Author: chris

Metro View from inside: Michael Franti on why music deserves to be shared

Posted on by chris

CD sales are down. Downloading is up. The future is coming. Don’t be afraid. Despite the fact the record industry dinosaur is sucking on its last barrel of oil, the goddess of music is more alive than ever before. I remember a time when an average fan had perhaps 50 CDs in their collection and most were from one genre. Today, nearly every listener has thousands of songs tucked away in their shirt pocket and everyone’s got their chill-out, rock-ou and make-out playlist among them. Did they pay for all of them? Unlikely. Are they inspired by all of them? Definitely. Some songs only inspire us to click delete but even that churns up to delve deeper into the vast sea of supply that is feeding the world’s insatiable desire to move and be moved by music.

So from an artist’s perspective, what good can come from people sharing music? When I turn someone on to new music I’ve discovered, my reputation as a tastemaker is on the line. I recommend a couple of duds and suddenly I’m “DJ non-grata”. The absolute best promotion any band could have is word of mouth and the internet is the music world’s blowhorn.

I cannot count the hundreds of times I have heard from fans after shows say “My friend burned me your disc and that is why I am here tonight.” Playing music on the streets of Baghdad in 2004, one man said: “I have seen you on the computer.” It really was an awakening for me to witness the power of song in the world today and the beauty that it’s reaching more people than ever before.

Michael Franti and Spearhead’s latest album, All Rebel Rockers (Anti), is out now

This was originally published in the Metro free newspaper.

Current projects

Posted on by chris

I’ve been spending my lunchtimes over the last few weeks getting a few little jobs done for websites I’m involved with. These all happen to be built on WordPress, which these days I seem to spend most of my spare time fiddling with.

One of them is for my good friend Al, whose FatLad blog has escaped from the clutches of a particularly nasty hosting company and into the cuddly arms of Dreamhost. So to celebrate moving hosts and blogging systems I designed him a new theme. People seem to like it, which is great as my design skills are more “miss” than “hit”. Good luck with the site, Al.

I’ve also done some work on my parent’s site StGauderic.net, which is about a small village in the south of France. There’s quite a bit more to do with structuring the site pages for English and French translations, but the theme is pretty much finished. I’ve even managed to get a very rough installation of ZenPhoto on there for a picture gallery.

Work on the new Wibsite continues, albeit at a glacial pace. I just need a free evening or two and I can get the bulk of this done, but free evenings are currently in very short supply over at Chris Towers. I’ve toyed with the idea of making it a BuddyPress site, but that requires rewriting the theme.

Finally there’s the new official site for my Performer JavaScript system, which allows you to use Web 2.0 style effects in your web pages without knowing JavaScript. I regularly tweak the code for that to make it better, and I have a set of new features I’d like to include.

Add to that the dangerously-close-to-official-launch myJournal and it all adds up to a LOT of code. One thing’s for sure, I’m not going to be bored over the next few months.

Ready, steady … no.

Posted on by chris

It’s been just about a year since I changed faiths. I was looking for something different, something new and exciting, something I could believe in again.

I found that something, it’s called Ubuntu. I’ve raved about it several times over the last year, and I still use it daily to do everything from emailing, web browsing, listening to music, storing photos and development. It is a triumph of open source software, and regularly makes me grin as I discover yet another great utility or useful feature.

However, and here’s where I invoke the wrath of the other Ubuntites, I don’t think it’s quite ready for the mainstream yet. Why? Simple: the terminal.

I’m a fairly savvy computer user. I know my SQL from my DNS, my PHP from my IRC. But even I panic when I look for an answer to a problem and receive something which looks like Martian in response. No wonder Gary Parkinson of the BBC is frustrated.

Whatever the “Users of computers should know the command line” crowd may say, most people don’t want to type commands in, they want things they can click with a mouse. The current young generation of computer users (not to mention everyone to come) see their keyboards as only there so they can type their usernames and passwords, and type messages to their friends. And, occasionally, type essays. The thought that they’d actually tell their computers to do something system-y by typing rather than clicking is not one that would enter their heads.

They’ve been raised on the GUI, given windows, menus and buttons for a reason – so they don’t have to know command line stuff. While I agree that the real power, and speed, in using a computer is to be had at the command line, it’s not something we should force users into. Likewise when a beginner first gets a guitar they aren’t expected to play jazz chords straight away.

And this is where Ubuntu and other Linux distributions fall down. They may offer nice interfaces (I’m a Gnome man) and wizards for many things, but the terminal is still too close to the surface – and relied on too much – to fix what should be trivial problems. Here’s a few off the top of my head:

  1. Networking. Going to the command line to fix a dodgy wireless connection? Come on, this is one area that open source should kick proprietary’s arse.
  2. External drives. Hang on, I have to type *what* command to make sure my USB memory stick is loaded automatically? Sheesh.
  3. Run as root. Maybe a root user should know the command line, but why isn’t there a right-click “Run as root” option for executables?

Ubuntu, especially the last 8.04 release, has gone some way to addressing these and other issues, but there’s still a long way to go. Until it a) just works and b) can be fixed by non-technical users, Ubuntu – and other Linux distributions – will find articles like the BBC one linked above being written. When it comes to getting people away from their entrenched addiction to the Microsoft operating systems, one article like that has profound effects.

Performerjs.org – Standards-driven JavaScript Goodness

Posted on by chris

For a while now I’ve been using a library of little functions built on top of the prototype JavaScript framework which allow me to add some interactive goodness (yes, that means AJAX) to web pages using nothing but a few standard element attributes. I’ve written about this before a few times, but the time has come to push it out a bit further in the hope that it will help others. I call it Performer.

So I’ve bought a new domain names (extending my power on the web, mwahaha) and am in the process of getting the very latest, cutting edge version of Peformer on performerjs.org. There are still some bugs to figure out, particularly in Internet Exploder, but you can see the range of features Performer offers.

It’s released in a Creative Commons licence meaning basically you can use it for what you want, but don’t say you did it all yourself. You can even adapt, build, tweak and chop/change to your hearts content. But any changes you make must be released under a similar licence to help benefit everyone.

No doubt I’ll be writing more about Performer as I add new features and polish up what’s there, but for now just take a look at how a few standard attributes can turn a boring page into an all-singing, all-dancing Web 2.0 wonderpage!

Useful neo-marketing websites

Posted on by chris

I’ve had a few conversations recently about neo-marketing, an emerging way to communicate between businesses and people (or people and people, businesses and businesses, anyone really). I even twisted it to apply to emerging churches.

After one of these conversations I put together a list of useful neo-marketing online resources. Well, strictly they are really resources about a modern approach to business, as well as marketing, customer service and a lot of other things. I’m a generous sort of chap, so here it is.

Signal vs. Noise by 37signals: http://blogcabin.37signals.com/posts/

37signals were a website design and development company which brought out a couple of their own online applications which have caused a storm on the web due to their ease of use and power. In particular their Basecamp project management system (http://basecamphq.com/) has revolutionised the way many which are deeply involved in the web companies work.

They have a knack of writing good medium length articles about all sorts of things. Plenty of example from other businesses about good (and bad) ways to operate:

They also link to some great articles, videos and other resources:

And they also have regular spots highlighting different things:

All these examples are from just the (sometime in June) front page of their blog, and the archives are full of fantastic things.

Creating passionate users by Kathy Sierra: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/

Kathy is a very well respected author and blogger with a huge range of great articles discussing many aspects of marketing, design, development and customer service. Here’s just a handful of the articles from her:

It’s important to note Kathy isn’t blogging any more, however she’s still active as a speaker and author.

Gapingvoid by Hugh Macleod: http://www.gapingvoid.com/

Hugh is a very well known Scottish cartoonish and marketer, with a particular style both of drawing and writing. Over the last year or so he’s been involved deeply in what has become known as the Blue Monster movement – based on this cartoon which he drew:

On the back of that he’s done work with Microsoft trying to break them out of their age-old marketing quagmire. He’s also involved in a wine company and a Savile Row tailors. But the best thing about Hugh is he’s got a fantastic understanding of what’s wrong with traditional PR, and how the tide is turning:

Church of the customer by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba: http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/

This isn’t one I read regularly, but there’s some good stuff on it anyway:

Global neighbourhoods by Shel Israel: http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/ * please see the note below this entry

Shel is an old-school marketer who has really “got” the Internet. Together with Robert Scoble (probably the most famous blogger in the world) he wrote a book called Naked Conversations (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Naked-Conversations-Changing-Businesses-Customers/dp/047174719X) which charts how blogs are changing the face of business. “Global Neighbourhoods” is the name of their follow-up book. If you want some good offline reading you could do a lot worse than buy these.

Shel is fundamentally a business marketer, and he has written some fantastic articles:

Important note: some of the things in this section are factually incorrect. Shel has kindly pointed out the error of my ways in this comment, and for that I thank him. Sorry for not doing my research properly, or indeed paying as much attention as I should!

Shotgun marketing by Chris Houchens: http://shotgunconcepts.blogspot.com/

Chris is a widely known marketing expert with a particular focus on web interactions. Here are some useful recent articles:

Horsepigcow by Tara Hunt: http://www.horsepigcow.com/

Horsepigcow is a blend of observations on online marketing, links to the “happening” things on the web and general observations about web business. Not every article will be of use for businesspeople, but she has written some great stuff:

Extra links:

Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds: http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/

Garr is a fantastic presenter, and on his blog he talks about how to make presentations better, and also has lots of example from some of the worlds foremost speakers.

Recommended reading by Hugh Macleod: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/002039.html

Hugh lists the blogs you should be reading.