Image and text source: MTV

Original Post August 15, 2007

‘Ye decides to rope in a rapper for Graduation LP after all.

OK, so Kanye West has had a change of heart -there will be one rapper on his upcoming Graduation LP after all. Lil Wayne has made the final cut and will appear on a track called “Barry Bonds,” Roc-A-Fella/ Def Jam confirmed Tuesday (August 14).

Bonds -Major League Baseball’s controversial, newly crowned home-run king -is apparently a metaphor for how big West thinks the record will be. The chorus goes, “Here’s another hit, Barry Bonds.”

As he’s been doing on “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” its remix and “Stronger,” West uses “Barry Bonds” in part to proclaim his continued evolution as one of the top lyricists in the game.

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Image source: scifi.com

Text source:  ZDnet

Published: November 25th, 2007

Robert Scoble spent the last week giving his new Amazon Kindle ebook reader a test drive, reading a couple of books and declaring the progeny of Jeff Bezos a failure. He thinks the usability and user interface suck and it lack features such as a touch screen, social networking and the capability to send electronic goods to others. He wants version 3.0 of the device.
David Pogue of the New York Times is far kinder to the Kindle.

So if the Kindle isn’t a home run, it’s at least an exciting triple. It gets the important things right: the reading experience, the ruggedness, the super-simple software setup. And that wireless instant download — wow.

Even though most people will prefer the feel, the cost and the simplicity of a paper book, the Kindle is by far the most successful stab yet at taking reading material into the digital age.

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Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, introduces its new e-book, called Kindle (Mark Lennihan /Associated Press)

Image and text source NYTimes.com 

November 19, 2007

Amazon.com introduced its electronic book reader today at a packed event in New York. Unlike other products in this area, Amazon’s $399 Kindle is designed to be used without ever connecting to a computer. Instead it has a wireless Internet connection that lets users browse Amazon’s online store on the device and download a book in less than a minute.

Amazon is trying to do for books what Apple has done for music. It has linked its device tightly to its own online bookstore, just as the iTunes music store is tied into the iPod. Amazon has 90,000 titles for sale at launch, including books from all major publishers.

Best sellers and new releases will cost $9.99. That represents a substantial savings off of Amazon’s already discounted prices. Amazon is currently selling hardcover bestsellers for roughly $13 to $20 and trade paperbacks for $8 to $11.

Read the entire article at NYTimes.com 

Image source: Dance Lyrics

Text source: NYTimes

The MySpace page of singer Alicia Keys has become the latest vehicle for malware on the Web.

Researchers at the Atlanta, GA-based Exploit Prevention Labs have discovered multiple hacked MySpace pages, including the personal page of the R&B artist. Also hacked were pages for Greements of Fortune, a French funk band, and Dykeenies, a rock band from Glasgow.When visitors click almost anywhere on these infected site, they are directed to co8vd.cn/s, which appears to be a Chinese malware site. The visitors then see a box on their screen telling them they need to install a special codec to view the video – a legitimate possibility on any site rich in media. But if the visitor clicks ‘yes’, the site installs software that appears to be a rootkit and DNS changer. This would allow the hackers to take over what you see on your browser and what you download onto your computer.

Read the entire article at NYTimes

Image and text source: Wired

July 12, 2007

Paul D. Miller, also known as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, has been producing beat-heavy electronic music for more than a decade. From his early solo trip-hop efforts to his more recent collaborations with jazz giants, Spooky has always approached music from multiple angles at once. He has the chops of a musician, the genre-blending ear of a disc jockey and the conceptual vision of a performance artist.

It was therefore no surprise when Trojan Records, a reggae label entering its 40th year, asked DJ Spooky to put together a mix showcasing tracks from its massive archives. When assembling >In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records, one of several mixes commissioned to mark the Trojan birthday, Miller found countless parallels between the Jamaican reggae scene of the 1960s and ’70s and the digital mashup ecosystem of today. (See Upgrading Jamaica’s Cultural Shareware: Trojan Records at 40.)

Read the entire article at Wired

Image and text source: The News Hour

Originally Aired: November 6, 2007

Social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook have started to allow advertisers to access users’ profiles and target the ads they deliver to that user accordingly. A media and technology writer examines the potential impact this marketing may have on individual user privacy.

GWEN IFILL: Judy Woodruff has our Media Unit look at the balance between online information’s financial potential and individual privacy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s where millions of young people list their favorite hobbies, movies, friends and trends, and now all that information from the two largest social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace, with a combined total of more than 160 million users, will be made increasingly available to advertisers.

Facebook announced today that it will allow companies to show ads to its users, both when they are on and off the site, based on personal information they list online.

Yesterday, MySpace unveiled a self-service advertising tool allowing groups like small businesses, musicians and politicians to post an ad and choose who sees it. They also increased a number of categories that track user preferences by more than tenfold, in order for businesses to better target their products to the much-sought-after 18 to 25-year-old demographic.

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Image source: dfloor.net

Text source: trugroovez.com

Intro:

Drum and bass music (drum n bass, DnB) is an electronic music style. Drum and bass, originally an offshoot of the United Kingdom breakbeat hardcore and rave scene, came into existence when people mixed reggae basslines with sped-up hip hop breakbeats and influences from techno . Pioneers such as raggamuffin DJ General Levy and other DJs quickly became the stars of Drum and bass, then still called jungle . Producers such as Goldie and 4 Hero transformed the current art and turned drum and bass in more instrumental direction, spawning sub-genres like techstep and moving the genre closer to techno. Some of the more popular and defining artists include Shy FX, Ed Rush & Optical, LTJ Bukem, Goldie, and Roni Size.

Jungle music, ORIGINS:

Based almost entirely in England, Drum’n’Bass (then called ‘jungle’ ) emerged in the early ’90s. It is one of the most rhythmically complex of all forms of dance music, relying on extremely fast polyrhythms and breakbeats . Usually, it’s entirely instrumental — consisting of nothing but fast drum machines and deep bass.
As its name implies, jungle does have more overt reggae, dub, and R&B influences than most hardcore — and that is why some critics claimed that the music was the sound of black techno musicians and DJs reclaiming it from the white musicians and DJs who dominated the hardcore scene. Nevertheless, jungle never slows down to develop a groove — it just speeds along. Like most dance music genres, jungle is primarily a ‘twelve inch’ genre designed for a small, dedicated audience, although the crossover success of Goldie and his 1995 debut Timeless suggested a broader appeal.
Dozens of respected artists started fusing breakbeats with influences lifted from jazz , film music, ambient, and trip-hop. — allmusic.com

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