Showing posts with label imeem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imeem. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Beware the Grooveshark



Which shark species presents the greatest danger to man kind? The Great White? The Tiger Shark? Perhaps the Bull or Mako? Nope. None of the above.

It's the Grooveshark music streaming website. Hyperlink intentionally omitted because I'm too afraid of it to visit or link to it at this point, following not 1, not 2, but 3 known laptop meltdowns in just 2 weeks using the site.

My colleague Ben and I both got stuck on the site, which seemed like the latest evolution in the streaming music genre of websites, introducing an iTunes like user interface and and wide variety of searchable songs that you can assemble into shareable playlists. Sounds great.

And it was, until my computer got KO'd by the nastiest malware infection I've ever witnessed - a piece of work known as SecurityTool - and ultimately had to be re-imaged. Ben, smug during the additional week of his Groovesharking, got it later and was also laid up for two days sans-laptop while IT went to work on the hard-drive.

I'm sharing this so other folks avoid this fate,but also as a plea to corporate IT policies around corporate America. Just let people have iTunes alright? At my company, the double-secret IT security policy is the equivalent of the War on Drugs - a costly and futile mission under the auspice of public safety that has the unintended effect of sending people under ground for entertainment and productivity tools that aren't regulated by reputable purveyors of web-based services. In this most predictable of ironies, it causes as many problems as it tries to prevent.

The bad stuff is always one step ahead of the firewall. As soon as IT blocked Pandora, I replaced it with LastFM and Imeem. When they banned Imeem (which never crashed my machine) I moved onto Grooveshark and had this encounter.

Now none of this would have happened if they'd trusted me with iTunes in the first place.


Monday, August 17, 2009

Imeem's Shot in the Dark Advertising

When I logged into Imeem this morning to add music to my 'Relaxin' Vibrations' mix and pulled up the lite '70s classic 'Sweet City Woman' from Canadian rock trio the Stampeders (currently playing for the dual purposes of your enjoyment and illustrating the irony of this juxtaposition), I was a little surprised at the agro advertising that interrupted my early-morning mellow not only with its image, but a recorded vocal track saying something to the effect of hey man, you into goth?

I'm not sure if this is what GothScene signed on for exactly, because it sure seems like a shot in the dark and Imeem could probably do better to psychographically target the ads they serve based on the music. This ad might be a little more appropriate along side a Mars Volta track, for example.


Friday, May 29, 2009

'F' is for Friday, Fun, Fancy F'in Footwork

Chromeo's my newest and truest electronic obsession since Daft Punk. But the allegory doesn't end there. Being that Chromeo's a slightly more accessible take on Daft Punk, just like Montreal's a slightly more accessible take on Paris, I'm feeling the symmetry as well this fine Friday.


Fancy Footwork - Chromeo

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Prince on Imeem

There are some positive things to be said for Imeem. Their iPhone/Android app is pretty damn good for streaming music, and while their website needs some work (at present it's UI is a confusing mutant lovechild of MySpace and YouTube), if navigated properly it yields some gems not found elsewhere on the web.

To wit, visions of feathered-hair glory and late '70s cutting edge special effects, before they were co-opted by porn, abound in Prince's video 'I Wanna Be Your Lover'