[Music]

The cool people at Skype should do more fun videos like this really cool spoof of "New York" by Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys. It will help them stay connected with the young and the tech folk audience.

I thought the guy rapping was funny, but when the young lady doing AK, came on I couldn't stop laughing. Funny as hell. I'd hire her for my next short film in a heartbeat. Then again I'm in Singapore, so I may not be able to hire her anytime soon. Can someone hire her for their next short film, if she fits the part? I think she played AK pretty well, and if the voice we heard came from her pipes give her a recording contract, dammit!

Enjoy!

Thanks...






...to my buddy @yaoquan for info abt this video.
BTW, @yaoquan is the young, good-looking founder of the online events management tool, FlickEvents.com (If you're female and single, let me know, and I'll connect you with him.)

Google just recently unveiled the latest addition to their family of life-changing services -- Google Music. Now users can type the name of a song or artist, and Google lets users play the song as many times as they want through Lala.com or iLike.com. The feature hasn't been rolled out in and around Singapore yet, but it's only a matter of time.

Aside from curing brain itches all over the world (you hear a song on the radio, and you can't know who sang it unless you remember the lyrics and Google it), Google Music may also boost music sales in the near future. After all, Google is the world's most visited site -- now looking for music is no longer the chore it used to be.

Much has been said about Google Music over the past several weeks. It's been touted as the "iTunes killer" (yawn) or "Bing destroyer" (double yawn), but it's doubtful Google had either Apple or Microsoft in its sights when it came out with Google Music. If you ask me, they're just doing what they do best -- give relevant search results.

Of course, there isn't a doubt Google Music will get its share of criticism from entities in the music business. Apple fans, for instance, may see it as a challenge to iTunes' superiority over the digital music industry, a dominance Microsoft has for so long tried and failed to dent.

It doesn't feel like that to me. It's likely that the people who'll be searching for (and eventually buying) music on Google Music will be those who have never touched iTunes before, and believe you me, there's a lot of them out there. If Google Music's going to do anything, it's bound to be for the good of civilized society.

Oh, and I'm not worried about traditional music media, by the way. I doubt the radio will ever die* -- it's a part of civilization that, like jeans and t-shirts, will never go out of fashion.


* But if I'm wrong about the radio, please don't point it out. Just pretend like I was right anyway

The Palm Pre had the unusual advantage over its competitors when it first came out, when users found that the new smartphone could actually sync itself using Apple's popular iTunes software. Naturally, it didn't evade Apple's radar for long, and the next iTunes update stamped out the possibility of syncing with the Pre.

Palm's next move was enough to make me raise an eyebrow. The latest software update to the Pre once again lets users sync their media with Apple's iTunes platform. When pressed for comment, the guys at Palm said what they did was completely legal -- when the Pre connects to a PC, it sends out a USB signature that's similar to the one assigned by the USB Implementers Forum to Apple devices.

What's more, they claimed that Apple was misusing the iTunes USB foundation by making it respond only to devices with Apple's assigned USB codes.

Hmm, okay. I think that's called "the way we do things around here."

Seriously, Palm may need to up their legal position a bit -- the USB Implementers Forum states that a device's USB code must match the USB ID given to its manufacturing company. Palm has already approached the USB industry standards group with their plans to make the Pre work with iTunes. So far, the group hasn't commented on the matter.

As usual, the blogosphere is divided on the issue. There are some who say Palm is doing the smart thing, since it's working around legal loopholes to its advantage, the same way Apple has done in the past. On the other hand, there are some who say that what Palm is doing is very unprofessional, and that they seriously should reconsider their position if they want to stay in the competition.

There's no doubt that the Pre has won some loyal followers, and Palm is hanging in there for a while yet. But this latest move seems to me like Palm's in a worse position than many think, and the company is resorting to even the dirtier tricks to get a leg up on the industry.

I doubt this move will make a dent in Apple's user base, which is why I'm confident that it'll get stamped out by Apple yet again, very soon. If you ask me where I stand, I'm naturally with Apple on this one. I don't intend to come across as a "hard-a**" for intellectual property rights, but that's the way it should be.

I found this on YouTube two days ago and told myself I *had* to write a little about this for Friday's (today) article.

If you're working for an airline company, then here's a tip you might want to share with the guys at the baggage department -- Handle baggage labeled "FRAGILE" with care. Apparently it's a lesson that United Airlines is learning the hard way.

Dave Carroll, a Canadian folk singer, debut his first of three YouTube music videos earlier this week, entitled "United Breaks Guitars." It was a way of getting back at United Airlines for breaking his precious guitar on a flight he took last year and refusing to take responsibility for the damage.

Carroll was took a United Airlines flight between his hometown of Halifax, Canada, to a gig in Omaha, Nebraska in March last year. He was traveling with his band, Sons Of Maxwell, when a passenger sitting behind the group looked out the airplane window at the baggage handling people and exclaimed, "Oh my God, they're throwing guitars out there!"

Surely enough, Carroll's TAYLOR guitar was broken badly. He then spent the next year calling up United Airline representatives in Chicago, New York, Canada, and even India, with the guys at United passing the blame and saying it was someone else's fault.

When United Airlines ultimately refused to pay for the damages (which amounted up to US$1,200), the frustrated Carroll decided to make a music video about his experience and post it on YouTube.

700,000 views later, United Airlines is now trying to make peace with Carroll and his band. They've obviously taken notice of the video (and the announcement that two more music videos were on the way) and want to treat it as a textbook case in handling customer complaints.

I'd like to say this is a good thing for United to do (since I'm pretty sure Carroll's YouTube video will cost United at least a million dollars in business), and if other airlines know what's best for them, they ought to start getting their act straight, as well. They need to stop thinking that disgruntled customers will just have to swallow the bad service -- you'll never know what they can do with the Internet.

Some like to say Apple's preference for minimalistic designs came from its disdain of rival Microsoft, which is (in)famous for its cluttered designs, wordy instructions, and sponsor-loaded packaging. But seriously, though, with the new iPod Shuffle hitting shelves all over the world, I tend to wonder just how far Apple plans to go with the minimalistic thing.

It's surprising to know the highs and lows that kids these days reach, and today's article is about a particular high point – David Nelson, a 15 year-old software developer, managed to create Muziic, a music application that can turn YouTube into a veritable playlist factory. And yup, it's free.

The two remaining members of the original Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, are holding an April 4 concert in Radio City Music Hall. It wouldn't be too newsworthy if the concert was to raise money to help solve problems like homelessness, hunger, or AIDS, but the fact that it's for something unheard-of – Transcendental Meditation – makes it so.

More than 40 years ago, the four original Beatles went to India and had their firsthand experience with meditation. The guys, who weren't all too hot with the idea of organized religion to begin with, were apparently instantly hooked on touching the spiritual. April's concert is going to benefit the David Lynch Foundation (yep, David Lynch the director), which has been an influential contributor to the Transcendental Meditation movement in the United States.

You know... some things are just a little bit of a challenge to imagine.

But a few days ago, the “One Laptop per Child” (OLPC) foundation came out with a TV ad that featured one of the more popular Beatles, John Lennon. Lennon was shot and killed 28 years ago when he and his wife, Yoko Ono, walked towards their apartment in Manhattan. Seeing him endorsing a TV ad for charity was a bit unnerving at first, and it left a bunch of mixed feelings.

The Grammys have been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism from music lovers year after year after year. The awards show has the annoying (if not infuriating) habit of rewarding popularity much more readily than musical talent. That's why, looking at the nominees for the 2009 Grammys, it's easy to wonder whether it's trying to do certain things that made its rival, American Idol, so popular ratings-wise.

At this point, it would seem as though no one could hold a candle to Apple's dominance of the worldwide digital music market. Its wildly popular iTunes software is being used by a little over half of the world's digital music-loving population, and it seems to keep getting better as time goes by. But give other companies a few months, and Apple could see its invincible grasp on the market slowly slip away.