quoperative

Well isn’t that the sweetest peach…

Hi stevepalmer,

Your free trial to Last.fm Radio is about to end. If you’re enjoying it, why not subscribe for only $3.00/month and continue listening to non-stop personalised radio.

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I guess last.fm figured out a revenue model for their awesome and (until very recently) free service.  I guess it’s worth $3/mo but geez… this is the first I’ve heard of a trial or that it would not be free someday.  Thanks for the heads up guys.

Even though I haven’t updated my work in a while, here’s a little micro-site I did for my bandmate Bob to help him in his job hunt for production work. I’m not sure who did the photos but I’ll add a credit when I find out — it’s easy to design something around a great shot like this.

Rupert Murdoch, eat your heart out!

Ok, so Chris doesn’t NEEEEEED an iPhone but he really dropped the ball on his latest smartphone purchase, opting for the poster child for why it’s important to test products before releasing them: the Blackberry Storm.  Yes, and it’s been downhill ever since he got it.  And yes, he really regrets buying the iPhone “wannabe” instead of an actual iPhone.

So I took pity on the guy and we hatched a micro-site to help him raise the money to a) get out of his current contract with Bell and b) purchase a new iPhone.  Sounds suspicious, you think to yourself.  Why give some wanker money for buying a shit phone?  Good point.

Here’s the deal: you give Chris a little money towards getting the iPhone and he’ll give you something in return — he’ll smash the hell out of his Storm in whatever ridiculous way his supporters (i.e. you) suggest and videotape for all of the interweb to enjoy. I think it’s worth a small contribution.

When the baby’s born we’ll eat steaks and bacon, high-five each other, and laugh at jokes like this…

I just experienced some of the worst customer service ever from Tiger Direct. Congrats, guys — you’re even worse than Rogers!

It takes a real visionary organization to deliver — on top of complete and utter incompetence in helping a customer with their problem — service that makes the customer feel like a moron for not understanding the ins and outs of running a business based on drop shipping.  Obviously when I want to cancel my order with you, Tiger Direct, it’s my responsibility as the customer to cancel it with the anonymous drop shipper as well.  Why didn’t I think of that? Thankfully, the gentleman I spoke to in customer service was only too happy to deliver this message in a completely unnecessarily rude and condescending manner. Reminding me yet again why I’m just not smart enough to be working in a call centre. Boy, I wish I had gotten that young man’s name.  I would have loved to have included it here.

So, Tiger Direct… the ball is in your court.  Contact me if you’d like to salvage this blunder.

Art installations in big box stores in France. Lots of good stuff here. C’est tout.

I’m imagining the 67 year old semi-retired guy at Home Depot encountering this… “Son of a gun! The manager’s going to kill me when he sees this!”

We saw this dance party literally explode out of nothing during Santigold‘s set at Sasquatch, but I had no idea it started with ONE GUY. The awesomeness of this is off the charts.

This is absolutely incredible.  Wolfram Alpha is a “knowledge engine” launching this month. It’s being dubbed a Google killer and even though its’ creator says it isn’t, it’s getting tonnes of (deserved) attention.

Check out this screencast posted last week to see Stephen Wolfram take Wolfram Alpha for a little test drive and show off what it can do.

Ok, fine… it probably won’t *kill* Google, but considering that people are turning to Google more and more to look up dinky facts and definitions because it’s such a damn good search engine, Wolfram Alpha stands a good chance of biting a serious chunk out of Google’s mind share when it comes to settling useless trivia disputes.

This is such a totally fresh and radical approach to using the internet — I can’t imagine this not having a massive impact on the everyday user in the next 3-5 years.

At least, that’s what some people maintain.  Including me.

If you’ve got a couple hours to kill you can read that article or I’ll just draw your attention to Exhibit A below.

I submit, for your listening pleasure, two songs…

The first is “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, a song that appears on Led Zeppelin III and was released in October 1970.

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The second is “Never” by Moby Grape from Wow/Grape Jam, a double-album released in April 1968.

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This one is definitely Page/Plant tag team thievery — Plant clearly borrowed big chunks of lyrics word-for-word and even though the song is a pretty standard blues jam I’d say the slinky feel of it combined with the stolen lyrics makes Page just as guilty.  Shame on you guys.

Word on the street is that Led Zeppelin reached an out-of-court settlement in 2005 on this one, paying Moby Grape’s Bob Mosley an undisclosed amount of money… but still no writing or arrangement credit on the song.

Yes, these are business cards made with two things: meat and lasers! What a fucking brilliant idea.

“Hey man, great to chat with you today. Let’s keep in touch.”

“Oh, your business card is made of meat? That’s odd.”

“Not really.  Grab my contact info and then enjoy the snack.”

“Is it safe to eat the ink?”

“It’s not ink, my friend.  It’s seared into the meat with lasers.”

“I know I only met you 15 seconds ago but I’m going to offer you our CEO position right now.”