Photo credit: (cc) Beth Kanter

Image and text source: Robin Good

Originally published on October 17, 2006

Web 2.0 has unleashed an era of online participation, personalization and interoperability set to change the way we network, do business and interact with the media that engulf us.

One of the most exciting developments in recent times is that of the Mash Up. The term Mash-Up can seem initially confusing, especially as it has more than one meaning. As Wikipedia points out a Mash Up can refer to:

1. A Musical Mash Up that works on the basis of cutting often mismatched samples together to create new and interesting hybrids in dgital music. One of most famous musical Mash Ups of recent times is the now banned DJ Danger Mouse album ‘The Grey Album’ – created from the fusion of The Beatles White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album.
2. A Video Mash Up in which video and audio from different sources is cut together into a new Mashed Up union. One of the best video Mash Ups of recent times has to be the Bush/Blair Gay Bar video.
3. A Mash-Up “Web Application hybrid“, which seamlessly combines tools or data from one or more online sources into a new, integrated whole. Examples of this latter type of Mash Up, the focus of our Marshall Kirkpatrick interview, can be found in abundance at Programmable Web.

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Image source: Gamebase 64 

Text source: Press Play on Tape

Published on February 27, 2002

Earlier we have already reviewed a series of albums remixing old-timer Commodore-64 tunes, called Back In Time 2 and 3. Since then a few other similar initiatives have appeared, probably the best of them is the new CD from the Danish Press Play On Tape band with their debut album Loading Ready Run, which I’ll talk about now. Even the name of the band itself causes nostalgic feelings in many (since those who had tapes remember that after the LOAD command was issued the computer gave this instruction: press play on tape). After this came “Loading” (which is present in the title), then Ready, and finally we started the program with Run.

We have seen remixes that were created with the classic band setup (the BIT series wasn’t exactly like this), but this new album is probably the best of them. The band has 6 members: 2 guitar players, one guy on the synth, one base player and a drummer (although he doesn’t play on acoustic, rather on electronic drums, but the difference can be noticed only by audiophiles).

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Image and text: Mashable

Remember the time when we announced Facebook as a platform? Well, a lot has changed since then: thousands of great applications for Facebook have appeared, and having a “naked” Facebook profile is just not that cool these days. This time, we’ve assembled a list of 20 great music-related apps for Facebook that you simply must try out.

My Music – here’s one for all you iTunes users: this handy little app enables you to access your entire iTunes library directly from Facebook.

Pandora – tune into Pandora from Facebook and find your new favorite songs and artists.

Last.FM Music – the official Last.FM Facebook app lets you turn your music into playlists and compare musical tastes with friends. Read more about it here.

Last.FM Charts – import up to 5 charts from Last.FM into your Facebook profile.

iLike – somewhat of a competitor to Last.FM, iLike lets you see which concerts your friends are going to as well as add music and videos to your Facebook profile.

MixLister – create a personal theme song; import and create playlists and share them with everyone.

BandTracker – track your favorite bands and their shows and check out who your friends are tracking.

Music Videos – add favorite music videos to your profile. Simple and effective.

Yahoo! Music Videos – another way to import music videos to your profile, this time from Yahoo!’s vast collection.

Upcoming – track all the events you plan on attending. Great for tracking live shows.

What I’m Listening To – a must-have app that shows the world what song you’re currently listening to; powered by Last.FM’s audioscrobbler application.

Currenty Listening – similar to What I’m Listening To, this app shows the artist name and cover art of whatever song is currently playing on your computer.

My Last Songs Played – display the last songs played in iTunes or any other media player.

Image and text source: Greg.org

Originally posted on September 14, 2007

Wait, the Warhol Museum called the 1-hour excerpt of Empire released on DVD an unauthorized bootleg?

Yes they did, in 2004:

“It’s a bootleg!” says Geralyn Huxley, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Which is odd. The Italian company Raro Video has released several Warhol films on DVD over the last couple of years. Andy Warhol: 4 Silent Movies is listed as a 2005 release on Amazon, and there’s a Chelsea Girls DVD, too.Last year, Raro compiled 11 films and 8 discs into a box set, Andy Warhol Anthology, which–like all the films–is issued in region-free PAL format. There are extensive bilingual notes, interviews, and bonus material accompanying the discs, but there are also odd errors in formatting:

At least two of the silent films, Kiss and Blow Job, are mastered at the wrong speed [25fps instead of 16fps], and the once-randomly silent or audible soundtracks on the split-screen Chelsea Girls are provided in a single, seemingly arbitrary configuration which omits much well-documented dialogue.

Read the entire entry at Greg.org

Image and text source: New York Magazine

Published on November 22, 2004

At eight hours, Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Empire is something that one watches, as its creator said, “to see time go by.” Officially, the only way to see the artist’s epic stationary shot of the Empire State Building is to borrow a 16-millimeter print from MoMA or attend one of the museum’s infrequent screenings (there’s one on November 20). But a one-hour edit appears on a new Warhol-film DVD, Four Silent Movies, released by the Italian company Raro Video. “It’s a bootleg!” says Geralyn Huxley, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which owns the artist’s films. Raro says the disc is authorized; the museum disagrees and, says Huxley, may sue.

The qualities that make Empire a precursor to reality TV—no script, elevation of the mundane—would seem to encourage sampling. But defenders of the film (which Warhol slowed down; shot at 24 frames per second, it’s projected at 16) say it simply can’t be cut. “It’s conceptually important that it’s eight hours long,” says Callie Angell, director of the Whitney’s Warhol Film Project. “Some people show it at the regular sound speed to make it go by faster, and I just think that’s not the film.” Seeing the whole thing offers surprises, she adds. “[Warhol and Jonas Mekas] were shooting it from the office of the Rockefeller Foundation in the Time-Life building, and when they changed the reels they’d turn the lights on. In three reels, they started before they turned the lights back off, so you can see a reflection of Warhol and Mekas in the window. No one had ever mentioned that before. Probably no one ever had sat through the whole thing.”

Image source: Youtube

I recently ran into some interesting remixes of Mr. Rogers and a young breakdancer in Youtube. The original excerpt in which Mr. Rogers interacts with a young African American boy already has sexual and class tensions, which could be ignored by the average viewer. But these tensions are brought forth in a one minute remix titled, “Mr Roger’s Breakdance Remix” in which Mr. Rogers states repeatedly “Hey Jermaine”, “Breakdancing with your friend…” and “I really like the way you do that…”

And then there’s another remix titled, “Mr. Rogers Was a B-Boy MOFO ! (feat NWA)” which is subtle in its intervension: it leaves the entire video clip intact, except for the moment when the young boy performs. In this remix, the original musical composition, which is non-intrusive, middle of the road, and exudes enough funk for the young boy’s moves to feel authentically off the street, is replaced by one of NWA’s track “F__k the Police” from back in the day–cursing from beginning to end. And like the previous remix, this one also makes obvious the cultural tensions at play between the two individuals. Mr. Rogers’s pleasant stride feels a bit forced, and when the music is over, he appears a bit out of touch with the boy’s performance.

These are multiple readings that any Mr. Rogers fan may want to retaliate against or at least play down, but one only has to look at the original clip carefully to sense the tension that the two remixes have brought forth for critical reflection. And this does not necessarily mean that there is something “wrong” with Mr. Rogers’s behavior, or with his interest in featuring a young breakdancer in his popular show. It just means that the remixes are able effectively to make obvious the social codes that both Mr. Rogers and the boy carry based on their ethnicity, class and gender, that are already at play in culture and they both, as well as us (the viewers), should be aware of.

Image and text source: O’Reilly Radar

Posted on September 11. 2007

I’ve been a fan of Ask’s Maps product, Ask City, since it launched (Radar post). Now Ask has made its web app viral by adding embeddable maps.

Much like Google’s embedded maps (Radar post), this only requires a simple cut-n-paste to utilize the feature. You can use all of Ask’s mapping tools, including drawing tools and movie searches on an embeddable map.

I am surprised that Ask is the first of the major mapping portals to add this feature after Google. I don’t see this as a copy or a me-too feature. I see embeddable maps as one of the fundamental features that a user is going to expect from their mapping portal — just like one does a video or photo sharing site.

More types of websites are going to become easily, anonymously embeddable in the future. When users put work into customizing or upoading content, they are going to want to be able to put it on their own sites. Google has been experimenting with embeddable Ajax search widgets, but those widgets still exist under the Google Code umbrella. I bet that many of these search pages (multimedia, web and local) will soon have their own embed links.

Image: Washington Post Remix

Text source: Information Today
Posted On December 12, 2005

Note: This text summarizes the expectations of an online project by the Washington Post, which is no longer active. The project is worth keeping in mind as a stepping stone and experiment to develop interesting tools for Web 2.0

The Washington Post Co. has launched a new site called Post Remix, described as “the Post’s official mashup center.” Available at http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/post_remix, Post Remix spotlights reader creativity with both washingtonpost.com RSS feeds and other streams of content The Post is making available. The site launched around mid-November, and that’s been plenty of time for interesting content to appear on it. A blog format provides an overview of reader-submitted projects, ordered by date. Among the spotlighted applications are a site that offers Amazon.com book suggestions based on washingtonpost.com content, automated text-to-speech podcasts of Post stories, and a “Tag Cloud” overview of washingtonpost.com content. All these applications use RSS feeds of washingtonpost.com content.

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Text and Image source: Rhizome.org

Published on September 5, 2007

To mark the occasion of what would be John Cage’s 95th birthday, WNYC has put together an amazing collection of audio and video from their archives. Video of seminal performances, interviews with the artist, as well as a few oddities including his appearance on the 1960s show ‘I’ve Got a Secret’ are posted along with writings by the composer. Cage collaborators including Joan LaBarbara, Meredith Monk, and Merce Cunningham also share their stories and insights into Cage as both a collaborator and friend. The festival airs on WNYC2 from September 5th at 12PM until 12:33PM September 6th, with video, audio, and textual documents available on their website.

http://www.wnyc.org/music/johncage.html

Charles Leadbeater in Action at Providence New Commons

Image by Christopher Reyes

Image and text source: CEOs for Cities

Originally posted on 5-24-07

We are being hosted by CEOs for Cities member Doug Kridler at The Columbus Foundation this afternoon. Thirty locals from business, health care, nonprofits, government, and philanthropy have gathered to work through Charlie’s ideas using their own experiences.

Charlie has gone right to the point: How do you orchestrate contributions by large numbers of people to solve problems? Is it possible to attack the opportunities and challenges the way Google or
eBay would attack them?

Think of an egg. For any issue area, there is a small core of that egg that represents the institution, such as police, schools, hospitals, performing arts centers. But the rest of that egg is outside the institution – learning, safety, health, culture. While the institution is fixed cost and hierarchical with budgets and
buildings, the rest of the egg is fuzzy and distributed and complex.

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