Thursday, December 31, 2009

New Music: Caravan Palace - Jolie Coquine

Jolie Coquine by Caravan Palace  
Download now or listen on posterous
04 Jolie Coquine.mp3 (5637 KB)

What better way to ring in the new year than with a talented band of dancing gypsies? Caravan Palace hail from Paris, France and quite literally mix roaring 20's Swing with classic filter happy French House. It's an unlikely yet perfect mix. There have been a handful of songs over the past two decades that have used swing samples to similar effect (Mambo No 5 I'm looking at you!) but Caravan Palace do it live with Horns, Violin, Clarinet, Double Bass and Acoustic Guitars. Let your hair down, loosen up that collar, grab that champagne and have a Happy New Year!

More Info:

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

St. Vincent - Marrow

Marrow by St. Vincent  
Download now or listen on posterous
07 Marrow.mp3 (5221 KB)

I was reading a Bob Lefsetz review of Jamie Cullum's "All at sea" and listening to the song via Youtube, bored out of my mind by the songs performance I start to wander over to the related videos and see that Jaime also does many a cover including "Sky Cries Mary" and "High and Dry" all of which sound lifeless to me. He's emoting alright but the performances all lack a rawness that would make a song stick with you for life. If those same arrangements were sung by Sting or even Norah Jones they would have a much better chance of sticking with me, these performance just leave me flat.

Growing tired of Bob's selections, I searched for a palette cleanser and found this phenomenal performance of St. Vincent's "Marrow" on Letterman.

 

St. Vincent is another one of those artists, like Jamie Cullum, who's name I had heard but for what ever reason had paid no attention to (and in the case of Jamie Cullum I'm glad I had.) Ms. Annie Clark finally caught my attention not with the Letterman clip but with a performance on Austin City Limits a few months ago. I was half passed out on the bed drifting away when I was lulled into curiosity by the angelic flutes and oboe's that suddenly jarred me to attention with a full on marching band stomp.

http://austincitylimits.org/seyret-video?task=videodirectlink&id=176

Kristen and I were unwinding for the night and I stumbled upon PBS and Austin City Limits.  I'll admit I wasn't immediately taken in by St. Vincent.  Like a good music snob I was half interested and half bored because I was unfamiliar with the music and exhausted, so much so I started to drift off... then it hit me, those horns and the guitar solo, the dynamics of soft and quiet to loud and explosive, the sophistication of the arrangements... it had all pulled me in, I was now fully awake and enjoying every minute of it.

The next day Kristen had downloaded the album Actor and knew everything there was to know about her. I then headed to e-music for her 1st album Mary Me and began diving head first in to the world of Annie Clark.  

Annie Clark's music as St. Vincent is almost exactly what you would expect from a multi-instrumentalist who grew up in Texas, attended Berklee School of Music, joined the Polyphonic Spree just a couple years after high school and played in Sufjan Steven's touring band. She writes Pop songs, full of life, colorful arrangements and orchestration that are rough around the edges. A juxtaposition of violent guitars and sugary sweet "Birds on your shoulder" orchestral swoons.  Not every song is a gem, and many come off better live than on record, but the potential here is undeniable, and Annie know's this...

It's interesting how the internet is this revolutionary thing that allows us to connect and share so much information with one another yet it took a TV appearance on public television to get me to finally pay attention.  Crazy world we're living in.

Enjoy.

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Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Dusting off the ol' Drum & Bass shelf

While going through some files on an old hard drive this morning I found a hand full of tunes I had worked on back in my D&B days. None of them were ever released and they were played in clubs less than a hand full of times. The original session files have long been lost on a failed hard drive somewhere and I figure why let all those hours of hard work go to waste. Those that new me back in the early part of this decade might get a kick out of these tunes. Enjoy!

Joe Shockley & New Republic - Why you gotta do me like that?


The 1st tune goes back to 2002 and is one of the last I worked on with New Republic, mainly it was Wade and my self on this tune and truly it was me obsessively trying to come up with something as catchy as Zinc's "Ska" and "138 Trek" and was heavily influenced by the sound DJ's Marky and Patife were pushing at the time... all in one song. As a group New Republic had already released a 12" with Break Beat Science and were working on a Latin/Brazilian influenced Single/EP for another label before the group started to implode and eventually fell apart.  Listening back to it now the song feels rushed in some parts and long in others, the drums don't punch through enough and you can barely hear the bass on my MacBook speakers, but overall it's a fun song. Good Times.

Joe Shockley - What You Want


"What You Want" written in 2003, is the 1st tune I worked on after leaving New Republic and you can tell I was a bit angry at the time. Prior to working on this tune most of the songs I worked on were mostly liquid funk inspired and upbeat.  This was a total 180 from that vibe and was a very literal response to the feedback I was getting from the crowd.

Joe Shockley - Other Life


"Other Life" also written in 2003, represents the most fun I ever had making a D&B tune. I just threw my self into it for a week and had a lot of fun programming drums, finding all the samples and coming up with an obnoxious bass line/lead synth. It was also the shortest and most concise D&B tune I had done at the time and I loved how it didn't have an atmospheric "drop" and then repeat section.  "Other Life" is also the last D&B tune I did as I stepped away from Drum & Bass all together, got back behind the drum kit and eventually started playing with Marqui Adora.

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Levi's Mean Machine: 1970 Mercury Cougar

Levi picked up a sweet new ride this Xmas. It's beautiful and in excellent condition.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Jackson the wonder dog!

The sweetest British bulldog catching a wagon ride.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Sufjan Stevens - Star of Wonder

Star Of Wonder by Sufjan Stevens  
Download now or listen on posterous
5-09 Star of Wonder.mp3 (10427 KB)

What Holiday Season is complete with out the sounds of Sufjan Steven's Songs for Christmas. Most attempts at holiday music, especially Christmas music, fall flat with me, but Sufjan captures the hope and joy that the winter solstice seams to bring while still leaving in a touch of sadness and reflection that also comes with the season. Then again all of my favorite songs from Sufjan do this for me. He has the ability to capture tender moments in life that make you want to both cry and sing out. 

This is an appropriate theme for me this holiday season as I celebrate my 1st Christmas with my beautiful wife and her family while I also mourn the sudden loss of my Aunt and witness the heavy sadness that weighs down on my family.  

This year my holidays will truly be filled with laughter, tears, reflection and renewal. Fortunately I have Sufjan Steven's "Star of Wonder" to get me through it. 

Joe

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Friday, December 11, 2009

John Stossel Talks Atlas Shrugged

 

  

ABC Fired Stossel?

Opinion Editorial by John Stossel - Dec 10, 2009
85 ratings from readers
While clearing up some of the misinformation surrounding his recent career change, this veteran reporter also aims to clear up the misinformation about capitalism in his new career - with a nod to Rand.

People keep forwarding me emails and blog posts saying ABC fired me. Internet forums claim I was fired because I aired a story about the downside of government-controlled health care. This is silly. It's not even logical. No one can broadcast anything on "20/20" without ABC's approval.

The truth is that my departure from ABC was by mutual consent.

I left to go to the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network because I want more time to report on free markets and economic liberty, the kind of reporting I do in this column. With two 24-hour news channels, Fox has more room for that.

Today, finally, my new Fox Business show begins! It will air every Thursday at 8 p.m. (and will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m. — opposite "20/20" — heh, heh, heh).

My first show will be on the "climate crisis." Or it might be on Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." I've prepared both shows because I can't decide which I should do.

What do you think?

I'm partial to an "Atlas" show because I reread the novel recently and was stunned. It was as if Rand had seen the future. Writing half a century ago, she predicted today's explosion of big government in shockingly accurate detail.

The "Preservation of Livelihood Law." The "Equalization of Opportunity Law." The "Steel Unification Plan."

Don't these sound like laws passed by the current Congress?

All were creations of Rand's villain, Wesley Mouch, the evil bureaucrat who regulates business and eventually drives the productive people out of business. Who is today's Wesley Mouch? Barney Frank? Chris Dodd. Tim Geithner? I'll ask my TV audience to vote.

"Atlas" is still a big bestseller today. This year, it reached as high as NO. 15 on Amazon's bestseller list. Pretty amazing.

Clearly there's some magic in "Atlas Shrugged." The Library of Congress once asked readers which books made the biggest difference in their lives. "Atlas" came in second, after the Bible.

Yet elites and the MSM hate Ayn Rand. When "Atlas" first came out, The New York Times wrote that "the book is written out of hate."

Maybe that's why no "Atlas" movie has been made. Angelina Jolie once wanted to play heroine Dagny Taggart, but it never happened. Rand's books still sell millions of copies, yet college "women's studies" courses rarely mention her. One professor says her department head asked, "Why would you study that fascist?"

Why such antipathy?

Rand celebrates business and free markets. The elites don't like business. In every newsroom where I've worked, and at my college,Princeton, capitalism was derided as selfishness.

And lately, as a failure. On one website, someone wrote: "You'd think it was a joke, when the global economy was collapsing because of greed, that anyone might turn seriously to the purple prose of crypto-fascist (!) Ayn Rand and think it was the answer to anything."

Well, I, for one, think her prose answers much.

The embrace of freer markets has lifted more people out of the misery of poverty than any other system -- ever. The World Bank says that in just the last 30 years, half a billion people who once lived on less than $1.25 a day have moved out of poverty.

But now, Wesley Mouch — I mean, Congress and the bureaucrats — tell us they are going to "fix" capitalism, as if their previous "fixes" didn't hamstring the free market and create the problems they propose to solve.

Who are they kidding? Rand had it right. She learned it the hard way in Soviet Russia. What makes a country work is leaving people free — free to take risks, to invent things — and to keep the rewards of their work.

Critics say Ayn Rand promotes selfishness. I call it "enlightened self interest." When free people act in their own self-interest, society prospers.

So there's my first show, maybe.

On second thought, with Barack Obama heading to Copenhagen promising America will cut its greenhouse gasses by 83 percent (not 82, not 84 — exactly 83), I may do my first show on global warming.

I'll decide soon — when I begin my new career.


John Stossel hosts the TV show "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He is the author of Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media (January 2005) as well as Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel — Why Everything You Know Is Wrong (May 2007), which is now available in paperback.

  

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I'm not sure about the move to Fox, but I often enjoy hearing John Stossel's perspective. Hopefully he'll add a little more balance to their "Fair & Balanced" reporting. I too have mentioned to friends that Ayn Rand predicted the future when it comes to the current state of economic affairs in the world. But I was saying that before Obama was elected, when it was the Republicans handing out money like candy on halloween and pushing agendas that did make sense in a "Free" market. It's easy to put the blame on the Democrats, but lets not forget all those Republicans who played their part. They're all hoping for the same thing... that they'll be dead before it all falls apart.

Joe

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Sunday, December 06, 2009

A lovely home cooked meal...

Spaghetti Squash with cranberries, Celebration Ale and the sounds of Bon Iver. Some much needed comfort food before yet another crazy busy week.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Freshjive Calls Out Obama

So I guess it's taken just a little over a year for the backlash to set in. Let's see where this goes.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Monday, November 30, 2009

The bummer that is touring... Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio3/podcasts/video/CBCR3Video_2009-11-20.m4v

True, most if not all the faces in this video are unfamiliar to you, that said, the sentiment is well understood. Touring is hard. Especially when few people know who you are.
Some insight from a few Canadian Indies who aren't The Arcade Fire, MSTRKRFT or Metric.

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

So If Obama Increases the troop count in Afghanistan (again), does he get to keep the Nobel Peace Prize?

Michael Moore doesn't think so...

"Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple."

Michael White will continue to count the dead regardless...

"Every day, White, 51, updates a Web site he launched in 2003,icasualties.org, to keep count of the dead: American troops, coalition troops, contractors and Iraqi civilians. He eventually began documenting deaths in Afghanistan as well."

The Huffington Post reminds us that NATO is also willing to send more troops to Afghanistan...

"NATO countries are also preparing to send more soldiers, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown saying 10 NATO nations are ready to offer about 5,000 more troops. Britain, which has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, the second-largest contingent after the United States, has not named the countries it claims will provide the extra troops."

And I can't help hearing the line "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" in my head.

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Friday, November 13, 2009

Facebook status update provides alibi - CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/12/facebook.alibi/index.html

Gotta love it. A 19 year old kid turns him self in, knowing he's innocent, after he discovers the police are looking for him in regards to a mugging. When he volunteers to do the line up the victim says he's the guy and the police send him to jail for two weeks. The kids father points out a facebook status that indicates where his son was at the time of the mugging; at home, on the phone with his pregnant girlfriend, and he's released. The 19 year old and his family plan to sue for damages.

Obsseive facebook status updates FTW!

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Why Retweet works the way it does By Evan Williams

November 10, 2009

Why Retweet works the way it does

274874658019133568
  • Posted at 6:29 PM
This week on Twitter, we're rolling a feature we've been working on for a while out to a lot more users. (If you don't have it yet, you will soon.) That feature is our native version of Retweet, which Biz posted about on the Twitter blog a couple months ago.

I'm making this post because I know the design of this feature will be somewhat controversial. People understandably have expectations of how the retweet function should work. And I want to show some of the thinking that's gone into it. I've been a big proponent of this particular design internally at Twitter, because, while it won't serve every use case, I think it offers something new and powerful.

Background
As you know, retweeting is a very cool thing that emerged organically from Twitter users as a way of passing on interesting bits of information. Third party developers who make Twitter clients embraced it and added retweet functionality to their apps without us at Twitter doing anything at all with the feature. This isn't the first time this has happened, and this kind of emergent behavior is one of the best things about our ecosystem of users and developers.

People have long asked when we're going to build a RT button on twitter.com. While it would have been pretty trivial to do the way some clients have, the reason it's taken a while is because we wanted to do something a little more fundamental that we thought would add a lot more value.

While retweets as they work today are great, they have some drawbacks. Notably:

Attribution confusion. With regular tweets, you have a user picture, a username, and the tweet text. They all have a particular relation to each other. We call this, the "anatomy of a tweet."

With what I'll call organic RTs, you have the same elements, but they have a different relation to each other. Most notably, the text of the tweet is not written by the person whose picture you're seeing, nor the username that's at the beginning—except for when the retweeter annotates the tweet, so they have written part of it. (And sometimes that's at the beginning, sometimes the end.) Even once you get used to the common syntax (and there's not just one), there's extra mental parsing to associating the text with the right username and not the picture.

I believe this is a bigger issue for the readability of tweets than is obvious. I also often receive @replies from people who clearly think I said the thing that I just retweeted.

Mangled and messy. The attribution is confusing in the best case. But it's worse because different clients treat RTs differently, and if someone retweets a retweet it gets messy fast. Because organically retweeted tweets can be edited, even if the original author is properly understood as the author, it's not necessarily for what they really said. Inaccurate attribution is possible in any medium. But in Twitter, because of the character limit, it's often necessary. People shorten and edit retweeted tweets to make them fit along with the extra metadata. Even when for legit purposes, that can be misleading and unfair to the author. Worse, RTs can actually be easily faked, which has become a form of spam, wherein well-known people are shown to be promoting something they never twittered about.

Redundancy. If five people you follow retweet the same thing, you get five copies, which can be useful but is a lot of noise. This comes up even more in search. Popular users can get retweeted enough to saturate a search query. Coincidentally, as I'm writing this I came across this:

Noisiness. Let's face it: Some people over-retweet. You may be interested in what they personally say, but you don't need to know about every link and charity cause they pull their RT-happy trigger finger on. The only choice you have today is deciding if the benefit of getting their occasional gems is worth the cost of their retweetarrhea.

Untrackable. Retweets potentially reveal very interesting data. After all, if something's worth repeating out to all your followers, that's a signal that it's more interesting than something that's not (over-retweeters aside). If something retweeted by a bunch of people, relative to how many are following the original author, that's valuable data that may help people discover interesting news more quickly. Third-party developers have recognized this and built sites to try and track this information. But it's fundamentally hard because the data isn't structured.

This last point is not obvious but is particularly important for fulfilling Twitter's goal of helping you discover the information that matters most to you as quickly as possible. Part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can follow your friends, organizations, public figures, or strangers you find interesting. But no matter how carefully you've groomed your following list, out of the millions of tweets written today, are you seeing the absolute most relevant ones to you? Or are you getting some good stuff, some stuff you don't care about, and likely missing a whole lot of other killer tweetage you don't even know is there?

I would argue it's the latter. The perfect Twitter would show you only the stuff you care about—relevant, timely, local, funny, whatever you're most interested in—even if you don't follow the person who wrote it. And, of course, it would give you ultimate, fine-grained control in how to do so. We want to give you more ways to help the good stuff bubble to the top.

Foreground
Toward that end, we've designed Retweets in a way that helps people get more good stuff, while solving some of the other problems described above.

In an announcement a few weeks ago to get developers building new RT functionality into their clients, we released some preliminary mockups showing how the new Retweet functionality might work on twitter.com. (I've read a couple times today that we're apparently keeping this feature only for twitter.com, which is exactly wrong. Most of the clients are working on incorporating it presently.)

The design is simple: There's a retweet link by each tweet and, with two clicks, it will be sent on to your followers. This takes care of the mangled and messy problem because no one gets an opportunity to edit the tweet (more on that below). The meta data (about who tweeted and who retweeted) is not in the tweet text itself, so they never have to be edited for length. Because they're built natively into the system, they're trackable. And because they're trackable, we can take care of the redundancy problem: You will only get the first copy of something retweeted multiple times by people you follow.

It will be very quick and easy to retweet, you'll never have to edit the text, and you also won't have to worry if your followers have already seen something, so this should encourage retweeting more and more useful stuff flowing farther.

The noisiness problem is taken care of by a new setting that will allow you to turn on and off retweets on a per-user basis. That is, if you only want to see someone's personally authored tweets, you can shut off just their retweets altogether but still follow them.

The attribution problem: In order to get rid of the attribution confusion, in your timeline we show the avatar and username of the original author of the tweet—with the person who retweeted it (whom you actually follow) in the metadata underneath. The decision is that this:

...is a better presentation than this:

No fault of @AleciaHuck's but the first is simply easier to read, and it gives proper credit to @badbanana. Even if you know @AleciaHuck, there's no benefit to having her picture in there.

The drawback is that it may be a little surprising (unpleasant even, for some) to discover avatars of people they don't follow in their timeline. I ask those people to keep in mind the following: You're already reading the content from these people via organic retweets. This is just giving you more context. My experience is that you get used to this pretty quickly, and it's a welcome way to mix things up. If you find someone constantly throwing people in there you don't like, as mentioned before, you can turn off Retweets from them (while still following their non-retweets). And if you really don't like it, and you only want to see what people you follow wrote themselves, you can turn off Retweets for everyone you follow (individually). Organic RTs do not offer nearly this flexibility.

The other thing some people will not like is that, unlike organic RTs, there's no way to annotate or leave your own comment when you retweet something with the new system. Some people annotate with every retweet, some don't do it at all. But it's definitely useful in certain scenarios. We left it out of this first version mostly for simplicity. It's especially tricky when you consider transports like SMS where adding a lot of structure or additional content is hard. But we have some ideas there, and it's possible we'll build that in at a later date. (This point should not be missed.)

What about those cases where you really want to add a comment when RTing something? Keep in mind, there's nothing stopping you from simply quoting another tweet if that's what you want to do. Also, old-school retweets are still allowed, as well. We had to prioritize some use cases over others in this release. But just as Twitter didn't have this functionality at all before, people can still work around and do whatever they want. This just gives another option.


The larger point, though, is that this feature should make Twitter a more powerful system for helping people find out what's happening now that they care about.

To give you a better sense of what we're trying to accomplish, check out this guest post on Techcrunch from back in May by David Sacks, CEO of Geni and Yammer and former COO of PayPal: The Awesome Potential of Retweet. In it, he lays out much of what I do above—describing the drawbacks of how RTs work today and proposing a native solution that's pretty much identical to what we've come up with. (Believe it or not, we had this design before he wrote that—not that we would have minded stealing the idea from him.)

I'm excited to see what our users and developers do with it and teach us about Retweet, so we can improve it more.

I'm curious to see how this plays out.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Monday, November 09, 2009

Music you should Hear and See: Exile & DJ Day - D Train Routine

Filmed in Amsterdam @ Rooms of Red Bull.

I love where DJing and Live PA's are going.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Bummer: !!! Drummer Passes Away.

Maserati and !!! Drummer Passes Away
by Staff | 11.09.2009

Gerhardt "Jerry" Fuchs, the 34 year-old drummer for indie bands Maserati and !!!, passed away early Sunday morning, due to a tragic elevator accident. The drummer was attending a Williamsburg, NY benefit, when he and another elevator passenger's elevator car halted and he attempted to jump to the next floor.

Fuchs' most recent work with Georgia-based psychedelic instrumental ensemble Maserati included a split LP, with Zombi released in early 2009, and rarities collection Passages out later this year. He'll be greatly missed.

  

That's a shame. I'm glad I had a chance to see them on before he was gone!

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Spotify: not getting the best advice...

"My advice to Spotify is to hire a banker and start shopping the company to a BDC (big dumb company)." ®

Entertaining read this morning. What I don't get is all the backlash. Spotify has a brilliant model. They've learned so much from others who have failed at making this model work. They know the bottom line is access. We want it all and we want it now. Mobile devices have created the oppurtinuty to make streaming and more importantly caching work anywhere and that's a service worth paying for. If the BDC is Apple I might be down with this idea, anyone else will most likely screw this up. 

Recently I had not only my entire media hard drive die, which housed roughly 1TB of Music, Movies and Pictures, but the media back up drive failed as well. Fortunately I have a 3rd back up that was just a few months old so my total data loss is very little, but I'm getting tired of managing this issue. These things tend to happen every couple of years and it's getting old.

I use Evernote and Dropbox religously and I want to manage my media the same way. I want to walk up to any device, install the app, enter my credentials and boom all my stuff is there. My library, My playlists, My ratings... The whole thing. I don't want to think about it, I just want access to it, where ever I am.

I want my Spotify and I want it now!     

Joe Shockley
Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

My take on The Time Traveler's Wife

The Book = A romantic adventure, inspiring and reflective. A great love story that has passion, depth and a tremendous sense of longing. 

You Know, things that you feel when you're painfully in love.      

The Movie = A rushed and uninspired piece of crap.  

So Kristn and I went to see "The Time Traveler's Wife" at the $3.00 movie theater in Tamarac this past Sunday.  We were adivised not to see it but I enjoyed the book so much that I just couldn't help my self. I wanted to see the charectors come to life on the screen.

From the very 1st scene the movie is all wrong.  I don't understand why it is that when screenwriters, directors and producers set out to make an adaptation of a book they more often than not suck the life out of it and deliver a mangled cliff notes version of the story.  At what point do you start cutting for time at the expense of actually delivering a finished product that's worth watching.

Don't get me wrong, you can't bring every word off the page and on to the screen, but if your goal is to make a love story with a fantastic premise such as a girl who 1st meets her future husband at age 6 while he's 39 because he's traveling through time unwillingly, then don't you think you might want to give the story a little breathing room so that the audience might have some time to get attached to the charectors and to possibly give a shit as to what might happen to them? Just Sayin'.

It's truly a shame. There was an opertunity there to turn this film Into a Titanic sized love story. There was so much depth left out that could've made this such a great film, Instead what was made was this steaming pile of turd that requires such a leap of faith to make it work that you really just can't buy into it. You just don't give a shit about anyone in this film, it truly plays out like an extended postcard of a sunny beach that's says "Wish you were here!" when it should say "I wish you were here becuase life sucks so much with out you that even the sun just dosen't shine as bright as It once did when you stood next to me." 

I think you get me. I'm dissapointed. I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting better. You had Brad Pitt as one of the Producers, Bruce Joel Rubin, the same screen writer who wrote the screen play for "Ghost", and Rachel McAdams... Hello! The Notebook! WTF! Then again it was directed by Robert Schwentke who directed "Flightplan"... yeah I didn't see it either so maybe that's part of the problem.

Bottom line, don't see this movie, remove it from your netflix cue, head over to Amazon, your Kindle or your nearest B&N or Borders and buy the book and enjoy. 

Joe

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Monday, October 26, 2009

Michael Lavine Photography · Books · Grunge ·

If this book ended up on my coffee table come December 25th, 2009 I would not be disappointed.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

9 Weirdest-Looking Animals You Didn't Know Existed (PHOTOS)

From newly-discovered deep sea crustaceans to rodent-resembling primates, nature has brought us some outright weird-looking creatures. Check out these animals that just seem out-of-this world and vote for the one you think is the weirdest of them all!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/9-weirdest-looking-animal_n_317907.html?slidenumber=0#slide_image

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Point!

Joe Shockley
Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

The Rosebuds - Push It (Salt N' Peppa Cover)

Push It by The Rosebuds  
Download now or listen on posterous
Push It.mp3 (4889 KB)

While preparing playlists for my wedding reception brunch thing tomorrow morning I stumbled upon this gem. I debated wether or not to add it to the mix but then on her drive home from dinner tonight Kristen heard the original and was inspired, thus it's made the cut. It should go well with the cover of "Bust A Move" that Kristen's brother does. No Joke.

The scoop on this cover is that The Rosebuds did it just for fun and used it to promote a few tour dates. And It's just another reason why Kristen and I love them so much. Most bands have a sense of humor, but few show it. I love a band that can write dark moody songs and cut loose and smile from time to time. Just as long as it's not all the time.

Joe

Posted via email from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Rosebuds - Push it (Salt N' Peppa Cover)

Push It by The Rosebuds  
Download now or listen on posterous
Push It.mp3 (4889 KB)

While preparing playlists for my wedding reception brunch thing tomorrow morning I stumbled upon this gem. I debated wether or not to add it to the mix but then on her drive home from dinner tonight Kristen heard the original and was inspired, thus it's made the cut. It should go well with the cover of "Bust A Move" that Kristen's brother does. No Joke.

The scoop on this cover is that The Rosebuds did it just for fun and used it to promote a few tour dates. And It's just another reason why Kristen and love them so much. Most bands have a sense of humor, but few show it. I love a band that can write dark moody songs and cut loose and smile from time to time. Just as long as it's not all the time.

Joe

Posted via email from One's posterous

Pre wedding reception booze talk

Listen!

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Monday, October 12, 2009

Compute This: World’s Oldest Working Computer On Display

Once used to help develop nuclear reactors, The WITCH comes out of being in storage for 30 years to be on display once again.

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Up super early on a Saturday, but well worth it.

Upgraded RAM in production MacBook, Listen to The xx, created a new Disk Image of previous production MacBook, listen to some Thom Yorke. Help a customer Migrate select data from a Sunflower iMac to a shiney new 20" Aluminum Iintel iMac. Listened to house keepers of said customer franticly clean and making all efforts to avoid gorgeous, yet gigantic Golden Retriever. I have lots more to do today and It's not even noon yet.

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Friday, October 09, 2009

It's F***ing Charging!

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9 Successful Techniques for Making Money from Podcasting

onairDavid Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions, specialists in building industry voice through storytelling and social media. He blogs at Spark Minute and is a regular on Cranky Geeks and ABC Radio.

For many, creating a podcast is something that’s done solely out of passion. But even among those who do it strictly for the love of podcasting, after awhile, once you’ve built up an audience, there comes a time when you think to yourself, “I can’t keep doing this for free.”

Such was the case with many of the people I interviewed in my 15-part series, “Making Money from Podcasting.” From a $50 donation to cover an afternoon of babysitting to a six figure sponsorship, the people I spoke to have been making anywhere from pocket change to lucrative careers from podcasting.

What follows is a compendium of nine proven money-making techniques for podcasters. All are successful to varying degrees and some podcasters use a combination of methods. This summary provides an explanation of all the techniques, and tips from the podcasters who have pulled them off. For more tips, advice, and to hear the full money making podcast story, make sure to read and listen to each the interviews linked throughout this article.

1. Got audience? We’ll get you sponsors

ssicon_Mevio_Adam_CurryPodcast networks such as Mevio, Podtrac, and Wizzard Media welcome any podcaster that has an audience, because that means they can sell advertising against it. The networks collect shows, categorize them, and sell advertising on a CPM (cost per thousand) or CPA (cost per action) basis. Adam Curry, former MTV VJ, podcasting pioneer, and President of Mevio (interview), is looking for podcast producers that know their audience and can motivate them. Using either their show programming or social media, podcast producers promote show-specific coupon codes for their sponsors. Every time one is used, the podcaster gets paid. Of their network of 15,000 podcasters, Curry said he has three podcasters that will make between $500,000 to $1,000,000 this year.

Kevin Kastner of Alaska HDTV used to be a Mevio customer but left because he was unsatisfied with what he was being offered (he wasn’t willing to make a CPA deal) and the opaqueness of the deals. He had no idea how much Mevio was selling his show to advertisers. Curry said he splits all revenue 50/50 with podcasters.

2. Get your own sponsors

ssicon_Alaska_HDTV_Kevin_KastnerKastner left Mevio (interview) because he believed he and his partner could land their own sponsors and make more money. They did, and in doing so increased revenue 200 to 300 percent, said Kastner. But he admits it has come at a serious cost: his workload has increased more than ten-fold.

ssicon_Wizzard_Media_Rob_WalchWizzard Media offers a hybrid advertising solution for podcasters that want to make more money by landing their own sponsors, yet still need the crutch of an ad network to fill out any unsold inventory. Royce Hildreth, co-producer of Pregtastic, the podcast by and for pregnant women, uses this Wizzard Media hybrid solution. For podcasters that get their own sponsors, Wizzard Media will insert the ads for a flat fee, explained Rob Walch, Wizzard’s VP of Podcaster Relations (interview) and host of the Today in iPhone podcast.

3. Be like public TV, beg for donations

ssicon_Pregtastic_Royce_HildrethPregtastic’s Hildreth (interview) admits that the hybrid sponsorship alone isn’t cutting it, so he’s put up a begware button and instructed podcast hosts to say that the show costs a donation. He and his co-producing wife aren’t making a lot of money from donations, however. It’s usually enough to hire a babysitter for when they have to go to the studio to record another episode.

4. Give some away free, charge for the rest

ssicon_ScreenCastsOnline_Don_McAllisterThis technique comes in multiple variations. One of the innovators of this technique is Don McAllister, host of ScreenCastsOnline (interview), a weekly video podcast of “how to” Mac software tutorials. McAllister gives away every other episode and makes viewers pay for the rest ($57 for the first six months) which includes additional bonus content and hi-res videos.

ssicon_Izzy_Video_Israel_HymanThe formula has become his livelihood for the past three years, and it’s been copied successfully (with McAllister’s blessing) by Israel Hyman host of Izzy Video (interview) and producer of Rolling R’s and Paperclipping.

ssicon_MacOSKen_Ken_RayWhen Hyman and McAllister first produced their podcasts they were completely free. It wasn’t until after a few years and some success that they started charging for some of their shows. Ken Ray, host of Mac OS Ken (interview), a daily podcast about Apple news, didn’t want to start charging for his free podcasts, so he created another show, “Day 6,” which can only be accessed through a paid subscription. Ray said the “Day 6″ show is designed to pay for his daily show.

ssicon_Premiumcast_PaulColliganApple doesn’t allow podcasters to charge for podcasts within iTunes, so if you want to create a paid podcast, you need to use a service such as Premiumcast.com which allows you to create personalized RSS feeds, explained CEO Paul Colligan (interview). Personalized RSS feeds allow for complete control over the podcaster/subscriber relationship, allowing you to serve different content (e.g., PDFs, video, or audio) and time the distribution, plus turn off a feed if someone stops paying.

5. Partial show free, full show paid

ssicon_Never_Not_Funny_Matt_BelknapOne of my favorite podcasts, Never Not Funny, is hosted by a great comedian I knew in Chicago, Jimmy Pardo. The show is 90 minutes long, but only the first 20 minutes is available for free. If you want the rest of the show, you need to become a paid subscriber ($19.99 for a season of 26 episodes in audio, $24.99 for the season in video). Like McAllister, Hyman, and Ray, the Never Not Funny podcast didn’t begin with a paid model. Pardo and his co-host and producer Matt Belknap (interview) created 100 shows for free first, and then switched to the partial show free, full show paid model. It’s paid off. Belknap estimates that 35 percent of their total listeners are paid subscribers.

6. Build your own media network of programming and sell advertising against it

ssicon_Personal_Life_Media_Susan_BrattonLaunching a radio or television network has enormous overhead. A podcast network doesn’t. Personal Life Media is an online network of blogs and podcasts that address personal life issues such as career, love, health, and finance, explained CEO Susan Bratton (interview). Unlike podcast networks such as Mevio and Wizzard Media which are just collecting a mishmash of programming, Personal Life Media behaves like a radio network that controls its programming and its overall brand. With her lineup of forty programs, Bratton can sell advertising packages by specific category that get from 100,000 to 250,000 downloads per month.

ssicon_ESPN_Marc_HorineUnlike Bratton’s Personal Life Media, ESPN didn’t have to start from scratch when creating its podcast network, ESPN Podcenter; they already had a brand and a radio station. When they first began podcasting five years ago, they repurposed some radio content for the web, but soon learned that it was more effective to create original podcast programming. Now with a lineup of more than 100 podcasts, ESPN sells integrated sponsor packages across multiple media that can include advertiser images that appear on the show’s icon within iTunes’ podcast directory, said Marc Horine, VP of Digital Media at ESPN (interview).

7. Build your brand to sell your services

ssicon_Duct_Tape_Marketing_John_JantschMarketing and digital technology coach John Jantsch is the host of the “Duct Tape Marketing” podcast (interview) which is also the name of his book and his consultancy. In his early days of podcasting, when he was a complete unknown, Jantsch would request interviews from well known social media types like Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin. Having them on his podcast raised his profile. Since, his consulting business has increased 500 percent and is now landing him six-figure sponsorships repeatedly, said Jantsch.

ssicon_Manager_Tools_Mike_AuzenneMike Auzenne, co-host of the Manager Tools podcast (interview), doesn’t charge for his podcast or take any sponsorship money. He just focuses on delivering great advice and actionable tips to be a better manager. The four-year podcast trust building exercise is working. All of Manager Tools’ clients come from hearing him on the podcast first, and as a result business has increased ten-fold, said Auzenne.

8. Sell an iPhone app along with your podcast

ssicon_Elsies_Yoga_Elsie_EscobarElsie Escobar is the host of the podcast Elsie’s Yoga Class Live and Unplugged (interview) which is simply an audio recording of her yoga classes. Though the podcast is distributed completely for free, she’s just starting to make money with a $3.99 iPhone application. The application, developed by Wizzard Media and available to any podcaster on a revenue share basis, lets Escobar and anyone else offer value add content for their podcast. Escobar uses it to add PDFs of routine sequences and quick access to 70 of her past yoga classes. It’s an ideal platform to be on since Wizzard Media’s podcast metrics show that 85 percent of people download podcasts through iTunes. Combine that with the 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches sold and you’ve got yourself a strong podcasting platform, said Wizzard Media’s Rob Walch.

9. Integrate sponsorship with the show’s editorial

ssicon_Slate_Andy_BowersDigital audio book seller Audible is a regular sponsor of many different podcasts. It is natural for them to advertise on podcasts, since their product is usually consumed in the same place: iPods. It was even more appropriate for them to advertise via sponsored editorial placements on Slate’s Culture Gabfest, a group discussion podcast of the week’s arts and entertainment happenings, explained Andy Bowers (interview), Slate’s podcast and video producer. The Culture Gabfest’s hosts were already consumers of Audible’s product and were eager to recommend books or take recommendations from listeners. Book recommendations fit in naturally with the show’s editorial and it also has increased engagement as they continue to track their success through a show-specific promotion code.

This is just a brief summary of all the different ways one can make money from podcasting. For “how to” tips and expert advice on how to make these techniques actually work, make sure you read and listen to the interviews, linked all throughout this article.

More business resources from Mashable:

- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business
- 6 Must-Follow Steps for Selling in Any Economy
- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business
- HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto (iStockphoto

), Graffizone

These are all great tips and, depending upon the type of podcast your doing, combing a few of them can obviously yield very positive results. For most though, building your brand through your podcast that lead to other sources of revenue is the best, most unobtrusive way to go. What are your thoughts?

-Joe

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

In a surprise move, Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

"OSLO -- President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation."

Didn't see hat one coming did ya!

Ok so now he has he worlds attention... again. So what's he gonna do with all that love?

I've got a few ideas...

Posted via web from Joe Shockley's Data & Sound

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Fresh Espresso - Live on KEXP

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Just listened to the these cats from Seattle. They're on the underground Hip Hop Tip with a bit of an Indie/Electro flare.  The tune 'Right Here' is smooth and 'Lazer Beams' has some cool live vocoder action, Aside from that it's just two guys rapping to a laptop, But man is that laptop is working it!

Enjoy!

Joe

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Gnarls Barkley cover Radiohead's 'Reckoner'

Reckoner (Radiohead Cover) by Gnarls Barkley  
Download now or listen on posterous
17 Reckoner (Radiohead Cover).mp3 (5192 KB)

Stumbled upon this cover this morning, it comes from a performance recorded Live @ Astoria 2, London in August of 2008. Cee-Lo's vocals lay the soul on pretty thick, almost a gospel howl of sorts, while the rest of the band does a rather accurate rendition of the song. Good find! The MP3 features a bit more of Cee-Lo introducing the song and some banter afterward.

Posted via email from Joe Shockley

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Monday, October 05, 2009

Ouch! Loud noise!

Listen!

Posted via web from Joe Shockley

U.S. Mac Ownership Grows, But Nearly 85% of Mac Households Also Own Windows PCs

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/10/05/npd-u-s-mac-ownership-grows-but-nearly-85-of-mac-households-also-own-windows-pcs

I find this to be true with about 80% of my customers. Many of whom are switchers thanks to the iPhone or simply tired of dealing with Windows virus issues.

Another interesting note: Of my 80% of Mixed enviroment house holds almost half of them continue to use Windows on their Mac via Bootcamp, Parallels or VMWare Fusion. And of that 50% I'd say nearly 90% of them do so because they are in Realestate or Finance.

Posted via email from Joe Shockley