Cut With Flourish is Ed Macovaz's musings on the web, music and design

What do I have in common with my friends?

I have both Rdio and Spotify accounts. At the moment I use Spotify more because I find both it’s iPhone and Desktop apps better, but decisions regarding Facebook login got me thinking about what I like (and dislike) about both services.

They both feel halfway there. Actually a third of the way there - neither of them are available in enough places for the social part of their services to shine.

Without a change in direction, I don’t see the social part of Spotify ever shining for me. Facebook is great for staying in touch with friends (best address book I ever had), but Spotify make the same mistake as many do when integrating Facebook - assuming friendship is everything. I had meaningful interactions with my friends before Facebook, but the web in general is amazing because of it’s potential to engineer value exchanges, and eventually relationships between complete strangers. This is one of the strongest points of Twitter.

Rdio’s embrace of following, rather than relying on a copy of my friendship graph from Facebook allow me to get music from people I find interesting and potential share taste with. Spotify assumes the people I became friends with through shared experiences like school, university and work will also be the people I look to for music. Not really true.

So now I wait for Spotify to understand this, or for Rdio to decide (or have the resources that allow them to admit) that wrapping their website in a thin native shell is not enough for a desktop app.

Amazon goes shopping

There are reports Amazon is interested in buying Palm (and WebOS). The first suggestion is that picking up WebOS and it’s associated IP at a discount would allow Amazon create platforms for delivery of its content and services without being dependent on Google.

I think an interesting question is whether Kindle OS, with a great library of content could be more attractive for hardware manufacturers than Android, now that Google owns Motorola? Same holds for Windows Phone when Microsoft is now in bed with Nokia.

This could be about more than just Amazon’s devices - they want the Kindle software on multiple platforms. Why not get Kindle OS aka WebOS on multiple devices?

Varsity Bookmarking: Who Svpply is competing with, sort of.

pieratt:

The line I’ve started pitching to my team is that Svpply wants to do for materialism what Twitter has done for narcissism.

A succinct and honest way to pitch your product.

Interesting to consider how Twitter and other services require us to rewire ourselves in order to benefit from them.

"Even with some vocal users complaining early on, Apple said they have not seen customers leaving the platform since Final Cut Pro X was released."

If this is true it doesn’t surprise me. One of the hardest things to do in product design is to distinguish between a loudly complaining minority and an actual problem.

Apple releases major update to Final Cut Pro X, release demo version

#6633FF

fuckyeahwebsafecolors:

#6633ff

Proof that I’m contrarian: moving to Berlin is what it took to get into country music.

texinberlin:

My big issue with living in Germany. YOUTUBE videos!

“This video is not available in your country” - story of my life here.

And YES..I WAS attempting to watch a Destiny’s Child video….

This shits me to no end. I guess it annoys Google too, which is why they’ve recently started calling GEMA out by name so people know who’s responsible (I automatically blamed major record labels). Wonder if Spotify will start doing this too?

(Source: dotdotdotexclamationmark)

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

The first release from the Ableton Web Team house band, which I am a part of.

Proud.

Portfolios are silver, LIVE design is gold.

Leisa Reichelt is bang on here, it’s what you ship that matters.

"There are no simple solutions. Trying to recreate a world that has come and gone is not going to work."

With regards to dealing with copyright infringement, I couldn’t have described the situation any better.

A VC: Protect IP (fka COICA)