Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Songbird - open-source media player

"A team led by ex-Winamp-er Rob Lord today released a preview edition of Songbird, a desktop media player that offers an open source alternative to services like Apple's iTunes and the Windows Media Player. Instead of connecting to one locked store full of DRMmed goods, it can connect to any and all available music (and video) on the internet.

Code brains behind the project include people who helped build Winamp, Muse, Yahoo's "Y! Music Engine" media player, and developers from Mozilla Foundation. Initial release is for Windows only, with editions for other OSes to follow in the coming weeks.

Built on the same platform as Firefox, Songbird acts like a specialized web browser for music. It sees the online world through MP3-colored glasses -- it looks at an archive of public domain sound files or a music store's catalog, and displays available media for you."

It will definitely crash though. So, interesting, but. Would be cool if it worked as a player for embedded content too on a web page. Not sure if it does though. here's a download mirror, and another. Some early reviews on this digg thread.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Word of Mouth - you can't ignore it

There's big things happening in 'word of mouth' measurement. Nielsen just bought two of the biggest players to form http://www.nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/ It even has it's own acronym CGM (consumer generated media) Nielsen are selling this as a brand reputation and marketing effectiveness tool. i.e. a monitor of what's going on with customers in the offline world - ratings tell you how many, buzz tells you what they are saying. It's essentailly viewing blogs, boards, forums etc as a massive real time focus group The companies really picking this up in the states are PR companies. For a quick overview have a listen to the start of the company announcement / podcast. Agencies take note - which discipline owns this area?

Monday, February 06, 2006

Web2.0 Hall of fame on Flickr

Web2.0 Hall of fame on Flickr! Don't know waht half of these are for, but a least there are less swooshes this time around

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

How to fix a dead pixel on an LCD monitor

  1. Turn off your computer.
  2. Get yourself a damp cloth, so that you don't scratch your screen.
  3. Apply pressure to the area where the dead pixel is. Do not put pressure anywhere else, as this may make more dead pixels.
  4. While applying pressure, turn on your computer and screen.
  5. Remove pressure and the dead pixel should be gone. This works as the liquid in the liquid crystal has not spread into each little pixel. This liquid is used with the backlight on your monitor, allowing different amounts of light through which give off different colours.
http://wiki.ehow.com/Fix-a-Dead-Pixel-on-an-LCD-Monitor