December 2011
3 posts
Goal Setting
I’m not usually one to set “new year resolutions”, but, as the end of a year approaches and things slow down, it’s a natural time to reflect on one’s accomplishments in the current year and set goals to achieve for the next. So here are my goals for 2012, in no particular order.
Release an iOS app Still bouncing some ideas around, but I did receive the excellent...
Have You Decided?
My name is Justin and I have a problem. I’m terrible at making decisions. I’m occasionally able to make the snap-decision and say, “Obviously this is the best choice. Done.” But the majority of the time, I’m left weighing the pros and cons for minutes, hours, days, even weeks. My troubles are only compounded when the dilemma is professional in nature. I was recently...
Don't Quit Your Job To Start A Company (But Still...
There’s a lot of talk these days about people quitting their jobs to start companies. People feel like they won’t be taken seriously (by investors and colleagues) unless they quit their jobs and dedicate their lives to their startup. While the ultimate goal is to create your own company that you can work on full-time, I think that’s something that comes later in the process, not...
August 2009
1 post
4 tags
What I Learned From A Music Industry Startup
From June ‘til mid-August, I had the extreme fortune of working at one of the music industry’s hottest startups, Topspin Media in Santa Monica. While it was obvious from the beginning that the company is filled with smart—no, brilliant—people, I couldn’t have foreseen how much I’d actually learn from those smart individuals. From day one, when Ty made me scan...
July 2009
2 posts
12 tags
What Artists Should Be Blogging About
As a musician, it’s not enough to have facebook, myspace, iLike, YouTube and last.fm accounts and profiles. To really engage your fans, and the public, it’s essential to have a twitter account and a blog. twitter is great for short form content, sending quick shoutouts to your fans, posting twitpics from the stage and the like. Adding a blog into the mix will allow you to post more...
5 Ways Artists Can Add Value to Their Offerings
Give your music away for free.
This is a notion that has been tossed around in the music industry (among others) for quite some time now, and I had an interesting conversation last night with someone from “a major creative arts agency” about this very notion. (“There’s William Morris and there’s us,” he said.) Anyhow, he was quite adamant that music, in no way,...
June 2009
3 posts
How Indie Bands Should Be Using D2F Marketing
Please note: I’m currently interning at Topspin Media in Santa Monica, which is working with the band mentioned in this post. No confidential information will be divulged and the opinions expressed on this or any other post on this blog are mine and not necessarily those of Topspin. Please don’t ask for specific numbers.
Inspired by Mike Masnick’s recent NARM talk, I thought...
twitterplaylist →
My latest project: http://twitterplaylist.com - an aggregation of radio stations’ live playlists (only 2 at the moment), powered by twitter, that makes it easy for you to buy song heard on the radio on iTunes or Amazon.
This is basically an alpha release in that it’s very barebones. It was more of a proof-of-concept for an idea I had one day. I coded it in about a week and hope to add...
April 2009
1 post
Photos from my walk in the Boston Public Garden... →
March 2009
6 posts
4 tags
3 tags
3 tags
The Rentals - Songs About Time →
The Rentals is a band led by Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. As part of their “Songs About Time” campaign and their upcoming three mini-album series , they are posting a new photo each day and a short film every week, chronicling the writing, recording and mixing processes. The photographs will form a calendar that will chronicle Songs About Time, and if you are one of the first 365 people...
How To Create Your Own 360 Deal (Legal Paperwork... →
360-deals are all the rage these days among record labels and musicians. But you don’t have to be a major artist to get one of your own. This article explains how you and roll-your-own 360-deal and remain an indie. Shazam!
2 tags
August 2008
1 post
Every New Car Will Be A Hybrid By 2020 →
All new cars will have some degree of hybridization by 2020, by which point battery technology will be ubiquitous and vehicles will communicate with each other and the road to make driving safer and…
July 2008
7 posts
Alcatel-Lucent's Troubled Marriage →
The merger has yielded bad blood, bad earnings—and a threat to Pat Russo’s future as CEO
Saturn mission goes into overtime →
The multibillion-dollar Cassini orbiter has officially ended its four-year primary mission to Saturn — ushering in a two-year extended mission that will focus on the ringed planet’s mysterious moons.
Judge finds Wal-Mart violated Minnesota labor laws →
A Minnesota judge has ruled that Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) violated state wage and hour laws, requiring employees to work off the clock, and the discount…
Keep Rocking: 30+ Sites for Free & Legal Music →
Whether you’re into pop, jazz, metal or classical, this list of 30+ sites will keep your MP3 player playing until your batteries are completely drained.
Hooray for Digg's New Recommendation Engine →
It’s a much welcome chance to see what your friends are digging without clicking on their profiles, then clicking on their diggs or submissions, then clicking on the titles to get to particular Digg…
Starbucks to cut up to 12,000 jobs, close 600... →
By Lisa Baertlein LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp said on Tuesday it plans to close 600 underperforming stores and eliminate as many as 12,000 full- and part-time positions, lifting shares…
20 Ways to Attack Shyness →
Can you remember wanting to ask someone out, but was too shy to do so? Here are 20 ways on how to overcome this shyness.Get off your computers and get practicing!
June 2008
1 post
TBS and their amazingly annoying interstitial... →
Time Warner is frightened of the DVR. Here’s video of the interstitial commercials that TBS is inserting into their programs in order to route around DVR use. A character comes on the screen,…
January 2008
39 posts
Robert Scoble interviews the shy Mark Zuckerberg →
“I asked him why he doesn’t like going on video and seems to have difficulty dealing with the press and bloggers. He said he was shy. Asked me not to video him “I freeze up,” he told me. He did promise to meet more with bloggers and to give me a video interview when he’s back home. But it was far from the only thing I learned about Mark.”
Don't Always Trust a Carfax Report →
Just because you received a clean Carfax report with their “Buyback Guarantee” doesn’t mean the car isn’t salvaged, stolen, frame damage, flood damage, etc….
Would You Pay $1 For A Feed? →
What if blogs and journals offered a full feed for $1 per month with no ads, mobile access, etc. Would you subscribe for a buck? And what about packs of feeds for a reduced price, say 50 cents per feed?
Gibson Screws Musician Out Of $10,000 Worth Of... →
A musician named Tonedeff won the Lolapalooza Last Band Standing contest in 2006. Part of the prize package was “$10,000 worth of equipment from our friends at Gibson. (yes, believe it!).” Well, Tonedeff believed it, and he’s spent the last year and a half trying to get Gibson to make good on their promise.
24 Ways to Achieve a Deep, Uninterrupted Sleep →
*#23* Spend 10 minutes journaling the day’s events or feelings after tucking yourself into bed. This “data dump” will help turn off the repeating tape of our day that often plays in our minds, keeping us from falling asleep.
Fox News Interview: Bush Equates Himself To... →
Fox previewed his documentary — “George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish” — on Fox News this afternoon. He said that what surprised him from the interview was the President’s repeated efforts to link himself to Abraham Lincoln
Toy Story 1 & 2 Returning to Theaters in 3D! →
It was announced today that the first two films in Pixar’s sole and signature franchise, Toy Story and Toy Story 2, are headed back to movie screens October 2nd, 2009 and February 12th, 2010, respectively, with a complete digital 3D makeover, called Disney Digital 3D to be exact.
Walmart Is Still Selling Nazi T-Shirts 62 Weeks... →
Just when you thought all of the Walmart tshirts bearing the exact replica of an infamous Nazi symbol were recalled, or sold to a discount store and burned, a Walmart in Palmdale, California has them on sale for $3.00 a pop.
Cabling As Art →
The most beautifully cabled servers.
Apple Announces Time Capsule Home Server for Macs →
At Macworld 2008, Apple just announced Time Capsule, a full Airport Extreme base station with 802.11n wireless and four ethernet ports, plus server grade hard drives to back up all of the Leopard Macs in the house. Details and pics to come, but for now we’re celebrating the pricing: 500GB for $300; 1TB for $500.
Engadget's Live Macworld 2008 Coverage →
Live from Macworld 2008: Steve Jobs keynote, starts at 9:00AM Pacific, 12:00PM Eastern.
Mac sales up over 40 percent year-over-year →
Apple later this month is expected to announce fiscal first quarter revenues of nearly $10 billion for the three-month period ending December, fueled largely by the ongoing resurgence of the company’s personal computer business, according one Wall Street analyst.
SteveNote Expo game: only you can get Jobs prepped... →
With CES in the books, banners flying up and rumors running rampant, only one thing could be on the horizon: Steve’s Macworld 2008 keynote. Unfortunately, it seems he’s a bit short on time, and needs you to access a totally awesome web-based game to help round up garb, VIPs and top-secret gear before taking the stage.
Internal changes bolster latest Mac Pro →
Macworld’s Speedmark tests of Apple’s latest high-end desktop system—the eight-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro released earlier this week—show that it’s notably faster than the four-core 2.6GHz Mac Pro it replaces in Apple’s product line.
5 Things You Didn't Know About Victoria's Secret →
You might know that Victoria’s Secret employs the most smokin’ models, but here are 5 other things Victoria’s been keeping a secret from you…
37 Simple Stress Management Tips →
#6: “Do Some Math” Using a scale of one to 10, with one being the equivalent of a minor hassle and 10 being a true catastrophe, assign a number to whatever it is that’s making you feel anxious. You’ll find that most problems we encounter rate somewhere in the two to five range — in other words, they’re really not such a big deal…
It Takes 7 Hrs and 51 Mins to Get From "Here" to... →
Only Google would know that
Why Apple Is Launching New Gear a Week Before... →
I had a briefing with Apple on their new Xserve and Mac Pros that were released today, mid week during CES, a week before Macworld 2008. I had only one question for them: Why release new gear when the Keynote is only a few days away? Their answer won’t satisfy your curiousity, but here is the official.
Apple Announces Penryn Mac Pros and Xserve →
Apple today revised the Mac Pro and Xserves with a new architecture and the recently released Penryn Processors. The Mac Pro combines two 45-nm Quad-Core Xeon processors running up to 3.2GHz and up to 4TB of internal storage. The standard 8-core configuration starts at $2799.
New Apple Mac Pro: 8 Cores, Count Em Baby →
Apple’s got a second release that just hit the wires: A Mac Pro with two intel 45nm Quad-Core Xeons.
Jay-Z, HP's star endorser, uses a Mac →
Jay-Z and girlfriend Beyonce seem to be Apple fans. No surprise there: Plenty of musicians use Macs. What is surprising? Jay-Z was in one of those Hewlett-Packard “hand” ads last year touting HP laptops.
Woman has full sized wedding cake....of herself. ... →
Pictures of a full sized woman wedding cake.
Building a .com in 24 hours →
This is about how I spend 24 concentrated hours spread out over 4 days during Holidays to build the online service Wigitize.com. What I tried to do for this project is use some new methods/tools out there to solve practical problems in my weakness area: design, frontend coding, system administration and SEO.
Napster goes back to MP3s →
Napster has announced that it plans to convert its non-subscription music purchases over DRM-free MP3 files. It has yet to finalize agreements with some major labels, but it hopes that the early announcement will give it a competitive edge.
Creatively Speaking: Model’s memoir written in... →
Isobella Jade, is getting national attention these days as the model who wrote a memoir without the use of computer. (Let me clarify: without the use of her own computer.) It may very well be the start of a new breed: books written in public spaces on public computers.