Category: Uncategorized

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

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

Bronfman on Apple and Music

Post ImageWarner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. has publicly responded to the comments made by Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs last week. Jobs called the record labels “greedy” and pledged to keep iTunes prices at 99 cents. Mr. Bronfman made it clear he disagrees:

He called Apple’s across-the-board $0.99-per-song charge unfair.

“There’s no content that I know of that does not have variable pricing,” said Mr. Bronfman at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia investor conference. “Not all songs are created equal—not all time periods are created equal. We want, and will insist upon having, variable pricing.”

I actually agree with Mr. Bronfman on that point; I think there should be variable pricing. What I don’t think he’d agree with is a maximum price, and no minimum price. Just as some songs are worth more than 99 cents, some are worth less and so consumers shouldn’t have to pay a premium for them. I also don’t think any song should cost more than $2.49 – if you have a CD with only one good song, that’s a fair price I’d say. Most consumers don’t want to buy an entire album, just the songs they like – a model that the record industry is clearly not used to. I like to have an entire album, and the record labels prefer me to purchase an entire album, so I think if variable pricing actually comes to pass, there should be big discounts for users who purchase an entire album.

I disagree with Mr. Bronfman on the following point though:

“We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue,” he said. “We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.

“We have to keep thinking how we are going to monetize our product for our shareholders,” added Mr. Bronfman. “We are the arms supplier in the device wars between Samsung, Sony, Apple, and others.”

Um, no. The record labels sell their songs through iTunes, not through the iPod. There’s no way they should get a cut of iPod sales. And to say they are the arms supplier? Hardly! People don’t buy an iPod over a Sony player because of the music. Wake up and smell the coffee Edgar!

Read: Red Herring

Complicated Technology Makes It Simple

Post ImageInteresting post written by John Zeratsky over at To-Done! about living a simple life with complicated technology:

I will concede one point – computers and their technological brethren are enormously complex. But the best-designed gadgets and systems actually go a long way toward simplifying our lives.

He then lists a number of technologies that make his life simpler. I thought about it for a couple minutes, and then I realized what my “life-simplifying” technology is – my Tablet PC.

I am terrible for losing paper. If I have something on paper, chances are it will get lost at some point in time. Unfortunately, it’s just not feasible to type everything! That’s why my Tablet PC is so handy, I can type or write or draw or do whatever I need to as if I had paper. And the best part is that I don’t lose anything AND it becomes searchable! I spend a lot of time on the computer as it is, so being able to just write something down without changing “interfaces” (read: moving eyes and focus from screen to paper) is extremely useful. My Tablet PC is a pretty complex device, but it simplifies my life.

What complex technology simplifies your life?

Read: To-Done!

Alternatives to Integration

Post ImageThe final session of the day was titled Alternatives to Integration with Bush’s America, and included Lori Wallach, David Schneiderman, and Gordon Laxer as panelists. Mr. Laxer spoke last, being the man behind the Globalism Project, and this talk was more a wrap up of the last five years of work than an alternative to Bush’s America. Ms. Wallach, from the United States, spoke first, but definitely stole the show. She was captivating, and had an excellent message to share. I found myself doing far more listening in this final session than writing, so my notes are not nearly as extensive as for other sessions:

  • The bottom line: it’s a power issue.
  • We need to get past the “inevitability” issue. There are alternatives – the status quo is not inevitable as many assume!
  • He or she who writes the rules, rules.
  • In order to effect change, a mass of people is usually required – something revolutionary. And that mass of people needs to first rally around a national issue, so that there is political accountability when taking on an international issue.
  • TATA: There Are Thousands of Alternatives!
  • Neoliberal Globalism is a forcefield.

Read: Globalism Conference

Energy and Security

Post ImageThere were concurrent sessions right after lunch today, and I chose to attend the one entitled Energy and Security. Of all the sessions I attended, this one had the most discussion and was probably the most engaging from start to finish. All three topics presented by the panelists were tightly integrated and related, so the following notes are from all three. Marjorie Cohen talked about Public Electricity in Canada, Hugh McCullum talked about the End of the Oil Boom, and Duncan Cameron talked about The Chamber of Commerce and Energy Security.

  • The main theme of the session was that Canada does not have a national energy strategy or policy of any kind, and that in order to move forward in a sustainable fashion, we need to come up with one.
  • Resource nationalism is common around the world, but not in Canada.
  • There is no Canadian counterpart to FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) in the US.
  • The idea for Electricity Policy is to create Regional Transmission Organizations, so that privatization can occur. Canada has voluntarily gone with this plan, though some utilities in the US have opposed the idea.
  • Global demand for oil has for the first time eclipsed global supply – we are entering the last few decades of the oil era.
  • The oil that is left will be the oil which is hardest to extract, and which has the greatest impact on the environment.
  • More than half of all Canadians heat their homes using natural gas.
  • There was lots of discussion about Alberta’s oilsands. It was said that oil is a national security issue for the US, and Canada and it’s oilsands are the most secure source of oil.
  • American investment controls at least 40% of Alberta’s oil.
  • NAFTA is an international treaty as far as Canada is concerned, and so it supercedes domestic law. This is not the case in the United States.
  • A scheme for nationalization of Alberta’s oil was proposed: 1/3 ownership to the federal government, 1/3 to the other provinces, and 1/3 to Alberta (actually 34%, so they have a veto).
  • The main political question of the next five to ten years: how do we as Canadians share our resources?

Read: Globalism Conference