This is MP3Monster's blog. The blog covers music, technology, photography and anything else Monster considers worthy of blogging about.Top Gear’s Stig gets a gong
Posted by monster in General
Top Gear’s infamous Stig collected a Gong for Top Gear as part of the British National Television Awards, as Top Gear won the best factual program. I dont know which is funnier the Stig collecting the gong, or Top Gear winning a factual programme over BBC’s quality documentary production.
Red Bull Air Racing Photos
Posted by monster in Photography
The big Picture - part of the Boston Globe’s website have some tremendous pictures of the Red Bull Racing Events here. Just one example of the amazing pictures …
Facebook in the office
Posted by monster in Technology
According to a new article on the BBC News site some research has been done looking at the use of Facebook within the work environment. The research suggests that a blanket ban on the use of social networking sites such as Facebook can be counter productive. although this on the surface may be counter intuitive, the arguement is that social networking sitesfacilitate alternative communication channels that may facilitate the execution of work, such as reaching out to a wider audience for help with a problem. This is far from a new concept, as such informal channels of communication to obtain help/communicate informally was identified as important in Frederick Brooks’ Mythical Man Month, and how such channels are important, this is sometimes referred to as a water cooler effect.
The research acknowledges that the situation can be abused, but if managed can be of benefit to an organisation. In addition to this the are also the tensions that may occur as younger staff are more likely to feel more at ease using such technologies resulting in a divide within an organisation. The crucial element that the news article fails to recognise is the possibility of sensitive information slipping into public domain (either deliberately or accidentally) when public sites such as Facebook are used. Such leakages could be detrimental to the organisation.
It is in these situations where services such as Ning and Huddle or for larger organisations private social network sites could come into their own. Although separation of the sites may create a barrier for adoption, when you can use a common site for both work and personal activities its adoption is going to be easier than where there multiple different sites for different activities. Although with the Open Social efforts driven by the likes of Google may reduce this problem.
RIAA Litigation is going to get ugly
Posted by monster in Music
According to Digital Music News a legal battle between one of Harvard Law’s top professors Charles Nesson has be ducked by the RIAA but has resulted in the professor contributing to another case that the RIAA have against an individual. The contribution to the case is a counter claim that says the RIAA have abused processes across state and federal jurisdictions.
It would appear that sooner or later Nesson and the RIAA will end up in court, and given the RIAA’s history and current appeals against them relating to how they identified and proved file sharing the prospects dont look too pleasant for the organisation.
Muppets, go musical
Posted by monster in General
It turns out that the Muppets have got a YouTube channel now. Being a music fan, I thought’d have a look at their musical offerings. This one made me laugh …
Oh and if you want a confirmed view of the internet then …
Beautiful Beatles collector’s box
Posted by monster in Music
Engadget have picked up on this lovely limited edition box set of Beatles music. which comes with specially logo’d iPod. The irony is that the Beatles catalog isn’t available on iTunes so you’ll probably have to rip all the CDs in the set yourself.
The disappearing single
Posted by monster in Music
Popjustice have a neat little article about the fact that most high street retailers have now abandoned stocking singles (that is of the CD variety for old readers). This situation has been brought on my both technological progress i.e. web, downloads, MP3 etc but as I’ve said the the past also the likes of the BMI who limited the number of tracks for it to qualify in the charts, the cheap option of getting remixes or simply instrumental versions to fill the space and son on. All very sad, although such a thought according to Popjustice now puts me in the category as vinyl elitists - I suppose my musical snobbery was going to get called out eventually.
So what constitutes a single now? As popjustice asks, can it be any track on any official download site, how about songs released virally? Should illegal downloads count,?
Will we see seens like this in another 5 years?
Free Eels Live EP
Posted by monster in Music
The Eels are making a live EP freely available for a limited period through their website (http://www.eelstheband.com/), direct link here. The EP is only available until 28th October 2008. The EP with four tracks includes:
- Fresh Feeling
- Packng Blankets
- Jeannie’s Diary
- Climbing To The Moon
The site is also promoting special limited edition copies of the Eels’ last studio album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.
Sound Blog - Cool little entry here on Audiophiles
Posted by monster in Music
Sound Blog has got a great little blog entry which also links to an article on CNET here. Essentially it argues that being an Audiophile is not about having the biggest and best HiFi, but a state of mind.
Kaiser Chiefs - Southampton Guildhall
Posted by monster in Music, Music Reviews, Technology
We managed to catch the Kaiser Chiefs on the small venue part of their European tour to promote the new Album Of With Their Heads. Initial impressions of the new songs is that good ones are very good, the others are only so-so, B side material, and leaves a me with the feeling that the album was rushed so that the pre-Christmas sales season could be exploited which is a shame.
I took some pictures at the gig with a new Samsung Soul mobile phone with what seemed to be a nice 5mb camera. Although its ability to focus in the conditions of a concert appears to be disappointing. To help with that I started using the multi-frame mode and discovered that when you do that it reduces the image resolution notably without any warning. I think I need to experiment some more with poor light conditions but at the moment I’d would say that the lower resolution Sony Ericcson K800i coped better at gigs.
Photoset at filckr here.
How profitable was Radiohead’s experiment with In Rainbows?
Posted by monster in Music
According to the NME, the figures for last years sales experiment with In Rainbows. Despite all the criticism from the likes of Paul McGuinness (U2’s manager) it turns out that the download approach generated more income than Radiohead’s previous album Hail To The Thief. The report indicates that a large proportion of people didn’t pay anything for the album, but enough did to make a difference. I’m sure that critics will attribute to issues such as the effort made to promote the album (Radiohead’s last for EMI), how good or bad the Hail to The Thief was and so forth.
It will be interesting to see if the model is picked up by more artists (other than Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails) given these new figures.
Tracking multiple email accounts
Posted by monster in Technology
In this day and age, email addresses are like bank accounts - we’ve got more than one, and we need to keep an eye on them with varying degrees of regularity. As a sideline of webmaster and Hotmail (Live mail) email client getting heavier on resource needs all the time. Having a small tool to monitor my many email addresses without resorting to using my work Outlook being muddied by non work stuff and visa versa for my home mail client.
To help with this I’ve started using a brilliant little application called POP Peeper, it can watch webmail like Hotmail, GMail account as well as good old fashioned POP3, SMTP etc. Its easy to setup and then let it sit out of the way on the toolbar and flag up when something arrives in the mail box. You can then look at the email in this little lightweight tool.
September Fuel Prices
Posted by monster in economy
With the latest fuel prices update we can see a small downward trend, which reflects the slowing economies.
Some stats for the month:
|
Fuel Type Difference |
11.4 |
|
increase from previous month (unleaded) |
-0.3 |
|
increase from previous month (diesel) |
-1.3 |
|
%inflation (unleaded) |
-0.34 |
|
%inflation (diesel) |
-1.6 |
7Digital power new Lost Tunes Site
Posted by monster in Music
It would appear that 7Digital are launching a new site called Lost Tunes that appears to concentrate on old releases, covers of older songs, and radio sessions such as those recorded by John Peel. The site offers the recordings in high quality MP3s.
Lost Tunes came to my attention as a result of an email from The Delays who have produced a covers EP which is being made exclusively available through Lost Tunes.
Tom McRae - Live Album
Posted by monster in Music
Tom McRae the fine English singer songwriter is releasing his first proper live album from a number of dates on the 2007 tour to promoting King Of Cards.
Currently the album is only available through Tom’s website here.
The track details include:
- Walking 2 Hawaii
- For The Restless
- A & B song
- Ghost Of A Shark
- End of the World News (Dose Me Up)
- Got A Suitcase, Got Regrets
- One Mississippi
- On And On
- Deliver Me
- Only Thing I Know
- Silent Boulevard
- Boy With The Bubblegun
The Power of Art when combined with Autism
Posted by monster in General
I came across an tremendous video on Open Culture which showed what an autistic artist could recall and draw beautifully after a helicopter flight over Rome. The result is amazing in both scale, detail not to mention its simple beauty.
Mental illnesses are often portrayed or seen as an affliction or handicap. But as the video shows it can also be a facilitator to creativity and beauty.
