November 2004

Hey, Shannon Okey, bitter-girl" href="http://bitter-girl.com/blogger.html">Shannon is back!

ZuZu was a full room late tonight for Tom Thumb (AKA Andy) and his new indie rock band. He was a singer/songwriter sort of guy until six months ago when friends on bass, drums and keyboards joined in. Michael’s bookstore cohort Molly plays the keyboard and sings backup. Hopefully they’ll get some tunes recorded and share them on their website.

On a whim last week I sent an email to Marqui, curious about their new program in the works to pay a couple dozen webloggers to write about them as a new way of finding clients and generating press. Looking through the information on their website, it seemed interesting. They’d pay $800/month for a weekly writeup about their product with everything being upfront and transparent and no limits on what each weblogger writes about (the good and the bad about the product). The approach sounded interesting, so why not look into it?

I wasn’t really expecting to hear back from them. But the next day I received an email from Marc Canter, one of their advisors who encouraged Marqui to set up the blogger program. He said we should talk over the weekend but then he got busy and I had a funeral to go to. So, fast forward to earlier this week and I get a couple emails sent out to everyone who has been invited to participate. I didn’t really know what was going on since Marc and I hadn’t even talked yet. I sent him a followup and then he called me last night.

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Yesterday I took a bunch of photos at Thanksgiving Dinner hosted by Debbie and Steve Femia (Michael’s brother and sister-in-law).

On Sunday I added a bunch of tunes to Exploit Boston! Radio, my internet radio station on Live365.com’s network. Thanks to The Charms, Count Zero, Soltero, The Dresden Dolls, Vic Firecracker, Mittens, Anti-Love Project (and more) for providing the rock, pop and/or alternative sounds to the 11+ hours of streaming music. If only the mystery listeners in China would email and let me know what they think of the tunes.

Gregor and I are conspiring to host my 7th annual sushi fest. This year it will be held at 9:00 PM on Thursday, December 9th. The dinner coincides with the first day of “Votes, Bits and Bytes“, The Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s conference about the impact of technology on politics. The location will be near Harvard Square with more specific details on the way.

[UPDATE: So much for it being a random email. The book author gave the publisher my email. ;)]

I think I’ve got an email that may qualify as the best spam I’ve ever received. The publisher of Gabriel Jeffrey’s new book sent me an email. I suppose this is the first time I’ve received a spam-ish email about someone I know. I’m surprised they didn’t include a link to the book’s website or Gabe’s weblog especially since this email was probably targetted to bloggers.

Here’s the email …

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I’m at the Paradise Lounge for the monthly Mix Tape Tuesday hosted by Mike Viola of the Candy Butchers. So I get to be semi-productive while the bands set up. Fun! Thanks to whoever left their WiFi network open. ;)

The fine folks at Whizspark are sponsoring my Exploit Boston! radio station. If you’d like to hear hours and hours of Boston area indie rock, pop and alternative bands, go listen to it! The music streams via Live365.com 24/7 on any MP3 player with a high-speed (cable modem/DSL) connection.

Peter Caputa of Whizspark also wrote about the sponsorship on his weblog.

I’m a big fan of Wilco. Singer Jeff Tweedy was recently interviewed in Wired Magazine and among many eloquent tidbits, had this to say.

We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they’re listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.

What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them.

Stop trying to treat music like it’s a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can’t be cheap, either.