Pop Social Blog Currently on Hold

Hello, my faithful few. Just a quick note to inform you as to why the posts to Pop Social Blog have stopped recently. Starting up a business is no small task and that is exactly what I’ve been up to. It’s a London based strategy/branding/design studio and all will be relieved soon. But for the moment things will remain quiet on this wee blog

Letting it Out

Photo: MyNameIsHarry (Creative Commons license from Flickr)

Sort of following up from my previous post… I’ve recently been thinking about the Cisco Fatty situation when it was doing the rounds; it might be nice to have a simple service that offers a channel to vent – anonymously.  There’s various articles/posts related to the comfort people are exhibiting  their lives and creating a virtual record for all to see all over the web. Some of which may be potentially detrimental to future collage acceptance and job prospects.

I was happy to find grouphug.us (thanks to Peppery who let me know about it). So if you just HAVE to let something out… maybe it’s better here than it is where your boss can find it. There’s also a project called PostSecret that allows anyone to get visually creative with their confession and mail in the physical postcard.

Is it unhealthy to harbour secrets? If so these places of collective admission certainly are healthy? But is it enough to actually rehabilitate… or is that not the goal?

Update: An article in the Los Angeles times Mark Cuban fined, Courney Love sued – over tweets You really do need to watch what you tweet.

The/My News Online

These days I consume my news almost completely on demand, digitally, and for free. I probably subscribe to far to many RSS feeds but they allow me to survey their entry headlines and excerpts as part of my morning routine and pull out interesting ones to read. It’s not unusual to read about more discreet events up to a couple of days in blogs before it comes through in the mainstream news.

But I thought I’d list a few of the mainstream sources I reference on the daily… you will have heard of them:

• the guardian – Good for the local news and views (that lean that way)
  
• The New York Times – Good for the America-centric news and often quoted in other papers the world over
• Politico – The latest news from the heart of Washington DC
• Aljazeera – Helps to give more perspective on some things
  
• The Daily Beast – “The Daily Beast doesn’t aggregate. It sifts, sorts, and curates… It allows you to lead the conversation, rather than simply follow it”
• The New Zealand Herald – To keep abreast of happenings in my heartland, xx.

So there you have it, certainly not revolutionary… but hopefully insightful into my perspective. I’ll try and create a post that lists my favourite RSS feeds in the near future. But these ought to tied you over in the meantime.

EMI Launches Free Music Steaming Site

Okay, so… in coincidental follow up something I posted just yesterday it’s nice to hear EMI has launched their very own music website to stream music from their artists… for free.

Create your own playlists save them and stream them when you like. Type in keywords and get back a suggested playlist (like Last.fm), find artist bios and videos. Obviously all artists are signed to the EMI label… but it’s a useful tool to search the EMI catalogue and discover some of their artists.

The site the brandishes the BETA tag…

“EMI.com is designed to be a learning lab,” stated Alex Haar, vice president of digital special projects for EMI Music. “It will help us gain even more knowledge about consumers’ preferences and choices. Those insights will be invaluable to our artists, helping them respond to fans in a more relevant way.”

“This is the beginning of a longer term experiment,” he added. “In the coming months, we will continue to add content and features to the site.”

Hopefully that means it’s only going to get better with time and your feedback …and hopefully they’ll produce some smartphone apps (such as Last.fm and Pandora have for the iPhone). And (maybe you can already but I’m not sure) share/suggest tracks and playlists with friends.

Here’s a full write up and screen shots over at Wired. But I’d say just got and have a play with it yourself, it’s a pretty userfriendly interface, go to emi.com (unfortunatly only works in UK, and in the US you can only sample the tracks)

Note: A couple of tracks I tried to play couldn’t be found… but it only just launched today after all.

Blockbuster to stream movies (across multiple devices)

Points to note:
1. Blockbuster to stream movies on demand.
2. Working with Live Mesh* means a user can start watching a movie on the TV… then move and continue watching on another TV, mobile device or computer (Live Mesh works with Microsoft Azure**)

Main Article: DallasNews.com: Blockbuster, Microsoft team up on mobile services
Summary article: ReadWriteWeb: Blockbuster is Planning Video Services on Top of Live Mesh

Notes:
*Live Mesh: A data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices. (wiki)
**Microsoft Azure: Is a cloud platform (cloud computing platform as a service) offering that “provides a wide range of internet services that can be consumed from both on-premises environments or the internet”. (wiki)

I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY

These guys from THE MASSES – they’re a film makers collective.. and they make some stunning work. I wish I could be one of them and make this kind of work… you know cause I’ve got heaps of time between work, side projects, gallerys, gigs, pubs and the general commute that is intrinsic to getting to any of that in London.

The Masses crew have managed to get themselves into an extraordinary place of creative expression (but I’m sure they still have brand managers telling them to lop 20 seconds off and move that shot) so the fact that the integrity of the work is so strong at the finish shows just how good they are. Makes me a bit jealous actually…

Have a look at the work of Matt Amato, he’s got some beautiful work. I’ve just watched a clip he did for one of my favourite songs by Bon Iver – if you’re in a hurry don’t watch this; just find a quite time maybe a red wine too and immurse in the experience… I grabbed some screen shots I’ll post below

MUSING FROM MY NEW LONDON

I find myself in London: the big city, the bright lights and opportunity beckoning. I’m figuring out day-by-day and step-by-step how to build a life in real time.

So here in this first post to the shiny new Pop Social, still bewildered by the newness of its own existence, I’ll say this:

“This digital space will live as an organic testament to Me and this World in which I am immersed. If I am affected or effected by my context I’ll post it here. If I interact with something in a meaningful manner I will endeavour to share it; for myself, for you and for posterity”

So sit back and enjoy, read, learn, comment and interact… let’s make something of this. Please subscribe to the RSS feed (see there in the top of the left hand column) and save yourself the hassle of having to check and see if I’ve written a new post.

Welcome,
m