Underground Media: Reloaded

I hate Facebook.  I should just be upfront about that.  Back in 2007 I thought it was the coolest thing since Star Trek, but now I loathe everything about it.  From its ever changing privacy policies to how it actually shares data with your "friends" and friends of your friends, its a continuous source of irritation to me. Especially because I can't avoid using it!  My family and close friends are on it. My work peers are on it.  And if you ever meet anyone new, the first thing they want to do is Facebook you.  Nevermind that its only full of lolcats , internet memes, and people's TMI .  It's the juggernaut of social media, and if you want to have a presence online, you gotta be on Facebook. I thought Google+ would supplant Facebook at some point, but that's just not going to happen anytime soon.  Facebook has mastered one half of the law of social media inertia.  In short, once most regular folk are "at rest" on a social media property, t...

It just hit me today as I was updating my Facebook page. My boss (actually, my boss's boss) requested Facebook friendship. Hmmm, this could be tricky. Ordinarily I am okay some work-life/personal-life convergence in the online world. Many of my employees and peers are Facebook friends, but this would be the first time that someone I *reported to* would have that level of access. Switching into paranoia-mode, I gave my profile a hard look through the eyes of an employer. Starting with my profile pic, I ended up spending the better part of an hour scrubbing my entire profile by untagging pictures, re-wording descriptions, and resetting some of my privacy settings. Did you know that unless you adjust them, Facebook defaults to a fairly loose set of privacy settings? And those settings allow Facebook to pipeline some interesting information out to internet search engines. For instance, I did a simple Google search of my full name. In the first page of results, I found a link to...

I just signed up for Twitter. Yes, the same Twitter that I have condemned as techno-heresy. Micro-F*CKING BLOGGING?!?!?! What the hell does it do that you can't do with Facebook??? AND Facebook does about 50 other useful things! Twitter JUST DOES ONE! Wait, why did I sign up for this? Oh yeah, so I can review it for an upcoming Urban Thought Collective series I am writing on "social networking". Hohum.

In my neverending quest to find great music on the internet, I ended up moving beyond the simple streaming services. Not that I have anything against the staple of internet radio. In fact, as I've said before, I'm an avid listener of stations like smoothbeats.com and beatbasement.com . But sometimes I want to hear music that fits my mood. A playlist that goes beyond embracing a certain genre, and maybe goes two or three sub-genres deep. Usually that would mean firing up my own music collection. That is, until I discovered a site called Last.fm a few years ago. Their famed audioscrobbler is actually a computer algorithm that gathers info on the music you like, and matches it up with music it "thinks" you should like. I was addicted for a while until I figured out that the scrobbling game had some competition around town. I'll break a few of the major players down for you. Last.fm Ah, the apple of my eye. Last.fm was my *first* music recommendation site...

Sadly, after a couple of weeks using Flock, I have to say I'm not too impressed. Sure it's nice to have a media bar at the top with your chosen Picasa or Flickr pics. And yes, it's cool to see Facebook updates in realtime on a sidebar. But when it comes to anything akin to real browsing, Flock fails. It's based on Firefox, but the experience only leaves you wanting for the real thing. In fact, I think it's overkill to design an entire browser to do some things that a few Firefox extensions could probably take care of. Too bad, as I thought it sounded like a cool idea. But over the course of two weeks, all I did was fire it up, watch the Facebook updates load, say, "Cool" and then load up Firefox to get my real browsing done.

So, I'm experimenting with different web browsers these days.  Not that I'm unhappy with my default Firefox 3.  On the contrary, Firefox 3 is the BEST I've ever used (despite the occasional crashiness on Flash 10 sites).  No, the decision to experiment came when I saw an article on alternative browsers and how they have matured.   Opera, Epiphany, and the like.  Ho hum.  But then I saw Flock , the browser expressly designed for social networking .  Hmmm, as my life has recently become CONSUMED with the social network sites, I figured this must be a "good thing", so I decided to give it a spin.  And it's based on Firefox, so how bad could it be? In fact, I'm blogging from within it right now.  And I have sidebars with Facebook, Picasa, and GMail updates.  It takes a little getting used to as the UI is quite a departure from Firefox, but it certainly enhances the "immediate gratification" effect.  It converts a "pull system", whe...

Between Facebook, Last.fm, various web forums, and my blog, keeping up with my social networks has become a full-time job. I wish somebody would pay me for it! Did you know you can even get the Facebook on your cell phone? Non-stop, man.

Recently someone asked me which sites I frequented for music downloads. Legal ones, that is. Heh. I really didn't have to consider the question for long. Over the last two years, I have settled into a fairly predictable music routine that costs me about $15/month. I stream Last.fm tunes while I'm hanging at the house doing things like blogging or laundry. It's a "smart" music recommendation system that learns what I like and what I don't like. This includes distinguishing an artist I don't like from a track I don't like. And if I like what I hear, I bounce over to Emusic.com and download it. As I've blogged in the past, Last.fm and Emusic were my first steps into a much larger musical world. And while much of what I listen to is new to me, I rarely download a new release. In fact, most of the time, the stuff I listen to was released a decade ago. Sometimes this is awesome as I have ten years worth of albums by the artist to sift throug...

These Brits are about to bury they're competition : "As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website. Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be. Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks...

Please, please, please watch this. If for no other reason than it's really funny to watch white people with no rhythm try to rap. I laughed out loud.

I'm a stealthy uber-geek. Stealthy because you don't know I'm a geek until I confess to it. And uber because.... well, I'm fun, social, good-looking, and chicks dig me. Find me another geek with all those qualities. So, anyway, I'm all alone on Halloween and I decide to do what any self-respecting uber-geek would do on a night like this. I logged on to FEARnet.com and watched a live, original horror movie. Uh, correction. A live, original horror movie WITH a geeky chat room. And do you know what? It was really fun! I mean, the movie was absolutely rotten. So bad, it was funny. And that was the beauty of the experience. If you've ever watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 , then you know what I'm talking about. I think I might do it again sometime. For those horror fans whose tastes extend beyond Halloween (or Dia De Los Muertos on 11/1), run on over to Fearnet.com. There's some good stuff going on over there.

As if on cue, the micro-blogging takes ridiculous to a whole new level . From the article: "Hictu is a new ‘microblogging’ system that lets you post short text, audio and video links and read others’ posts via web and mobile. It brings the bite-sized format made popular by Twitter, combines it with the aggregation of your personal feeds from services like Jaiku and Tumblr, and ads native audio and video support." I had to read that three times before I could figure out what it even MEANT! Hictu?! Are you f*cking serious?! My head is going to explode...

I know I'm supposed to be on hiatus while I'm out of town, but I had to talk about something that's been bugging the sh*t out of me. Twitter is f*cking everywhere!!! And it happens to be the single most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of . Who gave this guy money??? Because I actually have a GOOD business idea and I'd LOVE for the VC's who blew a few mil on Twitter to throw some my way. That way they could actually earn a RETURN on their investment!!! So, Twitter is this micro-blogging service that let's you post these SMS updates about your life. The late teens and 20-somethings (Millenials, so they are apparently called) are crazy for it. You get this avatar, and next to it are the updates that you sent in via SMS from your cell phone. Like this: Akshunj: 11:03am - "Watching Larry King in Chinese." Akshunj: 11:46am - "Thinking about steamed buns with pork for lunch." Akshunj: 1:28pm - "Steamed buns were good, but I...

No, Wxman. There's no porn to be had on this post. But, read on, 'cause this is a weird mashup. First, a word from our sponsors. I am not, nor have I ever been an advocate of breast enhancement through plastic surgery. I must say the same for breast reduction. As a learned scholar with advanced degrees in breastology, I'm an avid supporter of appreciating "what the good Lord gave you." Big or small. Firm or saggy. Get a well-fitting bra (see Oprah's bra show ) and call it a day. Women make the mistake of thinking that all men want is the super-model boobs. WRONG! The reason I LOVE boobs is that no two are the same. Quit trying to fit someone's idea of beauty and be happy with what you've got. My wife has got a rack that her girlfriends tell her they would pay thousands for, but she's still neurotic about it. Go figure... Back to our regularly scheduled program. So, some guys are at a bachelor party in Vegas. Stripper tells the guys ...