Month: September 2005

MusicGiants

Post ImageI have always had two questions in the back of my mind about purchasing music online. First, how do the record labels/music stores decide what quality to encode an audio track at for sale? And secondly, how can they charge similar prices for CD’s and online music, the latter of which is generally much lower quality than a CD? Well I still don’t know the answers to those questions, but I discovered via Om Malik a new service called MusicGiants that sells high quality music:

Musicgiants, a high-def digital music download service is all set to launch on Wednesday. Billed as a download service for audiophiles, the 15-person company will offer songs that are uncompressed and are encoded using windows media technology at 1100 kbps. In comparison, Apple’s iTunes and others like Real’s Rhapsody offer music at a compression rate which is a tad lower than the CD-quality, mostly to keep the file sizes down. Musicgiants’ business model is predicated on widespread deployment of broadband and speeds which can handle the big-phat downloads. So far, the service works only on Windows PCs.

The songs cost $1.29 a download, and you have to pay $50 a year membership fee. The Nevada-based company claims its sound quality is seven times that of other download services.

I generally rip CD’s into WMA at very high quality, though not as high as MusicGiants – I guess I am a “sorta-audiophile”. I can’t really tell the difference when I play music on my computer, but I definitely can on my Zen with good earphones. MusicGiants looks like a very interesting concept, but I am not sure how well it will fly. Most people seem to be pretty happy purchasing from iTunes and others at a lower quality bitrate.

Oh and if you’re in Canada, don’t get too exicted, you currently have to live in the US to use the service.

Read: MusicGiants

TEC Connector

Post ImageI attended TEC Edmonton’s TEC Connector event this afternoon with Dickson. TEC Edmonton is a joint venture of the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. Here’s what the event was all about:

This TEC Connector event will showcase companies created from the results of University of Alberta inventions and technologies. In addition, the event is an active connector which will provide networking tools and tips, plus generate opportunities to connect with useful representatives in our community, including: university researchers, start-up company leaders, professional service firms, financial support organizations, government agency representatives, media representatives, inventors and entrepreneurs.

Obviously Paramagnus is not a spin-off company, nor we do use any University research or innovations, but we though the event might be a great opportunity to do some networking anyway. We met some interesting people and found out more about many of the local companies we had only just heard of in the past. I also learned some interesting statistics about University of Alberta spin-off companies:

  • As of March 31st, 2005 there were 69 active UofA spin-off companies
  • There have been 84 such companies formed since 1963, including those that have merged, been acquired, or discontinued
  • These companies employ more than 1000 high-skilled workers
  • More than 80% of the spin-offs are based in Alberta
  • Seven are publicly traded

One of the speakers at the event also mentioned the pending offer to purchase to the Hudson’s Bay building downtown, which if approved is where TEC Edmonton’s new headquarters would be. University administration presents the proposal to the Board of Governors on Friday, so we should know either this week or next whether or not the deal will go through.

Networking events are always lots of fun! This one was especially good because there was free food and drinks 🙂

Read: TEC Connector

Commander-in-Chief

Post ImageI came home from the office relatively early tonight, so I had time to catch the first episode of ABC’s “Commander-in-Chief“. Here’s the very to-the-point plotline from IMDB:

Mackenzie Allen becomes the first woman American president after she ascends to the job following the death of president Teddy Bridges.

What’s that?! Her name is Mackenzie? That’s so awesome! I have always wondered why there weren’t more characters with my name; I quite like it. She is played by Geena Davis.

Oh yeah, and she’s the first female President of the United States. As if that weren’t enough, her ascension to the Oval Office was full of controversy – she went against the wishes of the dying President who had asked her to resign. Her daughter didn’t agree with her taking the position. Lots of good storylines.

I don’t quite get the Hillary Clinton bashing though. As Allen’s husband was being shown around the “First Lady” areas, his tour-guide kept commenting on what Hillary had done and how “it didn’t go over very well”. Hillary for President, 2008!

Interesting show! I don’t know if I’ll make it a point to watch, but we’ll see.

Read: Commander-in-Chief

REVIEW: Music of the Sun – Rihanna

Post ImageTime for the second album review this week! You’ve no doubt heard Rihanna’s first single, “Pon de Replay” on the radio or MuchMusic or something. It’s extremely catchy, and is played everywhere. Unfortunately, it’s probably the best song on the album.

Rihanna is only seventeen years old, and hails from Barbados. She’s a very attractive young woman, and she definitely has some talent, but I just couldn’t get into the album. “Music of the Sun” consists mainly of dance tracks and ballads, and the dance tracks are the better of the two. I really like “Pon de Replay”, and there’s a fairly decent remix on the album featuring Elephant Man. Other songs I kinda liked were “Let Me” which has a great hook, “If It’s It Lovin’ That You Want” (minus the weird opening) and “Rush” which is another great club track. I found the ballads to be lacking in something…they don’t seem very original. You could substitute a number of singers in Rihanna’s place for the ballads and achieve the same result.

The album isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. If I had to choose, I’d probably buy just the single and not the album. I’ll give this album 4/10.

Read: Rihanna

Google turns 7, hides index

Post ImageDid you know that Google is now seven years old? Yep, their birthday was yesterday I believe, and the front page is still sporting the birthday logo. Here’s what the official Google blog has to say:

Google opened its doors in September 1998, and we’ve been pursuing one mission ever since: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. For our seventh birthday, we are giving you a newly expanded web search index that is 1,000 times the size of our original index.

Google also no longer displays the number of documents in their index on the front page. John Battelle explains:

I asked Marissa [Mayer at Google] that since Yahoo claims 20+ billion documents, and Google claims to be three times larger, might not folks simply presume that Google has 60 billion documents in its index? The answer goes to the heart of the index debate in the first place: Google does not count the way Yahoo seems to, so the comparison is apples to oranges. Google is counting one way, Yahoo another. So the numbers don’t add up.

…Google is forcing the debate back to relevance, where, honestly, it really belongs.

Well said. We need more relevant search results! Who cares if there are 22 million matching documents. What matters is showing me the ten or twenty most relevant right away.

Read: tech.memeorandum

Everybody Hates Chris on Google Video

Post ImageI wonder how long it will be until we talk about search engines/web portals like television channels. Lots of them are streaming TV shows now, including Google Video which is streaming the premiere of Everybody Hates Chris (Via John Battelle):

Google is joining AOL and Yahoo in making new television programming available via their video search service. Today, UPN and Google have announced that Google Video now offers access (free) to the premiere episode of “Everybody Hates Chris” which aired last week on the network and is “inspired” by comedian Chris Rock’s life as a kid.

Check out the first episode on Google Video. You can read my review of the show here.

Read: Google Video

REVIEW: PCD – The Pussycat Dolls

Post ImageThe first of my album reviews this week is the new album “PCD” by The Pussycat Dolls, which was released on September 13th. Like most people, their first single “Don’t Cha” featuring Busta Rhymes was my first exposure to the group and I became hooked. As you can learn at Wikipedia though, the all-girl group actually has a very interesting history:

The Pussycat Dolls are a female burlesque dance troupe based in Los Angeles, as well as in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The group was founded by choreographer Robin Antin in 1993.

A number of celebrities have also guest-performed with the group. The dancers perform in lingerie and old-fashioned pin-up costumes and there is no nudity or explicit sex in their performances. The group has become nationally popular and has been featured in magazines, television specials for MTV and VH1, ad campaigns, and movies. Carmen Electra has been the group’s lead performer for many of these magazine articles and television appearances, and she has been featured on stage with the Pussycat Dolls most frequently of all the celebrity performers. Nicole Scherzinger (aka Nicole Kea), a former member of the American Popstars winners Eden’s Crush, has now become the group’s lead singer. Other past and present members of the group include Carmit Bachar, Cyia Batten, Kasey Campbell, Kaya Jones, Ashley Roberts, Rachel Sterling, Jessica Sutta, Melody Thornton, and Kimberly Wyatt

The list of celebrities who have performed with the group is quite impressive. So that’s the group – what about the album?

Well I can honestly say I quite enjoyed PCD; I’m still enjoying it, in fact. Stand out songs for me include “Don’t Cha”, “Beep” which features BEP’s Will.i.am, “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go” which is a cover medley, and “Wait a Minute” which features Timbaland. The first single is definitely catchy, but the other songs on the album offer much more depth (and a greater variety of voices). There’s even a pretty good slow song, called “Feelin’ Good”. “Stickwitu” is another slower tune. I would have to say “Right Now” is the song I least enjoyed – it just gets kind of annoying after a while.

I’d give the album a solid 7/10. It’s a typical record label album, with only 12 tracks for a total listening time of just over 44 minutes. There are more enjoyable songs than not though, so it’s definitely an album you can listen to from start to finish without getting bored. And have you seen the video? I mean, that’s enough for me!

The Pussycat Dolls also have one of my favorite music websites. The design is clean, and simple to navigate. Most importantly, they publish both RSS and Atom feeds so you can keep up to date on the group without having to go online. I wish more music sites had that. The site does use flash, but not in a way that makes the site unusable, so I don’t mind it in this case. The best part of the website – they don’t have music playing automatically when you visit! That is the worst feature on most music sites.

Read: The Pussycat Dolls

Notes for 9/25/2005

Here are my Sunday notes, slightly late once again:

  • My Dad’s blog is sporting a new look! He gave me a description of what he wanted, and I tried to make it happen. I think it looks pretty good! If you notice any bugs or anything, let me know.
  • I need to start coming home earlier. If I come home after 3 AM, it seems that 50% of the time there is a very wide load being moved down 17th street with police escorts and I have to wait for it to pass.
  • I had grilled cheese for lunch today 🙂
  • I also posted my post-Globalism Conference thoughts today. I’m very glad I went to the conference, gave me much to think about.
  • Tonight Dickson and I visited Annie, and she showed us her new Nintendo DS. She happened to be playing a game called Nintendogs, in which you have a pet dog that you must train and look after (and since the DS has a mic, you can use voice commands). She let us try it – big mistake!
  • Thinking of buying an iPod Nano? You might want to read this. Seems the Nano has some very widespread problems with it’s display.
  • I acquired a lot of new music this last week, so I am going to post some music reviews over the next week. Maybe I’ll do one album review a day. Lots of great music being released at this time of year!
  • I got my car all sparkly and clean today, inside and out, so it had better not rain tomorrow!

Thoughts on the Neoliberal Globalism Conference

Post ImageNow that the Globalism Conference is over and I’ve had a day or so to digest what I took in, I came up with some thoughts and observations. Megan also posted some post-conference thoughts. Here are mine, in no particular order:

  • I wonder how we get young people interested and involved in this type of content. Most people my age don’t even know what NAFTA really is, much less can they form an opinion on whether it is good or bad for Canada.
  • At a conference talking about challenges to American power, it was quite interesting that there were no sessions on China, India, or other up and coming countries. The lack of anything on China surprised me most of all. They are going to be the next superpower, and they are almost completely opposite of the United States. Surely there’s valuable information to be learned from examining the country.
  • I think I have altered my opinion on Alberta’s oil and gas industry. While I remain opposed to sharing everything with the other provinces and getting basically nothing in return, I understand the need for a national energy policy. As long as Alberta is given a very important position in such a policy’s creation and execution, I think it would be wise to pursue.
  • I think education and awareness is the biggest problem we face. Yes there were thousands of people protesting Iraq in front of the Whitehouse the other day, but how many of them have a good understanding of the causes and desires and ideals that resulted in the Iraq war? There is more to the story than just bringing the soldiers home.

I probably took more notes at this conference than I did at school all last week. I figure it’s the kind of thing that you have to take advantage of while you still can. It’s just too bad more people my age didn’t attend, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – most of them don’t vote either.

Read: Globalism Conference

MsgPlus Petition Worked

Post ImageIt seems as though the MsgPlus petition (that I wrote about here, but didn’t sign) has worked, though Microsoft has not made an offical response:

We have yet to receive an official answer from Microsoft regarding the problems caused by their AntiSpyware product, however, it seems that the petition already filled a lot of its purpose! An update was made to the spyware definition files on September 23rd and the msgplus.exe program is not detected as a threat at run time anymore!

While I am glad they are no longer identified, I hope they don’t get an official answer. Like I said before, Microsoft would open a whole can of worms if they bowed to the demands of one software developer. And again, I never had any problems with MsgPlus and AntiSpyware.

Read: MsgPlus News