10 Engineering Rules Applied To DIY Business
When it comes to problem solving, engineers are fearless because they follow these rules. 1. K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid! Forget the frills and the cheap thrills. Focus on the heart of the matter. 2. Identify. 3. Reduce. 4. Learn. 5. Design. 6. Source. 7. Optimize. 8. Test. 9. Iterate. 10. Amplify.
Flickr Search Fail
Is water polo related to digital music? Flickr thinks so. It also can’t tell the difference between a house and a person. Can anyone make sense of this and/or provide insight into Flickr’s search algorithm? I’m using the Recent tab, because I’m often most interested in more recent photos. The Recent search results should still be relevant. I’m a huge Flickr fan, but this isn’t the first time the search has me asking what the Flickr? Anyone else?
Musician Apps—What Do Fans Want? 5 Key Components.
Last year I covered four platforms that musicians can use to build iPhone apps—Mobile Roadie, MobBase, iLike, and Kyte. Sound Around is another one, and is currently in private beta. Discussion from yesterday’s autoplay poll got me asking myself, “what do fans really want in an artist app?” I thought about it for a while and came up with 5 key components.
![Music Autoplay: On or Off? [Poll]](http://img.virtualmusic.tv/thumbs/sound_johnnyvulkan_150.png)
Music Autoplay: On or Off? [Poll]
Have you ever visited a band’s website or MySpace page only to be blown out of your chair by a blaring music player? Usually the first thing I do is try to figure out how to turn it off, and, if I can’t figure that out in one nanosecond, I often exit the page and never return. Is this really the message one wants to send to their website visitors? Probably not. But maybe I’m a freak and the majority disagrees, so I ask, what do you think?
Music Data Confessions of a Tagaholic
Bandcamp added artist/song tagging to its slew of features yesterday, and hopes are high that more social music features are in store. As a self-professed tag-a-holic I’m pretty stoked about the news, and especially so because I had emailed them suggesting a tagging feature. Bandcamp artists can now list themselves in up to five genres, they can add their location, and they can add specific traits to individual tracks in the form of tags.
Multitouch—The Human GUI?
Multitouch may be next GUI—is there a doubt? For decades we’ve used the mouse, but as GUI technology improves we’ll find more limitations in a mouse-based system. Clayton Miller’s 2009 project called 10/GUI demonstrates the potential of multitouch. According to Miller, “the industry is now at a crossroads.”
