State of Mind of The Arts » Fun

The RIAA – Know Your Rights? No, You’re Wrong?

Mic Mell — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:49:59 +0000

Spotted on: YouTube

Hello, Linkie Winkie ; )

Eric Marden — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:57:18 +0000

As Chief Technology Officer for Polyvibe Entertainment Group, and the resident internet-nerd, I am a bono-fied stats geek. Every email we send, every myspace post, every blog post, every news update, every everything, I look to see if what we did made an impact on our site traffic and our visibility. So, as I was going through the list of bots in our feedburner stats, I noticed a new one. The one that calls itself Linkie Winkie. What’s interesting about this bot is that the corresponding page is decidedly lo-tech and quite spartan, only sporting a few links and an Alexa traffic chart. The only other text on the page is this cryptic description:

“Linkie Winkie is a bit of a social experiment and we want to see what happens. We’re not going to tell you much about it, except that its a very altruistic little site and loves to be talked about.

So if you can work out what it does, and get your timing right, then Linkie Winkie might help you out for a while.”

From what we can tell, by giving a shout out to Linkie Winkie, they will in turn to give you a shout out. How it does this, is still a mystery, but one blog discusses the effect of Linkie Winkie, while the other provides a bit on who is behind the experiment.

I’ll provide an update here if anything comes of this, but participating in a social experiment of the web 2.0 variety just seemed like a fun think to do on a Friday evening.

How REM got their Name

Eric Marden — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:00:09 +0000

Chris Anderson, one of the editors for Wired Magazine, and author of ‘The Long Tail‘ — an excellent book about the niche economy, recounts the story of how the multi-platnum band REM got it’s name, or should I say got to keep it’s name, on his blog.

The long and the short of it? Chris was in a synth-pop band back in the day, that was also called REM. Both bands were just starting out, and got booked at the same club on the same night (they staged it as a battle of the REM bands). The winner, chosen by audience applause, got to keep the name. The loser got renamed by the winner. You can already guess what happened, but you should read the anecdote for yourself.

And if you haven’t you should pick up ‘The Long Tail‘ for yourself, if you expect to survive and thrive in the “new” new economy of niche media.

originally published on dr.xnlb.com

digital pyrotechnic infernoptix display

Eric Marden — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 16:30:46 +0000

originally published on dr.xnlb.com

Impressions by John Coltrane

Mic Mell — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:42:46 +0000

This is like the most nuts version of this tune we’ve ever heard…

Vote for Polyvibe Records in the Best of Orlando

Eric Marden — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 14:40:30 +0000

Our Record Label, Polyvibe Records is up for “Best Whatever” in the Orlando Weekly’s annual Best Of issue. You can help us, by registering to vote, and casting your ballot in our direction.

For more information, check out the easy voting instructions posted on the Polyvibe site.

Hope against Hope makes it big because of Myspace.

Eric Marden — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 05:02:52 +0000

MySpace can make you big. Fast. Suppossedly this is how the Artic Monkeys did it. This was also lauded by the Jupiter Research report I tore apart recently. And now it’s worked for Hope against Hope. There’s just one problem… The band is fake.
Hope against Hope was a sham-rock/indie band “with no talent whatsoever” made up by british magazine Q. Their intention was to expose the Rupert Murdoch-owned site for what it is… just another method for Big Music to hype crap music.
What’s even funnier is that in just 4 weeks they fooled Alan McGee, the guy who broke Oasis, into offering them a gig at his famed Death Disco club night. “Shoot me an email and I’ll sort you out with a gig” said his myspace message. Talk about drinking the kool-aid.
Read the whole article on the Guardian Unlimited site, as the article tidily devolves into a history of other bands and the PR that tried to pull one over on us.
Brings new meaning to “The Great Rock ‘N Roll Swindle”, doesn’t it?
digg this story

originally published on dr.xnlb.com

New EFF Public Service Cartoon

Eric Marden — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:50:04 +0000

The above cartoon was made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit, ACLU-for-the-internet organization. It’s a characterization of Big Entertainment as Super Villains, fighting fair use and crippling gadgets in a single bound. It’s sad because it’s true.
originally published on xnlb.com

How Rice Is Effected by Resonating Tones

Eric Marden — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 02:32:17 +0000

Interesting Video. Not sure all that went into making the rice dance like this… What’s it sitting on? What’s generating the tones?

originally published on xnlb.com