Lair of the Asp

I am anxious to see how it goes with the whole upcoming podcast phenomenon. Will it give power back to the listener or be just another way for the large music corporations to get your money, I'll guess well wait and see. Chances are it'll be the first for a quickly fleeting period of time and then the latter for time eternal... From nytimes.com By JOHN MARKOFF Published: February 25, 2005 SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 24 - The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web's next big thing. That step is planned by Odeo, a five-person start-up that is based in a walk-up apartment in this city's Mission District and was co-founded by a Google alumnus. The company plans to introduce a Web-based system that is aimed at making a business of podcasting - the process of creating, finding, organizing and listening to digital audio files that range from living-room ramblings to BBC newscasts. Audi

Ok, so I was looking through the referring links for the Lair of the Asp blog and I had to laugh, someone had looked up "strippers on cocaine" and I was listed as the 13th top site for Yahoo Australia. This was in reference of story that I commented on quite a while back about Moby doing cocaine with strippers. Also, I seem to show up pretty high in the links for people looking for new info on Ian Astbury of The Cult, which I guess there's worse things to be associated with, I'm just amused that other people are still interested in what he is up to since it's been a while since anything big has come from him, even the last Cult album was a pretty small affair promotionally and the Doors of the 21st Century seemed to get more press about the legal aspects of the band/tour than the music did. Oh well, long live people's curiosity in the dark side of music and celebrity...

Hmm, not music related, but sad none the less. I guess it's interesting for people, including myself, when other people die, but it's very interesting when interesting people die... From CNN.com: Journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, who unleashed the concept of "gonzo journalism" in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself in the head Sunday at his home near Aspen, Colorado, police and his family said. "On Feb. 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colo.," said a statement issued by Thompson's son, Juan Thompson, to the Aspen Daily News as reported by the Denver Post. "The family will shortly provide more information about memorial service and media contacts. Hunter prized his privacy, and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family." A dispatcher for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Departm

I'm always a bit leary about things that say they can make something cheap sound just like something more expensive. So in that catagory goes this device. I haven't heard it so I can't really comment on the sound quality myself, but an interesting concept none the less... OK audiophiles (even audiophobes), listen up! Now there's a way to simulate surround sound from that old TV set without spending big bucks on a six- or eight-speaker system. The folks at Xitel have just introduced the SOUNDaround ($99.95), which will reproduce the effects of true surround sound through two speakers, whether they be headphones or those attached to your "stereo" TV. All you have to do is attach your DVD player, game console or other device to the unit and then output the sound to your stereo, TV set or headphones and you're instantly immersed in what Xitel likes to call "a 360 degree wall of sound." Using SRS TruSurround, SRS TruBass and SRS Dialog Clarity techn

Now why couldn't I figured this out and done something similar? Instead I seem to be bent on chasing the dark music muse and occationally blogging about it... " Michael Buffington chose to build a weblog using highly automated content aggregation tools around a single keyword, asbestos, because of the high click through rate associated with the ad. 'The subject matter, while weighty and all that, is of little importance to me. It's not that I don't have opinions on asbestos and asbestos reform, because I do. The whole point of the site is to experiment with an idea. I built a tool that helps me aggregate topical news with the help of Google's Alert system. So far it works wonderfully. But there's a second motive as well. Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire. Lawyers are paying anywhere from $15-100 per click through on Google ads. The second part of this big experiment is to see if I can capture some of that click through