I just made a muxtape.

And actually, I turned 19 in 1992, but “19 in 1991″ made better copy. In any event, 1991 was a pretty influential year. I graduated high school and started college at CMU. Back then, music was a scarce resource. Not just music, but information about new music was fairly scarce as well. We read magazines, listened to the radio, and watched MTV to learn about new music. CDs were expensive, imports from Japan or the UK were $40 and locked behind glass cases in record stores. Despite all that, it was a great time to be in college, just for the music. Freshman year in college, you could size up a person with one simple question, “so, what do you listen to?” (If you needed a second opinion, you could also look at their shoes.)

We were also transitioning from cassette tapes to CDs, analogue to digital. (Vinyl is a whole other story.)

Back in the era of cassette tapes, I made a pretty damn good mixtape, complete with of course carefully chosen songs, but also, witty titles and cover made from cut up magazines. I also made mix CDs, but it wasn’t the same.

In 1991, I made a mix tape for my sister, who was still in high school. I filled it with “college music,” precisely keeping track of the song lengths to maximize the 90 minute tape. I also had to physically borrow music from new friends in my dorm. The whole process now seems antiquated, in the post-Napster world.

A couple of months ago, muxtape launched. You can upload a mix tape, or what the kids called playlists. I must say, muxtape is impressive. I am not sure of the legal issues, but the system is smart enough to automatically link your songs to amazon.com to buy the mp3. I finally got around to making a mix tape, two months everyone else seems to have.

The theme is 1991, although just like the title, I took some liberties. So, the mix tape is more early 1990s than strictly 1991, but I really tried to stick to music that I was really into and frequently listening to, which as you can see was mostly 4AD, brit pop, with a bit of grunge, and a lot of Pixies influenced music. As I said, the early 90s were a great time to be in college. I left out the bands, I “should” have been listening, at the time, but got into late. I think that goes back to the scarcity issue. The tracks include lesser known gems from familiar voices, one hit wonders, and early singles from bands before they really hit it big. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which ones fall into which category.

Enjoy, and I wonder if my sister still has that tape…

I’m not watching the various dancing reality shows (just not my thing,) although, a lot of people seem to be. However, here are two music videos that feature some breath taking dancing.

Many, if not most, music videos have dancing. Duffy and Gnarls Barkley both just take it another level, in completely different ways. Mercy, by Duffy, has dancers, gliding as if on ice, demonstrating the epitome of smooth. Going On is manic and jittery, like someone moved by the Holy Spirit. I could both of these video multiple times in a row. Oh… wait, I already did.

I guess Spring is really here. I can’t seem to focus on writing up any “big” ideas, but I am definitely finding inspiring things everywhere, which definitely feels like a Spring attitude. Now, that I’ve said this… I will throw out that idea that, since we all know that MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore, we must be thankful for youtube. Online video isn’t just a substitute, but an improvement on watching music vids. On-demand video sharing is a much more effective model for distributing music videos, which in the end have their beginnings as advertisements for the music, like trailers for movies.

Thanks to Frank who sent me this link to the Chicago rap group, Psikotic, who wrote a rap about the Economist, with lines like “the magazine that tells the world how it should be, cream of the crop since 1843.” They also rap about McDonalds and the Internet. Enjoy the awesomeness.

Image source: amazon.com

Blog is back, still not exactly right, but at least, the layout isn’t the default.

I went to hear Ed Lin read his new novel “This is a Bust” at the Asia Society. I got stuck at work and came a little late, in the middle of the introduction, which means I missed the photo op. The novel is about a Chinese American cop who works a beat in Chinatown in the 70s. The book is pure pulp genre crime fiction.

I bought a copy, but wished there was an audio book read by Lin. He did a good job reading, giving different voices to the various characters, which was unusual and fun. When I was getting my book signed I thought about telling him, he sounded like the voice actors on Cowboy Bebop, but chickened out. I’m not a big genre reader, but the setting is of interesting to me, because I’ve been visiting Chinatown for a long time, even if as an outsider.

The Q&A was so-so, as they usually are. But I did learn that he likes pulp fiction and punk rock. Great to hear him mention Hüsker Dü and the Dead Kennedys. But the highlight of the Q&A was when he recognized a MySpace friend in the audience, whom he had presumably never met in person before last night, and said, “oh are you [insert some name that starts with D]?”

It’s been quiet here, because my word press account got hacked, so I’ve been archiving, researching and upgrading. Cross your fingers, folks. Update: It just hosed my theme. I’m super depressed…

While you are waiting, check out Facebook Lexicon, which lets you search the popularity of words that appear in Facebook Walls. Here is a graph of Clinton and Obama. Many of you will know how about my feelings towards the awesomeness of word frequencies.

Image source: flickr

David Weinberger gave a description of a link in a panel last year at the Hyperlinked Society Conference. A link is a conscious act of generosity. These acts is moral, and they form the architecture of the web. He goes on to explain that the syntax of a link (i.e. the href HTML tag) has no meaning within itself, it is merely an instruction which points to another location. The meaning of the link, which can be agreement or disagreement, is found in the text surrounding the link.

While these links have no meaning, they do have value, which is the reason by creating a link performing generosity. Google ranks pages by the number of links other sites point to a page. Appearing early in a search result clearly has value over a later listing. You can only have a reputation if other people can find you. A page and her owner’s reputation then relies on the generosity of others linking to her page. If an author disagrees with the contents of page and wishes to dispute it, linking to the page adds to its value and reputation. The author is then left to not link. However, this practice which the status quo forces people to use still leaves the reader at a disadvantage.

There have been suggestions to create a newer kind of syntax and link taxonomy which would add to the current binary options of link or no link. The simplest system would be to have three choices, positive link, negative link and no link. This system would actually be very easy to for users. All you need to do is add a tag to the link.

Flipping forward one year, I was struck when Jonathan Zittrain pointed out in his talk last Saturday, the use robot.txt files for telling search engines not to spider a file or directory started in the early age of the web as an adhoc measure by individual which became an internet standard. Today, it is much harder to get a standard adopted, but the story of robot.txt reminds us that it is possible to create grassroots change in internet standards. Endorsement links allude to aspects of the Semantic Web, but frankly, I’m not sure if it will every come. Contextual syntax might evolve over time with gradual implementations.

The idea of rated links get even more interesting when you consider how search engines might use links that interpret reputation and authority. Of course, gaming the system would occur, but that happens now and should not deter the implementation of a link taxonomy. It might also encourage search engines to become open to annotating listings, as Frank Pasquale has suggested. Generally, search results are given by relevance or time of creation. New categories could be ranked in terms by agreement, disagreement or even controversy. The end result would be better ways for author to link, for readers to under the context of the link, and for searcher to usage links in the aggregate.

So, many it wasn’t the Chinese government re-directing Google, but domestic ISP, who may or may not have been doing it intentionally. RConversation does a good job at pointing out how the speed of the blogosphere tends to amplify rumors and let gut reactions bubble up. After the first reporting of the Baidu redirects last week, I wonder how many people followed up to find out what really happened, or did they just move to the next media blitz with th e rest of us?

Image source: usgs.gov

My last post to flowtv.org described the work by Kevin Werbach, a legal professor at the UPenn’s Wharton School of Business. I first heard about him at this year’s Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. He is looking at how the different forces pull the Internet together as well as pushes them apart. I wrote about how it got me thinking about how the Internet is fractal, and how important is it to have models like Werbach’s to help explain it.

At first, because the Internet works so well as a decentralized network, Werbach’s suggestion of the idea of a fragmented network comprised of archipelagos and walled gardens seems unlikely and unwanted. However, Techcrunch is reporting that in China, attempt to access Google and Yahoo are getting redirected to the homegrown (and approved) Baidu. A chance of this kind of fragmentation is quite real, which could also mean that the ICANN testing of non-Roman language domain names might be too little, too late.

With the fad-ish nature of social networking and online communities, I’m wondering how long people can manage long term, daily usage.

If I had many more of readers than I do, I would probably do this in survey monkey or something. However, I don’t so, I can just do it low - fi.

Here is my question, how long and when were you obsessed with a social networking site or online community?

It’s informal so, please interpret these as you wish and feel free to keep it short.

Linked In - obsessed in July and August 2007 , now only use it occasionally for work

Face Book - still checking multiple times a day for the last two months

MySpace - log in about once a year, usually coinciding with a musician’s record release

Friendster - created a profile around 2004, and never went back

IM - (any, all flavors) still log on daily to AIM, yahoo, msn, google, first starting in 2003, except for 2005 when it was banned in my office.

Second Life - one month in January 2006

Plaxo - never used, it always felt like spam

Usenet - lurked through the 90s, it’s a bit of a blur

IRC - heavy usage in mid-90s until web-based chat killed it.

For your convenience, here are the site you can cut and paste into a comment. But free feel to add any sites I left out.

Linked In -

Face Book -

MySpace -

Friendster -

IM -

Second Life -

Plaxo -

Usenet -

IRC -

Thanks!

The threshold everyone in telecom was waiting for, looks like to have arrived, as mobile users overtake landline users. Mediamark Research Inc. announced the results of a study, finding that 84.5% of people surveyed have landlines in their homes, while 86.2% have at least one cellphone. Further, only 12.3% of the participants only had a landline, while the people who solely used mobile phones was 14.0%.

I don’t think that landlines will be going away time soon. Especially for businesses that require stable and high quality voice service. I can see home landlines usage to continue its decline. This move toward mobile-only usage raises interesting questions on how infrastructure in residential landlines will evolve, and the reactions by the telecoms and the FCC.