Uba Kontrovasie

Social Music

Yes I’m back….it’s been ages since I’ve blogged. I haven’t been walking around with my eyes closed though, my recent social media stumbling’s are as follows…

None of us are strangers to Last.FM or Pandora but I’ve recently become a fan Favtape.com an online service that makes a “mixtape” out of all your recently played tracks and stations.

Just a neat gadget I think not? This tool has the potential for a multitude of uses for clients within the music and entertainment sector and I’m looking forward to putting into some real innovative use.

Also another one out there for the garage bands types is amazingtunes.com, a great way to hear unsigned music.

Things have come a long a way since people just started tuning into on-line radio….we now have itunes, myspace and all the others I mentioned above.

The future in my opinion?

Well I think it has something to do with my earlier ramblings about smart phones and streamed music. In time I think we’ll start to see people move away from retained music on storage devices and instead have paid subscriptions for sites, which allow you to stream music to any device or computer.

Your whole itunes/music library could merely be a list held on line, which is then connected to a central music database. No running out of disk space or worrying about corrupt storage.

We’re already moving in this direction and some of the techies out there have got installations like this set-up via combining various technologies. As soon as broadband and 3G become a standard they will enable a mass-market concept like the one I’ve been discussing to become active. Who knows we might be waving bye bye to MP3’s and MP4’s in the near future.

Tags: 3G, broadband, Favtape, itunes, MP3, mp3's, on-line radio, online music, online service, recent social media, social media, storage devices, Tracks

Is the future of social about real personal space?

So many websites and social networks rise and fall down the Comscore/Neilson ratings and so many social networks are popping up across the internet I ask my-self how many can you actually become a member of and what are the real benefits?

Facebook was/is a phenomenon that took people by storm, however after the honeymoon period you start hearing “Facebook is ruining my life” and “I can’t believe I got tagged in that photo”.

The web is becoming more social and this is evidently true, however with every radical movement comes a back lash. People go through cycles and return to what they’re comfortable with, its habit, we’re humans, its what were programmed to do, end of!

After months of everybody e-mailing each other only through Facebook, poking, tagging etc I find my friends are returning back to good old email. A step back? I don’t think so…people will experiment with platforms like Facebook, get fully involved and then only use features they like, going back to what they know best and what they’re comfortable with is normal. There’s that word again - habit!

Its like fashion for want of a better example, you don’t follow every trend you just buy one piece of this years collection which suits you best.

I personally like the network aspect of Facebook, having nearly everyone I’ve ever known behind one log-in is a neat idea. The other stuff I’m not so concerned about, I think I’ll go back to flickr or istockphoto for photos and I will use email or IM to carry on talking to the people that are close to me.

Do I really want everyone to know my mate had a great time having drink with me on tuesday night? not really!

As much as people love to be social they also love personal space and anything that invades it in any way is bound to progress at a slower rate over time. Facebook will always have a core audience and I think people will start to use it more as a means to purely network and not “entertainment”.

Blogs have been around for years, way before Facebook and any of the other social networks. I still believe they still are the future, why? Well it’s because they’re truly personal and they allow people to be social without having their privacy completely invaded, you can push your thoughts across to your friends via RSS and they can upload photos of you, but there’s little risk of that girl in the accounts dept seeing a photo of you, totally off your rocker last Friday night. This is because she doesn’t have access to your friend’s blogs, even if you have blog rolled them there’s nothing encouraging that person to click through unlike Facebook where people can see things happen via feeds instantly.

Blogs are also neat place to aggregate all kinds of other web apps into your own space in your own way i.e your last fm’s most played list, flickr photo quilt and how you feel on Twitter.

People love customisation, its empowering to show all theses apps in your own way on your own space, even if you can (will be able to) do it on Facebook it’s just not quite the same, people love to host house parties at their own houses and not borrowed space.

Tags: Blogging, blogs, facebook, social, social media, Social networks, web 2.0, web apps

35mm over Digital

I recently took pictures at a friends birthday using a 35mm lomo fish-eye camera, it cost about £40 off the lomo website and it gave some quite quirky results.

To be honest it doesn’t manage light very well and some pictures were quite over or under exposed, however the low-light B&W pictures came out reasonably well.

I’d like to test my DSLR in the same condition’s (a dark bar), digtal has never been good in low light conditions therefore I’m keen to see how they match up.

Having always been a fan of the true old skool 35mm film, I’m seriously considering spending a few bob on 35mm SLR body, which my EOS lenses and flash can clip straight into.

Above all else getting back true black and white print photos is like Christmas, beats looking at photos on a screen as you appreciate things like tone and light gradients so much more.

After foolishly selling my 35mm EOS 500n last year I think I’ll have to invest in the EOS 3000V - the next best thing or punt around for a second hand 35mm SLR body.

I promise, promise to get familiar with manual shutter speeds etc first.

Tags: 35mm, Christmas, EOS 3000V, Fish Eye, GBP, Lomo

Street and Studio exhibition

It’s been a while since I picked up my SLR, and put it to worthy use. The Tate Modern has the Street and Studio exhibition on at moment and I cannot wait to go and see it.

I hope it will drum up some inspiration and motivation.

Go go check it out!

Tags: photography, tate modern, urban photography

Google indexing flash, what will this mean for accessibility?

Google are indexing flash, the news most designers have been waiting for! Flash has always been a harder sell for the pure designer types who build flash heavy websites and do not take the search engine spiders into account.

How will flash based sites rank within search engines in comparision to semantically optimised websites? With any luck the semantically optimised websites will still take precedence over flash sites as they adhere to best practice coding which takes accessibility and all types of users and browsers in to account.

The inclusion of flash content in Google’s index will also mean that another can of spam worms will get opened as the black hats out there will look at new ways to manipulate flash for better rankings.

Realistically I think flash heavy sites do not cater for universal accessibility and they should sit below websites in the SERP’s which do so. Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset a semantic search engine is further indication that search engines are starting to pay more attention to semantically optimised websites.

We hope search engines still stay more favorable towards websites who use W3C technologies and semantic coding as opposed to non-W3C formats.

Tags: accessibility, flash, Google, Microsoft, Natural Search Optimisation (NSO), Powerset, search engine, search engine spiders, search engines, semantic search engine, Semantic web, W3C technologies

Plurk another Microblog?

I stumbled upon Plurk the other day, a new dare I say it twitter. It is however not to be confused with twitter as it has some genuine distinguishing features.

Data visualization being one of them, yes I know “Data Visualisation” is such a buzzword at the moment with lots of websites pouring money into Java Applets which show information in lots of pretty ways.

Plurk however plots your Plurks into a progressive trend line across the times of the day. The more you participate the more “Karma” you receive.

I’m trying to get to the bottom what you’ll actually receive for really good Karma, however it is a great way to get people involved.

Other features include a ready to drop widget for WP and other popular blogging platforms. I was Mucho impressed by the ease of this, a simple copy and paste of code and re-position in CSS will have your Plurks on your blog in minutes. Although this has been done with twitter I think the ease of use is commendable.

As somebody who hasn’t yet committed to the Microblogging realm I think I’m going to give Plurk a test drive and see how it fits.

Tags: Blogging, Java, Micro Blogging, Plurk, Twitter