Some of you might have received a holiday mix from me last year, and my intention was to do the same this year, but I was slammed and even though I got it made, I wasn’t able to distribute it like last year’s. I’m hoping this might be a one-year glitch, and I can get back on schedule for 2011, but this was a good opportunity to go digital for the first time.

So here it is - Holiday Mix 2010

It’s a .zip file, so you’ll have to decompress it and then get it into your iTunes or whatever you use. Should be pretty easy for most of you, but that will be a good test to see if I’m overestimating how easy it will be. Drop me a line if you have any problems, and happy 2010!

Track list:
[#. Track Name - Artist]

1. The Clap - Thao With The Get Down Stay Down
2. Happy Up Here - Royksopp
3. Rawnald Gregory Erickson The Second - Starfucker
4. No Shit - Eskimo & Sons
5. Make The Roady By Walking - The Menahan Street Band
6. Marshland - Breathe Owl Breathe
7. The Corner - Common
8. San Frantico - The New Mastersounds
9. Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra
10. I Wanna - Matt & Kim
11. ?? - Paco de Lucia
12. Tresspassers In The Stereo Field - The American Analog Set
13. If It’s True - Yo La Tengo
14. Big Things Come In Small Packages - Young Gents
15. Hanuman - Rodrigo Y Gabriela
16. When We Swam - Thao With The Get Down Stay Down
17. New Resolution - Heartless Bastards
18. Machine Gun - Commodores
19. Boom! Shake The Room - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
20. My Gal - Yonder Mountain String Band
21. It’s Alright, Baby - Komeda
22. Bacano - Orgone
23. Que Hay De Comer - Jaime Urrutia

Here’s the beginning of their mission statement:

The print newspaper is in trouble. A lot of journalists joke about it. We don’t think it’s funny. Most of the writers and editors at The Faster Times have written for a print newspaper. They were our livelihoods, but they were also much more than our livelihoods. They were a way of pushing back the chaos of the modern world. Things happened, and the next day you could read about those things in your morning paper. The orderliness might have been an illusion, but it was a comforting illusion.

Time is always fast, but some times are faster than others. For American journalism, these are faster times.

Read the rest of the TheFasterTimes mission statement (go to the bottom of the page).

Eric Schmidt, Google’s co-founder and CEO, and also member of Apple’s board of directors until very recently, has just stepped down from Apple’s board. There are all kinds of investigations being talked about, and news is coming out about a tit-for-tat agreement between Google and Apple not to directly poach each others’ employees (which would be, by the way, a violation of all kinds of legal thingamajiggers).

And while that’s all well and good, I’m hoping to get a little bit more out of this break-up. Google is the king of entering other people’s markets, especially when they’re getting stagnant and lazy and not opening up properly. Google Docs, Gmail, etc. So, there’s a little piece of my brain, way in the back of my head somewhere, that is hoping that now that Apple and Google are splittsville we may be looking forward to a Google Media Player.

iTunes is fine, but it’s not the end all, be all that some people think. It just happens to be the best thing available right now. Unfortunately it’s tied to the iPod. Sure, I own an iPod, but if someone could come along and make something even close to as good that’s more open than the iPod, I’d jump on it in a second.

There’s a wave of announcements and denouncements recently of high profile people like Jason Calacanis and Mike Arrington giving up their Apple addictions because of the closed nature of the platform. A Google media player that allowed any portable media device to sync would be awesome. Oooh… and maybe they’d have a default offer to buy tunes through the Amazon mp3 store or other non-iTunes services…

And a solid media player offering that meshed well and optimized with Android wouldn’t hurt either.

I may be dreaming, but it sure would be nice.

Of course there are stories about this video and where it came from, and of course I’m also hoping to post some of my photos and videos from the trip soon as well, but there’s a lot to wade through. Hopefully coming soon.

Step 1:
At the bottom of every email you receive from the list serve there is a link that you can click on. This link will take you to a page where you can edit your profile, or (wait for it) unsubscribe yourself from the list. Click on this link.

Step 2:
On the new page scroll down to the section titled “Disc Subscribers” and put your email address in the blank field next to the button that says “Unsubscribe or edit options.”  Then click on the button. Important: You must use the email address that receives the message from the listserve. If you use multiple email addresses, make sure you enter the correct one.

to here…

Step 3:
If you used the correct email address you will arrive at a new page.  Scroll down and you will see a button marked “Unsubscribe.” Click this button to unsubscribe yourself.  Important: You are not done yet at this point!

Step 4:
Clicking on the “Unsubscribe” button from the last step sends an email to your email address.  This email contains directions for several options of how to complete the process.  This is an important final step because it keeps people from being able to unsubscribe each other - you have to be able to receive the email at the address you are claiming you want to unsubscribe, so it cuts out the funny business.  You can reply to the original message with a correct message in the subject line, or clicking on a link that will finish the process.  Pick one, or do both!

At this point you will have unsubscribed.  In four easy steps.  Congratulations.  Let’s celebrate.

Twitter bought in, and the messages started (and still are) flying around like hotcakes in a lumberjack food fight. I even bought in for a few minutes, but you’ll notice that the pages were fakes. If you rolled over, or clicked on any of the other links in the pages that looked very much like news sites with tabs like “Business” and “World News,” etc., you would see that all navigation links on the page link back to the page you are already reading. That is, there is no navigation. There is no rest of the site. There is just what looks like a navigation bar to give the illusion of a site.

Furthermore, if you took the time to scroll to the bottom of the site you would see this:

So, you know… pretty clear… “not factual,” “fabricated”.

The question remains… these guys brought in a whole boat-load of traffic to sites that have ads prominently displayed… what’s their conversion? How much are they making off of this, and how can this inherent issue with real-time message distribution in services like Twitter avoid being gamed so badly when real news events like the death of Michael Jackson prompt flurries of emotionally influenced posting?

I think it begins to come to personal responsibility and due diligence, but that’s a topic for another post…