Daytime Running Lights
The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
“I’ve signed up for artist newsletters distributed by autoresponder and I’m amazed at how underutilized these artists or their agents or managers make of this fantastic tool to communicate with their fans. There are so many things that any fan, lesser or true, would appreciate hearing from their favorite artists that they simply don’t think of doing. Here are some examples that come immediately to mind: a fan signs up for the newsletter, the fan is then sent to a ‘thank you’ page and offered a free mp3 download of the artists personal favorite song from their catalog, or there’s a FlipVideo produced clip with the artist simply thanking the person for signing up, or there’s a page of ‘behind the scenes’ photos of the artist and an audio stream thanking the artist. All this is fairly simple to do, it can be done once, and then it runs forever.”
Grabb.it has revved up another notch.
Version 1.0 began in 2005 as a hobby project to learn Rails. Early 2007, we started from scratch on Grabb.it 2.0, released last May. Meet rev 3.
We’re shifting the focus to mp3 blogs – they’ve be around a while, but the new UI puts them out front. So if you love music and blogging, we’ll be doing a little of both around there, and you’re welcome to join us.
Here’s some old-time music I grabbed from the Berea Music Archive ages ago:
Announcement ya’ll I just dropped the Grabb.it API Documentation and examples on a brand new Google group. I’m inviting you to come mix up our data, and providing some Javascript kit as well.
Click here for the Grabb.it Playlist API Documentation.
There are code examples and more REST theory on the way.
Embeded below is a simple Flash Player playing New Music from Grandpa Chris, a Grabb.it XSPF playlist:
(consider me surprised if that comes through your reader)
Apologies for mentioning the iPhone thing. I’m getting sick of all the discussion too. Just one counter-point I need to make.
Certain negative comments I’ve seen on posts like the NY Times Bits blog disturb me deeply. The gist of the bad comments are “quit crying, baby, you took the risk and voided you’re warranty”. On them I call bullshit.
But the question is: where do people get the idea that one shouldn’t hack your own computer? My conjecture is that if you consider the iPhone as a fancy phone then it’s way cooler than anything LG is selling. But seeing it as a computer that happens to make calls and fit in your pocket, I’m offended and dismayed by Apple’s stance.
There is a reason Free Software advocates mean “free as in freedom” and to anyone who has been exposed to those ideas, any device which is essentially a computer, but which is actively hostile to its users, is deeply troubling. Computing (communications) and freedom go hand-in-hand, as we’ve seen time and again.
The enemies of freedom are scared by the widespread adoption of general purpose computing (it threatens their business model) and are trying as hard as they can to lock the doors. Should the new iPhone prove unhackable, it will show tyrants (and freedom fighters) that freedom and computing do not necessarily go hand in hand.
If Apple keeps this up much longer, they’ll go on my list of companies to put out of business. Freedom to compute as you wish is rapidly becoming as fundamental as freedom of speech, thought, and assembly. An enemy of freedom is an enemy of mine.
Astute readers may have noticed the increasing coverage of Grabb.it related topics in my various feeds. We’ve been putting the spit ‘n polish on for release. Hodel 3000, etc.
Basically all the things we have to do to iterate quickly and surely once we deploy. If you want to follow Grabb.it more closely, we’ve started a tumblr:
I’m running my blog again, just like before, but with more power! So if you were accustomed to looking at the old Daytime Running Lights, now you’ll get accustomed to looking at the new.
If you’ve got the time and inclination, head over to the index page and check out the variety of feeds available. Some of you might rather subscribe to Livin’ or maybe even Music. There is a new party in town called Vinyl where I’m blogging my parents’ huge record collection, one Jerry Jeff Walker or freaky chilled-out flute player at a time.
