musician

San Francisco star­tup Skyara launched last mon­th with a cool con­cept — it’s a mar­ket­place where peo­ple can buy and sell new ex­pe­ri­ences. Now co-founder Jonathan Wu said the team has dis­cov­ered a sur­pris­ing side ef­fect: Most of the money earned in the mar­ket­place is go­ing to char­i­ty. The sto­ry seems like a good il­lus­tra­tion of how a rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor fea­ture can turn out to be a big selling point for your star­tup. Users look­ing to do some­thing cool and dif­fer­ent can go to Skyara to pur­chase (...)

I think web-de­sign is an art just as much as mu­sic is. Being a mu­si­cian my­self there are some things I per­son­al­ly like and want to see on a band web­site and there are some things that re­al­ly bug me. Things like land­ing pages, splash pages, mu­sic that starts au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, all-Flash sites and clut­tered in­ter­faces often make me won­der who’s in charge and why record la­bels and artists still do those things when they clear­ly get in the way of a great user ex­pe­ri­ence. Trends And Changes I did (...)

I am unem­ploy­able. I al­ways have been. I al­ways will be. Up un­til last year em­ploy­ment gave me a mor­bid fear deep in the pit of my stom­ach. Even with a suc­cess­ful per­son­al busi­ness, liv­ing in a house that is paid for, and a ded­i­cat­ed sup­port team in the wings – I still was freak­ing out about the fact that I don’t think I could hold a job any­where for any­one.  To give you the cliff notes,  I de­cid­ed to em­brace the fact that I am unem­ploy­able (not run from it). It has been a tremen­dous feel­ing (...)

The ques­tion knock­ing around our email is what are some copy­right free and/or roy­al­ty free mu­sic re­sources for the mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­er. The an­swer is in the list be­low. While not all en­com­pass­ing, we think it a good start to get you go­ing. ccMix­ter: dig.ccmix­ter is de­vot­ed to help­ing you find that great mu­sic, all of which is lib­er­al­ly li­censed un­der a Creative Commons li­cense so you al­ready have per­mis­sion to use this mu­sic in your video, pod­cast, school pro­ject, per­son­al mu­sic play­er, (...)

A mu­si­cian re­counts the day that Steve Jobs mocked him in front of the en­tire world.

Thanks to Rackspace (they pay me to roam the world look­ing for world-chang­ing tech­nolo­gies and tech­nol­o­gists). This video was de­vel­oped for Rackspace’s build­ing43, which has a short­er ver­sion of this video if you would like to check that out: Ever since I got my first Elton John al­bum back in some­thing like 1976 I have loved dis­cov­er­ing new mu­sic. But in the age of MP3s and iTunes it just isn’t that easy. How can you sift through a bunch of new bands you haven’t heard of be­fore and get (...)

Image the year 2040, the stan­dard of liv­ing in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly, the en­vi­ron­ment is warmer and the sig­ni­fi­ca­tion of lux­u­ry changed. Material and de­sign mat­ter more when buy­ing a car. Here are some in­ter­est­ing con­cepts on how fu­ture cars may look like. Where to find him on the web: http://www.be­hance.net/AmarVaya MG v1 Izaro Motors - GTE Audi Anxiom Project The zeit­geist of to­day is of a fast mov­ing world, where science is ex­po­nen­tial­ly ad­vanc­ing and so­ci­ety's (...)

To shoot pho­tos like Nick Brand you must have a lot of pa­tience. His abil­i­ty to cap­ture the wildlife is enor­mous, like I haven't seen be­fore. “African wildlife has nev­er looked so re­gal and mys­te­ri­ous as in Brandt’s grave pho­tographs. His ele­phants ap­pear as weighty as the pyra­mids. His rhi­nos look more an­cient than car­bon. His apes know some­thing we don’t. Given the mul­ti­tude of hu­man dis­as­ters in Africa, is it an in­dul­gence to lose your­self in pic­tures that car­ry no hint of the wars (...)

Before I got in­to the fat loss in­dus­try, I was a mu­si­cian (I still play to­day so who knows what the fu­ture holds!). In the past, I tried to make that love an in­come. My dreams were big, but my pock­ets ul­ti­mate­ly were emp­ty. Eventually I had to do what a lot of mu­si­cians do and get a job. Luckily, it end­ed up be­ing in some­thing else that I love – health and fit­ness. My job is some­thing I love and ­would do it for free, but for­tu­nate­ly it pays the bills (and then some). You might think the field (...)

It is amaz­ing what doors our mod­ern world and the com­put­er have opened, in the uni­verse of art. In graph­ic de­sign, the sky is the lim­it and many things that were not even a whis­per, just a few years ago are now re­al­i­ty. Take type­set­ting, for in­stance. Image cred­it: hom26 Although type­set­ting is very old, the com­put­er rev­o­lu­tion­ized it. Now, with ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy, that was non-ex­is­tent ten years ago, we can type­set us­ing com­put­ers and a laser. In ad­di­tion, nowa­days, any­one with a (...)

Common ad­vice when start­ing a busi­ness is to un­cov­er a seg­ment of a mar­ket and de­ter­mine what cus­tomers want or what prob­lems they’re hav­ing and then give it to them. The cus­tomer is al­ways right after all. Is this re­al­ly the best ad­vice? Might we be bet­ter off fol­low­ing our own in­stincts about what cus­tomers buy? Should we lis­ten to the mar­ket or lis­ten to our­selves? Who re­al­ly knows bet­ter what your cus­tomers want? You or them? Apple Follows its Instincts This past week­end I watched (...)

Sometimes we think that adding more to our blogs will im­prove our read­er's ex­pe­ri­ence. But, in most cas­es, the op­po­site is true. Think about some of the most pop­u­lar de­sign blogs: decor8, de­sign*sponge, Apartment Therapy (and many more here). They are all clean, easy-to-read and have sim­ple de­signs. In the past, I've of­fered you ad­vice on things to add to your blog to make it bet­ter. Now, I'm shar­ing six quick things to re­move from your blog to make it bet­ter. And I doubt you will hear any (...)

Yves Geleyn col­lab­o­rates with il­lus­tra­tor Remy Tornior on a short film, Pirates!!! The Curse of the Evil Eye, a tale set on the high seas, about an epic bat­tle of good again­st evil. Yves, hav­ing al­ways been a huge fan of Remy’s work, want­ed to work on a pro­ject with him for some time. Then a joke about a Cyclops sparked the idea for the an­i­ma­tion and the sto­ry be­gan to take shape. Starting in September of 2006 and fin­ish­ing in February of 2010, av­er­ag­ing about 52 sec­onds of an­i­ma­tion per (...)