It’s been a while since I stumbled upon a treasure of unparalleled value in the depths of the internet. It helped me find my way during dark times and showed me the light at the end of the tunnel.
I’ve shown this treasure to a few close friends, who I felt might benefit from it too. My belief in its value was confirmed, and so today, I share it with all of you.
As someone who spends considerable time in front of a computer screen (or two), I knew that there were two groups of people, supporting two text editing systems – Vi/Vim and Emacs. The relations between these two is like the relation between Windows and Linux – both are considered superior by their supporters. I knew that both are supposed to take text editing, particularly for coders, to the next level in speed and possibilities, and that both are supposedly harder to learn, because most people are used to “classic” style of working with text using arrows and ctrl-arrows, shift for selecting, home/end, etc.
I also knew that this style of text editing is very limited – getting the cursor to the right place on a page full of text takes numerous arrow- and ctrl-arrow key presses, or requires you to grab the mouse. For a large group of computer users, this is no problem. However, if you’re using your computer for programming, and are interested in seriously boosting your productivity (not to mention other advantages, like being able to switch between platforms), everyone who’s made the jump will tell you that it’s worth it.
This post is meant to provide a collection of resources and concepts and basic ideas about how the Internet can be used in music marketing. It is meant for musicians, producers, DJs and labels, hopefully without too many genre-specific things. However, the general ideas about Internet marketing mentioned and linked to in this article may be useful to people in other fields besides music too. Currently, it’s a draft, so if you encounter errors, or if you think we should expand on some sections, if you have any questions, or ideas, tips, links etc. which we didn’t mention, please tell us, or feel free to leave you’re note in the comments. If some of the points aren’t anything new for you, good – because there still seems to be a lot of artists and labels big and small, for whom most of this will be new. You don’t have to care about the bleeding edge of IT to be able to make use of the excellent (and often free) marketing opportunities of the Internet. However, this post is just for you if you do understand that there is a lot of potential in the Internet, but you could use some help finding out some inspiration and also practical tips about what can be done and how. We’ll offer you some general concepts of marketing on the Internet, and we’ll talk about how to make yourself present at the places where people could be looking for you and how to make the most of them. Read on…
Just a little tip for your next Google Earth visit. Besides the normal Google Earth navigation mode (Ctrl-T) there’s a “flight mode”, which can be turned on by pressing Ctrl-Alt-A or just Ctrl-A to start from current position.
You can control your plane using arrows, but usually you’ll need more precision. In flight simulator mode, when you click the left mouse button, your mouse cursor will take the shape of a cross, and every mouse movement now controls the plane. Another left click will switch the control mode off – the cursor will be an arrow again.
It takes a while to get hold of the controls, because even with the mouse everything is really sensitive, and you have to count with certain inertia. Basically, first you’ll want to make your plane fly straight. Using Ctrl-A to start from a flat angle, and then levelling the plane using just up and down arrows is a safe way to start, although in order not to loose height you might also want to increase throttle (using Page Up), close flaps (using Shift-F), and retract landing gear (using G). You can then use Ctrl and arrows to just look around instead of changing direction.
Use Ctrl-H to reach the complete help for GE flight simulator. There you can find more help and all the keyboard shortcuts. Enjoy!
UPDATE: With the release of Google Earth browser plugin, more interesting “simulators” are available – for example, you can visit http://www.paraglidingearth.com/ for a worldwide directory of paragliding sites, and use Google Earth as a paragliding simulator by clicking on “Fly this site”!
Another interesting use of the GE browser plugin, not a simulator, but a rather interesting visualization of various statistics, can be found at http://www.earthatlas.info/
Need more help with Google Earth? Visit Video tutorials for Google Earth at Google Earth Blog or Google Earth Basics page
I’ve been reading quite a lot throughout the summer, and thought I could recommend books that might be worth your time. I’ve been discovering America however, as they are mostly classic ones. Nevertheless, if you haven’t read these, I suggest you do some catching-up too. And, by the way, if you’re not into science fiction, these might be just the right books, as it is good science fiction. I’ve got hold of a few Ursula Le Guin books. I remember trying to read one when I was about twelve, and it didn’t seem to be my cup of tea then. Not this time however – she’s got me so good that I’m preparing to read everything she’s written. I read The Lathe of Heaven
The Word for World is Forest
The last book worth recommending so far is called The Dispossessed
The second author is John Wyndham I loved his Day of the Triffids
Last author I’ve been catching up with is Neal Stephenson. I’ve read The Baroque Cycle Series
And then I’ve read Clive Barker‘s Imajica
is quite an interesting service, which follows what music you’re playing, and uploads the results so that a lot of classic data and Web 2.0 magic can be done. Other people can see what music you’re playing, you can see what they’re playing, you can get recommendations, tag and comment on tracks, artist, etc. I’ve known last.fm for quite some time but never actually began using it, since I had trouble running the plugin. I’ve finally overcome that trouble (I needed to switch off a setting in Winamp that decoded all mp3s with the mp3pro input plugin) and so my last.fm statistics (not really representative right now as I’ve just started) are available. And as I know you too have an interesting taste for music, please let me know your last.fm id in the comments :) I’ve also noticed (after who knows how long) that half of the site doesn’t work with Internet Explorer. Some things should be fixed now, however YouTube playlists still cause the main column to be too wide and disappear on the right. Well, sorry, you should use Firefox anyway. I’ve also fixed the blog RSS feed, added feeds for last links and music production, and redirected all feeds to FeedBurner.
I’ve known and listened to the lectures by Alan Watts for some time now, spreading them among people who know English enough to understand them. However, since mp3 it’s a very practical format to use as an argument in online discussion, I started looking for some transcriptions or fulltext books, and I want to share what I found.
So, who is Alan Watts and why should you care?Alan Watts is said to have brought the ideas of (zen) buddhism, taoism and eastern philosophies in general closer to our “western” way of thinking. His lectures however are far away from what one would consider as “religious”. He doesn’t operate with hazy concepts and construct philosophical structures – he keeps it really simple, providing at the same time deep insights of mostly psychological nature. Strongly recommended for everyone who consider themself, or would like to become, open-minded. And for everyone else too.
http://deoxy.org/watts.htm – lots of materials
The Relevance of Oriental Philosophy – lecture
UPDATE: Alan Watts Podcast – lectures
I finally got to install this thing, and I’m overwhelmed. The feeling you get when you look at a place where you were standing a year ago (a cliff above a botanical garden near Cape Town, 34°20’42.52″S, 18°55’39.40″E) is nothing but godlike. It is like an upgraded view from a plane, except that while sitting in a plane you can’t zoom and rotate. I can see myself driving in a car somewhere in SA (I’m going again this Christmas I hope), pausing to take a look at my notebook, and seeing – now this valley nearby looks pretty, let’s have a small detour… Wow. Strongly recommended.
When I get to process photos from my two previous SA trips, you’ll be probably getting coordinates for every picture :)
Update: I got stuck at it for the whole day, and today I’m getting stuck again. This is a way to make geography an interesting subject in schools. It is a way to fall in love with this planet, if you don’t already love it here. It is a way to understand how it works – you can see the land of India colliding with Asia, and how the Himalaya comes out of that as a drapery on a blanket. You can see the lungs of this planet, the forest of Amazonia, with it’s fields of cloud and the cancer of deforestation – which, seen like this, looks really scary. You can see huge volcanoes in South America. Colors and fractal shapes everywhere. And then the work of humans. Look how huge is Tokyo and it’s surroundings. Look at the amount of smog above Shanghai. Look at the detailed cities of North America and western Europe. Awesome. Google Earth seems to be an amazing achievement. They have done it again. They’ve succeeded in changing the perspective of how we perceive information. I’ll be hungrily awaiting each new detailed place. Thanks, Google! By the way, I started adding some content in Czech rep., which was (until now at least, ha ha) quite poor on information signs.