Yo Mr Holmes

Highway Sixty One, Turned Music Site

Its nice to hear new terms in the tech space every once and a while.  ‘Ramen Profitable’ is the latest from Y Combinator mastermind Paul Graham in describing music sharing and streaming service TheSixtyOne.

TheSixtyOne builds custom playlists and radio stations based on songs that are ‘favorited’ or ‘hearted’ the most in each song’s specific genre.  So, with zero profile information and music knowledge, you can select to listen to ‘reggae’ , ‘electronic’ , or ‘hip hop’ , plus choose radio stations based on mood such as ‘ relax ‘ , ‘crazy’ , or ‘covers’ .

I haven’t tried the ‘crazy’ radio station yet, but I bet its Loco.

For the time being, I think these radio stations are considerably better than the radio stations I listen to on Last.Fm or on Pandora.  Almost all the songs are new to me, with a few obscure indie songs that I haven’t listened to in a while sprinkled into the mix.

What the site hasn’t proven yet is whether or not it continue to offer new tracks a month from now, after many days of listening to their radio station.  How will the reggae station be different a month from now than it is now?

If 50% of the songs are different, then I’ll be coming back.  In the next month or so, I doubt this will be the case, as they tend to still play the overall favorites, but as more bands continue to upload their music, and as more music moderators come in and ‘heart up’ recently added songs, I think these radio stations will be some of the best on the web.

One other feature I love about the site is the continuous playback.  I poke all around the site with a continuous stream of music going.  I can even use browser buttons such as ‘back’ and ‘forward’ the music doesn’t stop.  This does not happen with Last.FM, Pandora, or HypeM.

Let’s just hope that the TheSixtyOne continues to stay away from bands signed by EMI, who continue to sue developers who help the spread music to the masses.

I currently have all of my domains registered with GoDaddy as my registrar. They’re pretty much as cheap as any other registrar I’ve come across, and I can usually apply some kind of coupon code with any purchase I make. They have also recently been rated as the top domain registrar by a group of domainers.

For a more full-service registrar Moniker could be a better option.

In the meantime, I’ll still with GoDaddy, and here’s how you can transfer your domain to them.  Note: you’ll want to confirm with your current registrar that you are allowed to move registrars in the first place, then…

• Go to the GoDaddy Transfer page
• Enter the domain name in the box under ‘Step 1 Start Here’ and click on the go button
• Click on ‘Proceed to Checkout’
• If you would like to add time to your registration, you can choose to add more years under Step 1
• You can choose whether your domain contact information will be Public or Private, you can also choose whether your domain will automatically renew when its registration has lapsed
•Under Step 2, Select Your Transfer Nameservers:, if your domain currently has a website and you are not changing anything, then you should keep the existing nameservers
• Under Step 3, choose your checkout process. There are some promotional offers that are only available during checkout. Quick checkout will bypass the offers.
• Click on and read the Transfer Agreement. Check the boxes in front of the agreement to indicate that you have read it. (The Private Registration Agreement and the Web Site Hosting Agreements will only be available if you have chosen to add on these options.)
• Click on ‘Proceed to Checkout’
• Review your order and click on ‘Check Out’ to continue through the purchase process

The Daily Show couldn’t have demonstrated it better. I had no idea that Samantha Bee was so active in the blogosphere and social media…

This clip surely will do huge things for Twitter usage. Daily Show gets in front of 100,000s of tech-savvy web users, half of which who probably already have a Twitter account but never think to use it. This clip will get those people back into their accounts, plus acquire some new Twitter users.

Ev Williams said recently that he thinks ‘normal’ people will be using Twitter in 5 years. With more mainstream media coverage like this, I think it will be much less than that. Especially, if they boost their search capabilities, which I think will be coming soon. Another blog post coming soon on that topic…

Warner Music decided to sue Seeqpod a little while ago.  Now EMI is not only suing Seeqpod, its suing this guy Ryan Sit who has developed a number of sites using the Seeqpod API.  EMI is alleging that both Seeqpod and Ryan are not just extracting songs that are illegally hosted on the thousand plus music blogs out there, but that Seeqpod and Ryan are also temporary storing the files, which I would agree is very illegal, and could definitely bring all of the alleged sites down.

But even if Seeqpod was doing this, which I doubt, Ryan would have been doing so unknowingly.  Then, even if it does turn out that Seeqpod was temporarily storing these files, Ryan would only be building on their API, and the fact that he is one of the hundreds of developers doing so, and has thus been singled out, is crazy.

EMI is basically punishing Ryan for being a very, very good develop.

Just my two cents.

In the meantime, I’ve got a music blog that uses a seeqpod widget on almost every post.   Let’s hope that EMI doesn’t deem that I’m storing files.

The Presets Highlight a 40 day span of great music coming to San Francisco

Coachella’s coming up.  So is the already-sold-out Cut Copy show a the Fillmore.  Second hand tickets for the latter are already going for $75 on craigslist.  Here are 5 alternatives, each costing less than $20.  What a deal!

The Twelves.  3/15 103 Harriet Street. (Saturday Night) .  Two DJs from Brazil that remix all kinds of indie rock hits from past and present.  Listen for their remix of Radiohead- Reckoner

Scissors for Lefty.  3/27 at the Red Devil Lounge.  (Friday Night) .  A unique twist on post modern pop and post punk.

Friendly Fires. 4/11 Slims (Saturday Night).  The next big thing from the UK?  Check out the aeroplane remix of their song Paris at some point.

The Presets. 4/16 The Mezzanine (Thursday Night) .  Hard electro rock with soothing intermission jams.  Great show.

The Black Kids.  4/21 The Independent (Tuesday Night) .  THE indie rock band from Jacksonville, Florida.  They sound like something to come out of the UK or Brooklyn though.

Anyone can do it.  Almost anyone can pay for it.  Here’s the step-by-step process to put your own website on your own URL, or more technically, your own Domain (more on this in a bit).

Step 1, chose a domain that’s available.  There are roughly 25 domain ‘registrar’s’ that are given the ability to sell unacquired domain names to anyone.  GoDaddy is the most well-known example of a domain registrar.  You can go to any of these registrar’s sites to see if a domain is available.  Alternatively, I like the tool AjaxWhoIs.  I can quickly check for domain availability without having to click anything.

Step 2, register the domain name.  When you do this, you are acquiring the rites to put anything you want on the domain.  Typically, you have the rights for a year, then the registrar will auto-renew the domain a year later.  Be careful with this.  If there’s any chance that you’ll have your own website for a long period of time, I’d recommend registering the domain for a couple of years.

Step 3, put content on your domain.  Before doing this, I’d highly recommend making a list of exactly what tools/content/features you want to make available to your site’s users, as well as the short and long term goals.  In many cases, you don’t even need to purchase a hosting account, you can just point your URL to content that’s hosted somewhere else.

For example, if you want to move your blogspot blog or a ning social network to your own URL, you can just set up a DNS record for free.

For basic site content, I’d recommend Wordpress (as does pretty much every blogger) .   Wordpress is technically a blogging platform, but you can tweak it to make a site look an e-commerce site, a restaurant menupage, or pretty much anything you want it to look like.

I usually set up hosting accounts with GoDaddy because they have this service called ‘hosting connection’ that will let you drop a wordpress blog on your domain with just a point and click.  Alternatively, with other hosting accounts, you usually have to go through the process of setting up a database and linking it with your wordpress files that you later upload onto your server account.  Sound complicated?  If you haven’t done it before, it definitely can be, but if you use a GoDaddy hosting account, you don’t have to deal with any of this.

Step 4.  Make your site look good.

With Wordpress, there are probably tens of thousands of templates that you can install onto your blog.  Just upload the template zip file into your file manager, then click ‘unzip’ and choose the folder /wp-content/themes/ .  The theme will then show up in your wordpress admin dashboard, where you can instantly turn it on.

One of the best places to find wordpress themes is the official wordpress themes library.  I’d also recommend doing some google searches for the type of theme you are looking for ‘e-commerce’ ‘ two column’ ‘plain’ etc .  I also sometimes look for wordpress themes in this search engine specifically dedicated to wordpress resources.

Another feature I like to use with Wordpress is setting a default homepage.  You can then put whatever you want on the first page that someone sees when they type in yourawesomesite.com .   They don’t have to see a list of blog posts.

Step 5, continue to optimize

There’s hundreds, probably thousands of other site creation tools, and more are coming out every day.  Most recently devhub and whypark just came out with some quick content tools.  Tumblr and NetVibes also let you quickly create dynamic content and then drop it on your own domains.  More on this in another post…

Just dropped a swicki on ScienceFiction.com  .   Going to focus on sci fi games, downloads, and anything free associated with science fiction.  I’m expecting a lot of traffic for terms like free science fiction wallpaper, and free sci fi games.

Everyone’s always looking for free stuff, especially free games and other downloads.

Most people I interact with are on Facebook, so a Facebook search can work wonders, especially if the person I’m looking for is under 25 years old and has an actual picture of themselves up as their profile pic. But 1/5 internet users aren’t on Facebook right now, and there are plenty of double matches on Facebook that are hard to differentiate between.

But finding profiles on social networks isn’t the only reason that I like the relatively-new people search engine pipl.com . It also brings back web and news results from all kinds of niche sites, forums, and blogs.

Combine this with the ability to add custom geographical fields, and Pipl.com is a must-try. It will then quickly turn into a must-use.

Great use case: After doing a whois lookup for a domain you’re thinking about buying, you can then find out all kinds of information on the person who’s holding that domain.

Its scary how much you can find out about someone in a matter of minutes, especially if they have a relately unusual name.

Paidcontent is saying that Ticketmaster and Live Nation are about to merge, creating Live Nation Entertainment.  Ticketmaster specializes in ticket sales, Live Nation specializes in concert promotion, and they both specialize in charging 50% of the ticket price itself in “convenience” charges.

Let’s hope that their merger will reduce these crazy charges that gives less money back to the bands.  My guess that it won’t, so we’ll have to continue buying tickets at the venues themselves, as well as through some smaller ticket distributors.

For instance, just got tickets to see the Presets at the Mezzanine, via ticketweb, and convenience charges were only $3 per ticket.

Not bad, compared to the $15 ticketmaster charges.

I’ve been using ZoneEdit.com recently, and its extremely simple to use, and best of all its free.  You can get five ‘zones’ for free, and each zone counts as a single domain, and then you can set up unlimited subdomains for each of these.

Good use case?  You can drop a Ning social network on your own domain, and only pay the $7/month ning software fee, plus the domain registration fee (maybe $1/month if that) .

This is much cheaper and easier to handle then buying a hosting account.  Most people don’t realize that DNS tools and hosting are separate.