schmevil | (no subject)

Allfacebook.com is reporting a rumor that Facebook will take on Apple's dominant iTunes by introducing its own music store. Few details are provided, save that they are actively looking to hire someone to head the project and discussions with studios have been ongoing.
Tim Faulkner
10/05/2007
Valleywag

Oh Facebook. I have a deep-seated doubt of the wisdom of trying to be everything to everyone. This could either work out fantastically for them, or screw them up really, really bad.

In contrast, this is intriguing news. I don't know - is there enough interest in streaming music? But I'm happy to see more people moving into the digital download market. Yay for competition.

Time Warner Launches Music Store

For $9.95 a month, you get unlimited access to streaming music. It also will sell digital downloads through its store, and allow you to transfer files onto portables for an additional fee. With all these new entries into digital music distribution -- real and rumored -- it'll be interesting to see if Apple caves to market pressure and either allows flexible pricing on iTunes, as the labels have asked for, or a subscription plan, to stay competitive.
Mary Jane Irwin
10/05/2007
Valleywag

This is an interesting post but I'm resistant to some of his suggestions. Just how much *are* we going to let technology control our existence? Well, a lot, I'm sure. Still, I can't even cope with being leashed to a cell phone and only enjoy using lj *because* it's anonymous.

Every day I look around the lecture hall and see at least ten laptops on Facebook, constantly refreshed. I have a Facebook account but I can't seem to muster up the interest necessary to become addicted. I mean, the daily minutia is boring enough without having it enshrined in photography. Look! Here's me at the mall! Here's me at bus stop! Here's me at the--FUCK OFF. And the wall posts. Jesus god.

Anyway, the post blurb--

Web 3.0 Starts With Your Phone

Expanding on the promise of a more mobile powered web, consider these scenarios. You have an iPhone or some other similar device. You walk into a store and your network switches over to the in-house WiFi. Now you’re online and browsing an interactive, web delivered catalog. Maybe you want to know where to find a certain product (in a department store, etc). A map pops up on your screen, showing your current location through GPS, along with a directory that you can search or browse.
Sugar Attack
10/04/2007

There's a post on World Changing about greener apartment living and it's discouragingly short on promise.

I live in a mixed townhouse/apartment condo complex that's about 30 years old. In the next few years a number of new, greener building codes and recycling requirements will come into effect. It's easy enough to recycle in a house (though it's harder when you have to bring your various recyclables to a central location), but retrofitting a 30 year old apartment building for wet recycling and composting is mind boggling. At least it's currently boggling my mind.

Our condo association is painfully in the red, and swiftly depleting its reserve fund, trying to cope with the new building codes re fire/elevator/everything safety, (which are really good, well thought out regulations), and I can already see the special assessments in our mailbox. I truly believe in the importance of making some fundamental changes to our collective lifestyle, but some days it really hurts.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I saw a nasty comment to a post on a community a few weeks ago, to the effect that anyone who uses an electric clothes dryer wants to kill the planet. Clearly that person has never lived in an apartment. Every place I've lived in has had at least one of three problems: 1) not enough space inside to hang clothes for the day it would take to dry indoors, 2) no balcony, 3) a balcony, but strict prohibitions on drying clothes from it. And that's not even counting the iron pyrite dust that coated everything outdoors when I lived at the base of a mountain in Southern California.

Sometimes even throwing money at the problem doesn't work, if the underlying basics aren't there.

Very few apartments even today are being built 'green'. We're going to have a *huge* problem down the road in trying to alter them, because as you point out, quite often the underlying basics just aren't there. How do you put a rooftop garden on a decrepit, 30 year old government-built building, for example? Structurally, just not going to happen.

I'm actually starting to get really frustrated with the environmental zealots who want the world to overnight, morph into a sustainable wonderland. And the *sanctimony*.

Is that an SGA still in your icon?

. How do you put a rooftop garden on a decrepit, 30 year old government-built building, for example? Structurally, just not going to happen.

Not only is the weight a problem, but you'd have to run new plumbing through the building to get grey water up there or your rooftop garden dies. Unless you don't care about wasting water, which isn't an option where I am. Spring is barely here and we're already under severe water restrictions.

It's going to take a lot more than individual companies/buildings to make it work.

Is that an SGA still in your icon?

Yup. With some modification.

To truly green North America will take a complete societal commitment, and a very, very long time.

Where are you, if you don't mind my asking?

Melbourne, Australia.

Yeah, that would do it. :-) I'm in Toronto, Canada. We have a nice lake from which to draw water and generally mild weather. We're spoiled.

Oh, don't I know it. I grew up in Niagara -- it was a real shock to move to the California desert, and even more to move here.

Oooh, Niagra's a pretty area. I've never lived outside of Toronto. I'm planning to travel and work, once I've finished my degree. It's going to be such an adjustment!

(Especially since Toronto was recently decided to be the 5th most livable city in the world *g*)