For those interested, there’s an absolutely mad trailer for the upcoming Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean collaboration Mirrormask up now. Gaiman wrote it, McKean directed it, and special effects and such were handled by the Jim Henson Company…the trailer is amazing but hard to describe.
Think: Alice in Wonderland imagined by Dali while on an absinthe binge. Or, alternatively, Narnia if written by H.P. Lovecraft on a bad day.
As noted earlier in the blog, I was in Salt Lake City over the last week, at a great little hotel. Said hotel offers free, open WiFi, along with wired internet in some of its rooms. But the WiFi was open…I didn’t test it, but I would guess you could pick it up pretty well outside of the hotel edifice itself. There was a homepage redirect that I’m assuming logged your MAC and issued you an IP assignment, but that took just a second, and then you had a wide open connection.
So here’s my question/idea: Is there any reason that the hotel couldn’t set up its own computer somewhere on the subnet with iTunes running? Leave the iTunes sharing open, and rip music to the computer for whatever theme you wish…over the holidays, Christmas music. Perhaps focus on local artists, or bands that play in the clubs around the hotel. I read the iTunes EULA, and there are sub-licensed sections that are pretty picky about what it can be used for…but it’s not a directly commercial use to simply have the system sitting on your subnet, is it? I only focus on iTunes because it makes streaming so easy, and with more and more hotels offering free wifi/internet access, it could be a fun marketing point….streaming music associated with the hotel/area/season.
Now, there may be a dozen issues here, from broadcast licensing (is it broadcasting?) to copyright issues (it would have to be streaming only).
That said, I think there’s a great business opportunity here. Forego iTunes, and go straight for a cheap Linux box with streaming capabilities and a decent interface…there’s software out there that you can use to put something like this together for nearly nothing. Charge the hotel for support, and take payment from artists/record companies/whoever to include their content on the server. The hotel guests get free streaming music that they may not hear anywhere else, the hotel gets a great marketing point, the artists get extra exposure…and if you could get a chain to buy in, you could make a decent amount of money on this.
So: anyone know any venture capital/angels looking for an investment? I could make this happen if I could get a hotel chain on board.
Jean….what are you letting those Dookies get away with? I expected better from you, young lady!
I’m not completely sure what to make of this, but it is incredibly cool.
Or rather, the world. I’ve made it a point to avoid any semblance of American food while I’m in the big city. Thus far I’ve had:
My plan today is to have lunch at a Thai place called Lemongrass, and dinner at my hotel where I will finally be stuck with American food from Bambara. Of course, it has been voted the best restaurant in Salt Lake City, so I think that will be ok. 🙂
EDIT: Because Justin asked: I’m in Salt Lake City for training on the SCT/Sungard product Luminis Content Management System which MTSU is adopting. I’m here to learn how to create, edit, and manage templates for the CMS. I’ll post more about that when it’s all sunk in and it’s not just a rant about proprietary systems and silly markup.
Just a few notes on my current abode: the Hotel Monaco in Salt Lake City, Utah. Behold the pictures:
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The lovely King sized bed. |
One of the more interesting inclusions in the giftpack: the Intimacy Kit. It includes 2 prophylactics, 1 package lubricating jelly, and 2 obstetrical towelettes. I’m interested in the fact that 2 condoms are included, but only one package of lubricating jelly. |
My new best friend. The Monaco will loan you a goldfish for your room to help you feel less lonely. I can’t say that the goldfish is as cuddly as either Betsy or my kitties, but it’ll do in a pinch. |
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The interesting giftpack at the door. I don’t really need the stuffed goldfish, but it is an interesting selection of candy and such. Props for the Altoids, the Jelly Belly’s, and for including a bunch of locally made foods. |
The cool-as-hell cheetah print terrycloth robe. |
Sometimes when a new technology hits the Interweb, especially the blogosphere, it just spreads like a virus. Two of these things are Folksonomies and Flat namespaces. A flat namespace is a form of faceted classification (something that may or may not have popped up in some of your time at SILS) . The most popular sites that are good examples of this are del.icio.us, Flickr, and Gmail. For those of you not familiar with any of these, the big deal about a flat namespace (especially those mentioned above) is that content is given metadata by either the user or the community, which allows for filtering/searching of the data by its tags.
I’m just starting to play with del.icio.us, and I’ll say that it certainly looks like an interesting way to deal with classification, and is radically different than the hierarchical methods traditionally used by libraries (Dewey and the Library of Congress system). Imagine this: a library system that, via RFID tagged books and the right cataloging system, allows for users to virtually tag the books in the system. Given a large enough user base, a library could build a HUGE amount of data not only about their collection, but about how people use the collection. You may never expect people to catagorize books the way they do, and finding out how they see your books may give you a ton of information about circulation patterns and collection development that you would have never had otherwise.
Of course, you’ll still need a tradtional system like LoC for locating the works…for physical organization there’s still a need for some form of heirarchy. But if you add on top of that a searchable layer of user tags, we might have an exciting new way of dealing with physical information.
So we’re laying around last night, trying to decide what to have for dinner. I’m leaning towards the Quidnunc Cafe, which serves excellent sandwiches and calzones here on the mountain. Here’s a transcript of the exchange between Betsy and I:
Me: “Come on…you know you want a yummy calzone. You can put anything you want in it, and they bake it all golden brown…”
Betsy: “Like Paris Hilton?”
🙂 There’s a reason I love the girl. 🙂
An interesting event today online that I’m calling “instant commercialism.” Here’s the breakdown:
Of course…Jenna is probably not pledging her allegiance to either rock or the Dark One, but is more likely giving the “horns” from the University of Texas where she is a student. Judging from the fact that her mom and dad have both been caught on camera doing it, seems a family kinda thing.
In any case…in a roughly two hour period we went from “odd pic of first daughter” to “buy the t-shirt”. Behold the power of the Internet!
…I’m going to go so broke.
I just found CMH Records, a recording company that specializes in bluegrass cover albums. Covers of what, you may ask yourself…the answer turns out to be….well…freaking everything.
There’s the expected: String Cheese Incident, Phish
The sort of makes sense: Bruce Springsteen (Vol. 1 and 2), John Mayer, Counting Crows
The yes-we-are-hip: Modest Mouse, The White Stripes
The WTF were they smoking: Metallica, Guns-n-Roses
At the very least, I’ve got to get the Counting Crows album, and maybe one of the Springsteen’s for Betsy. I’m greatly tempted by the Metallica, though.
