Digital Digressions

Music Community 2.0 - Garageband.com

No, I don't mean Apple's lovely music-making software, but a community site called GarageBand, my latest addiction introduced to me by a friend only days ago. My music-making has seen a break recently, mainly because of other distractions, but also because when you are making your own tunes just for the fun of it, there's only so much you can shower your friends with and if they don't get what you are trying to do, your inspiration can take a dip. Not so say I only do tunes to get a pat on the back, it's more that when you are making music you really appreciate the feedback from fellow musicians.

That is also the beauty of this site - GarageBand excels where so many others have failed. It builds a community around independent music, people who haven't even got signed up yet, and the act of reviewing other people's songs before you even are allowed to upload songs yourself. Ahh, easy you say - but no, comments like 'this sucks' or ' your mother was a hamster' don't cut it on this site, as before your reviews go anywhere they have to be reviewed by other users who give you points on how well you articulate your points and how useful the review was to them.

True democracy - this helps not only the good stuff to trickle up to the top in the charts running on Garageband.com, but also all the bands to get useful feedback from their peers and not just some random comments or people trying to suck up to them. You have to complete 30 reviews, before you get to post your first song so this does take a bit of time to do, but again that is the beauty of it - good things come to those who wait. Too many sites instantly give away all their goodness to the extent that you lose interest in about a week, where other sites, like this one, grow on you.

So there you are, trying to be your most verbatim best, giving useful pointers and descriptions of stuff thrown at you (yes you can choose genres! I'm sure I wouldn't give very good ratings to the Country & Western lot, not because of malice - just because it isn't my thing) and having reviewed tracks in the Jazz, Electronic and Electronica genres I must say I'm particularly impressed with the quality of Jazz on Garageband.com.

A sad discovery, however, is that this site, a little weighted to the American audience, still doesn't have a genre called Drum&Bass, which does exist in America too, usually under the name 'Jungle' and a little too aggressive in my liking - but the really good stuff you'll find under the sub-genres of Jazz-step and Intelligent Drum & Bass - the output of which mainly comes from Europe. So once I'm as far as ready to upload my own tracks onto Garageband - I shall have to decide whether my Drum&Bass numbers should be classed as 'Electronic', 'Electronica', 'Dance', or 'Techno' to comply with Garageband's collection of genres.

Not sure what I'm on about? Go check out Beatport or TrackItDown for some great examples of what Drum & Bass can offer. Needless to say - this stuff is not mainstream in the sense that if you expect to hear it on Top 40 countdowns - forget it. That is also the beauty of Garageband.com - the real stuff, coming straight to you without some record company exec deciding what you should be listening to - for the people by the people, brought to you by web 2.0 put to the service of building a great community. Amen.

The Cynics Glossary of Business Terms

Again work has swallowed up all my time recently and now equipped with broader business horizons courtesy of an excellent course at Henley Management College in the last few weeks, I feel confident enough to decipher any annual report thrown my way. We have even had our big announcement at LEGO in the last few days and I am relieved to say that our CEO, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, did not use any of the terminology below so I feel confident I shall remain employed for a while longer :). Big thanks to Nick Rints for his excercise Lemming business simulation and this piece of insight I will share with you.

So here goes:

This glossary will be helpful to you in interpreting some of the terms in common use:

A man of broad experience and sound judgement  [Translation: my wife's brother]

A buoyant year [Translation: We just managed to keep our heads above water]

A year of consolidation [Translation: No growth]

Major challenge ahead [Translation: We have lost our monopoly]

Substantial improvement [Translation: Your board has it's fingers crossed]

Cautious optimism [Translation: It looks good if you stand far enough away]

Especially encouraging [Translation: Absolutely hopeless]

Impeded by lack of liquidity [Translation: We are practically bankrupt]

Acting in your best interest [Translation: Acting in my best interest]

We have called in the management consultants [Translation: We can't see any way out of this mess]

Capitalised development expenditure [Translation: We should have shown loss]

Continued to divest ourselves of activities that did not fit in to the new strategy [Translation: We got rid of the rubbish]

From this phase your company emerged in a new form [Translation: Smaller and less profitable]

New service agreements [Translation: We are expecting a takeover bid]

Unforeseen losses [Translation: Our cost control is up the spout]

Continue to serve the company in an advisory capacity [Translation: If we sacked him he might split on us]

Plans which for good commercial reasons cannot be announced {Translation: The shares would fall through the floor]

A Million Penguins - The First Ever Wiki Novel

"Everybody has a novel in them, so they say. Wouldn't it be better, though, for a million people to club together to write one? This is the theory behind an initiative launched this weekend by Penguin Books, in collaboration with students at De Montfort University in Leicester. They plan to create the world's first 'wiki' novel, fiction that will be concocted online by millions of contributors across the globe. Until the end of the month anyone can join in to help write the novel, which has the provisional title of A Million Penguins.

The site is A Million Penguins and, so far, just a few days into the experiment, the novel is into its seventh chapter. The project has been designed as part of a study module at the university. Students involved are based across the world and include the director of Booktrust, Chris Meade. The term 'wiki novel' has been coined for an online book from the internet term 'wiki' which is the name of a website that allows the visitors to add to and edit content, often without the need for registration.

Previous attempts to throw open the editorial process using the web have not had a smooth track record, however; chaos ensued when the Los Angeles Times threw open its editorial processes to internet readers. But Penguin is optimistic. The company's digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen, said the contribution of the students on the university course had already been hugely helpful in shaping the launch of the novel." ( Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent, Sunday February 4, 2007, The Observer)

What I want to know is, is it any good? Listening to authors speak about their novels it is usually a complex affair, many interlocking threads are kept initially apart to entice the reader to gradually piece things together, then things get turned on their head and eventually the novel ends in a surprising way, which makes all the pieces fall in place and make sense again. Well, of course not all novels are like that - but to cite an example for the purpose of discussing: can those intricate turns and twists of a plot realistically be delivered by people who don't know each other, don't work together necessarily even to the same goal? I decided to take a peek and this is what greeted me in the prologue:

The Emperor gazed ponderously over the city of London. Although he had long grown bored of the invisible control he and his ancestors had exercised over the human race, since abdicating three hundred years ago he had become increasingly remorseful at his decision to set them free. For over three hundred years now the human race had been left to do what it wanted, severing the intricate planning of generations of past Emperors. They had proved themselves to be absolutely useless, relentlessly engaging in a nonsensical frottage of sex, violence and gimcrackery that they attempted to pass off as art and politics. And now the planet was melting. It was a mess.

For the past fifty years The Emperor had been patiently executing a plan to regain control. His plot was at a critical phase, one that could, if he could pull it off, re-establish coherency in the world. In his current guise as the director of Penguin Books, hiding his appearance with a hard hologram that enveloped his portly black and white body in that of a gregarious businessman, he was in a position of immense psychological power.

Just then came a knock at the door. He turned from his office window overlooking the Thames as Jeremy entered, the head of Penguin online. The Emperor had been judiciously manipulating Jeremy to develop a tool with which he intended to get the human race back on course and regain the benign, paternalistic control that was so badly needed – A Million Penguins. Outwardly A Million Penguins was an optimistic creative writing experiment. But in the depths of its structure lay the most powerful psychological weapon that had ever been invented.

Sounds like this could be fun. I like the little jibes at Penguin and the digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen in all this - there is a taste of the beginning of a Batman movie hidden in there somewhere, or maybe it is just the reference to penguins that is setting my mind off. Also, let's presume this becomes a runaway success - how many more of these kinds of stunts can be done until people (rightly so) start demanding a share of the proceeds? Truly quality material needs to be matched with some reward or perhaps getting your name in print is enough? And what is it about Penguins - we had the March of the Penguins, then Happy Feet, now a Million of them... is the world obsessed with Penguins or ...?

How to Find Your Dream Job

No I'm not joking - there isn't a funny punch-line coming. There is at last a service set up specifically for all those of us who have ever wondered what it would be like to work as a ... chocolatier?  fishing guide? car critic and writer? pit crew member? you name it - they have thought of it! Almost - they should add toy designer to their list just to get people like me a little more respect - designing toys is actually really hard! At least good ones anyway - but I'll leave that to another post.

Vocation Vacations  specialise in setting up vacations where you get to try out your dream job - is it really all that it's cranked up to be, is this something so much fun you could easily do it for the rest of your life? Changing jobs and even vocations is very hard work - it's hard to get started and its even harder to sustain your interest if you run into difficulty. This could just be the perfect stepping stone to give you a taste of what you have been dreaming of and supply you with the necessary energy, ideas and advice to make the switch permanently.

Or then not - I don't know to what extent you cover the annoying things that there surely has to be with any job you take on - the question is are the nuisances small enough in the big picture to not matter - or will the prospect dealing with those nuisances in fact make you grateful you don't have to do this new job for the rest of your life.. I would like to hear testimonies from both camps, not just the evangelical 'Vocation Vacations Changed My Life', but then I can be a cynic.. only at times.

I like the thought though - also what an interesting thing to do for a vacation! Beats lying on the beach watching over-weight people slowly cook themselves to a nice pink colour. Coming home with a head full of ideas always puts a spring in your step and changing your outlook on life also feels good - knowing that you are not trapped in one job/scenario for the rest of your life, but that there is other exciting things out there and the step between dreams and reality has just been reduced with a significant step. That is something not to be sniffed at - life is too short not to aim for the sky, to follow your dreams and do your very damnest to try reaching them.

Scrybe: Where Art Thou?

If you read my rant a while ago about Scrybe you must have gathered how excited I was about this - my problem is: I never made it into the Beta tester crowd! As you might have noticed any cool software worth having these days is something in a Beta mode, primarily housed on the Internet and combining cool functions and features you will have grown accustomed to being housed previously in several different programs (all at an extortionate price), this time all in one and probably for free. Or so it seems. That's why we love them: the promise of simplicity, user-friendliness, productivity with low or no (God forbid!) hassle.

Then you find your holy grail, like I did (see for yourself in this little movie clip below) and what happens? Absolutely nothing. For months. I mean, I have been waiting since about September! And I am cheeky, so every couple of months I go to the Scrybe website to add my email to their list of people who want to Beta test (in case they have lost my previous entry... or because there might be strength in numbers... or submitting entries more times might convince them I REALLY would like this piece of software RIGHT NOW) in any case: to no avail. Every time I type my email address in the little box, I get the kind little reminder - your email has already been submitted. Thank you.

This is sublime irony if there ever was any - so please please Scrybe people, if you have one of those nifty RSS trackers that pings your in-box with an extract every time some poor blogger is writing about your (excellent if I may add) software - here's another poor blogger desperate for all the features and functions you so effortlessly extol on your little video - please: release it already or I WILL throw my PC out the window..