Who is? Go http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/elviscostello/bio/

The idea is, multiple cameras (in or on your TV) track your face and, even as you move around and eat popcorn, present a 3D image – unique to you! There are limitations, due to a restriction on the number of cameras, only four people can watch any given TV at the same time.  Okay, this might restrict how many kids you have or who you invite to movie night but at least you can watch the movie in all three known dimensions without Elvis Costello glasses! The question is now, who is watching you – in the privacy of your home?

From the same article it seems the future in touch screen technology is no longer in touch.  Hmmm. Apparently, cameras can now track all your movements and actions allowing you to stand up to 2 meters from the screen and still interact with the application.  This has plenty of positive implications, including extending office and shop hours by allowing customers to browse, select and buy products and services, all while standing outside the window of a locked shop.  Back home again, imagine flipping through TV and web channels without getting off your couch or wrestling the remote away from your rotweiller.  Given some thought, the opportunities begin to unfold.

However, what about the down side?  How about who’s watching you?  That wonderful thing we call the internet has allowed us to connect almost any device, from your phone to your fridge to your TV.  Enter my friends, not the one’s who cracked the nod for movie night but rather the bunch of theorists speculating who’s on the other side of all those cameras pointing at my ugly face so I can see Southpark 3D!  Are we finally adding to Orwell’s Big Brother or Ben Elton’s Blind Faith, or were they true visionaries? I’m not sure but I think I will cling to my ‘old’ 42 inch HD LCD television for a while longer, thanks.  Rather the nerd glasses for me, methinks.  At least I can go as Elvis Costello to my next fancy dress party!

In my defence, they’re all very quirky and indie – we’re not talking Britney and co here – but it is probably time to branch out a bit. And for the first time ever, Twitter has really come into its own for me. Turns out that a massive amount of music gets posted on Twitter every day, you just need to know where to look or how to search for it. Who knew?

Here’s what I discovered.

The first tool I came across was Music Mondays. Basically, every Monday, a group of Twittering music fans post their songs of the day, appending the #musicmonday tag so people can find them easily. From there, following the trail of birdsong seed led me to:

Twisten.fm: searches Twitter for tweets about music and then gives you the links to listen to it. More than that, though, as the wired people at Wired.com report, Twisten.fm is effectively “a playable list of the latest tracks to be posted to Twitter through Blip.fm, FoxyTunes, Grooveshark, Hype Machine, imeem, Last.fm, Twisten.fm itself and Twt.fm.” Bonus: “If you sign in with your Twitter name, you can search its parent company Grooveshark’s massive library of songs to stream (and potentially embed in your own Twitter feed), and, more importantly, follow people who have posted songs you like.”

Musebin.ws: Enter an artist or album into the search box, and – insert musical drum roll here – Musebin displays relevant tweets in seconds, with downloads to listen. Musebin also offers links to one-line music reviews and musicians you can follow on Twitter.

blipfm OR http://blip.fm/blipfm: “blipfm is a Blip.fm DJ. Blip.fm lets you create your own music station DJ’d by you and your friends. Join for free to start DJ’ing and listen to tracks that blipfm plays.”

Imeem: Custom Twitter integration makes it easy for people to tweet what they’re listening to on imeem. Posts like ‘The 20 most searched songs on imeem‘ add to the easy-use appeal for music neophytes like myself.

These are just a few of the music finding tools I cam across on Twitter… there’s a bunch more but I got a bit overwhelmed, I’ll be honest.

Alternatively, you can just log into your regular Twitter home page and enter your favourite band/artist in the search box along with any or all of the above music search apps. Once you’ve found music you like, follow the people who posted those tunes on Twitter and so build up your Twitter account into what amounts to a massive, ongoing, continuously updated playlist.

Meanwhile, back in my playlist, the very first thing I came across that I REALLY wanted to listen to was Imogen Heap’s new album… Seems you can lead a girl to male music, but you can’t make her listen.

Pic: Tweet Music by Hoppurr

The latest venture that really demonstrates the culture of the social web comes from Kutiman from Israel. He has mashed and mixed amateur video clips from YouTube musicians to create an almost perfect album.

“ThruYOU” has taken the Web by storm and has received over a million views since its release.

Via The Huffington Post:

What ThruYOU tells us is that all bets are off. The DNA of our media system has mutated so completely that it’s only a matter of time before our society changes as well.

In fact, that change is already happening.

In politics, economics, arts and culture, an era of privileged access is giving way to something that’s much more decentralized, participatory and personal.

We no longer passively consume media, we actively participate in it. This often means creating content, in whatever form and from whatever sources — what author Jonathan Zittrain calls “generativity.”

We no longer limit our political involvement to television ads and the polling booth. This means organizing via Facebook, “Googling” candidates to learn more, joining text-messaging lists and creating Twitter hash tags to stay ahead of our issues.

Read the original article where Timothy Karr explores how this will further impact the web and social media trends.

There are many ways to discover new music online but one of my preferred services is last.fm – the desktop app is easy to use. By ’scrobbling’ my tracks from my iPod to my online profile, last.fm then learns my music preferences and knows to *never* play Hootie and the Blowfish but recommends new artists and bands that I’d probably be interested in.

last.fm is a social network so it means I can also check out what my friends are listening to and recommend and share tracks with them…..everything is better when it’s shared

I was interested to discover today that YouTube houses the biggest collection of music on the web (like facebook holds the biggest collection of photos.) With this in mind Muziic has launched – The YouTube media player promises millions of songs in your desktop media player, all legal, all there for you to listen to. They also offer an advanced music encoder so that you can upload your own original mp3’s and it won’t sound like your band is recording in your mom’s bathroom.

This now obsolete but once hugely popular format was digitally rejuvenated last year by a web service called Muxtape. Many elements were keeping with 4 and 8 track traditions and conventions, nostalgically reminding us of a classical way to enjoy music. The site allowed users to create their own mixes of about 12 songs, upload the files, sequence and post. The site caused a stir populating the blogosphere with each new feature addition, quickly achieving over 100 000 hits per day. Sadly this site is no more.

8tracks has set the stage alight as the legal replacement to Muxtape. This simple site introduces many exciting new features carrying on from Muxtape such as search functionality and a dedicated song library. If you want to upload other tracks you can always use the simple drag and drop iTunes application. Perhaps most exciting is its full integration to Twitter, allowing one to post new mixes as well as to notify your friends and communities. Not a fan of Twitter, that’s okay 8tracks allows you to embed a simple player into other sites as well.

From registration to publishing my mix took me all of 2 minutes. Much to the disdain of the girls in the office I was in a grunge mood today. What do you think? (comment on and rate my mix.) If you think you can do better, then give it a go at www.8tracks.com

My Mix: http://8tracks.com/philraw/phils-grunge-mix

Image courtesy of: extrawack.blogspot.com

The iPhone is not just a way of communicating with people anymore, it’s that and a whole lot more, there are endless applications for this phone to suite anyone and everyone needs. No matter whether you the beggar on the side of the road, using it to calculate your daily earnings with its built in calculator, or a businessman needing to keep up to date with the stock markets, a fisherman wanting to practice casting on those bad weather days from the comfort of the lounge, or a musician trying to make it big but wanting to practice everywhere, the iPhone is the solution for you,

I am proud to say that I am one of those aspiring musicians trying to make it big, and I use the iPhone to practice in my spare time/working hours. From browsing their store I found an awesome application where I can tune into my iPhone and practice melody’s for hours and hours, it’s like time doesn’t exist.

This application is called the Ocarina it was developed by a company called Smule. It is a flute application that magically turns your Iphone into an iFlute…Incredible! With hours of practicing I have finally found out how to play a song or two. For you music lovers out there, there are many applications that will suite your every need, from the simple triangle to the guitar and piano applications. It’s truly amazing what you can do and especially amazing on what you can achieve with these phones.

Well done Apple

When activated, the blue inner band fills with air and expands for a comfortable fit around your wrist. A multi-touch track pad offers easy navigation and the audio links via wireless earbuds.

Clean, modern design with high-end functionality – this looks like a product that could become a reality.

First spotted here and locally in Milk Mag

The newest service, Mixtube, takes advantage of all the music stored on YouTube and allows users to create ‘mixed tapes’ using audio on YouTube videos. It takes over where now dormant Muxtape left off.

Although the YouTube sound quality isn’t always great it gives users and opportunity to discover and mix songs that they otherwise may not have been able to find. Of course as always, music rights and other permission issues are always in question with regards the web but until that conflict is resolved new audio services like this keep it interesting.