Most unfortunate domain names

January 31st, 2008

royal-fail.jpgNextwebgen posted their 10 Worst Company Domains, which are apparently the result of people registering their domain names without running it through their public relations department, branding / identity / in-house graphic designers or at least one other literate human being who speaks English.

Gems:

The Italian Power Generator company…
www.powergenitalia.com

Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange
advice and views at
www.expertsexchange.com

Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
www.penisland.net

Let that be a lesson to anyone starting up a company and thinking about names and domains… run it past a few people first. :-)

Top 10 Worst Company URLs

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Hero medals for gamers: Console Wars Veteran Medal

January 30th, 2008

consolewars.jpgFor a gamer, battle injuries are pretty minor–blistered fingers, numb butt, sore neck–but victories are still a cause for celebration. And now, those victories can be commended with a Console Wars Veteran medal. These limited edition enameled metal badges from Supermandolini are just the thing to commemorate level clearage and high scorage. They’re only about 18 bucks USD and would make a great gift for a gamer with skillz.

[via RetrotoGo.com]

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Glitching out Ableton Live

January 29th, 2008

Here’s a quick how-to by Gustavo Bravetti on making IDM-like patterns in Abelton Live. It makes me want to sit down and play with Live some more than I have.

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Kero kicks off Ramp Chicago’s new residency at Debonair

January 28th, 2008
February 28, 2008
7:01 pm

kero_flierfeb28.jpg

Multimedia artist Kero from Detroit, MI will launch Ramp Chicago’snew residency at Debonair, unleashing his hyper-technical brand of deconstructed genre-bending electro-IDM. Resident DJs Emulsion and Liz Revision support along with resident visualist Spiderback and guest Tesia K. In the same way Ramp has always focused on the dual representation of live video and live PA, Kero works sonically and visually as a musician, designer, and live video artist and provide the perfect introduction to Ramp’s new monthly home.

Kero has previous releases on labels like Ghostly International,Shitkatapult, Neo Ouija and his own imprint, Detroit Underground. Serving as both a record label and art+party collective in Detroit and Windsor ON, DU has released remixes and original tracks by artists like Richard Devine, JimmyEdgar, and Venetian Snares. With a new release on the analog-electro diva Andrea Parker’s Touchin’ Bass label, 2ADVNCD4U, Kero further progresses his sound and builds on his international reputation.

All of Ramp’s residents are original content producers while being skilled at manipulating work in the live environment. Emulsion’s DJ sets stretch from IDM and ambient to dubby techno and forward-thinking electro while Liz Revision chooses between glitchy minimal techno and melodic IDM.

Resident VJ Spiderback mixes his own visual material live in response to the music, and has invited Tesia K to share her take on
video mixing.

Thursday, February 28, 2008 @ Debonair Social Club
1575 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago IL
9pm – 2am, 21+, $0
(773) 227-7990

Ramp Chicago launches their new monthly residency at Debonair Social Club with Kero (Detroit). Resident DJs Emulsion and Liz
Revision support alongside resident VJ Spiderback and his special guest Tesia K. Expect a mix of glitched-out electro-IDM,
edgy ambient, and minimal and dubby techno.

About Ramp Chicago

Ramp Chicago promotes and organizes forward-thinking electronic music events that focus on innovation in sound and video. Devoted
to live and interesting electronic music that takes a path somewhere between the dance floor and your headphones, Ramp continues to bring in artists that straddle genres and take chances.

www.rampchicago.com

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Life at the NAMM show

January 26th, 2008

anaheim.jpgThe National Association of Music Merchants holds an expo / trade show called the NAMM Show, that I helped cover for Create Digital Music. Apparently it’s the largest music products trade show in the entire United States. Judging from the traffic outside the convention center and the number of chain hotels in the area it makes sense. This funny poster we found posted outside the entrance is completely ironic–Anaheim is just someone with a Photoshop clone brush and a JPG of a strip mall.

That being said, NAMM itself was pretty cool. Here’s Peter Kirn and I’s overview: The NAMM Win and Fail lists.

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CDM Unofficial NAMM Afterparty

January 14th, 2008
January 18, 2008
8:00 pm

neko_fire_3lg.gif

CDMUnofficial NAMM Afterparty

createdigitalmusic.com * createdigitalmotion.com

With our friends TRASH_AUDIO (trashaudio.blogspot.com) and vjkungfu.tv

RICHARD DEVINE
The Deep Element
Justin McGrath
Liz Revision (Quantazelle)
Moldover
dj halon (Fake Science, False Profit)

Visuals:
Image8nineteen (Mat Hale)
Momo the Monster
Peter Kirn

Handmade Music + Motion:

* Bring your own DIY music or motion creations and other hardware toys and geek out with an international crowd of hipster-nerdsters! All projects welcome (space first come, first served — think small, bring portable speakers if you can)

* Put together free kits to make your own ribbon controllers without soldering

* Learn how Bryant Davis Place (future-tense-cpu) built his own DIY VJ sequencer for M8 using the Lemur multi-touch controller.

* Learn about the wonders of wireless MIDI sync in AV Performance with Acid&Bass&Momo producing a live remix of Karate Kid.

* Bring demos to share and trade [How To Create a Successful Demo Disc]

WHEN:
Handmade Music + Motion: 8:00pm
Live sets start: 9:30pm - late

WHERE:
Basswerks in Mid City LA |5411 W Adams Blvd | Los Angeles, CA 90016 | (323) 939-2535 | www.basswerks.net

COST:
Free! (Cash bar)

RSVP to rsvp@createdigitalmusic.com

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Not sure if that interesting girl on IM is a girl? Use the Gender Guesser.

January 4th, 2008

While on yelp.com I was in a thread where a few people thought a user had created a fake profile to promote his business, and someone mentioned there had been a study done that found gender differences in writing, and then created a program to analyze writing and determine the gender. I put the “girl”’s comments in and it came out as “weak male,” but so did almost everyone’s posts. Either way, it’s an interesting concept and fun to play around with.

In 2003, a team of researchers from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Bar-Ilan University in Israel (Shlomo Argamon, Moshe Koppel, Jonathan Fine, and Anat Rachel Shimoni) developed a method to estimate gender from word usage. Their paper described a Bayesian network where weighted word frequencies and parts of speech could be used to estimate the gender of an author. Their approach made a distinction between fiction and non-fiction writing styles.

A simplified version of this work was implemented as the Gender Genie. They showed that fewer words were needed and that writing styles varied based on the forum. For example, fiction and non-fiction differs from blogs (informal writing). Even though the genres differ, there are still gender-specific word frequencies.

This Gender Guesser system is heavily based on the Gender Genie. In particular, the word lists and weights are reproduced from the Gender Genie. The Gender Guesser extends the interpretation of informal writing to work on blogs and chat-room messages, and combines formal writing styles (fiction, non-fiction, essays, news reports, etc.). It also looks for weak emphasis — used to distinguish European English from American English. In general, if the difference between male and female weight values is not significant (a “weak” score), then the author could be European. This is because the weight matrix is biased for distinguishing genders in American English.

Gender Guesser

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Tractile: Acid-styled blippy glitch from Berlin

January 3rd, 2008


If someone was asked what it would sound like if all of the most frightening, most exciting and sexiest scenes in cinema history were spliced together and merged with a robotic dance score, “Tractile” would surely be the reply. Adam Young (b. 1983) and Joel Boychuk (b. 1985), with several years of miscellaneous music experience behind them and a few years as great friends and partners-in-crime, decided to reinvent their sound and call themselves “Tractile.” Having been obsessed with the concept of controlling the uncontrollable and seducing recorded sound of any kind, the name was a suiting merge between the words track and tactile. Boychuk and Young played their first public live show in 2003 and have continued to shake dance-floors ever since, always impressing and exciting their audience far beyond expectation. Influenced by a strange combination of filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas and the evolution of techno music and emergence of the “minimal sound” through artists like Richie Hawtin and Jeff Milligan, Tractile delivers barrages of demented but motivating tech grooves perfect for dance floors and at-home listeners alike… and with a swiftly-growing international fanbase, it’s no wonder the name is on the toungue-tips of DJs and music fans everywhere.

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