Find New Music You’ll Like

I listen to quite a lot of music, but more often than not it’s the same bands and music I know I’d like. However there are a few new music sites that aim to find new music for you matched on your current music tases, and allow you to play them online, so I thought I’d take a look.

Pandora helps you discover more music that you’ll like

Pandora is a product from the Music Genome Project.

As you can see from the above, you first select an artist that you like. It then searches for bands that are similar, and plays ones it thinks you will like. You are able to rate the music and if you don’t like it, it will skip on to the next track. You end up with different band “radio stations”, each with other music similar to that band.

After a while the system will ask you to register, and is for US based music lovers only at the moment. However the only proof is a 5-digit US zip code, so just type one in and you’re good. Due to licensing issues there is no ability to rewind a track and you can only skip a certain number each time you listen. However you can easily create another station and listen to music on that station instead. Great free music.

iJigg shows you popular music

iJigg seems a little like a copy of Digg but for music rather than web articles. You can submit music, rate music and comment on music. They also have a nice little flash player to embed music on your site.

Frankly I haven’t heard of many of the bands, but maybe that’s a good thing?

Amie Street allows you to download free and DRM-free music

AmieSt is a cool site where the music starts for free. It’s clever in that the more popular a song gets, the more it charges for that song, but only up to 98 cents. You can even earn free music by finding more great songs and recommending them to your friends.

Artists can add their music and the music you download has no DRM, you can burn it to a CD, put it on your mp3 player, or whatever. Before you join you can listen to some sample songs here.

Enjoy your new music!

Originally found via: Read/Write Web and Techcrunch

Rocky Balboa

How did we get to this? Oh yes, I remember the five other films now. They reckon you can watch just the first Rocky and then this one, but that doesn’t do it justice. You need to remember that he was heavyweight champion of the world - twice so Rocky II and III are needed and then how he lost all his money (Rocky V) so I suppose you could miss out IV but it’s a cracker so I wouldn’t.

In fact this film has a bit in common with the fourth instalment as they’re both blatantly feel-good movies. Although Rocky Balboa doesn’t start off like that. Rocky is busy running his restaurant named after his dead wife, Adrian, and while not happy, isn’t unhappy retelling boxing stories over and over. What I like is that he’s still a nice guy, he lets a boxer he once beat eat for free in the restaurant, will still stand up for a girl’s honour and treat’s his brother-in-law Paulie with respect despite his negativism and bitterness. Rocky is a good guy.

The only problem is his son really - they’ve gone separate ways and Rocky Jr is even embarrassed by his father. I really liked the scenes between Rocky and his son, while they’re trying to talk in the lobby of Jr’s work, Rocky is clearly embarrassed by people recognising him, and then later on outside Adrian’s, Rocky has the speech of his life, only just eclipsing his speech to the boxing commission which get them to change their mind. It’s a cracker and puts the actual boxing in the shadow.

The story was basically secondary to me, I just enjoyed Rocky being Rocky. When he meets Marie and her son Steps he just wants to help them out. There’s no agenda there, he just wants to be nice to them (despite her calling him a “creepo” 30 years ago). Although I wasn’t complaining once the training montage started. It’s probably the best lead-in in the entire series: “Let’s start building some hurting bombs.”

The story is basically Rocky making his comeback against the current heavyweight champion. But it’s more than that. He’s trying to get over his wife’s death and he uses the fire inside him to drive him forward. The boxing itself is more realistic than previously but still a bit of nonsense. Watching Rocky’s journey through the rounds towards the conclusion is great and the ending a piece of understated brilliance. I loved it, I really did. The acting’s great, the music as good as always and you leave the cinema feeling good - what can be better than that?

Later this week I’ll have a Rocky treat for you (I say ‘treat’, it’s more like a funny video), but for now enjoy the trailer:

Buy a piece of your favourite band

Sellaband is a great site that allows you to help your favourite unsigned band by buying a piece of it.

An artist uploads a picture, a biography and a maximum of 3 demo-songs that represent them as an Artist. Then they need to tell your fans where they can see you play live, where they can find your own website or MySpace account and so on.

There are 5,000 parts of each band for sale at $10 each. Once they hit the magic $50,000 (which they do!) they are provided with an A&R person and a Producer, and get studio time to record their best songs. The bands investors (or Believers as they’re called on the site) receive a special edition CD, the band receive regular CDs (to sell at gigs etc), downloads are made available online and everyone (the band, Believers and record company) share in any profits made.

Anyone want to invest with me?

Read more/Source: Springwise

How To Test The Effectiveness of Your Adverts

This is Part 6 in our series “How To Make Money From Your Blog”.

You may be earning very little from your chosen advertising solution. You’ve experimented with different layouts and designs, yet it can sometimes be difficult to tell what is the best design and type of ad for your blog. There are a couple of similar ways of addressing this.

Use Mulitple Palettes

Web Ads Blog talks about a way to reduce ad blindness, that is people getting used to your ads and therefore ignoring them.

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab and choose AdSense for content as the product
3. Choose an Ad type and format.
4. In the Colors drop-down box, click “Use multiple palettes”, then select up to 4 color palettes by holding down the Control or Command key
5. Copy-and-paste the AdSense Ad code into web pages

This will only change the colour of the same ad type, to test different types of advert, use A/B testing.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is simply testing the performance of ad A versus the performance of ad B. You need to set up the two different types of advert (ad units) you want, on two different channels. Then simply use a piece of javascript to randomly display either one or the other. You can then measure the performance of both of them. Google themselves provide the code:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
    var random_number = Math.random();
    if (random_number < .5){
        //your first ad unit code goes here
    } else {
        //your second ad unit code goes here
    }
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”     src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”></script>

Good luck!

Car Hit by Tree in High Winds

Usually it’s the other way around. Taken by me in London yesterday (you can tell by the obligatory red bus and taxi in the shot), one of the less dramatic accidents due to the high wind. Between 80mph and 99mph depending on which paper you wish to believe.

Nice to see plenty of police attendance too. Good job boys.

It’s a shame. It was the branch’s last day before retirement.

At least their parking was better than the car in front.

How to Save Someone’s Life

I was stunned recently to discover the ten other people around the same table as me for dinner couldn’t save someone’s life. I don’t mean the heroic ‘pushing someone out of the way of a bus’ sort of way, but basic first aid and CPR (cardio pulmonary resuscitation). It’s amazing that people just don’t know these skills in an age where you can get a trainer come to your place of work if you can’t get to a course elsewhere. In the ‘information age’ where news is instantaneous (or so I’m told) and you can watch videos of first aid on the internet, then why doesn’t everybody know how to do it?

The answer is probably laziness and lack of time, but in my job I’ve spoken to two people in the last week who have saved someone’s life by being in the right place at the right time - one was having a sedate game of crown green bowling when a man collapsed! The feeling they got from saving the person’s life wasn’t one of heroism but relief and thankfulness that they had the necessary skills to do it.

So why not learn those skills yourself? The British Red Cross runs courses, you can even type in your postcode to see where they do them near you. Go here to find the Red Cross or Red Crescent in your country. Or you can learn yourself. There is an online shop on the site where you can buy a book on first aid complete with the new CPR protocols - oh yes, they update and change things all the time, tourniquets to stop bleeding are now considered dangerous for example.

So why not save someone’s life? You could never need the skills but you just might.

Crime is not Funny

Well, sometimes it is. Thanks to Laura X for the link.

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