Music & Religion

hank williamsThere is a rumor that has been circulating that Apple is going to be introducing a music subscription service like Rhapsody. I don't know if it is true, but hope that it is. I love music subscription services, and am a current subscriber to Rhapsody, but I would switch to Apple in a minute so I could use my neat iPod with it.

But what triggered me wanting to write about this was not the rumor, but the reaction to the rumor by certain quarters. Specifically, whenever you read about subscription services, you always read vehement and angry comments from people that don't like the idea of subscriptions. It is certainly fine to not want it for yourself. But what is odd to me is the anger that said people have at the idea that I might want something different.

It's fascinating that this response always comes from the "free" music crowd, and yet I am confident, if they had a magic wand, they would make such services illegal, or so socially or politically unacceptable that they would not be offered.

This vehemence strikes me as strange because clearly I should have the right to buy something the way I want and a vendor should have the right to sell it to me in the way that s/he wants.

In short, it strikes me that the free music crowd is really more a religious movement than one based in logic and reason. It is very similar to the way that certain fundamentalist religious groups demonize people for different beliefs. Here the free music community demonizes subscription services because, by definition, subscriptions must use DRM, which is "evil". And the irrational zealous passion brought to bear is exactly analogous to the behavior of every out of control religious group in human history. Ok, they haven't gotten to burning people at the stake, but you know what I mean.

The point is, even if you have the wacky view that all music or intellectual property should be free, the idea that you should consider business and interaction models, and technologies like DRM that don't match your world view to be "evil", is, to me, bizarre. This is particularly true when the DRM *enables* a, compelling, at least for some, business model such as subscriptions.

As I see it, this movement would be more appropriately lead by a religious figure like Pat Robertson, or John Hagee, or Richard Stallman, or... oh wait, it is!

This article was authored by Hank Williams who is a New York-based entrepreneur who explores the tech marketplace from 10,000 feet at Why Does Everything Suck?.

GetQuik Launches Corporate Catering and Food Ordering for Silicon Valley Companies

getquikMobile and Web food ordering service GetQuik has launched a corporate catering service today for companies in Silicon Valley. The service is free to companies and they note that it, "simplifies the process for planning and coordinating corporate catering orders."

Once an account is setup, employees can select from the 200 restaurants and caterers that GetQuik partners with. Administrators can setup pre-defined meals making future orders easier. GetQuik also offers help with selecting the right meal for the right business function. GetQuik notes that AMD is their first large customer of this new corporate catering service.

I could see this working well for medium-sized startups. Setup an account with GetQuik and the staff can order using the account making it easy for everyone to get the food that they like plus it would help with keeping accurate records (instead of a box of receipts) for tax time.

Check out our mobile food ordering review with GetQuik, SeamlessWeb, CampusFood and NY-based GoMobo.

JustHackIt - From Techcrunch to Up For Sale in Less Than 24 Hours

JustHackItYesterday Techcrunch Editor Erick Schonfeld wrote a review of a new service called JustHackIt. Schonfeld called JustHackIt, "a dating site for hackers". Basically it's a classifieds board for hackers and developers to easily post openings and have developers submit interest in those openings.

Less than 24 hours later, the JustHackIt service is now up for sale on Sitepoint. The current auction price is $20. In the 24 hours post launch the company reports the following stats:

  • 18,258 pageviews
  • 8,580 unique visitors
  • Main traffic sources: TechCrunch, news.ycombinator.com, Reddit and Netvibes

The description notes the reason for the quick sale, "I launched JustHackIt.com last night. I'm really enjoying managing the site but didn't expect the huge amount of traffic and don't quite know how to manage a community site like this. I'm doing my best with it, but thought I'd post it on Sitepoint to see if someone is looking for this type of opportunity." They claim that they will have 600,000 pageviews this month - of course that doesn't take into account that any blogger buzz dies off within a few days max.

Anyway, if you are interested in a cheap dat(ing) site for hackers and developers, JustHackIt is the one for you. And upon purchase you can tell VCs and friends, "I was on Techcrunch". Here's their pageviews chart - note that this is by the hour not by the day, week, month or year.

justhackit

9 Things I'm Done With Online (video)

Tonight I'd like to share with ya'all 9 things I am done with online. Rather than sharing them in text, check out the video below. Please add your suggestions to the list in the comments below.

To Reach Prolific Content Sharers, Lay Off the Humor

Editor's note: Dan Zarrella has put together a viral content sharing report and below is a small part of the report focusing on content types and online content sharing.

When most people think of viral content, one of the first things they think of is humor, silly Youtube videos, hilarious cartoons and toungue-in-cheek articles, but as I discovered with my viral content sharing report, the most savvy and prolific viral sharers prefer spreading news more than humor.

When I looked at the profile segments I constructed out of the survey data, I noticed a pattern among those respondents who frequently used new and geeky social web technologies, like Twitter and Digg: they prefer sharing funny content less than their less-social-media-savvy counterparts. The same pattern appears for frequent users of less bleeding-edge technologies (like blogs and Facebook), but it is far less accute.

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Hot 'n Fresh Jobs on the CN Job Board

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The New York Venture Capital Scene

Found via Mark Davis, Ty McMahan at the WSJ has a look at the NY venture capital scene. Ty begins by noting that, "a total of 67 New York-based start-ups received funding in the first half of this year - the highest amount since 2001 - and investment jumped to $828 million from $480 million in the first half of 2007". He says this is down from $4.24 billion invested in 2000.

The article looks at DoubleClick, Facebook, Clickable, DFJ Gotham and a variety of other companies either based in NYC or with a heavy presence here. It's well worth a read.

One of the biggest things holding back NYC from shining is the fact that so many products and services are developed in the dark. When I ask people at events who raise their hands saying they are working on a startup, no one wants to talk. I go to the west coast and they can't stop talking about what they are working on. My hope is that our city starts to open up so myself and the other writers here can show off the great work that happens here. I want to write about more NYC-area companies!

Times Square at Dusk

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