WLazorik » Websites

Counting Crows Launch Live Download Site: 10,000 Free Downloads

Bill Lazorik — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:58:01 +0000

Today the Counting Crows launched a new fan website http://www.livecountingcrows.com where live recordings of every future performance will be available for download. The first 10,000 users to register will receive a free download of the Charlotte, NC 7/28/2008 show. The site is operated by Nugs, a turn key music distribution service founded by former CTO of CinemaNow Brad Serling. Nugs operates download services for bands such as Dave Matthews, Metallica, Phish, and the Grateful Dead. Finding alternative sources of revenue is currently a key priority for the music industry and live download sites should continue to grow in popularity. The new site is straight forward and easy to navigate. The concerts come divided up into seperate files for each song. A pop up Java download applet offers a very fast and efficient means of retrieving the songs which are available for two days after purchase. Purchase formats include MP3 $10, FLAC $13, CD $21, CD+MP3 $26. The free Charlotte show was available in MP3 format only. There is no DRM on the downloads, but I was disappointed in the 128kbs bitrate. The only way that pay services can compete with free illegal downloads is buy offering simple to use, high quality products, at competitive prices. The Counting Crows win points for offering their fans a simple and easy way of obtaining DRM free live performances. However, the MP3 quality can be improved and $10 dollars is still too much for a product that requires little upfront expenses and hardly any incremental distribution costs.

KidZui Offers A Safe Internet Experience For Your Kids

Bill Lazorik — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:59:17 +0000

The internet is not a place to let your kids roam free. It is too easy to find inappropriate material that leads to way too many questions. There are plenty of services which offer the ability to filter the internet and make it a safer place. However, these services have never been truly effective because the internet expands and evolves faster then the filters. This made adding filtering technology in schools and the home a frustrating experience because it was still too easy to find the bad stuff and the filters often blocked material that would be helpful for research. This has always lead me to believe that the only real solution would be a program that allows a whitelist of approved sites instead of trying to blacklist all the bad ones. KidZui has created a product that provides just such a solution coupled with a fun and interactive browser easier for kids to use. It is designed for kids ages 3 – 12 and every website, image, and video accessible has been manually reviewed by trained parents and teachers. The program’s interface will change depending on the user’s age to make the experience easier for younger children and more valuable to older kids. Content is also filtered or allowed based on age and parents can approve additional sites at any time. KidZui is a powerful solution and one which can be expanded to become the defacto standard for a safe internet experience beyond even 12 years of age. The service costs $5 per month or $50 for a year in order to have enough money to pay the individuals who review and approve content. However, there are a few other products that offer a similar solution for free such as Kidzcd or the Glubble add-on for Firefox. The KidZui solution is slick and powerful, but it is difficult to compete with free. What this space really needs is a wiki based solution that parents and teachers can use to collaborate together in creating the whitelist of approved material, which then can be used by all filtering programs.

KidZui: The Kid Safe Browser
KidZui: Browser For Kids

MC Hammer Launches DanceJam

Bill Lazorik — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:12:42 +0000

As your new fun website of the day I bring you DanceJam by MC Hammer. The site opened to the public on March 1st. It offers a forum for individuals to upload videos of themselves dancing. Dancers battle against each other to determine who has the most skill or funniest moves. For those of who don’t know, MC Hammer is actually active in the tech startup community and DanceJam has been in development for several months. The combination of MC Hammer’s name and a focused niche should should enable the site to distinguish itself from other video startups.

Google Apps Adds Team Edition But Limits Cross Company Use

Bill Lazorik — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:43:25 +0000

Google has just released a new version of their online apps suite called Team Edition. It compliments the current Enterprise, Education/Non-Profit, and Free editions by allowing members of an organization to collaborate together without their entire company signing up for the service. Employees simply verify their email address and they will be able to share and work together using Google Docs, Calendar, Talk, and Start Page. Students can also add their school email address to get access to the team edition features. The whole verification process would be similar to adding a network on Facebook. This is a great way for Google to get a back door into a company and may lead to more businesses paying for the Enterprise version. The requirement to verify an email address is an attempt to appease corporate IT managers worried about security. It is doubtful large corporations will be embracing the service anytime soon, but many small and medium sized operations may find benefit in free collaboration tools while maintaining local control of their email services. However, the requirement to verify email addresses limits the utility of Google Apps for cross company teams, and projects that consist of consultants and employees from multiple companies. It would not be surprising to see Google drop this requirement in the future when everyone becomes a little more comfortable with the idea of cloud computing.