Jazz Odyssey

 In no particular order:

Allan Holdsworth–Then!:I’ve been a fan of jazz and fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth for many years, but more recently I’ve become a fanatic.  He released his finest studio album ever The Sixteen Men of Tain back in 2000 (reissued in 2003 with sonic improvements and bonus tracks) and followed that with two stellar live [...]

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This article from the New York Times offers an interesting look at the current problems facing drug companies:

The worldwide drug industry is struggling…"the $500 billion drug industry is stumbling badly in its core business of finding new medicines".
Drug companies have tried to counter this failure to develop profitable new drugs through aggressive (and by extension, expensive) [...]

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"The music industry maintains that Sharman, the maker of the Kazaa peer-to-peer software, is owned by several companies through a trust fund registered in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. The Red Cross is the only beneficiary specifically named in the trust, so the recording industry, which is suing Sharman, is asking the organization to [...]

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Here is a concise iPod FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) from Walter Mossberg over at the Wall Street Journal. If you are new to the world of iPods and considering giving one as a gift (or you’re lucky enough to have received one), this article is useful. 
If you are an iPodder looking to take your [...]

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Finally…some numerical support for an opinion I’ve been voicing for years which is that having music start to play automatically when a web page loads is unappreciated by most (79% to be exact) web surfers.  A clear option to have music playing while browsing a site is critical, but it shouldn’t be forcefed… 

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So this morning I went to a record store and bought a CD.    Brought it back to my office, but it wouldn’t play on my Denon CD player.  Called the store, and they told me that their CDs wouldn’t play on my Denon CD player, and that I’d have to play it on my Sharp [...]

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Take a look at this article in Wired about the IPod advertisement created by schoolteacher George Masters in his spare time.  This ad is travelling fast through the Internet, and has lots of marketing folks talking.  The technology to create a pro-quality TV spot in your own living room has made enough strides in the cost-of-entry and ease-of-use [...]

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This article is but one of many that illustrates the many impracticalities of using email as our primary marketing and communications tool.  Between phishing scams, inbox overload and oceans of spam, what was once a useful tool has become a challenge in being heard.  I used to look forward to the email newsletters from my [...]

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Engaget has a great article on how to customize the graphics on your IPod.  You can replace the "do not disconnect" logo, battery logo, fonts and more.  There’s a terrific little application called IPod Wizard that will walk you through the process.
Here’s a nice example.   And here is another one.  Here’s one with an ironic sense [...]

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No matter which side of the file-sharing issue you are on, the widely reported/blogged Pew Internet & American Life Project report Artists, Musicians and the Internet is an important read.
But file-sharing isn’t the only area in the digital music universe that has both proponents and naysayers…this interesting article by longtime netizen David "Zzyzx" Steinberg raises the issue of the [...]

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The Denver Post reports that the hours people spend listening to radio are in steep decline as younger audiences switch to iPods, CDs mixed at home and subscription satellite signals. The newspaper reports several local stations are taking steps to address this by cutting ads per hour, jumping back into Internet streaming, and emphasizing live [...]

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“…the most powerful forum for consumer seduction is not TV ads or billboards but rather the conversations we have in our everyday lives. The thinking is that in a media universe that keeps fracturing into ever-finer segments, consumers are harder and harder to reach; some can use TiVo to block out ads or the TV’s remote control to click away from them, and the rest are simply too saturated with brand messages to absorb another pitch. So corporations frustrated at the apparent limits of ”traditional” marketing are increasingly open to word-of-mouth marketing. One result is a growing number of marketers organizing veritable armies of hired ”trendsetters” or ”influencers” or ‘’street teams” to execute ‘’seeding programs,” ”viral marketing,” ”guerrilla marketing.”

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This blog posting about a 3-year old’s view of television in a Tivo-enabled universe is a must-read.  Bear in mind that this 3-year old is going to be an important customer in just a few short years and has already developed a radically different point-of-view on when and how they want to consume their entertainment.  [...]

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"The growing popularity of blogs and other online forums has prompted companies to pay more attention to what is being said about them on the Internet, and has given rise to a new kind of market research aimed at finding useful information in the sea of online chatter."
This interesting article in the Wall Street [...]

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Interesting post at Dana’s Blog….Trendwatching has coined the phrase CUSTOMER-MADE, which they define as "the phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed."  Trendwatching goes on [...]

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