crucial

the hype software

OSX

The locals think all of us Americans living here in Berlin are a bunch of geeks. Even the casual mention of http://del.icio.us or http://flickr.com and you get a "wie bitte ?" Iran has more blogs than Germany does. But Germany makes better audio software and they know how to party.

tips:

Flock

Holy fuck. Only in buggy beta right now, but this is a mozilla web browser and RSS reader, with integrated blog writing attached to your del.icio.us links and flickr photos. Eventually it will be possible to plug in to any service. It sounds like total hype and the design is very slick. But a fluid combination of reading and writing is what will make Hype 2.0 actually work.

http://www.flock.com/developer/

So much for the silence of the spectacle society. We are going to be heard, all of us, at once. Let's just crank up the media overload a couple notches past 11, eh ? Somebody was blogging from WAF while I was playing. ("now its better. timeblind has enough bass to plow a field.") Soon I'll see a pissing notifier on my screen while I'm still playing. Media consequences will be in seconds or instantaneous.

Update: who cares ? Why fix functionality into a single app ? Web browser based apps have far more potential. I guess though its hackable like firefox. Offer a richer application framework accessible by javascript, open it as a platform.

Update 2006: poof. its gone.

Mac only:

Acquisition

Probably the most naggy shareware ever, but otherwise a well built gnutella network P2P with a "find similar artists" mode that I think traces compilation relationships.
http://www.acquisitionx.com/

The main problem right now is finding stuff that you DON'T know about. P2P services tend to cluster around the well known artists. Or maybe people still tend to do that (as a reaction to too much choice). Really I want discography and label discography browseable inside the P2P. Associative recommendations via http://audioscrobbler or something. Maybe just a Firefox plugin could launch the Acquistion search from selected text on the browser page.

SolarSeek

Soulseek p2p client. Soulseek is one of the weakest protocols, but the community is hip. and so are their files. .... oh sorry...shhhh.
http://www.fejta.com/solarseek/

iFlash

Flash card learning software with user-sharing card library. Now has interval learning. Always pleasant to recognize a word in real life that I only just learned.
http://loopware.com/

QuickSilver

Replaces Launch Bar to launch applications or URLs in a few keystrokes. This is very slick and bouncy in a way that actually brightens your day when you select an app. Yep, you think that's a stupid geek thing to say but when it actually bounces and kind of glints as it disappears....
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

Links and things

I am timeblind on myspace. thanks for the add.

I am crucialfelix on del.icio.us which is where I link to all the interesting shit I come across.

I put my photos up on flickr

NYC events iCal : anything that looks good.

Berlin events (parties, shows, vernissage, films): subscribe to google calendar / iCal

When I listen to music at home it all gets echoed onto here and on my Last.fm page. Most of the time I don't use that cause I don't want you to see me obsessively listening to my own mixes, really bad working titles.

You can read some posts I thought were interesting from various feeds.

I've been doing the Dance Music Business Resource since 1995, back when it was on hyperreal.org. Articles and info for artists and small labels. Recently I've been posting interesting industry news items and adding some new content about downloads etc.