Darwin Deez: Weird Spring Pop

Yep, it's a pretty wacky video. But it's also a pretty catchy single. If Napoleon Dynamite started his own band he'd probably sound (and would certainly look) something like Darwin Deez. Needless to say, the Brits love him already.

The Morning Benders

This is Promises from Big Echo, the Morning Benders' velvety new record. They're going to be one of the my music revelations for 2010. And just to drive the point home, and to brag a bit... Me and my mate Lolo have tickets to see them when they play Mercury Lounge ending their U.S. tour.

Facebook Bigger than Google

At least according to Hitwise's latest data for the week ending March 13, 2010: Facebook beat Google as the most visited U.S. Web site for that week.

Facebook had actually reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day (as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th). Presumably, a lot of people posting updates about their progressing state of drunkeness and overfedness...

Marketing Pilgrim points out  that Hitwise's methodology is fraught as they're comparing all of Facebook (videos etc...) against only google.com. Thereby leaving out Gmail, YouTube and other Google properties. Good point, but it does raise a couple of others:

While Hitwise may be comparing full oranges to orange quarters (rather than apples), the methodology is consistent over time and does show Facebook's growth on a property Vs. property basis. And it excludes any Facebook data for traffic from mobile phones... In other words, the headline overpromises but the data do point in the right direction. 

Beyond the ooh ahhing at social media's incredible growth and Facebook's in particular, what's interesting are the implications in the way people are using the Internet. And their relationship to the Web is changing. 

It's not going on THE Internet anymore, it's increasingly MY Internet. In fact the very vocabulary of "going online" or "being online" are starting to sound archaic as people are always online and updating their Facebook profiles through blackberries and iPhones.

Search was the big thing of the 2000s and its one-way information retrieval process is now being overtaken by Connectivity (and a multiplicity of (largely social) information exchanges. Social media's growth is hardly a scoop, but the shift and rebalancing from information search/retrieval to information exchange marks a new relationship and level of intimacy between Internet technology and people. 

Primary 1: The Blues

Perfect music for a monday morning.

Austin 2

Went to see The Strange Boys. A really good, local band with a retro garage/R&B sound. It's actually two brothers on bass and guitar. 

They're playing Radio City Music Hall in NY with Spoon and Deerhunter on March 26th.

Austin

I'm in Austin, Texas this week on a business trip. Having been here a few days already, I can see why it's dubbed the capital of live music. There are bands playing in every single bar, every single night.

But there's also some art culture, like the Mexic-arte museum that groups a few local collections of Mexican art. It's small, colorful and has some vibrant pieces spanning Mexico's history. Some of my favorite pieces below:

Top 10 Things to Watch Out For in 2010

Global trend expert Ann Mack from JWT Intelligence has predicted the Top 100 things that you should watch out for in 2010. It ranges from the predictable prediction (electric cars...) to the more obscure (dry shampoo). 

My favorite? Argentina's Lionel Messi coming in at #52.

The Future of Gaming

You don't need to speak Hebrew to understand how this application could take gaming outside of the living room and into the real world. Or virtual/real world.

This reminds me of a trip to Disneyworld about 8 years ago where I tried one of those bulky helmets and had a sword and was swatting around at virtual things that appeared. The experience was so not-immersive that I really felt like an idiot. Bridging the real world and the virtual looks like the real deal...

The Known Universe

The Known Universe is a new, and quite trippy, film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.