Prince performing Radiohead’s “Creep” at Coachella ‘08

Prince recently played a cover of the Radiohead song “Creep” at the huge concert festival “Coachella.” Since Radiohead won’t play the song anymore, it’s good to see that somebody is still playing the song as it’s such a great one. Well… after the concert Prince talks to his people and starts having them take the video off the internet. Flagging it as copyrighted by the owners of the content.

The problem with this, is that Radiohead owns the song since they wrote it, even though Prince performed it. Radiohead’s lead singer Tom Yorke wants to see the video and he wants the video to be spread around the internet. So in a funny, or forward thinking artist, twist Radiohead is telling Prince’s people to stop blocking the video and to let it live online and let people see it.

Funny that the person who owns the copyright wants it distributed, and that the person who doesn’t have the rights to pull it off the series of tubes that is the internet is trying to get it yanked.

You can’t find the videon on YouTube, but there are a few versions floating around. Hopefully the video embedded above will continue to work.

Yahoo News Story

• 30 seconds- Time it takes for a typical email to be sent to someone I know.

• 2 seconds- Time it takes for Twitter to update my tweets and send them out.

• 1 second- Time it takes to send an IM

• 1 WEEK!- Time it takes for facebook to tell me that someone wrote on my wall.

This is ridiculous and it seems like it should be a major concern for facebook and the people who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars. As others have notices, the instantanious connection that twitter provides should really make facebook consider how they are doing things on their site. Yes, they provide a much larger news feed of what your friends are doing, but if the news is on pace with a weekly magazine, how relevant is it in the world we live in today?

It sounds like facebook will be launching an on site IM service on Monday which will allow people to chat with other people who are online. This will be a nice service, but I am surprised that it is so far up on the priority list for Mark Zuckerberg and Co. With so many people already on AIM, MSN, GChat, and the many other services that work with eachother and can be used without being logged onto a specific site I don’t see facebook’s service taking off that quickly. Yes, it will work. Yes, I’ll probably use it a few times. But no, it won’t make me stay logged into facebook all day long.

What facebook should be doing is working on speeding up their news feed as well as how quickly they notify you of new messages and wall posts. I don’t live on facebook because there isn’t enough of a stream of new information being sent through my news feed. When someone writes on my wall, if I don’t find out about it for a week then the chances of that message being relevant in todays world of connectivity are very very slim.

Facebook needs to stay on top of the game if they wanto ever cash in on their $15B valuation.

Dreamhost sent out an email, posted a blog entry, and many other blogs started writing about the mixup. The billing team at Dreamhost has taken a very non-chalant tone in all of their customer contact pieces, and they continued this tone, even in a HUGE mixup that they made. They actually billed $7.5M to customers today, which isn’t bad for a single day of billing I guess.

The honesty and humor was a perfect mix of being up front as well as keeping their same tone to keep me feeling good about hosting my domains with Dreamhost. A great company who I highly recommend… unless they triple bill you.

For a good reach check out their blog entry addressing the issue: Dreamhost Blog- “Um, Whoops”

Major League Gaming now has an agreement with ESPN that will provide content for ESPN.com which will also include online video of various events and matches. ESPN includes bowling, billiards, darts, poker, and a bunch of other non-mainstream sports, but how far are they going to push it. Personally I would say that neither poker nor online gaming are sports, but they are competitions and for that ESPN is choosing to carry them on their network.

So, in your opinion, does this partnership make sense? Should ESPN carry Major League Gaming events on their website for now? Will it lead to them putting it on tv opposite Sunday football when they are desperate for a different target audience?

Press Release

I hang the majority of my shirts, and one of my least favorite houehold tasks to do is laundry, particularly the folding and hanging of clothes after they’re out of the dryer.  Check out what I learned to do today and how I will be folding the rest of my shirts from here on out.  It’s kind of like 7 minute abs, but if someone comes out with 6 minute abs I will switch to the new shirt folding method.

Enjoy. 

VideoJug: How To Fold A T-Shirt In 2 Seconds - Explained

Are you hooked?

One useful thing that has been done with twitter though, has been conference "casts" if you will.  A large conference called TechCrunch40 was going on the past two days, and a group of individuals got the twitter user name of techcrunch40.  Therefore people could follow their take on the conference, only problem for the conference was they were being honest, and mostly mocking the presenters and the conference itself.  Then randomly, after this twitter account had quite the following (almost 300 people in two days) Ev Williams, twitters founder, changed their name to nottechcrunch40. 

That kind of thing might fly with your buddies, but if you’re trying to create a tool to be used by a critical mass you shouldn’t change a users name (not delete, change) because you don’t like what they are saying (Williams is on the board for TechCrunch40).  The users said nothing offensive, and although I was not at the conference, I would imagine many of the things said were true.  I agreed from what I had read online and what they were saying. 

Ev has made alot of very smart moves (Blogger and Odeo) and I think twitter has the potential to be something very useful.  I hope to one day make a third of the great decisions Ev has made.  This move, however,  is something that should not happen if you’re trying to create something on a large scale.

Fred Wilson, has previously stated that the Wall Street Journal should allow their online edition to be totally free (I’d say about 90% is for subscribers only) and I have had a hard time believing this would be worth it.  People are paying between $50-$70 to access the WSJ online and that is money you know is coming.  It has been there for years, and with the Journals market, it seems like it will be there for a long long time.  I mean, I’m 25 and I’m willing to pay for it.  The NYT says that the traffic they are now recieving through Google is worth more than the paid subscriptions.  If that is true, then there is no reason not to open up the WSJ.

We’ll see how long Ruper opens up the WSJ.  With the NYT move, I have a feeling I will be asking for some of my subscription money back soon. 

Google has now opened up "Presently" which is their new competitor to Microsoft’s PowerPoint.  It looks pretty straightforward, and like Googles other offerings, very basic.  That’s what’s great about their products, but it’s also what will hold them back from being "Enterprise Ready."

I like the look of it, and from what I have seen thus far, I think I may use it for small team collaboration.  It will take awhile for this to infiltrate any non startup offices, but it’s a start.  The reason I have used Googles "Docs" and "Spreadsheets" have been because they’re easy to use and easy to share and collaborate with friends who have gmail.  If you are working on a small presentation and don’t want to spend the money on Microsoft Office, you may want to check out "Presently."  If you’re going to be working on a single computer and don’t have to share the document all the time, I’d stick with PowerPoint for now.

Also, on another interesting note.  I read about this on TechCrunch.  They have said that Google was supposed to release "Presently" at TechCrunch40 tomorrow, but that the site is now live.  Seems kinda weird to scoop your own conference doesn’t it???  The site’s live so I guess they have to say something, but truth of the matter is, I doubt many people would realize until the news hit TechCrunch and Digg.

Here’s a great prank from the guys at collegehumor.com.  Well at least one of the guys at the site thought it was great. There is some language at the end if you’re concerned about that. 

And as a sidenote I was at the first game of that series between the Mariners and the Yankees last week. So it’s totally relevant for being on my blog.

There is an option on the official site though if you "…already own an island.  But I’ll take the phone on its own."

Nice work Sprint and Blackberry.