I’ve been playing guitar for around six years now. Since then, literally every single time I’ve ever been around my grandma (who loves Willie Nelson) and have also been holding a guitar, she’s asked, “Well when are you going to play ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain’ for me?!”

So for Christmas I made this for her, and thought I’d share. I hope you dig it:

If you’d like to download it, the MP3 is here.

I just signed up for an account with the new (new to me….recently relaunched) music database Soundflavor. This site not only lets you search for specific songs or artists using genre, lyrics, subject, mood, decade, artist, or album (good for finding out who the hell sings that song you’ve had in your head since last Thursday…but don’t have enough to go on to Google), it also makes new music recommendations based on the songs or artists you find (like a more search-oriented Last.fm).

Each artist page brings together videos, streamable songs, recent news, and similar artists collected from across the web. Disappointingly, I don’t think it includes discographies.

If you’re into sharing music, or being a good friend, you can build your own playlists or auto-generate recommended playlists to share (or post to your blog…except for Wordpress…lame). Here’s a link to my Elliott Smith One-Click playlist (includes music from The Weakerthans, TMBG, and Damien Jurado).

Unlike Last.fm’s “similar artist radio,” which plays a song once before it disappears into oblivion, the savable playlists of recommended music allow you to catalog and revisit new artists worth digging into.

The next time I need to settle a bet over a song or whip up a genre-driven mixtape, I’m heading to Soundflavor.

(via TechCrunch)

(Originally posted on Open Source CU)

I thought it’d be nice to start the week off with a rant inspired by three things:

1. Jim Bruene’s recent post about the scrappy usage (his word: ‘anemic’) of financial apps in Facebook.
2. My disagreement with this quote from the CUES Nexus blog (sorry, Lisa):
   

   If you want to reach Gen Y, why not be where they are? The more than 68 million Facebook users (many of them young people) spend an average of 20 minutes a day on the site. And about 250,000 new users sign on every day. Some CUs are already there, waiting to greet them.

3. That there are still high-fives given for corporate MySpace pages.

Social networks…

Are Not:

Real estate. If you look at online communities as an opportunity to park your caboose and head people off at the pass, you’re missing the point. Go buy a TV spot, pop up or newspaper ad – stick to the proven, tried and true methods of interrupting and annoying people.

To brands who treat conversations like billboards: you’re not just old marketers, you’re also posers. (And I should note that I’m not talking about Lisa here at all.)

There are 140 Facebook apps added every day. This is Noise 2.0. The apps that are the most successful are those that help Facebook users do what they came to Facebook to do rather than react to the fact that they happen to be there. More on that in a second.

Are:

Communities. If you bust in on that without immersing, participating, understanding, you are a door to door salesman. If you show up, you and your toothy grin, you’d better be adding value to the community by helping them interact, grow, and have a deeper connection with each other (that’s why they’re all there in the first place). The Cluetrain Manifesto said communites are groups “of people who care about each other more than they should.” And each community/platform is unique, but also interwoven. Engaging the Facebook community looks different from engaging the Second Life community looks different from engaging the Twitter community.

For Example:

Why is Facebook’s iLike so successful (361,568 daily active users, $15.8 million in funding…for a Facebook app)? Because people use Facebook to communicate themselves, learn about and connect with people. iLike enables that and, as a result, enhances Facebook for its users.

This is shown across the board in the numbers too. According to Adanomics data (made sense of by Asi Sharabi) the most widely used apps (44%) are “Identity Formation / Social Comparison.”

Why do I think Fiserve’s MyMoney will not succeed as it is right now? Because, frankly, who cares that you can access your account within Facebook? It is not that difficult or time consuming to open a new window or tab and get to my online banking login. Thank you for saving me three clicks, but until MyMoney brings more to the table I’d rather keep my applications clean.

What if you could use MyMoney to visualize your progress as you saved for a vacation, a new toy, or the secret to time travel. What if a few trusted friends and I could use Facebook’s social tools to build a cross-FI collective overdraft protection account that auto transfers cash in a time of need, notifies each person on the account, and in doing so: 1) saves me fees and 2) builds in the obligation to replace that money as soon as I can?

By the same token, Financially Fun Island™ (not a real thing, but almost a real thing) in Second Life will, at best, attract a lot of industry insiders who are interested in this “innovative new tactic.” But the citizens have better things to do than go to your island and play money games. They’re building an active economy. However, a financial institution that offers home, land, and small business loans in Second Life for Second Life is enriching the in-world experience…not just capitalizing on it.

I’d much rather be enabled than greeted.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got. You can yell at me now.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. I hope you’re doing something schmoopie this evening. Here are three legitimately free collections of music. It’s my present to you, because I like you.

1// David Bazan - Live at the Grey Eagle

Download it here. Visit David Bazan’s website here.

Tracklist
01 Harmless Sparks / Fewer Moving Parts
02 Cold Beer & Cigarettes
03 Weeds in The Wheat (New song)
04 Transcontinental
05 Q & A 1
06 Please Baby Please (New Song)
07 Of Minor Prophets & Their Prostitute Wives
08 Heavy Breath (New Song)
09 Hot Girls
10 Q & A 2
11 Untitled (New Song)
12 Selling Advertising
13 Options
14 Curse Your Branches (New Song)
15 When They Really Get to Know You…
16 American Flags (New Song)
17 I Do
18 Q & A 3
19 Q & A 4
20 Bands With Managers
21 Hallelujah

(thanks to Terrell Meek)

2// Amplive - Rainydayz Remixes (Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” remixed)

Download it here. Visit Amplive’s Myspace here.

Tracklist
01 Rainydayz
02 Video Tapez (ft. Del The Funky Homosapien)
03 Nudez (ft. Too $hort & MC Zumbi
of Zion I)
04 Weird Fishez
05 All I Need
06 15 Stepz (ft. Codany Holiday)
07 Reckonerz (ft. Chali2na)
08 Faustz

(thanks to Our Digital Music)

3// Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos - Demos

This link sends you to a page with a ton of live Margot downloads. Personally, I think most of the live recordings kind of suck. But, if you scroll down until you find “Demos”…those are all new songs, all acoustic, and all fantastic.

Download it here. Visit Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos’ website here.

Tracklist
01 As tall as cliffs
02 Broad ripple
03 Hip hip hooray
04 Holy cow
05 Ocean
06 Open your eyes
07 Things you shouldnt do

(thanks to Casey Bedell)

…So do you like anyone, maybe who like writes a blog or something, maybe like more than a friend?

[ ] yes [ ] no [ ]maybe

Last November I had a couple of friends who participated in National Novel Writing Month. Their goal? To write a 175-page (around 50,000 word) novel in 30 days. The idea is to fight creativity’s worst enemy, self-editing:

By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down. (nanowrimo.org)

I wanted to participate, but didn’t care to write a novel. So I made up my own version - National Album Writing Month. The goal was to attack my bent towards self-editing, jump-start my songwriting, and write 9 songs in a month.

Here is one of the songs I wrote last November. It’s about some good friends of mine (the lyrics are here):

I ended up writing 6 songs, so I didn’t quite hit my goal, but it definitely got me back into song-writing (it had been over a year since I’d written) so I’m calling it a win.

I’d love to hear your feedback, and would love even more to hear music from other songwriters who might have stumbled onto this post.