Archive for the 'web 2.0' Category

Free Music On-Demand - A Complete Follow Up

Published
by
Ehren
on October 23, 2008
in Mentions, fun and web 2.0
. 1 Comment

I’ve been studying the analytics for this blog for sometime and one of the most popular search terms for people arriving on this site has been “free music on demand”.  Apparently people keep arriving on to this blog post I had written in January.  So I figured maybe I should help these people out by pointing them in the right direction(s) instead of just leaving my exclamation about Last.fm.

Let’s start with the big ones — or at least, the ones that I actually have used:

Pandora

Honestly, my favourite.  I had so many people I knew hooked on to it — and then they shut us out … that is, those of us who are outside of the U.S.  Simply enter in a few songs into the player that are to your liking and it begins to showcase music that has been deemed similar according to the “music genome project”.  You’ll get to give each song a thumbs up, in which case it would keep that in mind — or thumbs down, in which case it’d move on to another song.  I can’t remember but when I was still permitted to use Pandora, they had a limit on how many thumbs down you could give in a row within a specified period of time.  Pandora also allows you to create your own radio station or listen to your friends as well … or even mix ‘em up!

Last.fm

Second to Pandora, Last.fm continues to be a huge hit amongst fans of social media and general music aficionados.  With it, you can network with your friends or other people with similar (or different) interests and share songs of a wide variety that you give a thumbs up or down to.  Unlike Pandora, Last.fm bases its playlist on your network of friends and acquaintances which brings a whole different level of music exploration to your finger tips.

Musicovery

I discovered Musicovery not too long ago and it is brilliant way to discover new music by defining a mood.  Not only does it allow you to discover music but it’s got a great visualization of how different songs relate to one another.  Playing the music works similar to the other services in the sense that you can give songs thumbs up or thumbs down so that the system plays more music to your liking.  From my experience, it didn’t seem to work that well but on the level of discovering new and international music, Musicovery does the job pretty well.

Amie Street

I realize Amie Street isn’t an on-demand music player however IF you are seeking free music, Amie Street is a brilliant brilliant website to discover some new and upcoming artists on the scene.  I’ve found quite a few  but it takes time to go through the site and sort through what you like.  Of course, that depends on whether or not you’re a leader and like to explore — because if you’re a follower … you’ll end up paying up to 99 cents per song based on the level of popular demand.

Seeqpod

Seeqpod is a favourite in the office (shh…) when things just seem a little too quiet.  A relatively simple user interface, Seeqpod allows you to search through all sorts of media (mp3s, YouTube, etc.) but only allows you to queue up mp3s or other audio files.  The great thing is that you can then save your playlist and return, or even embed your playlist on to your own blog, website, etc.

Another neat element to Seeqpod is that you can see what other people are searching for in real time.  Good way to find new music.

Songza

Is very much like Seeqpod.  Search for songs you like and queue them up on your playlist.  Slightly more straight-forward cleaner interface and they feature artists.

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Now on to stuff I haven’t actually tried but looks pretty spiffy to some degree:

Guitarati

This reminds me of Musicovery — playing music based on mood.  It’s really like a blend between Musicovery and Amie Street.  The difference with Guitarati is that you get to select music based on a diverse number of big colourful circles!  Oh … and you have to pay for some of the music but again like Amie Street, it varies based on demand.

Deezer

A French start-up that looks like it’s got potential.  To quote from the website: “The concept is simple: To offer, free of charge and legally, all kinds of music, from rock to hip-hop, jazz, electro and world music While at the same time, artists and rights owners receive a share of advertising revenue.“  So lots of free music of all kinds to enjoy.  Supposedly you can even download and store mp3s for yourself — sound good?

iLike

For those who have iLike attached to their Facebook or Myspace or <insert social networking site> … iLike works similar to Last.fm and allows for discovery of music through your network of friends.  I haven’t really touched this but it is likely just as popular as Last.fm — I guess when it comes to stuff like this, you have to ask — where are all of your friends?  I presume you’ll be joining them…unless you’ve got a rebellious streak…

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Here are some other sites that seem interesting but I’m not so sure that I will likely make use of:

Free Napster

Wow… Napster… I haven’t touched Napster since my days in university.  This is their free version as opposed to their subscription-based site.  Seems to be good for all around music tastes but I left Napster a long time ago — don’t really intend on returning.

Highnote

From scanning through this website, it seems like a large number of “stations” set up playing various types of music.  I believe you can create your own as well.  Just a glance noted that the highest number of stations were hip hop related but there are a fair share of other genres being played.

Qbox

This is a download that allows you to stream music from social networking sites like Bebo or Myspace.  While the interface reminds me very much of iTunes, it isn’t really to my liking.  I like web-based applications that I don’t need to download on to new machines.  At the same time, this may be to your liking if you’re quite involved in MySpace and just want to queue up all your favourite artists.

Soundlantern

This reminds me of a blend between Highnote and YouTube.  People often upload their own remixes and there are a lot of channels that you can subscribe to.  Sort of like … stations?

Streamzy

This is like a slightly more complex looking Seeqpod or Songza.  The user interface is a little more slick.

HearWhere

Not quite an on-demand website, this actually seems somewhat interesting.  Primarily for concert goers, the idea is to listen to the tracks by various artists and decide whether or not you want to attend.  It primarily streams from other social networking sites.

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I hope this has been helpful to you folks who keep arriving at my site looking for free music on-demand!  Now go listen to your hearts content :)

A few others that I haven’t checked out just yet:

8tracks

Muxtape

Hmm… if only I had all that music handy on my road trips. But the local radio station was still cool.

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What’s in an Online Identity?

Published
by
Ehren
on July 15, 2008
in Ponderings, Unthinkables, marketing, philosophy, technology and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to encourage my friends, my colleagues at work and authors to begin to develop an online identity.  One of those first steps is to create a gravatar for themselves so that everyone can be identified relatively easily.  What really started to get me thinking about writing about online identities was Melanie Mcbride’s write up on Google’s Lively with a brief comparison to Second Life.  I had written about being Googleable before but the more I think about it, an online identity is no longer an option, it is a necessity if you are a citizen in this day and age and work or carry out a lifestyle that involves the web in some form.  My reasoning is that each and every person should be defining themselves in some sense online so that what they do online becomes more than just a part of the web, but rather a part of themselves as well.  I’m less so concerned about the conversations taking place online but rather how people view and represent themselves online.  Conversations are an outcome that results from how people view themselves and others over the internet.

What’s interesting is the reaction and response that I get when I mention the idea of creating an avatar — which ranges from apathy to near-absolute confusion or on the other end of the spectrum, enthusiasm and a outburst of creativity.

Avatars have been a long-standing convention on the internet for individuals to represent themselves in any manner they wish, beginning with a nickname.  It seems the biggest hurdle for most individuals is recognizing the long term implications to having an online identity — the fact that it is connected to building your online identity and wields the power to the gradual creation of your place (or existence) online and allows for a person to formulate value and credibility.

Nicknames were used in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and message boards in the earlier years of the Internet as well as BBS (Bulletin Board Systems).

It seems that with the Internet becoming mainstream and the fact that Facebook and all social media websites pushing for the use of avatars (or profile photographs), people are confused by the overlap between the online virtual world and real life.  In addition, many seem to be flustered by the fact that there are different worlds that we live in — public, private, and virtual.  In some cases, some people may even suggest multiple “personas” to represent yourself in different circumstances.  One can argue the consequences of personas but I will leave that for another day.  Those who may be interested, Melanie has posted on her site and on twitter numerous times about why people need to be aware of their actions online.  My point however, is focused on why everyone needs step up and work on their online identity.  Being on Facebook and LinkedIn is not enough — unfortunately if you don’t take control of your identity and help define it, others will do it for you.

An easy example that many people can relate to would be the many photographs on Facebook.  How often are we in someone elses photograph and are tagged?  How often do you find those photographs repulsive?  Yes, we usually have control over those tags on Facebook but that’s not always the case.  Very often we don’t necessarily have absolute control over who sees what and we definitely do not have a general control over the open space of the Internet.

The ironic thing is that we would readily strive to define our lives in real life yet we don’t take that into consideration or discount the virtual aspect of our lives, where everything is X number of times more connected.  I’m not suggesting that we reveal our private lives or expose our name and hometown but I am saying that one simply needs to represent themselves online in one way or another.  That is how we connect with one another and express ourselves as individuals.

What is identity?

What is identity? (credit: Dominic Sayers)

It’s the importance of our online identities that leads us to the many debates and discussions with regards to OpenID.  This is the second step for those who already have set up their many usernames, nicknames or avatars.  The goal is to ensure the authenticity or privacy of your identity and that the ownership of that identity remains with you, the user.

The consequence of your online identity is the same as how you define yourself in real life multiplied by the number of people who actively engage the world wide web.  So … what do you think of yourself?

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Whilst at Book Expo…

Published
by
Ehren
on June 16, 2008
in Interests, Mentions, books, fun, marketing, web 2.0 and work
. 0 Comments

So I’ve spent the past weekend at Book Expo Canada.  A few of my colleagues are generally much more enthusiastic (and in some cases optimistic) than I am but I nonetheless tag along because it’s both amusing and fun to see my co-workers have so much fun (… right, and because it’s all part of the job of course).  Lots of meetings, lots of free books (more given out than received… or in my case — none).

The funniest thing that seemed to pop up in various conversations was the fact that whether it may be publicity, traditional or online marketing — the question from management always seems to be:  “Can we do it for less?” or “Can we do this for this small amount of $$?”

photograph by http2007

No this isn’t Book Expo Canada but if they offered free food, it might as well be!
Photograph by http2007

The answer is usually very simple.  You’re either going to provide me with the monetary resources or you are going to provide me with the time work on some form of initiative — either way, it’s not “free”.

What I found most amusing was that as soon as I got home was that my mind got hit with three ebooks.  Mind you, they are all books that are marketing and business driven so they don’t necessarily serve as the literary world’s finest examples but they do indicate how books can be more than just another book.

I ran across Dave Balter’s The Word of Mouth Mouth Manual Volume II which I should add is available in PDF format to download for free.  Haven’t fully read it yet but the few pages I have scanned have impressed me thus far.

I then ran across Dave Balter’s book again on Seth Godin’s own blog which reminded myself and all his other readers about Seth Godin’s Ideavirus — also free for download in PDF format.

And then … I was reminded of Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo’s recent book on social media Getting to First Base which isn’t free but I did purchase it out of support for a great introduction to social media.  Despite the fact that I did get the ebook a while ago, I haven’t finished reading it yet — about half way through and it’s good for anyone who needs to hit management on the head with some sort of wake-up call, or even those in management themselves!

Seriously, I need an ebook reader … Amazon Kindle where are you in Canada?!  While we were all busy marketing books at a trade show and conference — the word continues to spread about books available online, one way or another.

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Fighting Complacency and Procrastination

Published
by
Ehren
on April 12, 2008
in Mentions, marketing, nature, technology and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Marketing is key to engaging people. Causing individuals to begin examining and questioning their current behaviour has the potential to instigate change — even those who are reluctant may just turn their heads to see what the noise is all about. Well done Dave Schlafman.

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Steps Toward Social Simplification

Published
by
Ehren
on April 5, 2008
in Ponderings, applications, marketing, policy and web 2.0
. 7 Comments

I’ve been thinking for a while that there are waaaay too many social media / web 2.0 sites springing up. While many people group web-based applications with these sites, I distinguish these sites from social media / web 2.0 sites because I regard web-based applications as a little more focused on a task.

Social media / web 2.0 sites focus on human interaction with one another and after reading blogger and web designer Shey Smith’s post on why We Need Social Media Interpreters, Not Evangelists, I thought that I would point out my perspective from an online marketer’s standpoint or perhaps just marketing in general. I don’t necessarily consider myself an evangelist as Shey points out, but I do take on some aspects of evangelism by promoting the use of particular social mediums for marketing purposes. At the same time, I also do a lot of what Shey points out as interpreting.

Part of my job (and probably a lot of it) involves tracking and monitoring online trends. Sure, management hears about Facebook and blogs all the time in the mainstream media nowadays but they still do not necessarily understand the underlying basis for all of these mediums — they are still trying to catch up with classic question of: How does the internet impact our business model?

So what do I do? I act as a filter — in fact that’s how we all act more or less to some degree. I don’t need to tell them every bit of detail about the Internet and social media. Most of the time, people tell me to stop talking because their head is hurting from all the information!

5 Questions I Ask Before Telling Management About (Yet) Another Web 2.0 Start-up

1. Would any user would even bother with this?

2. Is there something else out there that does just as good or a even better job?

3. Is there a point for any business to get involved?

4. How? How? and Really … How? I want steps outlined.

5. Is it simple enough?

This is really just touching the surface of the whole issue but I guess my question about simplicity is focused on the general purpose. Just as web-based applications exist for a purpose, what is the purpose of social media / web 2.0 sites? Human interaction is the reason I often receive.

I hear review after review of social media aggregators such as friendfeed and socialthing! The purpose of these sites are to bring together all of our social networking data into one place but from what I can see after I begin simplifying the whole idea down to its underlying role — these sites do exactly what almost all other sites already do — draw data from other social mediums and place it on their own. Everyone is trying to become a social media aggregator! The only difference is in presentation and interaction of that data. Aside from early adopters like myself who may leap from one site to another, I don’t see how that helps most users who remain on a few.

Image from Dion Hinchcliffe

The only aggregator of a user’s online social networking data should be the user, not another web 2.0 start-up. I’m mainly pointing at the failure of social aggregators to actually do something useful, but if you want to read more about them, Dion Hinchcliffe has a very thorough article on social aggregation online.

Emphasis on Consumer Control (aka. The USER)

Those who regard social media aggregators as the key to dealing with the problem of so many web 2.0 sites are seriously mistaken. The whole social web/2.0 idea was never about the centralization of data, it was about decentralization and sharing. I think human interaction is a lot more complex and that the social media aggregators are not focusing on those linkages, but rather the the information and data that is flowing from these people through different social mediums.

The first step towards social simplification is data portability. While not the ultimate solution, I think it is important for any user to be able to take his or her data with them and decide what to share or not share — it is integral to any social medium and it will be a defining point for the marketing industry.

The next step is for everyone to have their own “website” where they can define themselves online. The public policy side of my brain (from working in government) asks … does that mean all citizens have the right to an online presence of their own? With data portability — I think the possibilities are available.

At this point you maybe wondering, “And how does the topic of social media interpreters relate to social media aggregation?” — simple: as individuals, we are the aggregators and we are the filters and we are the interpreters. If we want to control our lifestream, it begins with where we decide to interact. If you are a web worker like myself, our lifestream begins on our own website or blog. Forget the aggregators, what better system is there than one that is open source and that you can completely customize on your own?

Now the major question would be: HOW can we help people who aren’t as web-literate to do the same?

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Ideas are Exciting

Published
by
Ehren
on February 28, 2008
in Aspirations, Mentions, Unthinkables, video and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Bad ones, good ones, they are all worth hearing regardless of whether or not we agree with them.  Why?  Why not?  It doesn’t really matter because the more ideas you have to work with, the more resources you have to build towards something successful.

Think of how many ideas are actually floating out there and most likely how many are likely the same or very similar to one another.  Only a minority of ideas actually are put into action — think of Google and Microsoft.  I am sure both companies are bursting with ideas (as are many other businesses).  Unfortunately, the company will only invest in ideas that they feel are successful.

What makes one company more successful than another?  It’s usually an idea or lots of ideas put together that lays the foundation for that level of success.

TED has a live webcast taking place at 5:15pm Pacific time.  Argh!  I wish I could watch it.  Suffice to say — if you are able to watch it, check it out.  Like their slogan says, they’ve got ideas worth spreading.

Ideas are always exciting.  What will make an idea successful?  Pretty much … more ideas.

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Work, School, and Idea Survival

Published
by
Ehren
on February 6, 2008
in Aspirations, Interests, Unthinkables, blogging, books, design, fun, technology and web 2.0
. 0 Comments

Definitely a blogging slowdown:

1. Full-time work.

2. Taking three part-time courses (with a hearty amount of homework!)

3. Still lots of ideas in my head but no time to blog about them.

That’s probably why I like my twitter account. The blogosphere continues to evolve as a population’s behaviour shifts and twitter allows me to share my findings or short ideas.

What I’d like next? An Amazon Kindle so I can read whatever book I want (and surf the web) in a convenient, wireless way. Maybe even blog wirelessly.

For now: Still waiting in Canada…

Recently Chip Kidd had an interesting response to the Kindle. To say the least I was disappointed to hear that from a normally forward-thinking designer.

Two words to describe my initial opinion of Kidd’s response: wow and stubborn

When the printed book was first introduced — people were skeptical.  This is to be expected for change in general.  To dismiss the fact that there are actually many people who want to read books in another way is just a silly way of saying that you just don’t like it.

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Are You Googleable?

Published
by
Ehren
on January 29, 2008
in Mentions, applications, marketing, technology and web 2.0
. 1 Comment

Companies, businesses, organizations and governments spend millions (perhaps even billions) of dollars trying to ensure that you can find them on search engines (namely Google).  The whole idea of being searchable (def.  ability to be found) has created a new industry of professionals specializing in search engine optimization.  Now I have my reservations about the tactics and strategies used but as long as a good informative webpage that is useful to people can be found, then I am satisfied.  Nevertheless the battle to be at the top of the search engine results remains a controversial matter to me.

But are you Googleable?

The matter of being able to be found is important not only to organizations, but to individuals now.  I’ve long advocated to my friends to ensure that they can be found on the Internet only to be ignored.  The argument typically being — “I want my privacy and it seems creepy that people can find me.”

True — the era of search engines (notably Google of course) has created a new way for employers to find out about potential candidates before hiring them.  This of course can seem both good and bad but to people who complain about privacy and then turn around and have a personal blog and photos available for public access — have you forgotten that the Internet is a public space?

Keeping in mind that the Internet is a public space, it is vital for everyone to make claim to their online identity.  Claim it and define it as you wish, but keep in mind that it is important to draw the line between private and public.

Chad Sapieha wrote a great piece for the Globe and Mail about one’s Google Reputation and employment prospects.  It doesn’t only stop with Google, there’s that whole social media realm too so take control of your online identity and shape it appropriately.

After all, you are marketing yourself :)

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