Vis-a-Vis

Life experiments: my 2011 Magic Mix

2011-01-02T20:05:00.000-08:00

wow 2010 is over and finished on a bang...of the good kind.
After 6 years in Orange San Francisco, I started working for Gracenote...which if you know me is pretty freaking awesome: music + tech!! Oh sweet life!

A very awesome end of year doubled with family's visit, an awesome New Year with dear friends and an impending trip to India. As of right now, my status is: heart full, gratefulness in full force, too much awesomeness!

If I am trying to recap my last year, it has been a mixed one for me:

What worked:
* Expressing my gratitude: Oh dear gosh, help me, I sound like a total Californian! Used http://thankfulfor.com/ daily for a few months until it was ingrained in my brain....and it works. I still had my bitchy days but I really do believe it changed my outlook on my life, away from the "what is not working right now" I tend to dive in otherwise.
Conclusion: Worked! Definitely doing it again this year
* traveling: that was awesome, SXSW, Coachella, Camping, Burning Man, renting cabins with friends. Awesome year filled with many fun events and awesome friendly faces. I have the hitch for longer and farther traveling though and next week I am going 2 weeks in India for a friend's wedding and to spend quality time with my girl RT, oh and my husband :). Excited I am!
Conclusion: will definitely be part of this year as well
* running: before running I never found an exercise that I liked to do so much that I will continue past the first few months. I have been running now for 2 years, I am still very slow and would love to be more consistent but I can truly say that I am addicted. It clears my mind, reduces my stress, makes me feel good and gets me outdoor getting this Vitamin D at least for these 3 times a week I am running our Bay.
Conclusion: so so glad I found this, definitely part of my 2011 magic mix
This year's objective: run consistently below 11:00 minutes a mile, do at least 2 half-marathon, break the 2:15 hours limit. (I know: I am slow!)

What did not work:
* growth: I felt stagnant this last year and this is scary for me. Learning and growth are a big part of what I seek for my life, and this last year it really hit me a few times that in my day-to-day life and especially at work I was repeating myself and not challenging myself enough. I did not feel that I was growing anymore and when Gracenote presented itself, I jumped on it. Totally the right time for it.
Conclusion: Hey new job, I fixed it!
* saving: well I can't say I did not have a lot of fun this last year between trips, shows,and overall good times but my savings account reflected it by being virtually empty...and that is becoming quite embarrassing knowing that I am way past my 30s and have no student debts anymore.
Conclusion: Need to fix
* sickness: not sure what happened last year but I got sick way too often. This new year resolutions definitely include eating better (more raw, more vegan, more wholesome), sleeping better, getting stress under control, exercise, practice yoga, meditate...oh and more bodywork
Conclusion: Need to fix

What will be in my 2011 Magic Mix:
* know what I am lucky for and express my gratitude,
* travel, continue the new experiences, deepen the existing one,
* run V, run: awesome stress killer for my overworked, overworried brain,
* some quite time, more wholesome food, exercise, practice,
* spend time with friends and family (& kitties, rabbity, and hubby): a no-brainer for most but quite a new one for me. Having been away from France since 1998, I thought that, especially from a family tie point of view, I was very independent, but this last trip with them, even with its little frustrations, left me more grounded and also more in touch with whom I became. And I was pretty happy of who that person was, and I think they were too:) Same thing with my time with friend, they leave me feeling better, that's how awesome they are; for socially awkward me, that's a new feeling.

Contended I am, 2011 I am ready

My SXSW week in numbers

2010-04-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

It has been years that I have been wanting to go to SXSW and gawd it did not disappoint, I truly, entirely, blissfully enjoyed it.
Rather than a full summary of it, I thought I would attempt to do a summary "a la Fetron" in numbers. Here we go:

numbers of days missed of SXSW: 4 -> This was the event that I could not wait to get to, so of course I had be sick before it started. I developed a pretty bad case of bronchitis. Interdiction to fly from doctor, plus anyways I was sick as hell and did not want to contaminate all of my awesome @sfembassy roommates (not best way to make friends right?), so I hold my horses until all was cured and arrived only on Monday, therefore missing most of the Interactive conference...oh well, at least I was fresh and ready for the music!!
numbers of panels and keynotes attended: 4 and 1 on that last day, as opposed to that ambitious schedule I had planned, ha! Reports were mixed on the quality of the panels, but I rather enjoyed mines and I absolutely loved the keynote I saw.
numbers of embarrassing fall from slippy stairs: 1 -> on my first night mind you, way to impress my fellow ambassadors.
numbers of bruises: 3 huge ones from the fall, and then a few other ones from Austin's apparently rough nights
numbers of RV ridden: 1 -> the RVIP lounge, moving Karaoke awesomeness, who knew that could exist?
numbers of songs sung in a moving Karaoke: 1 -> "ca plane pour moi"
numbers of places checked in: 20, thanks Foursquare oh and thanks for that party again :)
most checked-in at: @sfembassy the awesome place I had the chance to stay in, thank to Gabe & Amy from Sonic Living. An article was even written here on it.
numbers of concert in my living room: 1 -> the awesome bay-area based Ferocious Few -> superbe timelapse of their live here and the whole Ustream here
numbers of pedicab taken: 3
numbers of steps taken: 151,496 steps or 65.3 miles!! Thank you Fitbit for recording that! (and okay there might be a lot of dancing and jumping in there)
numbers of Tweets sent: 66 including tweets of almost all the bands/DJ that I saw
numbers of bands/DJs seen: 23
number one band discovered: super hard to do because there were so many awesome shows. If I had to pick only one then I would say that my favorite discovery was Bear in Heaven
number of days that went as planned: none but thoroughly enjoyed it -> I guess that's where I can see the comparison to Burning Man, too much stimuli, too much choices to follow an agenda
numbers of slices of Pizza taken: 6 -> one each day more or less
number of breakfast tacos eaten: 4, miam by the way
numbers of salad eaten: 1 -> I must have walked a few miles to find that place but oh that salad felt so good
numbers of Bloody Mary, Beers and Vodka consumed -> yeah that is not an easy one to track but nothing too crazy boss ;)
numbers of vitamins taken: 1 everyday religiously, did not want to get sick again
numbers of hours slept: way not enough
new awesome people met: oh many awesome new people were met <3>

Final result -> score of happy: high, very very high!

What are you thankful for?

2010-01-20T22:02:00.000-08:00

A quick update on my journey towards contentment, I have started using everyday this little tool "what are you thankful for today?" that Ian Li recommended based on my last post and I love it. Dead simple, integrated to Twitter if I want to shout out my thanks, and as I do it everyday, it forces me to take a moment to reflect everyday and appreciate my life. A little luxury that we rarely get to do as we usually rush to the next thing.

It is a little bit of cultural shock for me this positive psychology, after all I am French and we're supposed to be doubtful, sarcastic, critical and certainly not "positive":) I don't know if I am getting totally assimilated to San Francisco and its culture of optimism but I feel that this tool is working for me, as in making me definitely more appreciative of what I have today, as opposed to having me focused on my list of "shoulda", "want" or "have to".
The website recommends to do it for 2 months straight, I will definitely try.

2010: present, aware and contented...starting my journey in contentment and personal informatics

2010-01-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

2009 has been a really high and really low kinda year.
Highs of the election of Obama and the hope he inspired, lows of the crisis and its impact on my friends, my SO and even on me, lucky enough to have a job but type to worry anyways kind of gal.
In my highs: I remember starting the year by a nomination for an award at work, going back to France in June and spending quality time revisiting my country, hanging out with friends and family, then Burning Man, Decompression, Halloween at the Ghost Ship, my first Kayak experience, camping at Cherry Lake, that surfing lesson on my Birthday, the Japanese punk-rock show that same night, running my first half-marathon, music music music, Leonard Cohen, Bonnie Prince Billy, Rusko...just hanging out at my house with my purring machines, my friends and my guy and really enjoying it...finishing the year surrounded by friends in beautiful Yosemite, and also just the plain highs of walking/driving/biking/running in my city and taking in its energy and its beauty.
It's really interesting in one way how my Twitter, Sonic Living and my Flickr stream are a great living memories of these high and lows, (actually mostly of my highs) and how happy I am to have been documenting them so that I can reflect on how overall awesome of a life I have... if I ever dare to forget.
Side note: which is why Twitter needs to give me access to my full history, this is the closest thing I have to a living journal nowadays.

Continuing on that thread of documenting your life, I have been totally fascinated by the reports Feltron publish every year...beautiful visualization of all types of facts about his life in data. If I could do it for myself, what kind of patters would I find? What would I want to improve, what would I be satisfy with?

This year, my key resolutions are:
* to be more present and contented,
* to remember regularly to be grateful for what I have hence the documentation
*to work on some goals I set for my self: continue running (realized there were a strong correlation with feeling present and subsequently satisfied and running), talk to strangers more (one of my fear), be greener (I feel I could do much better), plan for more nature time (also correlate well with me feeling contended), live music (also so important for my sanity), be more connected with my community be it my friends & family but also other vegetarians, animal lovers, universal health care believers....and finally something I worked on last year but want to continue working on -> to fear less and try more.

As part of this process, I am going to attempt at documenting my life more this year beyond Twitter and Flickr. Some of this tracking will be done manually (trying Daytum and beta.metrics.com) but I also hope I will be able to automatize some of it. One simple area is to track my running activities where I can automatically track my runs and my progress with Nike+ and Runkeeper, but I will also look at my overall health, my sleep level (aka as no insomnia tonight = win) with Fitbit, my trips planned, my footprint...

Excited by the journey and what I will discover along the way

Tumblr FTW

2009-03-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

I know that I am very late in the game but Tumblr is pure awesomeness and perfect for my needs for spontaneous sharing over 140 characters...so if you were so ever inclined, you can find me over on Tumblr
and of course still very much on Twitter

me lazy blogger

2008-01-07T14:32:00.000-08:00

so as you may have noticed, I have been blogging very sporadically lately, okay very rarely lately :)

Truth is I belong to the burst generation, I like easy and spontaneous.
I am much more comfortable with the compulsory shortness of Twitter input box or the easiness of the lazy comments and quick recommendation of bubbletop, the thing I have been working on for a while now.

So 2 sites where you will be able to follow me more regularly if you're interested:

http://twitter.com/virginie -> for what I've been doing
http://virginie.bubbletop.com -> for my favorites of the moment on the internet

so sayonara for now on this blog and hope to see you on Twitter and Bubbletop

Sebadoh at Noise Pop 2007

2007-03-01T20:13:00.000-08:00

This week is Noise Pop in San Francisco, a very cool festival celebrating Pop and Rock'n Roll mainly, good from time to time to go back to the grind grind of the guitar.
Yesterday I went to see Sebadoh at the Great American Music Hall, the concert was a sold-out and I was pretty excited to finally see Sebadoh. It was an important band from my early 20s and I allways missed them. They are pretty historical band in fact, but you would never guess it from their attitude, I really like that about them, the antithesis of the star attitude.
Lou Barlow (was in Dinosaur Jr, then founded Sebadoh, also Folk Implosion, also follow his solo carrer) is credited for having invented the lo-fi style (meaning more authentic, not over produced, sometimes meaning home recorded). The 3 of them all sing ther own composition, switch instruments and just stay true to what they started as: experimentation, freedom and chaos even if it means aking us wait 5 minutes in between songs because they are switching places and gears. In short, very very cool show.
Other very good suprises from that show were Love of Diagrams, a two girls one guy band from Australia with an interesting punky Nu Wavy sound, and Bent Moustach, a Dutch band (i have a sweet spot for anything Dutch having lived 4 years there) with a very funny energy, mixing shoegaze and Dub. Very very nice live.

For more on these bands:
Sebadoh MP3s - they are asking for bootleg on their websites :-)
Sebadoh video
Video of Love of Diagrams
Bent Moustach on My Space

CSS (Cansei De Ser Sexy)

2006-11-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

Cansei de Ser Sexy - Alala

My latest discovery: CSS.
Do you know this band? Really fun, not taking themselves seriously at all 5 girls and a guy, self-proclaimed, self-taught musicians and singers but that got signed by Sup-Pop nonetheless, pretty amazing! They are from Brazil but you would not guess it, their sound is more European Electro-rock-trash. They don't sing in Brazilian but in English because as they proclaim it: their scene is the Internet. So you find them all over the net, they have their own "TV channel" on You Tube: CSS.tv.
The only thing is that I could not find their music digitally elsewhere than iTunes (well ok they are not on eMusic, the MP3 site I use, so I bought them DRMized, damm!)
Anyway, here is a video of them, enjoy!

Green Festival this WE

2006-11-06T22:36:00.000-08:00

so this is a busy week in San Francisco for the techies...there is of course the one and only web 2.0 conference. We also just finished the very good first ever on that subject Widget Live conference organized by Om and Niall, there will be web2point2 at the end of the week....but in a very different category, I wanted to point out an expo not to miss this WE: the Green Festival.
I volunteered to the first ever Green Festival 4 years ago (geez, time flies) and loved the vibe and energy from this conference. There is such a vibrant community and ecosystem in that field and so much innovations in there too. This year, I will be attending again but this time selling/promoting organic chocolates :-) for a small traditional chocolate company that started an organic line couple of years ago: Sjaaks Organics Chocolates. This should be fun, so if you're in the neighborhood, you should check it out....

Fresh song to put smile on your face

2006-09-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

I first heard LDN of Lilly Allen on Cognac Jay podcast, and I really like it.
A very charming, fresh, upbeat song.
Easy listening is nice sometimes, put you in good mood at each time.
I love her voice too, reminds me of the voice of the singer of the Cardigans.
And now I found this song available to download on Odeo.
Enjoy!

powered by ODEO

Back from Burning Man

2006-09-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

and once again it was brilliant, I think I enjoyed it even better than my virgin year amazingly.
Just awesome art, awesome landscape, awesome sunrise, awesome people watching, a lot of fun with my campmates and what I consider now a necessary condition for going to Burning Man: a life saving water air cooler for the hot afternoon...best birthday gift ever!
I posted some picture there, but for real amazing pictures go see the ones of Tristan.
And go check what is still keeping me dreaming there.

Silence radio

2006-07-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Long period without writing here,
a very short trip to Hawai to visit a friend, pictures to come soon
then a trip to France for my work....
pretty busy month of July, but a lot of good stuffs and I really can't believe how hot it is here...not to the point of missing San Francisco's summer fog though :-)
Back in SF end of next week

and so....

2006-06-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

to continue on that privacy/identity thought, here is Leonard Lin's view on where we will be in 2011:
"lobal digital identity / reputation / relationship system - as you're online persona gets tied to your offline persona and your physical presence (digital leakage?), this is a given. Perhaps the only real question is who will own and run this."

He also gives some other points that are very interesting with respect to what I am working on right now.

about privacy

2006-06-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

danah made an excellent post on privacy and government spying.
I have mixed feeling about the whole privacy issue.
Of course i don't like the idea of the government spying on me but at the same time I hate the whole "what about the privacy issue?" argument that is given at each time a company is trying to do something useful using customer's data.
For instance, i don't care about my privacy when I use last.fm because I think that me giving up a little bit of who I am is nothing compare to the added value last.fm brings to me in terms of social recommendations.
I don't really care as well about my privacy when I put my pictures on Flickr or hang out on MySpace...up to a certain extent as I realized little by little.
Same thing when using Google desktop search, there is so much thing Google knows or could know about me, but I don't really sweat it because I somehow trust them with my data and think they bring me considerable value in return.
Really privacy does not really exist anymore when I think of how much my banks, the government, Google...have for digital bits about us.
And I guess I had a little bit of that "so what I am not doing anything wrong, so why would privacy be such an issue" that Danah finds irritating.
At the same time, I totally and more and more understand her point that we are not always behaving in the "accepted social norms" and that it is important to protect that.
I came to realize this after several little incidents at my work showing me the limits of wanting to be transparent and open "digtally" and the impact it could have on the image I wanted to project:
- a coworker making me the reflexion that I was listening to some weird shits after I made all my itunes library accessible on our work network including some more breakcore and experimental electronic tracks that are pretty "noisy", and that it gave him a new perspective on me.
That's true that this is something I like but the image that goes with it is not something I want to portray at work. So I moved some of my tracks back to private and left what I thought would be "socially more acceptable"
- me showing to my boss Mercora and Last.fm and him fixating on: what is it that you're listening to? The new Pornographers? What is that? It is just an inoffensive pop band but going through the length of explaining it to my boss is something I could have lived without.
- my old manager saying "so had some fun last WE?" after I uploaded a bunch of pictures on Flickr of me and a co-worker celebrating at a very fun party where in some of them we may have looked a little tipsy...there again I moved these pics to "friends only", not that Sean, my old boss, cared at all but more because again of what image did I want to portray to my work sphere, as well as because of the fact that it was not just about me but about my co-worker as well.

So I guess there is what I am okay with portraying and there it is fine that my "attention data" are used and displayed because I find value in it... and then there are these embarassments or "not always socially acceptable" moments that I would prefer and should be able to keep to myself or a chosen inner social circle or even a trusted service provider. And I would love to have control over that.
Which is why an organization like Attention Trust is so important and why the ability to control who sees what will be a highly demanded service in the future.

Anyhow, excellent post from Danah with some serious food for thought

Pikeo is on

2006-06-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

a nice project from our center just went live. It has been on as a closed beta for a while, but it finally went public this week. Go register there.
It is a photo sharing site with a very nice Flex interface and nice features such as who, what, where tagging and a mapping interface, more to come...
Congrats to Celine, Vincent and Dmitry.
Talking about our center, work has been pretty intense lately, explaining why I have not been blogging as much.
We got some pretty cool people coming to our place lately though (for a seminar we had): Tara Hunt and Tim O'reilly among others. Both gave very inspiring speech, making me ven more motivated by my project. Good thing happening there too, let's see how things go.
Tomorrow, I will be heading to Haight Street Fair, that should be fun.

The podcasts I listen to

2006-05-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

So I realized that I was subscribing to a lot of podcasts but was really only regularly listening to the music-related ones (with one exception: RTL 19:00-20:00 that I listen to from time to time to get news from France)
I guess it's because I usually listen to my podcasts behind my desk at work and can't concentrate on spoken worlds while working. Too bad, I am subscribing to great content like ITC, but I end-up very rarely listening to them.
I wonder how true is it for other people as well, when you know that today most people listen to their podcasts on their computers. I don't take the time to synch them to my iPod. I guess this will change when podcasting-to-the mobile will become more mainstream, as then we will not need to synch anymore and then when I will have some time to kill or will be working out, I would have all of my great podcasts imediately available.

Anyhow, here are some music podcasts I would recommend:
Cognac Jay, podcast from a friend from France with some really good eclectic music,
Sub Pop, each week this great label podcast songs of its artists for download, very cool initiative,
Anticon, label that I love from Oakland, has some really cool podcast
All Songs Considered, show from NPR with a very different mix of artists at each time.

Grand Canyon

2006-05-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

After my week at Las Vegas for the CTIA show, I did a small roadtrip with Troy to Grand Canyon. It was actually nice to escape the craziness and business of Las Vegas for the desertic roads. Grand Canyon, sorry for the lack of originality but really, was gigantic. I loved it. It was so different from any other landscape I experienced and so big, this huge hole that goes on for miles and miles, just the result of erosion, amazing!
We experienced a stunning sunset, definitely in my top ones ever, at Desert View.
I definitely regret we did not take more time to explore the Grand Canyon, so wished we could have take a day hike to Colorado River. I so would have liked to see the other canyons too. Well, next time...damm this country is so big and so much to see!

Entre les deux

2006-05-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

mon coeur balance....

I am hesitating between these 2 phones for my next little gadget.
Both looks cute (very important factor for me), both do what I want in terms of multimedia (pics, video, music), both looks pretty small. What makes me hinch towards the Sony one is the fact that it seems to work very well with Mac and that the Samsung is sliding, which I am not sure I like. But the reviews for the Samsung are so good...
Any thoughts?

Review Sony K750i
Review Samsung SGH-D600

Master of my own destiny

2006-05-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

Love this illustration!
From Hugh

How come???

2006-05-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

So I am using Podbop to always know who is going to play soon in San Francisco, and still I am missing shows I really want to see because they are full.
At each time I am convinced I will get a ticket as in my view they are relatively small bands, but I guess a lot of people in San Francisco are listening to the same music as me.
I missed Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Ladytron (really bummed about that one), Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and now I am going to miss Mogwai, no!!!!
Anyway: so if you have any tickets for Mogwai for me, would be really really appreciated :-)

In July though, I will be going to the Flaming Lips and Ween at the Berkeley Greek Theatre, nice venue where I saw my favorite band ever last year, the Pixies.

On marketers and the blogosphere

2006-04-18T14:28:00.000-07:00

"The opportunity is not for marketers to pick off the chickens one by one but for marketers to unlearn what they have spent so long teaching themselves. The blogosphere is a vibrant human conversation. If marketers can learn to enter that conversation as humans first, talking honestly about what they care about, identifying themselves and exposing themselves, then they will be welcome in the blogosphere. But, of course, that means they cannot enter it as marketers."

David Weinberger

Last.fm and Pandora

2006-03-29T09:22:00.000-08:00

whoa, my 2 favorites music services combined in one!
okay, not the best user experience yet but very neat mash-up. I am going to play around with it for sure.

Talking about this Last.fm versus Pandora thing, here is an excellent post on them.

CTIA wireless

2006-03-29T09:20:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

will be at the CTIA wireless conference in Las Vegas next week, let me know if you would like to meet at virginied at gmail . com

Stunningly beautiful

2006-03-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Bridge
Originally uploaded by wmchu.

Beautiful pictures of San Francisco retrieved from the visual Search Engine Tiltomo, based on Flickr photos using the Tag San Francisco and following the same theme as the first one.
Okay, I did not understand how they defined themes, there are several types of pictures in there, not just landscape, but bottom line: San Francisco is beautiful and nice service from Tiltomo, my first try at a visual search engine.

what i've been up to

2006-03-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

- went to a Vegan Feast by chef Joshua Ploeg at the Purple House in Oakland where Nedelle was playing. Awesome food, awesome people and nice music. What more to ask!

- saw St Etienne, then went to hear some breaks at Shattered
- saw Sugar and Gold, and Persephone's bees (one of my favorite local bands) at Hemlock Tavern
- went to the record release party of Daly City Records from Mochipet at 111 Minna. Loved the set of Daedelus.
- saw Crash, beautiful complex disturbing movie on latent rascism and cultural stereotypes

- went to eat at Chutney in the Tenderloin and Country Station Sushi in the Mission. I love these restaurants.

- started Belly dancing at Fat Chance Belly Dancing

- played with the latest Yahoo! Music Unlimited functions that allow you to share music with your friends, very cool except useless unless your friends also have Yahoo! Music Unlimited!
I hate closed systems and I hate DRM!!
I really can't find one music service that gives it all to me, extensive music, good recommendations, easy porting, easy sharing, social features....well SongBird has a good concept, but has been a little buggy on me. I also I really cherish my subscriptions to E-music. It's pure MP3, no dirty DRM associated. However, it's more of a download type of place, the social features are not there, and although their catalogue is good, they don't have everything. Actually, I was pleasently surprised to see that some of the small artists I discovered here in the Bay are on Yahoo! Music...The beauty of the digital world.
MySpace Music is so prominent in terms of artists represented, it would be cool to integrate it witin a music service...

- today, the weather is bad, so I am staying in reading "This is Burning Man"

like this quotation

2006-02-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

from Jim Rapoza, Columnist, e-week

"Isn't saying that performing searches is one of the main reasons people use the Internet kind of like saying that riding in taxis is one of the main reasons people go to New York City?"

Podbop: I dreamed it, they made it

2006-02-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting something like this for a long time now. I am so fed-up of missing some good shows just beacuse I forgot to go look on all of my bands and venues website.
There, I can enter the name of the city I live in (only US for the moment) to see which bands will be playing and it also links to MP3s of the bands so I can listen to these MP3s in case I did not know the band. Cool way to discover new bands too.
I subscribed for San Francisco, and it will also send me the MP3 of the bands as enclosure. Nice! It uses Eventful API to get the live dates.
I tried for San Francisco: pretty nice resuts, but it misses the smaller venues and bands though.
It would be nice if it could retrieve show information for sites like MySpace (if they had an API), then it would get the smaller bands and venues.
Wish I could subscribe to some artists there too, so I will get their new releases as well as their tour dates
In any case, nice mash-up.

Do you know Parts & Labor and Pedestrian?

2006-02-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

To continue on this "do you know" theme, here are 2 bands I discovered lately that I appreciate a lot; both very different styles, both hard to put a label on except experimental:
-Part & Labor, experimental rock. I discovered them thanks to Catbirdseats blog. Here is the link to one of their upcoming songs: A Great Divide. I have their LP "Rise, Rise, Rise", made with Ty Braxton.
- Pedestrian, experimental hip-hop. Pedestrian is from the Oakland label Anticon.

Bubble 2.0 is a bubble in media

2006-02-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

Excellent post from Scott Karp about the digital media economy, the infinite number of choices available to us when our attention span stays constant. He mentions these points as being hi summary of Umair Haque’s theory of media economics.
To sum-up the most important points for me:
"When there were only a handful of content choices, there was plenty of attention to go around — and attention could be bought through marketing.
When there were only a handful of distribution channels, and the cost of entry was high, a handful of players could profitably compete for a slice of the attention pie.
Digital and network technology has lead to an explosion of content and distribution channels, i.e. a proliferation of media.
The proliferation of media is destoying the economics of Old Media, which depended on a finite media universe.
The proliferation of media is a bubble because it’s being driven by speculation — the 20 million bloggers and dozens of Web 2.0 sites popping up everyday are speculating on the unbundling of content and distribution.
As a result of the speculation in media, there is now too much media competing for too little attention.
When the cognitive dissonance of too much media choice becomes too great, individual media behavior, i.e. the allocation of attention, will become chaotic and haphazard. When this happens (and it already has), no one is going to be able to build a profitable business model because the two types of media dollars — advertising and content fees — won’t be able to flow efficiently.
What the user needs is help allocating a finite amount of attention. And the solution needs to be personal — perfectly tailored to each user’s needs. The user needs a personal killer app."

Do you know The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble?

2006-02-02T21:27:00.000-08:00

Do you know The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble?
They are my latest discovery on MySpace.
I guess a lot of people use MySpce to hook-up. I use it to catch up with my friends and to discover new music. Every small bands imaginable is on there. So my latest discovery:
The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble. From their website "The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble’s form of mutant jazz, slithers and slides...delicately painful. Each song, a little story of heartache, hope and perseverance, seemlessly fusing analogue and digital. Soundtracks to non-existing movies, inspired by the worlds of The Quay Brothers, Hieronymus Bosch, Picasso, Goya, Murnau and Lang."
I don't even like jazz usually (but is it Jazz?), but their sound touches me, very melancolic and beautiful.
They will be on Planet-Mu, home to some very very good electronic artists (Venetian Snares and Doormouse, two of my favorites)

Quote of the Day by Susan

2006-02-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

"4 years ago, I stated that from that moment on I wouldn't work on anything I didn't love, and I would only work on things I loved. (I needed to say it redundantly, because it felt wobbly inside, saying it out-loud. I was terrified.) As soon as I said, it I knew I could never go back. A door had closed. The old way was over and no longer reachable. I could not understand the old way, from that moment on. The new way had clarity, passion and intensity.

It doesn't mean I don't do a lot of hard, trying, difficult, long work, but I have to say, but the overall goal, the project, the commitment, must be something I love. And frankly I haven't worked for a second in the past four years. And I work all the time. Because it's not work. Down with work that you hate! Do only work that you love. And the work will pour in, you will have more choices that you know what to do with, the quality will be high, the satisfaction will be high, your life will change, and your free time will become so much more satisfying."
--Mary Hodder, CEO, Dabble

Nice!!

The Life Aquatic

2006-01-28T23:51:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching The Life Aquatic from Wes Anderson and I loved it! A really wacky and retro movie with some surreal visuals (loved the cut-up boat and the creatures), and some awesome dialogs and gags. I guess it's a "you hate or you love" kind of movie and I just got right into it. Bill Murray is perfect in it.
I highly recommend it and will be curious to know what you thought of it.

Lately

2006-01-28T11:40:00.000-08:00

so after one very enjoyable month in France, I have been pretty busy enjoying life here again, and discovered some pretty cool new stuffs:
- a fire opera show at the Crucible in Oakland.
Awesome combination of industrial arts, fire arts, symphonie and opera...kind of Mad Max and classical music merged together, loved it!
Plus some of the arts displayed there were part of my favorites at Burning Man, so nice to see them again.
- a Brazilian show, my first time, crazy considering the amount of time I have been spending with Brazilian people (oh no that's true, we went to see a singer long time back)....but anyway my first time dancing on Brazilian music, it was a mix of drums, breaks and electro, really liked it!

- Glyde Church in the Tenderloin (thanks to Edouard who has been evangalizing it non-stop last year)
Not something I would normally do on a Sunday morning, anybody who knows me would know that religion scares me more than attracts me, but that was something! The music, the very cosmopolite crowd (from the homeless from the Tenderloin, to the old black lady with her nice costum and nice hat, to the old guy with his mo-wack, the queer chorist, to ...well tourists like me), the singing, it was very fun.....very "American" dramatic too with the organizers giving away tissues to those with tears in their eyes. Bonno is known to come sing there sometime.

- brunch at Mama's on a perfect sunny day in North Beach.
From there, I took Ethel and Nico, both new to the city, to the top of the hill on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge that same perfect sunny day. Perfect view, pic to prove it just above.

- last Thursday finally I went with Ethel, Nico and Brett to the Persephone's Bee's at Cafe du Nord.
Loved that band!!! They are from oakland, the girl is originally from Russia. They have a lot of presence on stage, and you can't really put their music in one particular genre which I like a lot.

So 2006 is starting right, I am loving it! (oh and I bought my tickets for Burning Man 06....yeah!)

Pink

2006-01-12T22:38:00.000-08:00

well for 2006, I decided I will go pink...well at least for my blog :-)

Wikipedia and Breakcore

2006-01-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

voila, if I had to demonstrate the power of the so-called "web 2.0", I will use this:
if you now make a search for breakcore (which is a style of music that I affection a lot) on Google, you will find this article from Wikipedia, which explains it and lists its main artists.....impressive when you know how "obscure" this music is!!!!
Ahhh, so okay this web 2.0 thing is very much hyped but I love Internet!!!

Songbird

2005-11-29T21:41:00.000-08:00

so does it mean that I will be manage all my audio apps (iTunes, Odeo, Last.fm, Yahoo,...) from one UI?
I am really curious to try app!
From Techcrunch "One thing to clear up is that Songbird is not an online application - it is (among other things) a next generation media player."

Country Station Sushi

2005-11-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

I went to Country Station Sushi last WE to celebrate the departure of Sylvia back to Germany. My first time there and I loved it!
There are a lot of good sushis place in SF, but this one is out there, may be more because of the ambiance than because of the food (although as a veggie, I was happier than in most japanese restaurant I've been too)
A very fun cozy little place with wacky decorations and funny chefs and waitress...they all scream "welcome" in Japanese when you come in (forgot how to say it), they have a very nice selection for the vegetarians, I heard everything is organic, pretty loud Rock n Roll music, no sign at the door, very informal and fun place!

Ladytron

2005-11-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

My latest discovery, I have their album Witching Hour and I really like their sound.
Syntheto Pop band with influence from shoegaze and my bloody valentine (w/o the guitars), cocteau twins, stereolab.

Back from Ontario...

2005-11-16T15:28:00.000-08:00

...and the podcasting conference was absolutely great...
There were a lot of interesting and original people, and a very positive energy.
Many mentioned the fact that it reminded them of the Pre-Internet days "we don't know where it is going but it is going to be huge"
The French community was surprisingly well represented: Jean-Michel, Arnaud, Thomas, Bertrand, Herve from Europe1, and Jean-Louis and Frederic (from an upcoming start-up Pycreus around Metropolitan Portable Media…more to come).

A lot of good time with them and interesting discussions, it seems like France is a very dynamic market for all what is blog and podcasting...our love for ranting and raving may be :-)

So what did I find the most interesting:
1. The two kick-off keynotes of the first day were the best way to start the conference in my opinion.

A first one very business oriented, Jason Calacanis, from Weblogs, Inc (that he sold to AOL), and a second-one very grass-root oriented from Leo Laporte, from This Week in Tech "we are doing it for the passion" kind of speech.

In the first keynote titled: "Podcasting - Huge or Hype? Handicapping the Business Models", Jason had some definitive takes on one of the underlying question of this conference: what business model for podcasting?
Basically, trying to be a podcasting directory or a podcasting search engine is bound to fail on the long run because there are too many companies and the big guys are already occupying the market.
Becoming a podcast network makes more sense for him, but need big talents. The revenue model there will be advertising.

Other business model:
1. creating podcasting creation software: "I want to be the Microsoft of Podcasting". The revenue model will be around selling the software.
2. hosting: "I want to be the GMAIL/ Geocities of Podcasting!" The revenue model there will be advertising. For Jason, the recording tool existing in the market are kind of overkill compare to the needs of a basic podcaster so there are definite opportunities there.
3. Podcasting Ad Network: "I want to be the Google AdSense of Podcasting"
Jason sees great opportunities there for the company that can do it right. More challenges than text-based advertising. A company that it mentions is Fruitcast.
4. Being a podcaster: success will greatly depend on talent. If talent, then winning business model. "Talent wins"

The second keynote speaker was Leo Laporte (used to be heading a small tech TV show) and has now one of the most popular Podcast: This Week in Tech.
Very charismatic and funny character. In his keynote, he talked about the limit of traditional medias and the frustration he felt: very constrained environment, same content everywhere…
Podcasting at the opposite is a very free medium and one does not need a huge audience to continue podcasting. "you can't build a cable network on a niche but you can build a strong podcast on a niche"
I am really NOT a fan of Howard Stern but Leo played a segment of what Howard Stern thought about podcasting, and I have to admit this is funny: "somebody talking endlessly in his living room? if I want to hear that I would get married"
Leo concluded his keynote by saying that you gotta have passion, if you do then the rest follows…

The major questions/ideas floating around were:

- Will podcasts kill the radio stations? (well no if we look at the top podcast on iTunes France as Loic Le Meur shows it. This shows that podcast has been quickly recognized as a great way to repackage content for the radios, but there are still places for quality niche content…the challenge is how to discover it?)

- Business model for podcasts? (advertising came back the most often)

- How to make a living out of podcasting? (importance of the brand, the passion and the talent)

- Podcast and the Long Tail, of course podcasting fits right in this concept of the Long Tail…one interesting thing here is that what counts most in podcast in terms of advertising opportunities is not the size of the audience as it is with traditional media, but its quality and its attention. One podcast may have a very small audience, but if fits right in a niche then this podcast is worth a lot to those trying to reach that audience…

There were a couple of very interesting panels at this conference as well, on difficult topics such as music and legality. Everybody agreed that incompatible and DRMs that are too rigid will not work. There are interesting initiatives in the music area to make it safe for podcasters to use music: Podsafe, Creative Commons, and independent labels opening their music to podcasters. Marisol of Ioda (a San Francisco based Independent digital distribution) was telling me they will make some of their catalogs available. This is excellent news for independent artists. At the end, major labels may regret not embracing this movement because after-all these podcasts are made by people passionate by the music they promote, and listen to by exactly the target audience, so at the end these are great marketing vehicles.

Finally, Bertrand did not like it as much, but I really enjoyed the presentation from Noah, co-founder of Odeo. Okay, granted, I am a little bit of a fan of Odeo, but I really think that they are after something pretty smart. For Noah, there are a few podcasters that will make a living out of podcasts, but then there is the rest of us (a big chunk of the population) that just want to have casual conversations. And that is what they are after with their creation tools; make it easy to exchange with each others audio-messages in a one-to-many way (me to my tribe).

All in all, I really enjoyed this conference, great people, great time, felt like I was into something big, will definitely be there next year…

oh and for the funny anecdote, the name of our conference was Portable Media and Podcasting and we were sharing the Ontario Convention Center with a Portable Potty conference :-) ...true!

Leaked Memo from Microsoft CTO

2005-11-09T21:52:00.000-08:00

and excerpts from Susan Mernit: blog

I find it very fascinating how the message of this very well articulated memo is similar to our thoughts here at my work,
how hard though it is to deliver things that "simply work"...especially in a big organization such as ours

Portable Media Expo and Podcasting

2005-11-08T21:24:00.000-08:00

I will be at this podcasting conference in Ontario, California, this end of the week.
Drop me a message if you will be there as well and would like to meet.

Why I love San Francisco so much

2005-11-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

Nice list on Yelp on these little things that make San Francisco so unique, I would add to that:
the Golden Era (awesome veggie restaurant in the Tenderloin), New Ganges (other awesome veggie restaurant in Cole Valley), the vegetarian Indian cooking class with the lady from Other Avenue,
111 Minna111 Minna (art gallery, live music, sometimes yappie, sometimes artsie, sometimes punkie, very diverse nights and crowds), the Bimboin North Beach, Burning Man (okay not in San Francisco, but so "san franciscan"), people watching at the terrace of the Ty-Couz in Valencia, Cole Valley, Critical Mass (where the bikes take over the center of San Francisco once a month), the Green Festival, the Folsom Street Fair (because I think that this kind of festival can happen only in San Francisco), Halloween in Castro (I am kind of crowd-phobic but has to be done once), the crazy hills downtown, the victorian houses, Point Reyes....
and of course, my very very eclectic group of friends....
I love living here!!

Loic Le Meur

2005-10-31T22:08:00.000-08:00

Loic came to visit us last week at our lab,
Very interesting character, so young and already did so much.
I was also positively surprised by his character: very respectful, looked very genuine and we can see he is very passionated by what he is doing...
Nice of him to post the group picture we took....

Key Take Points:
key characeristic of and necessity for a blogger is honesty,
corporations need to understand the blogging phenomena and be true in their tackling of this new medium
blog is allowing anybody with enough passion and talent to make a living out of their passion, this in a much easier way than in traditional business
web 2.0 is about discussion

Here is a website he showed that I absolutely loved:
LesFraises
the guy proposes design for T-shirts and people vote on the ones that should be printed...brillant I think...and the guy is actually able to live out of that

Pandora, Last.fm

2005-10-31T21:37:00.000-08:00

Although different, they are my 2 favorites online music services at the moment.

Last.fm analyzes what you are listening to on your computer or on your portable device, keeps statistic on them online and based on that find "neighbors" that match your musical taste.....it also creates a pesonalized radio station which is a mix of what you're listening and what they think you would like....the same way you are able to listen to other people's stations. Really like it. Nice way to discover new music. Here is my profile there.

Pandora unfortunately is not free anymore, I wonder how many "testers" they convince to subscribe (I did not do it yet for instance). Anyhow, they have a really cool service I think. You give them an artist as entry point and based on that they will create a personalized radio station that you can modify with a Thumbs-Up (more of that) and Thumbs-Down (less of that).
What is very original there is their recommendation is based on how songs actually sound rather than the usual Amazon type recommendation (you like this, other people that like this also like that). Pretty nice way to discover/re-discover new music too...

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

2005-10-31T21:30:00.000-08:00

I discovered this band through NPR podcast "All Songs Considered",
awesome! really like them, I love this kind of good musical surprise...unexpected, charming and original...

The Odeo Blog: Podcasting for Regular People

2005-10-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

The Odeo Blog: Podcasting for Regular People

The Death of Television

2005-10-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

"When Hollywood and cable executives look at the record companies, they see an industry in decline. What they should see is a business that failed for too long to offer its customers what they want: portability, searchability, and the chance to buy the two songs you like without the 10 you don't."

About Publishing

2005-10-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

and Verisign buying Moreover
From John Paczkowski
"But increasingly, publishing in mass media as well as the corporate world will start to look a lot more like the blogosphere, at least in terms of the architecture. And it won’t be because of the hype of 'Web 2.0' or the trendiness of blogging, but because the underlying model – publish > ping > analyze > aggregate – simply works better than the old one."

Spam

2005-10-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

So I even get spammed in my blog.....I want to keep the comments open in case somebody was really reading my blog but I don't want all these junks in my comments either.
Any suggestions?

Web 2.0 or not

2005-10-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

Making fun of the almighty
Web 2.0

About Web 2.0

2005-10-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

What is a platform? by ZDNet's Richard MacManus -- Leading up to the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on 5-7 October, many people are asking: what is Web 2.0? It's a difficult question to answer, because it can mean different things to different people. The most common explanation is that Web 2.0 means the current generation of the Web, where the Web is [...]

Burning Man

2005-10-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

was absoluely incredible!
I will never use a disposable camera again, my pictures are lame and really do not reflect the beauty of what I saw!

Anyway, hopefully Lawrence took some very nice ones.

Connecting the dots

2005-06-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

I know a little bit of a groupie but:
Transcript of Commencement Speech at Stanford given by Steve Jobs June 14,
2005
there

Apple and Intel to Merge

2005-06-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

According to this blog, Apple's move to incorportate Intel's chip into its next Macs is just a first step towards merging with Intel. Schocking thought but that makes some sense. However, one cannot discount Apple's huge brand equity, Steve Jobs' ego and Apple's strategy to become more of a digital company than a PC company.
Let's see....

The Fall of the iPod?

2005-04-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

While Apple has been posting stronger than ever quarterly sales and profit thanks to its success in the digital music space, many are predicting its fall because of the next generation of music-playing mobile phones. (Examples: Business Week, CNET , MocoNews)
Since 2001, Apple shipped 15 million iPods, in comparison 1.4 billion people worldwide possess a cell-phone. These figures show the potential of a mobile-music service, which is why many operators have launched or are preparing to launch their own music store. Operators have also not been enthusiastic about the Motorola-iTunes phone as it allows the transfer of the music from the PC to the phone, therefore bypassing their networks and cutting them out of the revenue-share.
Personally, I don't think that today, MP3-enabled mobile phones are a threat for Apple because of battery and hardrive limitation, as well as poor quality of music and lack of easiness-of-use. In the longer term, as technologies evolved and as current limitations are solved, they could be a bigger threat for Apple and mobile music an interesting opportunity for the operators. However, there are still some issues that we need to address at both the operators’ level and the terminals’ level:
o Operator’s music service: If I am satisfied with the service that Apple or RealNetworks provides me, and that I already have a large library of songs with these service providers, would I be interested in having my operator as my music provider? Considering how cheap and fast it is to transfer my songs from my PC to my device, will I be interested in Over-The-Air (OTA) downloads? When I am able to buy a song for $0.99 on Apple iTunes Music Store, would I be willing to pay a higher price to download it on my phone? If I am at home and want to listen to the song that I downloaded on my cell phone on my PC or stereo, would I be allowed to? Would I have the freedom to download a song directly to my PC or the device I choose?
o MP3-enabled mobile phone: o the iPod has been successful partly because of its simple user interface. All the hard work of downloading songs, managing the library, creating playlists … is done on the PC at the iTunes level, the iPod is really only a tool to store and listen to my music. In the case of the mobile phone, there will be a lot of work to be done in order to create a simple music experience and at the same time integrate all the traditional functions of the mobile phone (communications, contacts, calendar,...). This is why I believe that, for music on mobile, a dedicated cellular device for music will have more success than a multi-function phone, and this is also why I believe that high quality MP3 players will still have demand in the future.

In conclusion, looking at these issues, Apple music solution still has some good years ahead. Music on the go is still a very interesting opportunity for operators and handset manufacturers; however I believe that the issues listed above will have to be addressed in order to launch a mobile music service that appeals to users.

Simply Hired

2005-03-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

Few months ago,
we were talkimg about RSS and aggregators and my friend Ray came up with this concept of aggregating job postings from all job sites, and damm, now it exists!

Check it here

I whish they add a RSS button and a "and the surrounding areas" option but it's a nice service.
wonder what their business model will be? contextual ads? being purhased by Yahoo or Google? the look and feel makes me think of Google or Technorati or Flickr.....
Anyway, it is very hard to come up with an idea that nobody is working on yet in this area!

Music on Mobile

2005-03-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

A lot of things happening in the Mobile Music space.
Latest news, Sony Ericson is launching its line of "Walkman phone"
Sony is trying to leverage its fame from the Walkman era.....and counter Motorola (with its iTunes phone) as well as Nokia/Microsoft combination......
so Music on Mobile is hot this year....
Personally I believe more in it than in TV on mobile, another hot topic.....
especially in this country (US) where people are majoritarily taking their cars while commuting.
It's more practical to listen to music than to watch TV while on the move
I believe that TV if delivered in a user friendly way have some market for spontaneous use (I am waiting in a queue, why not watch a news clip, a trailer, etc...) but not for repetitive use....Music has much more potential for revenue....

At first view, the Sony Ericson W800i looks very cute,

Here

Same design as the current line, a Music Joystick for easy access to your library, cute....

Of course, it will not work with Apple standard but it will work with Sony music store.....

So once again, the question for this year is:
do customers want all-in-one wonders that do everything kind of okay?
or a specific device tailored for a specific need (the iPod)?

CTIA Wireless & IT 2004- 10/24/04

2004-10-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

want to the Wireless Data University at the Moscone West Center.
Although it was on a Sunday and that my WE was short, really appreciated.
was my first conference thanks to my work.

A lot of interesting talks and ideas,
was the most impressed by the CEO of Vindigo, really sharp, good presentator, pragmatic in his approach to mobile data,
seemed really young too!