Beatport = Excellent source of electronica

I never really got into buying songs online. When iTunes Store first opened, I bought a few albums from it because I own an iPod, but very quickly I was deterred by the fact that I can't even play my iTunes purchases on my Squeezebox because of the DRM-protection.

Annoyed by the situation, I subscribe to Rhapsody Unlimited, which let me cue up pretty much anything I want for a low monthly subsription fee of $12.99. When I find something I really want to own, I just go buy the CD and rip it to MP3 so I can play it anywhere.

Then Amazon introduced Amazon MP3 Downloads, and it changed everything. Really, what's not to love about being able to purchase DRM-free MP3s encoded at 256k? I thought that the 1-click and ship to feature was evil in getting many books that I probably do not need then.. that's until I discover the even more instantly gratifying 1-click and download MP3 :)

Just when I thought that there can't be anything better than 256k DRM-free MP3 downloads, I discovered Beatport yesterday. Beatport offers 320k DRM-free MP3! To top it off, it even offer WAV (16-bit 44 kHz) and 192kbps M4A!



Little did I know, the site was actually launched in 2004, and the latest version as seen above was released in August 2006. Beatport focuses on electronic music specifically, with an eye squarely focusing on DJs and electronica lovers. In other words, it's made for me.

The content is top-notch, and I am able to get to a lot of remix tracks that I would not otherwise been able to get my hands onto if I were to browse on mainstream music sites (such as those described above).

Highly recommended!

Related SML Universe
+ SML Music
+ SML Remix Music
+ Symphonic Electronica

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

UT LOOP! / 2008 / Uniqlo

Yet another fantastic play toy from Uniqlo:




Play the full thing at http://www.uniqlo.com/utloop

via IconSpam by RSNJ

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

Ten Thousand Cents

Screenshot: http://www.tenthousandcents.com

Ten Thousand Cents is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon's Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100.

The project was a collaboration between Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima.

Here's a video documentation:


Ten Thousand Cents from Ten Thousand Cents on Vimeo.

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

Yahoo! Live

http://live.yahoo.com/

Kind of like Kyte, except with better UI – but it does not do video streaming captured on mobile phones which the Kyte platform allows.

In a gist: Yahoo Live allows anyone with a Yahoo ID to broadcast webcam video stream from multiple users at the same time. Y! Live was previously used at the Winter Music Conference which streamed live video stream from different events: http://live.yahoo.com/evt/wmc/

Y! Live is currently under an experimental release, and supports a highly customizable widget for your live feed. I will provide more details after I play around with this a little bit further.

Bonus: you can follow @ylive on Twitter to see if there’s anyone broadcasting live from the site: an interesting idea to get audience.

Updates
+ 2008-04-27: In the original blog post published on 2008-04-25, I have incorrectly stated that Yahoo! Live does not have native Facebook and MySpace support, and i was informed by the development team that there is in fact two Facebook apps and MySpace implementation developed. Details to be posted shortly.

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

Dipity = RSS-driven interactive timeline

Found this nifty site called Dipity yesterday which will turn any RSS feeds (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, you name it) into an interactive timeline.

The most straight-forward thing to do is of course to visualize your own data:


Interactive version:
http://www.dipity.com/user/seeminglee/timeline/See_ming_Lee

Since it's RSS-driven, you can create anything. Here's a visualization of IconSpam:


http://www.dipity.com/user/seeminglee/timeline/IconSpam

Source: via Lifehacker

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

PicLens = Image browsing made easy

I don't know how I managed to not know anything about PicLens until today.

PicLens is a browser plug-in which transforms image streams into a full-screen browsing experience. I installed the Firefox extension this morning and I'm in image surfing heaven moments after.

Here's a quick demo on YouTube before my review:



I have been on Flickr for a while now and have accumulated a lot of contacts over time. All of my non-friend contacts on Flickr are folks that I have made a decisive choice to maintain contact because I respect their photographic creation. 1000+ sounds like a lot, but when you consider that more than 24 million people are active on Flickr everyday, a thousand is actually quite a small amount.

While my intention is to be amazed by my colleagues' work, the paging mechanism + thumbnail clicking has also become rather annoying overtime. I tried using the Slideshow module to go through my contacts' photos, but the 200 count limit imposed by Flickr still create some problem.

PicLens does not impose image count limit to any browsing. The browsing model is also so fluid, transparent and intuitive that require zero learning-curve.

With this tool, I did something I have never done on Flickr today:
1. I browsed through every single image posted to my contacts' recent photos.
2. I browsed through the entire photostream from a contact I recently added.

There is no way I could have tolerated this process if I were to do this in Flickr's native interface. It has also replaces the need for flickrleech now, which I must say have served me quite well before PicLens.

But PicLens does not only do Flickr, it also does Facebook, YouTube, Google Image Search, Yahoo Image Search, and the list goes on... I tested it on Google Image Search and had the first tolerable experience on Google Image Search today.

This tool is indispensible. Highly recommended!

Related SML Universe
+ SML Del.icio.us: Flickr + Tools
+ SML Tools
+ SML Wiki: PicLens

Source: via IconSpam

©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

Connected Unconscious = global multimedia art and music extravaganza

is... a collaborative exhibition produced by BrooklynArtProject.com and the Brooklyn Academy of Music featuring work by 15 top emerging artists from around the world.

Opening night is tomorrow (Thursday, April 17, 2008) 6-8pm Free at BAM with free cocktails, but you should RSVP.

(below is C+P'ed)



Connected Unconscious is a collaborative exhibition produced by Brooklyn Art Project and
BAM celebrating the creative possibilities of our web 2.0 connected world. Featured work includes 15 original pieces from members of the BrooklynArtProject.com community of 1100+ members from over 22 countries.

RSVP NOW // ART, COCKTAILS & REMIXES
In addition to all the great art, we'll be playing Connected Unconscious theme based video and music remixes created for the exhibtion by rising star Brooklyn DJ's, curated by Halcyonline.com. Enjoy free cocktails courtesy of BAM and meet all the artists flying in from around the world to
participate.

Opening Night // April 17th - 6-8:00 pm // Free -
Exhibition dates // April 17th - May 11
Venue // BAM Natman Room located at 30 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, NY

Featured Brooklyn Art Project Members:
+ Foon Foono — Singapore
+ Josh Heilaman — Oklahoma city, OK
+ Derek Lerner — Brooklyn, NY
+ Maya Bloch — Tel Aviv, Israel
+ James Cospito — Brooklyn, NY
+ Sarah Nicole Phillips— Brooklyn, NY
+ Stephan Fowlkes — Brooklyn, NY
+ Kim McCarthy — Seattle, WA
+ Jun-Jun Sta.Ana —Chicago, IL

JURIED WINNERS
+ Maria Sochaniewicz
+ BriAnna Olson
+ Louis Caldarola
+ Erica Falke (Drexel)
+ Jax Chachitz

HALCYON AUDIO/VIDEO REMIXES
+ Crybaby — Romeo Alaeff
+ The Pimps of Joytime/Bonita — Remix by Dj OBaH
+ Displaced Construction #1 — Ezekiel Honig and Joshua Ott
+ Bedroomz — Levon Vincent and Brian Crumley

Cost: FREE!
Official Site: http://www.brooklynartproject.com


©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe