Using the web app @ twitterscribe I can back up old tweets to PDF.

I began to find that I was simply adding people that added me, take them for a test run and then decide to continue or not. I notice a lot of users having near on equal amounts to how many people follow them to how many they follow. I began to realise this wasn’t for me.

Looking at this it is an interesting statement on people using Twitter, it can be customised to be what YOU want YOUR Twitter to be. Over the weekend I caught up with some a few close friends I’ve known online for many years. One of them being the person that introduced me to Twitter. So it got me thinking, I started to use this just to follow the people I knew in real life or long time friends from different haunts from around the world, why have my twitter habits suddenly changed? Why did I feel the need to follow everybody that followed me?

I made the decision at that point, to drop some new and long term Twitter followers, it was a very hard decision to come to. These are people I added years ago and was just keeping as ‘followers’, sure I enjoyed reading the tweets but I would often be more interested in the updates from my well known close friends in my life.

Im really sorry, if you’re reading this, and you are one of those people I unfollowed. It’s not you, it’s me. This is a change for me, I’ve enjoyed your tweets, but now it’s time to move on for me. Find new people to follow, people outside of my hometown … I’ve begun to see life as something all about new experiences. This is a small step in not ‘holding’ onto things just for the sake of it.

Catch you on the twitters … maybe.

The inner n3rd in me couldn’t let this milestone go without a blog update. After being on last.fm for nearly 4 years I’ve finally hit the 1337 number of artists in my collection. w00t?

That’s really it, so now lets make it more exciting with some more ‘numbers’ with some Wolfram Alpha action:

So that (just under) 4 years works out to be ’1451 days’ meaning that for majority of this time I’ve been discovering a new artist nearly every few days or nearly every day. To take this a step further too, since signing up I’ve been working as a web developer/graphic designer working at my machine, headphones on lost in the sound of music while I create away.

Lets just look at working days and we have 1036 weekdays, meaning I’ve discovered at least ONE new artist every working day for the last 4 years. Now I know these aren’t all “new” artists, as I listen to a range of older/newer music, but its definately showing my “range” of listening habits … and I honestly didn’t think I have listened to such a great variety.

Anyway, the milestone was met … who was the lucky artist?

*drum roll*

Blackout Beach

I discovered their album ‘Skin of Evil’ via last.fm (oh the irony), through my love of Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, Handsome Furs etc … from a few listens so far I’m in love with the record. I found a review that sums it up perfectly:

“Skin of Evil is hardened, seamless, and totally unrelenting, everything full-bodied and visceral about Frog Eyes squeezed until it sublimates. This is scary, ethereal shit. It’s also a gorgeously captivating half hour of bedroom pop pushed screaming out of bed. “

Purchase: Blackout Beach – Skin of Evil on iTunes

PS: Add me on last.fm … last.fm/user/sunky_ … yeah I’ve got an underscore at the end because “somebody” had my username already.

Would you like to know ‘the super magical awesome way’ how to gain 10 followers in less then a minute?

Simple, get mentioned on national radio. After a simple tweet reply to the lovely Rosie Beaton being read out on air across the nation … I had just over 10 followers add me within less then a minute. So there you have it, want the followers, get on the traditional forms of media … crazy huh? I should have pimped my twitter all those others times I was on there for Ozphoria (shameless pimp: @Ozphoria)

So big thanks to @SuperRequest for embracing the twitterverse and a big ‘HELLO’ to my new followers.

(PS – Please take this with some good humour and do not take this seriously as a way to ‘increase your followers’ … I’m so over reading those lists.)

Up to speed now?

Seen the Dad sing about glow-in-the-dark towels, heard the daughter sing like a banshee and watched the guy ‘sing that tune that will impress his band mates?’. Its by far the worst (greatest) bit of advertising Microsoft have ever done. We can all agree it is cheesy, but the cheese factor is what makes this work. A product like this is aimed at the tween market, the kids that want to be like their older siblings and friends. While everybody is off playing Singstar to songs they know, this younger market who doesn’t know the lyrics to “Mr. Mister - “Broken Wings” are able to make up a song and have a beat created for them. It is just like the ‘old days’ and hitting ‘Samba’ or ‘Rock’ on your preset controls on your Casio keyboard.

Where this ad works for Microsoft is that it has now become the latest internet ‘fad‘, because its advertising is so incredibly funny.  Youtube members and bloggers around the world are forwarding the link, and from this it is gaining so much exposure. More than any ‘traditional’ media spots could ever get. All it will take is to be sent to somebody who has a son or daughter that would actually benefit from such a product, and they’ve got a sale. If this was a straight forward ‘This is how you use Songsmith’ type advert, it wouldn’t have same effect at all. The cheese factor is strong here.

Microsoft have always created what would be deemed as ‘cheesy’ advertising. From the early days, right up to the Jerry Seinfeld failure of advertising. While their number one competitor, Apple, were all about the stylized ’integrate with your life adverts’, Microsoft went for the ‘used car salesmen‘ approach. Yet somehow, it worked … and well.  

So now with the latest Songsmith advert doing the rounds, there is a new sub-pop-culture phenomenon happening with Songsmith Remixes. This is just adding fuel to the fire for Microsoft, this is spreading the net (pain) even wider. With the premise behind Songsmith being: ‘Sing a song, we’ll add the music’, close clever boffin’s out there are taking the vocal tracks from well known songs and putting them into Songsmith. Sometimes with horrendous results. Take for example the mid 90′s classic acoustic Brit pop anthem, Wonderwall by Oasis. Put this into Songsmith with Liam’s phrasing and lyrics the song becomes a early 90′s techno dance anthem, which could have happened if Oasis didn’t find the Beatles and were inspired by Gary Numan instead. 

So Microsoft, even though I despise you for selling the world an inferior, bug ridden, flakey (and cheap) operating system for all these years. I applaud you for this wonderful approach to advertising, but one question still remains. Where can I get these glow-in-the-dark towels, and how much?

Day 001 of Project 365

In 2008 my wife, Bree (aka Pants), undertook the rewarding project of taking “A photo a day“. The idea behind this is to document the year of your life, whether you were sick, at work, on holidays or just not in the mood to deal with other people – you still have to take that photo. As 2008 has now finished we both spent last night looking back at all the photo’s from the year, and it reminded us of some amazing times from the past 12 months.

Whether it was meeting Jimmy Chamberlin from the Smashing Pumpkins, flying to New Zealand for my cousins wedding or packing our belongings to move into our new house, this project gave us both an amazing way to remember everything we did this year.

So I’ve been inspired to document my year of 2009 . I’m undertaking the project myself (along with a few hundred others via Twitter/Flickr) … one day down, 364 to go.

(I’ll try to look a bit happier in the rest of the photos)