Okay, first off, I’d have to clear to way and level the playing field, otherwise I might get taken out by your critics for publishing this here. I first heard about Meg and Dia from a friend of mine who normally hooks me up with interesting new music to listen to. Now my top bands at the moment include Incubus, Billy Talent, Brand New, Alkaline Trio and Rise Against and my music-giving friend has an even more alternative taste. So when he suggested I give Meg and Dia a listen, I thought okay maybe it’s just something indie (whatever that is anyway these days) with a little softer side since it has chick vocals.
My conclusion to his promotion of M&D and my initial thoughts is that M&D pleasantly suprised me and I listen to it every now and again when my girlfriend is around – that softer side thing again.
Meg (21) and Dia (19) Frampton are two sisters and they’re the founders of the band. They started out with just an acoustic guitar, but has since grown into a full 4-piece band (that is what success does to you). Their music can be described as guitar-driven with poppy, but slightly unique, chick vocals. So yes, they are poppy, but I can be a man and face up to listening to them sometimes.
The interesting thing about M&D however is the fact that they appeal to the more alternative crowd and I don’t if that’s just because they are the prettiest girls in the alternative scene or whether the alternative peeps just enjoy their music. M&D are signed to a major label, but they tour with smaller, but more well-known punk bands, which means that maybe the next time you get to see your favourite band, M&D will be there too.
See the thing is, we really like photoblogs, because it’s so easy to blog on those…Just resize your image (sometimes even not) and post them to the blog. No text, no boring comments, sometimes not even a title (what is up with that though?)
But anyway, we can’t really have a go at photoblogs since it’s not really rocket-science posting to Cool Crowd either. So we’ll just keep it at the fact that we really enjoy having a look at photoblogs every now and again. The only silly thing about these blogs are the fact that normally when you visit you view say 5 or 6 photos, which means that even if the publishers post daily, you can really visit it daily.
To get back to the reason for this blog: we found a pretty cool new photoblog, entitled friskyPics, and we think it’s worth your time reading our 2 cents on photoblogs and also checking them out!
Everyone, who is anybody, is jumping on the social networking / web 2.0 bandwagon – and mixing the old with the new seems even more popular! According to reports the UK’s Channel 4 have decided to audition candidates for their upcoming Big Brother series via Social Networks.
Apparently, their website, E4.com, will be redesigned to look more like MySpace & Friendster, with visitors being able to upload photos and videos, chat to other members and rate their stuff.
Channel 4 chief, Andy Duncan, has however gone the “safe route” by declaring that they will choose “at least one” contestant from social networking, which means that the majority will still be auditioned through “normal” means.
Although this is quite clever and it will give Channel 4 some cloud in the blogosphere, it is only conforming to Web 2.0 and thus to whatever everyone else is doing. But again we find ourselves in a situation, where we can diss / rant / comment too much, because after the big blogging boom, who got on the blogwagon as well? One of these days however, you’re not going to need to leave your computer screen, because we’ll all be Matrix-type “robots” and we’ll just be plugged into the system – Google and Microsoft (or MySpace perhaps) are still however fighting for the right to be in control of the Matrix…
November 23, 2006 at 5:52 am · Filed under Misc & Random
As you all can see, we’ve launched V3.0 of The Cool Crowd at last! After a very long night (of struggles), we can at last say that we are proud of this new look. Although the look is more conventional (than the previous), we feel we’ve gone for a more “traditional” layout and we sure feel that the increased effectivity and convenience to our readers, will make this a popular choice.
One of our biggest struggles, was resizing all of our images to fit into the main content window, since our content panel got resized from 600px to 480px in the redesign – the missing 120px has basicly gone to the third panel (just because 3 panel blogs are so “in” right now!). So we had to resize every single image individually, since you can “intelligently” batch a set of files in Photoshop…
And just as you think that this IS indeed the new and improved TCC, we promise you some more upgrades, which makes you want to come back every day to see if we’re done…Well, we will be adding some additional modules in the next few days, which we hope will make your experience on TCC so much cooler. Check back for the upgrades!
So this is the fairytale of the girl that sold advertising space on her soon-to-be-bought Macbook Pro and eventually got enough money to buy the Macbook. The clever girl in the fairytale is, Leah Culver and she is a computer programmer, who couldn’t afford a snazzy new Macbook Pro. So she went out and found a few sponsors who were willing to buy her one…
November 19, 2006 at 7:58 am · Filed under Gadgets
The official ad for the new Nintento Wii console has just been released and according to YouTube, it’s breaking all kinds of records. It’s been watched over 750 000 times already and is now officially the most watched video on YouTube.
We must say, the ad looks pretty slick, but it’s the gaming, as showed in the ad, that really draws your attention! The ad seems so popular that the YouTube guys have disabled the embedding of the video on sites like ours…
So unfortunately, you’ll have to go see the ad over here. But be sure to click through as you want to be part of the “cult” of 750 000+ that has already seen the ad…
Tequila must be our favourite drink in the all wide world…And we’d sure love on of these beauties at the top…Tequila Ley has just entered themselves into the Guinness World Book of Records after they sold this limited edition Tequila bottle (we hope there’s some liquid in there as well), titled Aztec Passion Limited Edition, for a cool $225 000. An anonymous investor from Las Vegas (probably our favourite dirty city in the world) apparently purchased the bottle. The bottle is in covered in 4.4 pounds of white gold and platinum.
We’re just wondering whether this tequila gives you a headache as well the next morning after a heavy night!?
November 16, 2006 at 5:31 am · Filed under Gadgets
Apple has just agreed a new deal with six major airlines (Air France, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Emirates, KLM & United Airlines) to offer in-flight iPod entertainment to all passengers. Any passenger will basicly be able to plugin his / her iPod into the existing TV consoles to watch their favourite movies and videos straight from their iPods.
This very value-added service will go live in the middle of next year and Apple are also in negotiations with various other airlines over the same deal.
These are the benefits of having an iPod made by a company with an absolute marketing genius, such as Steve Jobs. This marketing is just so effective and simple and it will definitely increase brand loyalty – especially since Microsoft’s new Zune MP3 player does not seem to be to bad after all…
Well, according to owner Rupert Murdoch (News Corp) MySpace is valued at about $6 billion – already ten times more than the $580 million they paid earlier this year and also 4 times as much as the $1.6 billion price Google paid for Myspace a month ago…
We think this is absolutely bull-crap – how could anyone ever expect to make a profit on a $6 billion investment? A good business breaks even within two years, which means that any new buyer would need to make about $3 billion each for two years. We all know the internet and Web 2.0 are going places, but those sums are insane, and all the profit is coming from advertising revenue. And advertising is a very subjective decision – MySpace is not selling a physical product.
According to MySpace they currently have 130 million users, which keeps on growing at 8 million a month. Although they admit that “some” of the accounts are indeed inactive, we’d like to guess a percentage of inactive accounts – let’s say, ummm, maybe, a third of all accounts? How people on MySpace actually use it frequently anyway? Not being a big fan of MySpace, our opinion is that MySpace is used more commercial interests by commercial parties these days, than it is being used by individuals to socially connect to others. But hey, who are we to judge Mr Murdoch and his gang?
Everyone, who is anybody, is jumping on the social networking / web 2.0 bandwagon – and mixing the old with the new seems even more popular! According to reports the UK’s Channel 4 have decided to audition candidates for their upcoming Big Brother series via Social Networks.
