Colin Charles Agenda

This is a beautiful song. Its on replay through my speakers, a lot recently (you’ll know if you follow me on last.fm). That is, the single from Radiohead, titled the House of Cards. From the excellent album, In Rainbows (you know, complete download available DRM-free, for any price you want to pay for, even zero dollars.) Beautiful lyrics.

I don’t wanna be your friend
I just wanna be your lover
No matter how it ends
No matter how it starts

Forget about your house of cards
And I’ll do mine

Of course, the video is equally interesting. Because no cameras or lights were used to generate it. Read more about the technology behind it (how to capture, and render 3D data). Joi Ito has a good post summarising the important bits: the data (not the music) used to make the video is under a Creative Commons license, the source code to make it happen is under the Apache license. Good stuff all around.

Today I found out that Mixwit, a site that allows you to make digital mix tapes, is closing its doors by December 21 2008.

We regret to announce that Mixwit will cease to exist at the end of the year. The website and profiles will be turned off around Dec 21st and all embedded widgets will stop playing before the end of December.

We’ve put a year of work into Mixwit so this choice wasn’t taken lightly. I won’t go into the details of our situation but state simply that we boldly marched into in a position best described as “between rock and a hard place.” We’re very grateful to be have been part of the mixtape revival of ‘08 and are satisfied to be able to to bow out while things are still good.

I’ve had an account since about August, and made two mixes, which have received an OK number of plays (considering the mixes were really just meant for one person). The interface is easy to use, you can customise it with a graphic design of your choice (I’ve used photos), and if you want (or should I say can) to buy the MP3’s, you can do so via the iTunes or Amazon music stores. As long as you have unmetered bandwidth, Mixwit made a lot of sense.

For me, it was bringing me back memories of mix tapes, and why I created them. Mix CDs replaced mixed casette tapes, but seeing Mixwit’s interface brought back that nostalgia. If tapes were the originals, CD’s felt so mixtape 1.5 – Mixwit was mixtape 2.0.

Good bye Mixwit, and thanks for the mixtape revival of ‘08.

Songs to remember: Barry Manilow – Can’t Smile Without You, Michael Buble – Everything, Jet – Look What You’ve Done, Toploader – Dancing in the Moonlight, Ronnettes – Be My Baby, Jason Mraz – You and I Both, Oasis – Wonderwall, Wannadies – You & Me Song, Gwen Stefani – Cool, Starship – Sara, Hoobastank – The Reason, Bob Dylan – Sara, Winterpills – Pills for Sara, Eric Gale – Sara Smile, Fleetwood Mac – Sara.

Today I found Must Go Lah, a portal for events happening around Malaysia. Its a WordPress-based site (still 2.5), run gratis, by Orangedot Technologies.

I even disabled AdBlock Plus to look at the site and found no monetary business model (read: ads). I’m impressed – I wonder how long it will last. Do we really need another site for events listings, considering there already is Upcoming? Turns out of course that there are more events listed on MustgoLah, then there is on Upcoming. I’ve added it to my RSS reader.

Are there more event portals in Malaysia that you know of?

The new firmware (ok, its been out a few weeks) for the iPod Touch (and I presume the iPhone), allows one to download podcasts over the air – i.e. no need to sync with iTunes any longer, you can do it over the 3G network (on an iPhone) or the WiFi network (on an iPod Touch). Preetam was right when he said podcasts are really going to rule now.

I got the update, it took hours (some 200+MB took hours on a DSL connection), and was all excited, till I saw the following:

The iTunes Store is not supported in this country. What an amusing message. The AppStore definitely is. And podcasts are free – are there paid podcasts that I don’t know about?

I filed rdar://6443514, in disgust.

Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and many other chains, aren’t afraid to let you use their electricity (and at some places, free WiFi), because they know you’ll be buying coffee, food, and more. I however, took offence to the Secret Recipe, in Plaza Mont Kiara – the management there find it offensive to allow people to plug their laptops in!

However, running a Christmas tree from another socket was fine. I think they’ve just lost my business, and probably every other laptop toting yuppie reading this.

A new way to teach your child to get potty trained. Comes in both a boy or a girl version. Correct potty usage of course, gives you a sticker as a reward. I don’t recall reading about (and getting rewarded) for using the potty. Is this Parenting 1.5?