Songbird 1.0 released!

So Songbird finally went 1.0 Gold! Its release today marks a major milestone for this free yet feature-rich, do-it-all media player. As a long-time user and minor contributor, I can honestly say that it is a wonderful product and solution for us music heads. Songbird is an open source media player powered by the Mozilla engine (yes, as in Firefox).

For those of you yet to try out this awesome media player, here are some of the features that I dig:
Browse the web while you play your tunes
Tabbed browsing
Ability to play/download media files from any web page you´re browsing
Last.fm integration so you can rate your own tracks
Shoutcast radio
MashTape integration
Complete customization through add-ons (called ¨feathers¨)
You can check out the full feature set here.

Download it today and feel the power of open source and media at your fingertips. Songbird runs on the big three operating systems: Linux (any distro), Mac and Windows so don´t be alarmed when you visit the download page. It is smart enough to detect your current OS and only provides that option for download.

Awesome weekend

Wow, what an awesome weekend!

Friday night started with my buddy Oscar & I heading out to support our old high school by attending this year's Homecoming Game. I hadn't been to a football game since being at their CIF Championship game in 2006. The young men & women did an outstanding job of putting together a very fun event & Verb won the game convincingly. I saw and spoke with several old coaches, teachers & administrators. There were also a few guys I recognized from back in the day but by far the BEST moment came when we saw Gavino. I've known Gavino since we were 6 years old but we had all lost track of him for many years. The cipher is now complete & Gavino will forever be a part of it.

That was only the beginning, though, as I headed off to Firecracker's 10th Anniversary event in Chinatown. This is my favorite club in all of the U.S (been going for like 708 years since my friend Lea put me onto it)! Why, you ask? A very diverse crowd (both ethnically & age-wise) that enjoys a good time dancing led by phat beats-spinning DJs is the draw. Additionally, there's no dress code (they want you to be creative), a minimal cover charge & no pretentiousness allowed. For a few hours, you feel like you're not in Los Angeles. Headlining was Biz Markie (whom I'd never seen live) which was a treat for someone like myself who grew up listening to him- he killed it on the turntables as he drove us down a trip through memory lane. The resident DJ's were killin' it as usual (especially Coleman) & the other special, guest DJs (like Tittsworth) had us dancing all night long. Put it like this, I'm an old fogey but the music was so darn good I forgot about my age as I slipped back into my old "battling" days. Sure, I was sore the next day but I had such a great time & met so many cool folks that it didn't even faze me. Here's to 10 more years, Firecracker Crew!

Saturday was going pretty quietly along until my friends Vero & Adriana invited me to go with them to see a band. So happy I tagged along as I'd never been to that venue (Bordello's- the old Little Pedro's- next to Little Tokyo). One of their friends is in a band called the Boogaloo Assassins & they were great- fusing Latin Jazz with percussion, great vocals & a fun vibe. Up next was Humo Verde, a Latin ska, dancehall & reggae band that was really awesome & reminded me a lot of Quinto Sol.

Sunday, I headed over to my buddy Dan's as he wants me to collaborate with him on a MediaWiki project (more on that later, you'll want to hear about this sweet project). We did some work, did some research & then hung out & watched some football games also.

Great weekend filled with music & technology...what else could a geekmeister, like myself, want?

Obama's President! Download a free remix

So today is the day (ya, shoulda posted this earlier) where Lars Behrenroth of Deeper Shades of House was going to release a FREE remix in honor of President Obama utilizing words from a speech he gave in Berlin addressing 200,000 people in July 2008. The free download link is only active until 11:59pm tonight so hurry up!

From the site:
In celebration of election day in the USA, you will be able to download the current Deeper Shades Recordings release 006 "Now Is The Time" by Matt Flores at no charge.

enjoy.

Met Teddy Riley & Miguel Angel Rodriguez

Tonite at Arroyo (in Arcadia, CA). While posts like these are rare, I was overly-impressed by how nice, easy-going & humble they both were. Of course, my phone's on the fritz so couldn't take a pic w/Teddy Riley (/sigh) but my boy Obie was with me later & Mr. Miguel Angel Rodriguez was nice enough to grace me with a picture (boy is my mom going to be happy about that as it is one of her favorite artists).

Good music + good friends + (unexpected) down-to-earth folks = a good night!

Super_Saturday!

My International Women's Day celebration started by giving thanks for being blessed with having so many wonderful women in my life- my mom, grandma, sisters & close female friends.

It continued, although in a completely unrelated manner, by picking up a friend so we could carpool over to the LA Webspinners meeting. Pete Benjamin was discussing SEO strategies so it was a very worthwhile drive to the Westside.

I then headed over to the Mujeres de Maiz event @ Self Help Graphics to continue the festivities. A bit about the locale:
-lots of GREAT art & artists on hand
-a wonderful movie presentation where 6 international films were showcased (all roughly 10 minutes long, each) on a continuous loop in the theater
-great skits & musical vibes headlined by In Lak Ech
-wonderful people & a great, family-type environment where I saw babies in their mothers' arms all the way to grandparents!

Then, I was fortunate enough to attend DFR´s 10th Anniversary Benefit concert again this year (thanks for the phat hook Fidel & B12!). Last year's concert was bangin' & so was this year's!
-Medusa killed it AGAIN, this year! I couldn't make it out to her album release party but made up for it by not just vibin', I actually found myself breaking out the old hip hop moves (phat beats + great lycs will do that to your body hehe)
-different venue (last year was more all day event vs. this year's downtown rooftop, nighttime affair) but very good to see the crowd growing yearly.
-CYPRESS HILL was the surprise performer this year (last year it was Will.I.Am from Black Eyed Peas)! DJ Muggs was already there, so it was hella cool to see 'em all together again!

-I also met this cat named Tolteka (@ both events) & his album is HOT!!!

A GREAT day filled with knowledge, culture, great music & cool peeps!

International Women´s Day!

Today, March 8th, is International Women´s Day. It has been getting celebrated since 1911. There´s a local chapter here in LA.

Suheir Hammad has a poem as a blog entry there. I was blessed to hear Suheir at last year´s Divine Forces benefit concert where part of the proceeds went to inner-city youth programs.

Lots of events going on today including:
March in front of federal bldg @ noon followed by rally. Heck, Bambu is even going to be droppin´ some lyrics
Mujeres de Maiz event @ Self Help Graphics - 5-9pm
DFR´s 10th Anniversary Benefit concert - while not an event tied to International Women´s Day, it´s still a red pill slangin´ event!

Ronald Stewart presenting at the next SGVLUG

Ronald Stewart, Creative Director of the Trinity Audio Group will be speaking at the next San Gabriel Valley Linux User Group. He will be presenting the yet-to-be-released InDaMixx appliance. A full-featured, hand-held recording studio built on Linux (a customized version of 64Studio, to be more specific).

I met Ron at SCALE 6 & am excited to be working with him on the InDaMixx project. I´m doubly-excited because having this type of talk might be just what the Linux ProAudio SIG (special interest group) needs to get kick-started. I´ve heard zero traffic on that list since I joined a while back.

Hmm, thinking I should just take the lead & start drumming up support to get the Linux Audio group going...

Black History Month Ends on a GREAT note!

I was listening to Beneath the Surface on KPFK today & host Jerry Quickley was getting all emotional as he played large excerpts of Malcolm X speeches. Also listened earlier & heard Cynthia McKinney! Talk about some great, inspirational people who aren´t afraid of telling the truth!

Heck, this whole year started off great on KPFK! This comes as no surprise if you´ve ever listened but if you haven´t switch your dial off of all the commercial nonsense & listen to an independent voice. Talk about RED_PILLS!! OMG, KPFK doles out nothing but...

It´s about to get real busy

Well after the wonderful SCALE 6X conference, there were a few things born out of that. My conversation w/Zak started as a question re: whether he´d seen something on the internet that I´d thought about for like 3 years (but I hadn´t seen anything after repeated google searches). Even though I´ve never done anything like this"before, Zak encouraged me to basically just start it. He´s totally right, so my 1st project is starting a tech-based non-profit. It´ll be a web-based tool & since I´m going to have to teach myself a few things to create the cool features I want to provide the community, it´s going to take a while...stay tuned.

The 2nd thing I´m now working on is the IndaMixx project. I also met Ron @ SCALE & we had some real good conversations.

I´m really looking forward to the creation of a service for the community-based, grass roots organizations through technology as well as being a part of a revolutionary musical endeavor.
200GR8!!!

MLK Speech

I heard a great speech this morning given originally in 1968 in front of UC Berkeley's Sprowl Hall. It would be MLK's final speech in California & sounded like it was still relevant today, 40 years later. I was driving to my job & had goosebumps the throughout the WHOLE speech. We were blessed to have people like Dr. King, but they were taken too, too early from us.

From the Vault Radio was the source of the speech (I think that´s part of the Pacifica Archives). So when you go to KPFK, look up the archives for this day & download everything during the morning commute hours, You´ll be glad you did.

We still need you, Dr. King! Thank you, Pacifica, FTV & KPFK for dedicating resources to preserving such wonderful free speech!

Creative Commons

So for the folks that don't know, Creative Commons is the dopest thing to EVER happen to multimedia distribution. EVER!

Basically, open source met multimedia & their beautiful love child was Creative Commons! It's been around for years & is, thankfully, finally getting more mainstream (& well-deserved) recognition.

Matter of fact, I've always wanted to freely distribute the music projects I've created & this will happen under a Creative Commons license. It's a project that, unfortunately, won't see the light of day for a couple of years- I have to dig up all of the music i've created since I started doing music production as a hobby back in 1996.

DopeTracks

So one of the presenters at the Startup Project- LA who is currently using Amazon Web Services is this startup called DopeTracks. It is a website where hip hop fans can go create beats & rhyme over user-created beats all for FREE! It is driven by Flash so there is nothing to download or install on your computer. I checked it out (briefly) & think it is a great tool for our youth who are lovers of hip hop to produce & MC. While it is not perfect, you cannot go wrong with "free" & it even has a feature to export your rhymes & beats to your MySpace page.

While it is not a production-quality digital audio workstation (DAW), it is still a wonderful tool- personally I use Reason as my DAW. Especially since DAWs (Pro Tools, Reason, Cubase, etc.) are quite expensive so, hence, make it financially prohibitive for folks to even play around with the technology who do not have the means to do so. Give it a try, you might dig it!

Contributing to songbird

So like i mentioned a month ago, been using songbird forever. Been lovin´ it but found a few bugs so I´ve been contributing to the Songbird dev. community by putting my old QA skillz to use! ;)

Take a look (& listen), it´s a great product!

BEST CONCERT EVER!!!

The Hip Hop 4 Education (benefit) Concert was by FAR the best I've ever been to (& I've been fortunate to go to many over the years). I decided to give my 'lil brother an early graduation gift (& appropriately enough, it was his 1st concert) as it was an "all-ages benefit. Hosted by Divine Forces Radio (DFR) & benefiting Krylon 13 (a non-profit helping our youth) what we were able to witness the night of 3/3/07 @ the LA Center Studios was pure musical bliss. I can't even begin to explain the beauty & positivity that flowed throughout the evening, but I'll try. The evening began @ 4pm & ended just after midnight & was filled with great music, lyrics & a positive scene (as Fidel said @ the end of the night, not even 1 fight ensued). Just great people, enjoying great music on a wondrous night. I met several cool peeps including the Native Guns, which really dropped it- fusing mind-churning lyrics, phat beats & even blending a little tagalog to spice it up. Pix of the evening aren't up yet (darn camera's acting up something bad) but they will be soon so check back. The event was hosted by Fidel & featured DFR's DJs, which were dope as ever!

My brother & I had a blast! Great event fusing hip hop, spoken word specialists (even one of the modern day innovators in this genre- Saul Williams) & thought-provoking speakers. It was really a treat for me as I'd never seen X-Clan nor KRS ONE live (especially since 1 of my 1st music purchases was an X-Clan tape- along w/Digital Underground & MC Hammer). But everyone really brought great energy. Medusa was super fly. Anomolies was an all-female group that really got down. Visionaries, Living Legends & Dilated Peoples always rock the house & did so again. KRS ONE freestyled for a good 10-13 minutes. The icing on the cake was Wil.I.Am showing up @ the end & freestyling for almost 7 minutes. Now that's hip hop! It was a pleasure to partake in the positivity & bathe in conscious lyrics fused with body-bumpin' beats. Below is a list of the event participants in chronological order:

1 - Olmeca
2 - Native Guns
3 - Anomolies
4 - Aztlan Underground
5 - Quetzal
6 - Visionaries
7 - Medusa
8 - Suheir Hammad
9 - Sabac Red
10 - Funkdoobiest
11 - X-clan
12 - Saul Williams
13 - Luis Rodriguez
14 - Congresswoman Cynthia McKenna (great speaker)
15 - Psycho Realm
16 - Soul Elevation
17 - Living Legends
18 - Chief Joseph Chasing Horse (special speaker)
19 - Dilated Peoples
20 - KRS ONE
21 - Will.I.Am (special, surprise guest)

You can see youtube videos of the evening here (including KRS ONE & Wil.I.Am's fresh freestyles).

Music in the digital age

Paul McCartney just released his new album- his 21st solo edition- & even though he's 64, he's still keeping up w/the Jones'! He just ended his long-standing relationship w/EMI Records & this new record is being released completely as a music download.

Quote from the article:
"I was bored with the old record company's jaded view." "They're very confused, and they will admit it themselves: that this is a new world, and they're a little bit at a loss as to what to do. So they've got millions of dollars and X budget … for them to come up with boring ways — because they've been at it for so long — to what they call 'market' it. And I find that all a bit disturbing. "I write it, I play it, I record it, and that's all fun. And you go to the record company, and it gets very boring. You sit around in rooms with people, and you're almost falling asleep."

This is no surprise. As music moves further into the 21st century, you hear of SO many artists doing it their own way. Look at Maroon 5, they got in on the music via the internet thing just before MySpace started getting big & they've sold millions of tunes online. Reminds of me a GREAT article I read a while back praising the rise of indie labels & the mantra: “If you are an independent artist or record label and you don’t love LimeWire then you are just plain stupid!”

My neighbor's a musician & we talk about this all the time. Big record companies are upset because so many folks are downloading (for pay or for free) music instead of buying CDs so we've become all too familiar w/phrases like RIAA & DRM. It's the music industry's fault, if you ask me...I mean, how many years did we pay $15/album for 1-2 good songs? It's no surprise that artists are going to indie labels or doing it all on their own- they get a bigger chunk of the pie AND still maintain creative control. Besides, artists on large labels get more cash out of doing their tours than CD sales...so like I've always said: Support your music, go to a concert!

Songbird Media Player

So I've been using the Songbird player for almost a year now & it's about high-time I evangelized about how dope it really is. It's FREE Open-source software (FOSS), has tons of features & the community's awesome!

Songbird™ is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins (feathers). Like Firefox®, it is built from Mozilla®, cross-platform and open source. Cross-platform means it's available for Windows, Mac & Linux. It's available in 45+ languages & sports 64-bit support. It's developer-friendly as there are over 30 community-authored add-ons & on-staff developers are very friendly in helping you around. It supports iPod & USB devices & you can play tracks from the iTunes store or Yahoo Unlimited services.

Prior to Songbird, I used to use Winamp & while it was great, Songbird is truly the end-all, be-all music application. Not only that, but their logos are seriously sweet! Give it a try, you might find yourself not needing anything else, EVER again!

Government, at it again

The Register is reporting that the White House is implementing the need for new patches of Windows (both for XP & Vista) to "run on the secure version of Vista" (so I guess, thousands of people have also bought an insecure version?) Of course, this is a bit of an oxymoron as NOTHING on Windows is secure (or do I need to remind you of the emergency Vista security patch that came out the day after Vista was released, it's become routine for the last 10yrs. or so). Heck, before Vista was even released, there was already a list circulating on the internet detailing ALL of its discovered security holes and how to exploit them (memorable to me was the one detailing yet another virus exploit in Office 2K7 file attachments). However, the White House still feels the need to use and support (since they will be upgrading to this in the White House) Microsoft which practices ruthless anti-competitive practices not only here in the U.S. but also in Europe, where the entire EU seems to be suing Microsoft.

The net result will be identically-configured computers with fewer applications (doesn't this make it a Mac?). The whole reason for using Microsoft is to gain access to cheap hardware and a boatload of software. You can best believe there'll be a ripple effect which affects the common home user- as other large companies follow the government's lead with its $65 billion/yr. IT budget. Every computer purchased in a few years will have these restrictions. Every PC, being relatively similar, will only make it MORE susceptible to viruses (but the hope is to recover quicker). Small things like this (and national ID's, for example) are the beginnings of a monoculture, which is just asking for trouble on so many different levels.

Whatever happened to "land of the free, home of the brave?" I guess Brother Ali got it right in his new song titled Letter from the Government where he switches it to "land of the thieves, home of the slaves."