conversation, have seen demonstrations of the game, understand how it's going to roll out, what you're going to see on your screen, how the interactivity and the immersive experience will unfold and they will be involved along every step of the way creatively and musically, with Giles Martin [son of Beatles producer George Martin]," said Apple Corps' Jones. "They'll be involved in the design and the implementation of the design."

It's Mini-PC!

Okay, it's probably a bit clunky, and most Smart Phones do as much, but I'd love one, wouldn't you!?

Wimax comes to Baltimore

Now you can get wireless access anywhere in Baltimore (at least that's the spin). A promo video from Intel:



The word from USA Today is it's fast, but not free.

"Fence Off" your wireless access area

What if you could "wall off" an area of Wi-Fi, where anyone outside a set perimeter couldn't access your signal? Check out the video:



I first saw this on the Seattle PI's new Seattle Tech Report site.

Wario - Ha! This is clever

Watch carefully... (will open in a new window)

Attention! And then some $$ to go with it, please

We're drowning in choices - music, tv channels, web sites. Why does so little truly excite us? And why are so few people making any real money from all that's being put forth?

I think Kevin Kelly is really on top of it, with so many nuggets here:

Where ever attention flows, money will follow.

Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow.

...the fact that something does work or is helpful is no longer sufficient for success. Good, useful stuff is now the minimum standard. I might even make the argument that great stuff is the minimum.

Now anything that lasts has to also maintain our attention.

Getting a quick blitz of attention is a no-brainer. The challenge is maintaining a flow of attention in an environment where you are surrounded by millions of similar things that are good and useful.

The problem for a band is not being "discovered" but remaining interesting.

Time (does) not equal attention. I spend a lot of time in my car but I don’t give it much attention..

- all from Kevin Kelly

and

The challenge for everyone is that we are getting better and better at creating “interesting stuff” but there is a finite supply of attention. Our dynamic range of “interesting” is lessening, as everything in the technium is more perfectly designed to grab attention.

- from Stan James (www.wanderingstan.com) in the comments

Again, here's the piece.

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