...more recent posts
Though the album was rejected by one major label as uncommercial, Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" defied record-industry expectations by selling 55,573 copies in its first week and debuting at No. 13 on the Billboard album chart--by far exceeding the band's past sales achievements....Where are the record company investors? Why haven't they kicked Valenti out yet? Isn't that what's supposed to happen?
Last summer, Reprise Records let Wilco walk away from its record deal because executives said "Foxtrot," an experimental pop album, lacked an obvious hit single and therefore wouldn't sell. The band began Net-streaming the album on its Web site, allowing listeners to preview songs for free.
Rather than hurting the band's sales, the strategy appears to have only built anticipation for the official release.
Here's another new page at datamantic.
A bill has been introduced in Peru which would require the government to use free software.
Microsoft is of course outraged, and has complained. Here is the utterly amazing reply from Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nunez, Congressman of the Republica of Peru. He says, in part:
To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.Amen. The whole letter is worth a read. (from MeFi)
To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
Today is my 33rd birthday.
David Weinberger is wondering about the odd capitalization of Tom's blog title, IMproPRieTies. I thought it was a phonetic fudge of "I'm pretty." IM PR+T
We'll have to wait for some independent verification on this. I mean on whether or not he's pretty.
"The conversation continues..." is another mailing list I'm on (is it still called a mailing list if it's only one way?) This one is put out by Kevin Werbach and Esther Dyson, publishers of the influential Release 1.0: Esther Dyson's Monthly Report. Not nearly as entertaining as EGR, but it is pretty good coverage of the tech world. I don't learn too much new, but they have a knack for summing up the current thinking in an easy to swallow form. The last one featured a piece titled "The New WWW" where Kevin Werbach argues that Weblogs, Web Services, and WiFi are the new WWW.
"The old grassroots energy is coming back. Web services, Weblogs and WiFi are the new WWW."I've been trying to get something together about web services. This is an important emerging area. And it does seem true that "the old grassroots energy" is coming back. We'll see.
Compare Kevin's thought to megnut's:
All this talk about APIs and web services warms my heart. We've passed the nadir of the dot-com hype and we're coming back to the Web in interesting and important ways -- opening up sites through APIs and services and working together to build better and more powerful applications. People are getting excited again about the potential of the Web and it's really great to see.
She points to a recent Kottke post where he sees the same thing: "But I admit that Web services makes me feel just a little bit tingly."
What's all the fuss about? More soon.
(You could subscribe to 'The conversation continues..." here.)
If you look at the bottom of this post you can see the first real example of reference logging. Somebody linked to that post, and when their link was followed this system went out to investigate, grabbed the bit of text surrounding the link on their page, and added it below my post (click on [1 ref] to see the reference page.)
Sort of cool I think.
Also the system keeps track of new references I haven't seen yet, so when I loaded up the front page this morning it listed [1 new ref] next to my page link just like it does for new posts and new comments.
You could turn this on for your page in [editpage].
I don't listen to much rap music. But lately I've been playing Eric B. and Rakim's ground breaking 1986 album Paid in Full over and over again. Seems to perfectly match my mood. Big Jimmy gave me some really nice headphones which I have plugged into my iMac so I don't bug my office mates with the constant repetition.
Thinking of this
you keep repeating you miss
the rhymes from the
microphone soloist
So you sit by the radio
hand on the dial soon
as you hear it
pump up the volume
I think "I know you got soul" might be the best rap song of all time.
While I'm still waiting for the danger hiptop, Sony and Ericsson are about to introduce something similarly cool, in a more traditional cell phone form factor. I guess it's officially to be called the Sony P800. People are going crazy over this one.
Want to get tons of very long beautifully written emails from someone slightly insane? Of course you do. Register here. You won't be sorry.
I am completely shocked by this man's output. Both quality and quantity. His blog, which I've pointed to a bunch before (plus it's listed over there on the left) is here, but the email list is much better.