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Posts Tagged “web 0.5”

web 2.no

Soulja Boy Victim Of Social-Network Account Kidnapping


If this video is to be believed, some hacker purporting to be 12 years old broke into the MySpace and YouTube accounts of vlogger/one-hit wonder Soulja Boy, and subsequently demanded $2,500 to relinquish the passwords. After some boilerplate chat-room racism and counterhacking, all is now well, and apparently the account-stealer's identity has been revealed—Soulja Boy's next clip will apparently serve as his revenge on said kid, and we all know how good the kid is at flame wars with people who dare cross him. Here's hoping the Anonymous masses don't get so inflamed by whatever happens next, they decide to break into Soulja's house and take his Segway. [Valleywag]

4:15 PM on Thu Aug 28 2008
By Maura Johnston
181 views, 4 comments

Latest by jasonelias: Serves him right for disrespecting Ice-T. more »

share the lawsuits

Some Muxtape Stan Out There Might Be Trying To Get "Revenge" On The RIAA

Last week's RIAA-assisted shuttering of the shared mixtape site Muxtape caused many an Internet-savvy person who liked "indie" music and Helvetica to shed a tear or two. But apparently someone out there has decided that Muxtape will not only live on, it will thrive! And grow, like kudzu or dandelions in a field! Behold Opentape, "a free, open-source package that lets you make and host your own mixtapes on the web." Yes, that's right: For the price of some time slapping the code on a site and some Web space, you can have all the liability that Justin Ouellette had when he was hosting Muxtape users' MP3s on a server that he paid for! More »

3:00 PM on Tue Aug 26 2008
By Maura Johnston
301 views, 2 comments

Latest by cheesebubble: Muxtape + zombie bite = Opentape more »

welcome to the future

So It's Come To This: Behold, Music Reviews With A 160-Character Limit

Today, I found out that there's a Web site trying to bring the clunky brevity of the microblogging service Twitter to criticism: Behold Blippr, another vowelless Web 2.0 entry that lets users grade on a one-of-four-emoticon scales (it ranges from ":D" to ":(") and "write" 160-character reviews of movies, music, games, and (sigh) books. Because, as they put it, long reviews suck! After the jump, 10 reviews by blippr members about albums they love—posted in their entirety, because hey, we've got the room! More »

3:30 PM on Mon Aug 25 2008
By Maura Johnston
740 views, 28 comments

Latest by revmatty: @Maura Johnston: That's a good point as well, I hadn't been thinking of it as a pronoun in that context. And I'd really hate to see everyone move to iblppr and iflkr and itmblr naming to emphasize the centrality more »

Those of you who aren't deleting artists from your Last.fm profiles to look "cool" may want to check out Soundamus, which slices and dices the listening habits you've leaked to the site in order to let you know which artists you like have new releases on the horizon. (NB: You may want to let it run while at lunch, since running a query on the site seems to take a while.) Unfortunately, the site seems to have no info on JC Chasez's long-in-turnaround Kate. Booo. [Soundamus; HT Nick Douglas]

3 comments

somethin 4 the weekend

Hiding Your Listening Habits On Social-Networking Sites? You Should Be Ashamed!

Today I ran across a neat page on Last.fm outlining the songs and artists that are most likely to be deleted from users' musical histories on the site, which charts its users' listening habits to come up with a bunch of charts that constitute a musical profile that's then shared with the world. While the No. 1 artist who's been deleted from peoples' listening habits isn't all that surprising—"[unknown]," who comes up when people don't fill out their ID3 tags properly before giving songs a spin—and I'm wholly unsurprised by snobbier music types out there being loath to not want to share how many times they've listened to "Piece Of Me" and "Girlfriend" with the world, there were some eyebrow-raising inclusions on both lists. Top five on each chart after the jump. More »

5:00 PM on Fri Aug 22 2008
By Maura Johnston
1,497 views, 18 comments

Latest by ineffable.me: @Poubelle: Yes, I was expecting Ashlee Simpson in that list for sure. I mean, just cause I heard that some people liked her first record or whatever. I wouldn't really know anything about that. more »

Dear Metallica: If you are going to post 10-second clips from your forthcoming album, please, for the love of God, embed the stream. Some of us are on crappy computers and we don't feel like waiting longer than 10 seconds in order for the application you're making us rely on to open. Thanks! [Metallica.com]

4 comments

web 2.whatever

Pandora May Turn Off Its Streams: Do You Care?

I've been putting off writing a post about the possible demise of the Music Genome Project-powered streaming site Pandora—which may be sunk because it might have to pay royalty fees that add up to 70% of its revenues—for most of the day, because I'm not really sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, yes, the royalty structures set up by the fee-collecting regulatory body (and RIAA spinoff) SoundExchange are a bit high, and do encourage a lot of new sites to operate in the dark so they can get out of bankrupting themselves right away. On the other hand, SoundExchange doesn't solely represent artists on majors, and I'm wary of sites like Pandora that seem to want to have their cake (creating technology that's all about sampling music for free) and eat it too (not paying musicians under the guise of "promotion" and keeping any revenue for themselves). And on a third, possibly selfishly concealed hand, I don't really use Pandora; the few times I have sampled it, its utility has been spotty at best; and I'm wary of the online outcry in favor of the service, because of the whole outsized importance of technologically triumphant Digg Nation types in any debates involving the intersection of music and technology. So, readers, I'm opening the floor to you all, in hopes that someone out there can convince me to pick a side. Think of it as a chance to dust off those debate-team-honed skills! [WP]

5:15 PM on Mon Aug 18 2008
By Maura Johnston
989 views, 28 comments

Latest by Maura Johnston: @TheContrarian: Totally agreed. (Especially about the 'faith forum' being ludicrous. Oy.) more »

web 2.no

MySpace Music: The Run-Up To Launch Is Getting "Desperate"

The latest problems plaguing MySpace Music, the fading social-networking service's joint venture with the majors that is allegedly going to launch in September: A slew of candidates for the CEO position have flat-out turned down the gig; finding a CEO now, if it happens, would be dicey, since any new bigwigs would likely have enough opinions on how things are going to warrant sweeping changes; and the technology team is getting "all-consuming and desperate" in its attempts to hook the service into MySpace's toothpicks-and-glue infrastructure, because they're sure that any further delays will alienate partners. On the bright side, this will probably make the service's Snocap experiment seem like a resounding success in hindsight. [The Deal via Hypebot]

2:00 PM on Tue Aug 12 2008
By Maura Johnston
109 views, Comment

Bearded music guru Rick Rubin has joined the board of MOG, the social-networking site with a music-blogging component, an easy-to-remember three-letter name, and $6 million in capital, including money from Sony and Universal Music Group. According to MOG founder David Hyman, the site will soon be classifying its blogs by genre and launching an ad network for independent music blogs. Also, Rubin apparently has some user-experience gurudom lurking beneath that thick beard of his. (Given that Rubin seems to think that subscriptions are the future for saving the music business, though, I suspect that there's at least a little bit of executive puffery lurking beneath that statement.) Hyman also claims that the site has two million users, although I wonder how many of those accounts have long been dormant. [LA Times / Photo: AP]

2 comments

now, on with the countdown

Journey Still Inspiring People To Plunk Down Change In Their Honor

Yahoo! Music chart watcher Paul Grein has run down SoundScan's list of the most-downloaded tracks and found out which pre-Napster-era songs are still inspiring people to pay 99 cents for a copy. Anyone who's ever seen the number of Google hits the words "Steve Perry" and/or "Arnel Pineda" and/or "song at the end of The Sopranos" can accrue will be completely unsurprised that Journey's unkillable "Don't Stop Believin'" is No. 1 on the list, with 1.8 million downloads. However, I was a bit amazed to find that Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole's sweet, ukulele-tinged version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" beat out Survivor's Rocky-inspired "Eye Of The Tiger," if only because that and the Journey track are forever twinned in my mind. Top 10 after the jump. More »

5:00 PM on Mon Aug 11 2008
By Maura Johnston
462 views, 3 comments

Latest by Monkeyrash: Whew, I've only purchased one of those songs (and I think I was sober). It was a little scary clicking through. more »

web 2.yes

How To Use Your Artists' Blogs: Part One In A Series

Kanye West is now using his blog to write "clarity posts"—pithy denials of items going around the gossip-o-sphere. I love this idea, mainly because I'm ready to welcome with open arms any attempt at bringing something resembling primary-sourced material into the current incoherent narrative surrounding "celebrity" and its many permutations. (And yes, I know these posts are just another excuse for West to talk about himself, but hey, you take the not-great with the good.)

[kanYe West: Blog]

3:30 PM on Mon Aug 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
227 views, 4 comments

Latest by slickhop: eh, most days it seems like all anyone has to do all day is surf the internet. even kanye. more »

Things Everybody Should Read Right Now Dept. "How I Spread A Lie About Ghostface Killah, or Why You Should Not Trust Goddamn Wikipedia." (NB: A quick Idolator search for "chunky Mario" only turned up an old piece on Perez Hilton. Whew!) [Robotskull]

1 comment

So tomorrow I'll be broadcasting bits of my Warped Tour experience via Twitter, in case you're one of those people who likes the whole "blogging as it happens, in 140 characters per short burst" idea. (Our Twitter feed also links you to our top posts, in case you feel a need to read Idolator on the go.) [Twitter]

Comment

putting the pseudo in pseudo-event

MTV Turning This Year's VMA-Nominating Process Into A Block Party For Street Teams

MTV has announced that it's opening nominations for this year's video music awards to the fans, presumably because July and August are low-traffic months for Web sites all over the planet and they need to boost the traffic to MTV.com somehow. Eight categories will have their nominations receive "help" from the clicking hordes: Best Male Video; Best Female Video; Best Hip-Hop Video; Best Pop Video; Best Dancing In A Video (apparently the word "choreography" is too syllable-filled for Generation TXT); Best New Artist; Best Rock Video; and Video Of The Year. Given past online skirmishes between crazed fans, it looks like the final category is going to play host to a bloody, yet well-coiffed, showdown between the Jonas Brothers and Tokio Hotel. But what of the other battles? More »

12:00 PM on Mon Jul 21 2008
By Maura Johnston
689 views, 5 comments

Latest by DocStrange: oh good they have the genre awards back instead of those stupid ones they had last year. Not like i'm going to watch. I'm an MTVu kind of guy. more »

everybody loses

Warring Fandoms Further Prove That The Internet Should Have Age Restrictions

Remember those halcyon days when we came to know and love ADiehardFOBFan as the grand wizard of all Jonas Brothers-directed malice? Well, according to MTV News there's a new anti-JoBro sheriff in town. And its name is Hundreds Of Angry Tokio Hotel Fans. More »

5:00 PM on Mon Jul 14 2008
By Kate Richardson
2,250 views, 17 comments

web 2.no

"New York Times" Writer Needs A Lesson In MySpace 101

Of all the disastrous MySpaces I've seen, Coldplay's current page does not exactly merit a second thought. It's simple, tasteful, professionally designed, and easy to read. Perhaps the only thing remarkable about it is how good it looks for a MySpace. Yet New York Times media critic Virginia Heffernan seems to think it's some sort of menacing pariah of the online world, a crudely cobbled-together middle finger to all those who crave browser-crashing Flash from their favorite artists' online presence. Her piece in yesterday's NYT Magazine is borderline embarrassing to read if you've ever so much as visited a MySpace page, not to mention rife with misconceptions about how the site actually works. But in the end she finally gets down to the bottom of Coldplay. Sort of. (Not really.) More »

2:45 PM on Mon Jul 14 2008
By Kate Richardson
1,168 views, 25 comments

Latest by BRATMix: I maintain a few band MySpace pages. As in my normal web design, I despise Flash. There's no need for it, especially on a site already filled with bugs and headache like MySpace. What's wrong with simple and clean? Hell, I turned more »

web 2.no

Free Songs From Music-Related Celebrities: The Future Of The Biz?


When I think about slow news days, or the ever-diminishing cultural potency of music, I moan (well, IM-moan) to my friends about starting a new feature called "Does Anybody Give A Crap About Music Anymore," in which I examine concerning developments from my RSS reader. Today's YouTube music-videos chart could be Exhibit A: The No. 1 clip, outpacing its closest rival by a ratio of about 4:1, is a rip of the new single by Ali "Possibly Less Screwed-Up Sister Of Lindsay" Lohan, a piece of '80s-throwback twaddle that has the production values of the "make your own karaoke tape" booth at Adventureland. The vocals are mixed high (and not pitch-corrected at all), the keyboards are sub-Casio, but none of that matters, since Ali's famous, and listening to this is a way to participate in the celebrity-industrial complex that, at the very least, is less grueling than sitting through her sister's star turn in The Georgia Rule. I guess I can comfort myself with the knowledge that The Soup will make a joke about the track during its contractually obligated E! cross-promotion this Friday. Screenshot of the chart after the jump. More »

12:30 PM on Thu Jul 10 2008
By Maura Johnston
233 views, 7 comments

Latest by Defenestrated: @Maura Johnston: Fair enough, I get where you're coming from. I guess sometimes the cynicism gets to be a bit much for me is all. Of course, I'm still a young, naive little thing who has only just more »

and statistics

This Just In: People Trust Their Friends' Music Recommendations

Hey, did you hear about the survey that claimed eight out of 10 consumers "are turning away from professional music reviews and looking online for guidance when buying CDs or downloads"? That sounds kind of bad for people who aspire to make their living offering guidance to people who illegally download buy new music, right? Unless you wonder if those 80% of people who are "turning away" were actually paying attention to reviewers in the first place. (Has anyone done a "study" correlating Pazz & Jop positions to chart success, I wonder.) Oh no, what if this "story" consists merely of some dressed-up numbers that allow an e-commerce firm (Avail Intelligence) to wax rhapsodic about the digital future and allow a writer (Ian Williams) to fulfill a daily journalistic-output quota? Who will tell the children? More »

12:30 PM on Tue Jul 8 2008
By Maura Johnston
486 views, 14 comments

Latest by Lax Danja House: @Oldboy: They've been including more metal recently. more »