I read an article on Wired yesterday about SanDisk pushing to replace CDs with “SlotMusic,” basically an album, complete with artwork, on a MicroSD card. Five to 10 years ago, this might have caught on for a while. Let’s face it, CDs are crap. They are easy to scratch, and if you do, the whole thing is ruined. If this had come out in a cost-efficient way 10 years ago, we’d see slots built into most devices and maybe the success of iTunes would have been a bit different. We can’t really say for sure. The one thing I can say is this is a big mistake for another industry, the movie industry.
After a fight between Blu-ray and HDDVD we are seeing that neither are really winners. HDDVD is dead and Blu-ray sales are extremely low with no bright future in sight. What the SlotMusic’s failure is going to do, and it will fail because a physical medium for music is dead in a culture of iTunes and MP3s, is prevent other people from taking the chance to change other mediums. This SlotMusic card idea is perfect for movies. Movies don’t come with album art, so you’re not missing anything there. DVDs scratch just as easily as cds, so there’s another reason not to continue the disc medium, and with the increasing capacity of the cards, you’ll be able to put higher quality movies and extras on a single card. This is where DVDs should be heading. Unfortunately, I think the inevitable failure of SlotMusic will prevent that. Without widespread adoption, prices on cards will still be too high and you won’t see gadget manufacturers adding readers to TVs, DVD players (because you still need something to play your craptastic DVD collection), and other devices.
The Invisibles
I have a few friends that set their IM status to Invisible when they are online. Since IM is my primary means of communication with some of my friends it bugs me a little. The reason that they are invisible is because they are hiding from someone (or multiple people). I know what you might be thinking. Maybe they are hiding from me. Well, I don’t think they are. A lot of times they will IM me when invisible, and if I do IM them, they respond right away. So they are obviously hiding from someone that’s not me.
I think if you are going to go as far as to hide from someone, why have them on your buddy list to begin with? These friends that are invisible aren’t invisible just when they don’t feel like talking to a certain individual. They are invisible most of the time. The least they could do is set their status to away so if the person they don’t want to talk to does IM them, they can just pretend they are not there. That I don’t mind as much. One of the reasons I hate when people are invisible so much is because a lot of times my messages won’t go through because they are invisible. They just bounce back saying offline messaging isn’t available or the message was not sent because the user isn’t online. This happens most if they are using MSN. I also can’t send them files a lot of the time. So, if they are asking for a file and are invisible, it won’t let me send. If you feel the need to hide from certain people all the time, then delete them from your list. It’s that easy. Stop causing problems for the rest of us :)
St. Louis Bloggers Guild
This week I joined the St. Louis Bloggers Guild. I know a couple other people that were part of it and I figured it would be a good way to meet fellow St. Louis bloggers. I’m interested to see what kind of things they do, what the meetings are like, and what kind of wisdom they can impart on me. I’ve been blogging for 4 years now so it will be interesting to see the different opinions on blogging, social media, software, etc. that I’m sure the fellow members will have. I really want to get more involved in social media, hit up events such as the Bloggers Guild meetings, tweet-ups, and blog conferences, if we ever get a big enough one to hit St. Louis. BlogOrlando sounded like a great time this year. I would like to see something that big hit St. Louis. One of these times I’m going to have to make it to a conference. I know I’ll never blog for a living, but I think it would be cool to meet people who do and see how they do it. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get into podcasting, but I have no idea what I’ll have to talk about. Unless there is a market for Saved by the Bell podcasts. Is there? Please tell me there is. :)
Tonedeff- Warden (Love Lockdown Rmx)
One of my favorite artists, Tonedeff, created a remix of Kanye West’s Love Lockdown. Tonedeff states, “It’s not so much a remix is as it is a re imagining of the concept – added a bunch of instrumentation, new lyrics & hook, etc.” Well, whatever he wants to call it, it’s a great song. Make sure you give it a listen and then head on over to QN5.com to find out more about this talented artist or download the track, plus a house remix from the blog post. He is a great rapper, singer, producer, and lyricist. This is what good hip hop is about.
The Genius of Tupac
A lot of people dismiss Tupac as a typical thug. In fact, one of the comments on the Digg page stated:
I can see his point to an extent, however, this commenter is limited by what the media saw of Tupac most of the time. They never saw the good things he did, they rarely played the deeper songs on the radio, only the party and gangster tracks, they never showcased his poetry. At least his acting ability garnered positive praise (though, he usually portrayed a thug in the movies, but that’s an issue with Hollywood and typecasting of African Americans and not of Tupac himself). Read more
A New Medium
I read an article on Wired yesterday about SanDisk pushing to replace CDs with “SlotMusic,” basically an album, complete with artwork, on a MicroSD card. Five to 10 years ago, this might have caught on for a while. Let’s face it, CDs are crap. They are easy to scratch, and if you do, the whole thing is ruined. If this had come out in a cost-efficient way 10 years ago, we’d see slots built into most devices and maybe the success of iTunes would have been a bit different. We can’t really say for sure. The one thing I can say is this is a big mistake for another industry, the movie industry.
After a fight between Blu-ray and HDDVD we are seeing that neither are really winners. HDDVD is dead and Blu-ray sales are extremely low with no bright future in sight. What the SlotMusic’s failure is going to do, and it will fail because a physical medium for music is dead in a culture of iTunes and MP3s, is prevent other people from taking the chance to change other mediums. This SlotMusic card idea is perfect for movies. Movies don’t come with album art, so you’re not missing anything there. DVDs scratch just as easily as cds, so there’s another reason not to continue the disc medium, and with the increasing capacity of the cards, you’ll be able to put higher quality movies and extras on a single card. This is where DVDs should be heading. Unfortunately, I think the inevitable failure of SlotMusic will prevent that. Without widespread adoption, prices on cards will still be too high and you won’t see gadget manufacturers adding readers to TVs, DVD players (because you still need something to play your craptastic DVD collection), and other devices.