Apparently the Yes Men are behind the fake versions New York Times in Union Square today. Gawker has scanned some of the ads.

Once the traffic abates, I bet this website will have all the content. The Yes Men website also down right now.

Okgo guitarist Andy Ross has a solo act called Secret Dakota Ring. Very cute video! Don't worry, it has a happy ending.

* 'Free' in this sense being not free of terms, conditions and only to AT&T wireless subscribers (so expensive! kinda) and then there's this extensive setup process below because OMG if some kid manages to figure out how to mooch free wireless at Starbucks the whole internet is going to end.

From their instructions page:

iPhone users, get started with Wi-Fi

• Activate Wi-Fi from the settings icon on your iPhone
• Select "attwifi" from the list of available networks
• Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap 'continue'
• You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. You will not be charged for the text message.
• The SMS link will only be valid for 24 hours at the location it was requested. Another request must be submitted when using another hotspot location.
• Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot

Wow, so free! It reminds me of how kids have to agree to 120 pages of legal stipulations in order to watch Sleeping Beauty.

New Banksy mural up in Soho.

Also here is a video of him putting his stuff up at museums around NYC.

UPDATE 10/2: ...and now another rat!

I did a new site this weekend: The Alumni Club of Worcester. It's a nonprofit located in Worcester, MA that serves alumni of that city's 13 colleges and universities.

One nice flourish is the embedded Google map on their directions page, centered slightly lower to accommodate the open marker. I've been reading up on the Google Maps API, and plan eventually to make a map like the one at Health Care that Works.

You can check out other recent projects on the Projects page.

Friend and commenter Scats has made a brilliant video with exclusive footage of Sarah Palin's acceptance speech.

UPDATE 9/29: Matt Taibbi's take on the same speech: It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

This song really makes me wish I had a bike. And if there were a Modes of Transport Mix, this would definitely be on it.

The Cool Kids - Black Mags

A Dyno with black mag wheels. Not three-point ones, but whatever!

On a Mac, open Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

This update to iTunes feels like it's all about Apple flexing its commercial muscle without much clear benefit to consumers. Am I wrong? Is it time to start looking for an alternative to iTunes?

ALSO:
This update really encourages you to download art for your MP3s. I'm all in favor! But instead of using iTunes, you might try this free dashboard widget. It selects the art from Amazon, and is right about as often as iTunes is. The difference is that the art is encoded right into the MP3. iTunes, on the other hand, associates it with your library. Meaning that if you, er, share the MP3 with someone else, the Amazon art will transfer over but the iTunes art won't.

I approve of the simplicity of Umbrella Today, a site that will text you in the morning if you need to bring an umbrella with you to work.

Of course, if you were really smart, you'd already have an umbrella at work, but maybe it's still nice to get the text. It's a reminder that there's a robot somewhere out there thinking of you.

Via Daring Fireball.

Reader Scats introduced me to the transcendent Failblog tonight—as he points out, it's a great meme.

UPDATE!

What did I do right after posting that? I upgraded the last.fm plugin and broke my site. Fail within a fail!

Would you say the interrogations were torture? Well, I think probably, a lot of people might disagree, even some of my other detainees might feel like what they received wasn't torture. And relative to what someone might receive on a daily basis at a place like Gitmo it certainly is not particularly harsh. It's kind of like being a little bit pregnant, we were a little bit tortured. We were strapped into chairs in uncomfortable positions, we were put into cages with blood on the floor and told we would never live, we were sleep deprived the entire time. There was an interrogation every night and they kept us up all day. They never turned the lights off in the cells. We were fed food that was inedible, we were not given potable water. Any time you threaten and take the numbers of family members and take down home addresses, there's an element of mental torture there. There's physical torture in the form of us having to sit in uncomfortable positions all day long and spending the night strapped to a metal chair inside of a cage. We all have cuts and bruises from that, and some of my peers were beaten up a little bit.

Were there any Chinese nationals with you? No nationals, and that's basically why we do this, because there are Tibetans in exile, who would do what we did themselves, and put their lives on the line, but they're not issued passports. And Chinese nationals who would say something would be thrown into jail for the rest of their lives. So the next best thing is Americans of conscience who believe (like we did) they're not going to get detained, but simply deported. So yeah, we make sure there are no Chinese nationals involved and we don't take their assistance inside, and that's to protect those people who would suffer much worse consequences than us.

Could someone explain to me what's happening with all the dogs? Is it a metaphor? Or does she feel like a 'bitch' for cheating on her boyfriend? Here are the lyrics.

The Long Blondes - Guilt [Dan Carey Mix]

Thank you, Captain Obvious, for posting an excellent August Mix, which I am reposting here as a single 83M ZIP.

Here's a track from that mix that I like. Cool name, right? I don't know anything about them, except that they're from Australia and their site is impossible.

The Curse of Company - All the Mines

I hope this blog is helping you to find music that you wouldn't have otherwise! But if you want to take your music game to the next level, you could try moving up one layer of abstraction to The Hype Machine. They're like a huge mega-blog that aggregates hundreds of other blogs. (Sadly not this one, but hopefully that'll change soon!)

I'm very impressed with their music player (try hitting 'play' next to a track). If you sign up for a profile, you can scrobble those plays into your last.fm profile. Amazing, right? Maybe the web is the new iTunes!

Belle & Sebastian - Seeing Other People

"You ruined Christmas"—so says brilliant-yet-overly-thin Deerhunter frontperson. Already? What did you do, you ask? You downloaded song files he left in a public folder on the intertubes, of course! Which is causing them to release their October album early on iTunes.

But you know what? It's a good album! Go buy it! (It's safe to buy because it's iTunes 'plus' and therefore doesn't have the icky copy restrictions.)

At the risk of ruining Christmas even more than it already is, here's a track off that album:

Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened

Also, I found this refreshingly simple rating system. No way this track isn't a 'monster jam' though!

I had to cut this song from my earlier post about The Grates. I think in my future pop song ranking algorithm, a track will get a bonus for each second under 2:45 it is. That's going to put this song over the top. That and the subtle horn section (?) in the background?

The Grates - 19-20-20

I would be an irresponsible #1 Metric fan not to note that a new album seems imminent. The evidence:

• Their website has changed to color bars
• They've been performing new material
• May 1, 2007: Metric Begin Work on New Album
• Sep 10, 2007: Metric's New Album "75% Complete"

The suspense is totally fine, really. I'm fine with it!

This is the demo version of their biggest single. I don't know what makes it better than the album version, but it is. I've seen them play in NY four or five times, and it's notable that they never really nail this song. I think maybe it annoys them that they always get the biggest response on this early, comparatively simple song. You can hear an example of this on Metric Live at Metropolis. Compare that to how they always nail Wet Blanket (probably my favorite song) or Dead Disco. Of course, they usually play this song at the end, right before the encore. So maybe they're just tired.

Metric - Combat Baby [Demo]

It's time for some rock! Way too much pop and indie on the blog lately! Show description via Lazyeye.

This is old-school punk, loud and aggressive by way of The Stooges, with geek vocalist Spencer Moody doing his best Iggy impersonation, microphone in mouth, jumping around a stage that was lit ominously by candles lined up along the top of the amps. Energy was high, resulting in the first time I've seen an attempt at moshing at the Underground in a long, long time.

Murder City Devils - Press Gang

Geez, I hope you didn't have stock in Blockbuster! The CEO gave an interview last Thursday where he demonstrated his jaw-dropping cluelessness about where his industry has been headed for the last oh say decade.

Hilarity: he uses this practically unreadable chart to demonstrate how great his physical infrastructure is and why he is "confused by this fascination that everybody has with Netflix." Dude, even your chart is subtly pointing up and to the right. You want to say the business is going to stay on the left. And how busted are those graphics? And don't say you're confused, obviously!

Then he really gets going on kiosks.

…we picked a technology partner so that when we deploy a vending machine, it’s a vending machine that turns into a digital download kiosk.

Right, but for now it’s only a DVD machine. [translation: when?]

Keyes: Correct, but it’s intelligent. It’s wired. It has a server on board [I don't think he knows what a server is] and it has full capability to do digital download and that’s critically important because as this transition occurs from vending to digital download, there are going to be many customers that want both.

Ahhhh! When = "As the transition occurs?" Let me get this straight. Kiosks. All the capital investment of an online strategy, PLUS the physical cost of the huge devices, MINUS all the benefits of having an online strategy because the customer has to GO to the kiosk. AND it doesn't work yet? BUT it will transform when the time is right? Well… you're fired!

I want a DVD for my kids to throw in their DVD player in their room, but I want to download a movie to take on the airplane with me on my Archos device or on my PC. [Archos? PC?] We’ll be able to provide that flexibility of use occasion that our customers have. Those who are only in one segment will only be able to satisfy one use occasion. [Is this even English? And dude, syncing!]

Right, but for the kiosk are these kiosks to be in Blockbuster stores or other locations besides the stores? [Translation: why kiosks, again?]

Keyes: What they do for Blockbuster stores is they allow us to have greater title depth in smaller space. [Translation: I'm not answering.] Imagine in the future the ability to have the entire library captured on a kiosk.

ZOMG dude! Do you understand the internet? You're all like "Imagine every movie is on our huge, physical device." Imagine every movie on every computer, tv, phone, whatever! I remember a national tv ad campaign that did 10 years ago!

Honestly, I couldn't read the whole thing it's so sad. Looks like the stock has been taking a real dive. The top of the article has an editorial note saying the headline was changed. You can tell from the URL that the headline used to be, appropriately, "Dazed and Confused."

Bonus: Here is a press release of a similar kiosk initiative at Tower Records in 2006.

Special Bonus: Blockbuster's amazing transparent late fee policy.

Via Daring Fireball and Wired.

Update 8/20
Ok so I just signed up for AdSense tonight, and so the first ad ever on this site was for… Blockbuster! Doh. I feel bad for them now!

I think I may have posted this a long time ago—this was one of my favorite songs of 2006! Anyway check out an open love letter to Sea Wolf and these t-shirts seem pretty nice.

Sea Wolf - Black Dirt

It's been a while since I stopped reading the news (that's been going great, btw!) so I don't know if I would have seen this on NY1 or whatever, but apparently this road-rage incident was a big story in Portland this summer. Reason I bring it up? Via BoingBoing I see that the accidental photographer, Rick Adams, did a helpful but all-too-short writeup about his experience dealing with the media. He notes that there should probably be some type of FAQ for when you're in this increasingly-common type of situation, and gives some helpful advice:

First off, and remember this: make the arrangements with everybody yourself. I didn't understand how this works and it cost me some money. You don't need to speak to agencies that represent the networks; you can speak to them directly yourself, and if you're in the middle of something like this where they are running your footage right now they will actually call you back. You won't know who to call but start with your local TV station, tell them they are running your copyrighted footage and you'd like to get paid for it. Then, while you're doing that ask for a contact number for the parent network itself so you can do the same thing there. It really is that simple.

This reminds me of the tourist this summer catching the NYPD officer attacking a bicyclist. I wonder if he knew to negotiate a deal with the media? I think this FAQ sounds like a good idea!

I know from my limited experience dealing with the media over a thing in college that they can be unbelievably persuasive in getting you to give them things for free. I'm doubting that tourist got anything for filling the space between their commericals. I hope I'm wrong!

So here's an amazing song from The Wombats. At the top level, this is an off-the-chain pop song on performance-enhancing stimulants. (Its always a good sign when a song starts with a "woo!"-type exclamation. More on that in a future post.)

But there seems to be a lot more beneath the surface; like how it name-checks another artist / classic song, but then it appears to get the whole thing wrong while "celebrating the irony of it all." After a few verses, it takes a right turn with early 80s drum machine and synth sounds, and starts brilliantly mis-quoting the song in question: "Love will tear us apart" has become "Let the love tear us apart."

My theory is it relates to the apparent contradictions in the first verse; you're supposed to "learn from his mistake." Is it the advice you're supposed to learn from or the breaking of it? Any why would he break the advice he just worked out? And if the advice is that dancing to depressing Joy Divison songs is a cure for heartbreak, then… well ok I'm confused. But perhaps that was the point?

(Woo!)
I'm back in Liverpool,
And everything seems the same,
But I worked something out last night,
That changed this little boy's brain,
A small piece of advice,
That took 22 years in the make,
And I will break it for you now,
Please learn from my mistakes.

Let's dance to Joy Division,
And celebrate the irony,
Everything is going wrong,
But we're so happy!
Let's dance to Joy Division,
And raise our glass to the ceiling,
'Cos this could all go so wrong,
But we're so happy!

So if your ever feeling down,
Grab your purse and take a taxi,
To the darker side of town,
That's where we'll be,
And we will wait for you and lead
you through the dancefloor,
Up to the DJ booth,
You know what to ask for!

You'll ask for Joy Division,
And celebrate the irony,
Everything is going wrong,
But we're so happy!

Let's dance to Joy Division,
And raise our glass to the ceiling,
'Cos this could all go so wrong,
But we're so happy!

Let the love tear us apart,
I've found the cure for a broken heart,
Let it tear us apart,
(Let it tear us apart)

Let's dance to Joy Division,
And celebrate the irony,
Everything is going wrong,
But were so happy!

Let's dance to Joy Division,
And raise our glass to the ceiling,
'Cos this could all go so wrong,
But we're so happy!

Thanks Sweets Lyrics

The Wombats - Let's Dance to Joy Division

Voxtrot should show up soon as one of my top artsts in the sidebar. (I think it updates on Sunday night.) I've been listening to them alot this week, wondering when we're going to hear new material. Soon, I hope! You can find more mp3s on the Voxtrot website.

Voxtrot - Missing Pieces

How fresh is this thing on the sidebar? The six tiles are my most-listened-to artists of the week. The source data is courtesy of my last.fm music profile, which monitors the music I play in iTunes. The WordPress plugin is written by Gary Fenstamaker.

This is an example of the awesomeness of open source software and, in particular, the developers in the WordPress community.

(I should note that if you have a non-WordPress blog, you can still get the widget because the author also provides a standalone PHP version.)

The Hussy's (shouldn't it be the Hussies?) is a six-piece pop/ska band from Glascow. I'm not sure if they have a proper full-length LP, but they do have a number of great singles (Tiger, Napoleon). This song, Sister Mary Jo, is from Necklace.

Some good lyric-writing here too—it tells a funny story without getting too bogged down in it, you know?

Sister Mary Jo, it’s time to let the whole world know
That you’re actually a bloke and you like to drink and smoke
Oh sister Mary Jo are you a gangster on the run?
And if I slipped into your bed will you tell the other nuns?

The Hussy's - Sister Mary Jo

Update 8/16: An OAP is an old age pensioner. Also the bassline is really intense so turn up the sub!

According to last.fm, Maps has recently beaten out The Roots to become my number two favorite band. Well, it's not a band per se; it's the Englishman pictured above: James Chapman. I think he has a band for touring. (There should be a name for that.)

This is one of my favorite songs (but they're all good though, really). It's from a split-EP he did with Blonde Redhead. I'm curious to know where the audio sample came from. It sounds like a movie—a wonderful/terrible b-movie from the late 90s/early 00s, hopefully? If you know, please post in comments.

I just love how serious they are. And how, at the end, he's all like "Yeah, well, I don't do safe?" Snap!

Maps - In Chemistry

1. Upgraded to WordPress
2. Comments
3. …with avatars!?
4. Design changes
5. Search
6. Transitioned to a new RSS feed
7. …that you can SUBSCRIBE TO WITH iTUNES (insane!)

On top of all that, I think there will really be more content. WordPress makes it really easy to post. You can even use applications on your desktop or iphone to make posts!

Plus? It was pretty fun to do this little project! I got kinda obsessed with it on Saturday night and pretty much worked straight through on it until now. I love doing stuff like that.

Stop listening to this song! Especially you, Raz.

Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes

What's that? A new platform you ask? Why, yes! I'm tired of my DIY blogging platform, and I think that WordPress is the way to go. What does that mean for you? More posts! And comments! And probably some other stuff too. But you'll never know if you don't update your feed!

Stephen Colbert issues an apology to Canton, Georgia.

#1 blog reader Georgia has alerted me to an amazing new single from The Grates, which, although is linked below, you should still support the artist AND get the higher quality version from the store above.

Sailor hats above both cute and appropriate; photo is from their recent surprise show on a boat in Australia.  (They're from Australia.)  Also, they all went to art school and make their own cute posters.

The song is really stunning.  They are so good at the under-2:30 pop song!  Lyrics here.  Video here.  Very conducive to listening to over and over and over.  Several of my top songs of all time are Grates songs, including #2!

The Grates - Burn Bridges
The Grates - 19-20-20

Update 8/16: Having multiple songs linked in the same post is interfering with the podcast—iTunes subscribers are seeing 19-20-20 instead of Burn Bridges. Unless I find a good solution, it's going to be one song per post going forward!

Via Daring Fireball, "iPhone Customer Calls Jackass TV Reporter a 'Jackass'"

I was so happy there were no TV 'journalists' at the line in Soho yesterday!

via the deerhunter band blog

Update 6/17: I was ahead of a trend!

There's a beat drop at about 2:30 of this song that is just perfect.  Highly recommended listening.

DJ Krush - Only the Strong Survive [Bon Mix]

There's some fresh dancing (and cool hats) in this video.

Gnarls Barkley - Going On

YouTube, via StereoGum and BoingBoing

So Trent Reznor released another album today online. (Here is a post about the last one.) The music sounds really good so far, but this post is about how impressed I am by his web presence. From a usability perspective, it's just the perfect method of distributing music. And behind the scenes, Trent and his web designers are elegantly balancing a number of other factors.

• First of all, the music is free. As he writes on his blog, "this one's on me." In exchange for your email address, you get sent an email link (expires in an hour) which you click to get to the download page. By doing it this way, he's ensuring that people submit actual email addresses, and that they don't forward the emails around (much).
• Beyond that, he's distributing the parts of his music as well, encouraging people to remix the tracks at his extensive remix site. I don't know of any other artist that's doing that so successfully.
• Furthermore, he's giving you several
  download quality options, which are exactly the options people want (see below).
• The method of download rocks: if you choose the V0, you get a ZIP file, which makes it easy for most users. Other formats are .torrent, which is a P2P method that eases the bandwidth on his server and doesn't compress the high-quality music files.
• And finally there's no Digital Rights Management (here's what happens when you buy music with DRM).

Here are the options that I'm so impressed with (quoting from the download page):

From 1990-94 I thought that NIN was just the coolest thing. These days I still do, but for new reasons!

This is the first and last post about politics ever on this blog, and it's only to say that I'm fed up with it, and am no longer going to follow it.  I stopped watching the Sunday talk shows a few years ago, and recently I unsubscribed from all my news feeds (eg Yahoo, NYTimes) and also from political blogs that follow the news, such as Atrios, ThinkProgress and AmericaBlog.  The only way I'm going to read the Times is if BoingBoing, Kottke or Gawker links to it.

Why?  Nothing could be more frivolous and deceptive than the traditional, international news freakshow.  Things that become 'issues' of the day (I'm thinking of Jeremiah Wright here because that's what's on right now) almost always turn out to be the exact opposite of the story that's presented as news.  Of course, you have to read the story to the jump page.  (Usually I find the fragment of truth that invalidates the whole thing in the third-to-last paragraph of the story.)

No traditional news organization is exempt from this.  People tend to blame Fox and say that NPR or the BBC is better.  Well, it's not.  A comedy show on Comedy Central better informs its audience than any of them, every single time.

So, why the announcement?  Because I think you should too!  Strip that negativity away and you'll be so much happier.  Read the papers if you must.  But keep it to yourself, ok?

The city is covered in advertising now for the upcoming release of Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV.  I, personally, am into the ads.  They're all characters from the game, apparently.

Her expression is significant, from an ad perspective.  From this website:

In advertising, art and photography, the direction the subject is looking or the flow of the composition can affect the tone of the image. Left is the past, right is the future, up is positive, down is negative. For example: a subject looking up and to the right is looking positively into the future.

So: the tone of the image says "I'm looking at the future, and it's as sweet as my lollipop," or something.

UPDATE 5/5: The game is great!  I wish I had more time to play it!  

I think the reason why the ads are so thick down here is that Rockstar Games has an office at Broadway and Houston.

Forwarded to me from several friend-sources, I learned that Nine Inch Nails released an album (sans record label) on Sunday Monday.  Like Radiohead, it's available in different formats directly from the site.  In a twist however, there's also an 'official' BitTorrent release on the Pirate Bay.

Now that we're no longer constrained by a record label, we've decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

Ack.  In internet time this is old news: WSJ / NYT / LA Times.  I will say: it does come with a nice PDF booklet!  Support independent music!  Spend $5!

Update 3/13: Total sales for the first week: $1.6 million.  No word on costs yet, although I think we're likely to find out.  In related news, TVT files for bankruptcy.

Netflix's 'Watch Instantly' feature is amazing.  Supernatural, almost, how quickly it streams video and how sharp that video is.  The only disappointment is that it's for Windows only.  Mac users can get around that with Parallels Desktop, among other ways.

Above: Tracy Morgan in the suprisingly-funny Season 1 of 30 Rock.

Also, be my friend on Netflix!

Update 1/13: Now instant viewing limits have been lifted.

Update 1/24: Netflix working on instant viewing for Mac.

Above is a piece called Sea Dragons, by my friend Brian Booker. I just finished his website—check it out!

Also his fiction is amazing. Be sure to read Pennsylvania: A Guide to Lodging.

Wire is a mini revelation for me.  I found out about their albums Pink Flag and Chairs Missing in Pitchfork Media's 100 Best Albums of the 1970s.

Wire - Reuters
Wire - Mannequin

They have a wonderful minimal punk sound.  It's atmospheric but with attitude, not empty.  It turns out they wrote The 15th, the Fischerspooner track that