I know as a fact that promos for the new Rammstein album were mailed out as full blown digi-packs to the press. And sure enough, it was leaked in Finland.

Original source: http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20091207.html

Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here, but I've been using the iPhone for 6 months now and here are my reactions so far:

• I like (not love) the interface. It's pretty intuitive overall, but being someone who prides myself on usability and interface design, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to customize the programs list. This is something that's so simple to do on many other devices, but has been puzzling me for months. Even for the customizations that are there, they're very limited on what you can do. C'mon Apple, you can do better.
• Holy dropped calls!!! I used to have Verizon, and Sprint before that. In the past three weeks with my iPhone, I've easily have had more dropped calls than my entire prior experience with Sprint and Verizon combined (20 vs 1 or 2). I had one 40-minute conversation that was dropped three times in the process. And it's not like I'm in a dead zone either ...
• AT&T customer support. There seems to be a LOT of talk about their support, and even though the support staff seems friendly, they don't seem too terribly good at getting things done or answering my questions. For example, I signed up with a coupon code to receive a discount on every bill. Since July, I have not received one statement that honored that coupon code. Each bill, it seems, I have to contact support to get this fixed, and them I'm assured it won't happen again ... until my next bill comes around ...
• iPhone apps. Love em. Enough said.

I'm left wondering if my phone's issues are related to AT&T or the iPhone? AT&T, when contacted about all the dropped calls told me it was a bug in the iPhone. I'm not so sure about that though ... So, with that said, I'm stuck here with 1.5 years left on my 2 year contract. If I leave early, I'm sure there's a hefty fee (although, according to this article, it sounds like a breach of contract on their end to me). If I stay, I know I'm going to continue getting crappy phone service. To be honest, going back to Verizon with the Droid is looking very inviting to me right now ...

I just realized today that I have quite a few applications I use to stay connected to feeds of data and tools I use to share my own data throughout the day. Here is what I use:


DIGITAL MUSIC: I purchase all of my MP3 music from Amazon.com using their downloader application to instantly transfer music into the Windows Media Player library.

MUSIC LISTENING/TRACKING: I have a Last.fm plugin for Windows Media Player that pumps all of my listening habits to my Last.fm profile, which I can then share using Last.fm widgets in signatures on other sites.

TWITTER: I manage my Twitter account with thwirl.

RSS FEEDS: All rss feeds are managed with FeedReader3.

WEBSITE TRACKING: The Haulix website is monitored with Xigla Live Support.

EMAIL: Email is managed with Outlook 2007.


What do you use?

If you want to see how many times a URL shortened by Bit.ly was clicked, copy/paste the URL into a browser address bar and insert a plus sign (+) at the end.


http://bit.ly/59eYA3+

Original source: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2053-meetings-the-practical-alternative-to-work-via-ariel

Don't you think robot-crawlers, that in the past, have been programmed to look for strings that contain an "@" symbol, for harvesting email addresses for spamming purposes, have been re-programmed to include:

"me [at] mysite.com"
"me @ mysite.com"
"me@TAKEOUTmysite.com"


I can't believe people still use these techniques to avoid spam.

Great article written by Jennifer B. Kahnweiler on Forbes.com.

I have introverted tendencies and my business partner leans in that direction too. It's refreshing to read an article like this, when in society, it seems that introverts get looked down upon like they are weird or are lacking in something.

Jennifer says in her article,

"They think first, talk later. Introverted leaders think before they speak. Even in casual conversations, they consider others' comments carefully, and they stop and reflect before responding. One executive tells me that he sits back and listens to his leadership team's ideas and proposals, often using silence to allow even more thoughts to bubble up. Learning by listening, not talking, is a trait that introverts consistently demonstrate."

What happened to Twitter?

Back in the early days, Twitter had a much "calmer" feel to it. The only people using it, were my developer/nerd acquaintances. Rather than being fast moving blob assembly lines made up of random news feeds, like it is today, you really got a feel for the current state of mind of the people you followed.  It was more intimate. I could tell if my buddy was having a bad day or if he was bored in the meeting he was in. It was refreshing to see happy comments about a child's birthday or the excitement of going out to see a big movie that just got released.  I get more enjoyment out of hearing that a coworker just spilled their coffee all over the keyboard, rather than someone reposting the latest news from CNN about how Tiger Woods hit a tree. (Who cares?!)

Now-a-days, it's all about getting a big number of followers and seeing how many bullshit news articles one can post, when really, nobody else cares what you post. I predict even the ego-boosting result of having thousands of followers will soon lose its appeal.

I'll post to Twitter once in awhile, just for SEO business purposes, but other than that, the site has lost its charm.

I couldn't wait to upgrade my systems to Windows 7, seeing that almost all reviews for the OS were very positive. Ironically, Vista ran pretty well except for some display driver issues on the desktop PC.

First upgrade from Vista 64bit to Windows 7 64bit:
(New) Dell Studio 1737
Dual Core Processor w/4GB of RAM

The upgrade took a very long time - I'm talking about 3 hours. When the upgrade finally finished, the only problem I experienced, was Windows not being able to see my DVD drive. After countless searches on the internet, it seems that nobody has a silver bullet solution.

- I updated the BIOS
- Disabled driver signatures
- Uninstalled all programs that might take control of the drive (Nero, Dell Media Player)
- I downloaded updated firmware, but when I go to install it, it doesn't see a DVD drive to update

If anyone has a fix for this, I'd like to hear it!

Second upgrade from Vista 64bit to Windows 7 64bit:
Dell XPS 630i
Quadcore Processor w/8GB of RAM

This upgrade was done in about 2 hours. When Windows did the compatibility check in the beginning, I did have to uninstall SQL Server 2005 (professional, not express), my graphics card display management software, and a few other piddley programs. The main thing I was worried about, is the dual display support, especially after having to uninstall the display manager software. Installation chugged along and rebooted the machine about 5 times, but when it finally came up, I was able to right click the desktop and select "Screen Resolution."  The new display manager worked like a charm - actually even better than the ATI one I had before. So far, the upgrade has been flawless - no problems - knock on wood.

To be honest, I don't experience much difference in performance versus Vista. There are a few UI goodies that are nice, like pinning programs to the taskbar, but for the most part, it feels the same. The OS loads pretty fast and shuts down quickly. I think only time will tell if what's under the hood has improved. I hope Windows 7 is more stable.

While we are excited to experience the fast growth of our business with quite a few medium to large record labels signing up, we have made a few changes to our pricing/plan strategy. We used to have a plan aimed at the single artist. Pay a one-time fee and distribute your album to your contacts with our services. The idea looked great on paper and we had a few sign-ups, but as a whole, this model just didn't feel right. In this freemium internet world, many artists were appalled at the thought of actually paying to use a service to market their music. I partly agree, especially with Facebook, MySpace, Pure Volume, etc., there ARE other cost effective ways to deliver pre-release music to the masses. Our model might work a few years from now, depending on if "free everything" slows down.

In place of the single artist plan, we experienced a demand for a service to handle a very small record label load - two releases per month maximum. With that, "Rising Star" was born. Upload two promos per month, send invitations to an unlimited number of media contacts and utilize five gigabytes of bandwidth space. This plan is geared towards that small record label that might be content with releasing a couple albums per month or that up and comer who is new to the game.

We now feel our five price plans cover the majority of scenarios a record label might approach us with.