Twitter #Music brings iTunes, Rdio and Spotify together

It is called critical mass.

When you have critical mass you can pull off just about anything.

Who would have thought that competing music platforms like Apple iTunes would be playing nicely (no pun intended) with (streaming / digital music) newbies Spotify and Rdio?

Twitter‘s new service #music  – https://music.twitter.com – just pulled off something many industry watchers didn’t even dare dream about in their best recording-studio-high moment.

How Twitter #Music works:

1. Users can  listen to a few seconds of the (Popular, Emerging, Suggested, Now Playing, Me) music through iTunes Preview

2. To play full tracks users can select Spotify or Rdio and link it to their Twitter #Music account.

After allowing Twitter to access your information, you go through the dialogue to sign into your Spotify [Premium] or Rdio account.

I think Rdio is going to emerge the winner out of this collaboration because unlike Spotify, you don’t require a premium account with Rdio to run your Twitter #Music application.

How does Twitter make money in this? Twitter users like us will now stay longer #scratchhair

Where does this leave Pandora?

Enjoy the visuals!

A Vision of Leap Motion + OUYA

I remember pre-ordering the Leap Motion almost a year ago and recently the OUYA console.

Since then I’ve been fantasizing about connecting my Leap Motion to my OUYA.

I think it is a match made in heaven and hope some developer somewhere is tweaking his codes to make this happen. Come on, OUYA is open source!

Or a game publishing house is working on their input device code to allow the Leap Motion to work with that exclusive OUYA game title.

What are the odds?

 

 

 

Images: Leap Motion & OUYA official images

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is only for right hand use

I’ve been using the new Kindle Paperwhite for close to a month now. It seems to be a good replacement for my 3 year old Kindle 3 (with keyboard)  which died on me one cold winter night – just when I needed it the most.

The ability to read without any lights on in the room at night is what makes the Kindle Paperwhite amazing. I’d pay for that any day. Thanks Amazon!

It is an upgrade in some ways and not so much in other ways. Actually, it is a retrogression in some ways.

It’s super responsive touch screen interface is a winner and I love the virtual keyboard.

However, nothing prepared me for the fact that I couldn’t listen to MP3s or play audiobooks on the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. I miss that about the Kindle 3.

The fact that I can’t plug my earphone into my Kindle Paperwhite is a no, no.

Today I discovered another issue about the Kindle Paperwhite while  on my way from school – the Paperwhite is best suited for holding [and reading] using the right hand.

I had moved the Kindle from my right hand to my left hand to read but realized that in order to tap the [the right side of the] screen to move forward/ progress through the ebook, I had to stretch my left thumb all across the screen to tap there. Or I had to m0ve my Kindle into my right hand just to easily tap the screen to progress.

Once again the Kindle Paperwhite is beaten by the Kindle 3 because it offers the convenience to progress through an ebook whether it is being held in the right hand or the left hand.

 

Of a mad man – Ken Agyapong, a twitter bully and the invisible hand of 2012 election connecting them

So I am minding my business as a student and thinking of internships and finals and the coming summer break…

..but here I am blogging about Ghana not because I am feeling nostalgic about a Ghanaian Easter/ Christmas and Azonto dance moves and the things that make me proud to be a Ghanaian but contemplating the implications of Ken Agyapong’s ‘declaration of war‘ in response to allegations of minors registering for the upcoming presidential elections in Ghana.

Arrogance, ignorance and money make for a bad combination in a culture where rich people are celebrated and vested with power. To even read that some persons besieged the Ghana Police Headquarters to demand the release of Ken Agyapong beats my wildest imaginations. I wonder if they understood Ken’s call for people to butcher others with machetes? and what misery a war can bring.

Most NPP politicians have decidedly kept quiet or risen to Ken’s defense or try to dampen the severity of his call for war. How can such a graphic call to war involving slashing fellow Ghanaians with machetes be explained away as ‘metaphorical’ and with no bad intentions? Counsel to Ken or no, Atta Akyea just lost all the respect I had for him as an educated gentleman and lawyer.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”

I applaud all who have roundly called Ken Agyapong’s outburst for what it is and Ghanaian artistes for their quick response and attempt to use social media to call for peace albeit wrongly targeted. The general populace who listen to Ken’s radio are not your usual twitter/facebook fans. Get your music together and do a peace concert. Throw in some Azonto competition and defuse this Ken Agyapong madness.

In other remotely related happenings on twitter in Ghana:

I will decidedly not mention any twitter handles but I think that some celebs shouldn’t ask some persons to campaign for peace in Ghana. People follow people on twitter for different reasons just as houseflies will settle on pastries and cow dung. Point here is that because someone is popular on twitter for breaking gossip doesn’t mean they have legitimacy to ask people to take socially positive action.

“Adjapong might be right. If only NDC didnt allow Togolese people into the border to register to vote all this wont happen!”

The above is what you get. SMH..

‘African’ – Usage and Abusage or Kony is not an African Warlord!

I find it very distasteful to read articles like the latest one on an Ugandan called Kony, who until yesterday I didn’t know existed [anymore]. You can wonder how up to date I am on current affairs all you want but an MBA schedule doesn’t allow me the time to read about people like the Konys of this world.

My rant is simply this.

Don’t refer to Kony as an ‘African Warlord’, and yes I am talking about The Christian Science Monitor’s latest headline on Kony.

Kony is an African but not an African Warlord. He probably qualifies as a Ugandan Warlord being the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and all.

To understand what I mean, Christian Science Monitor, go back to the dictionary to find the definition of ‘warlord‘. A warlord only applies in the context of a country and AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY.

There!

I did a presentation in class yesterday about Ghana and why investors should come invest there and you use your widely read website to plant another seed about why people shouldn’t invest in Ghana and other Africa just because of Kony 2012?

If you made the editorial decision of not headline “Kony 2012: Campaign against Ugandan Warlord..” because it wouldn’t drive as much traffic as “Kony 2012: Campaign against African Warlord..”  then you have to start examining your ethics as a Christian? media outlet.

In conclusion, I say learn to use [the word] ‘African’ appropriately and in the right context.

Kony 2012 is a campaign I support! Please Pledge!!

PS: Kony 2012: Is a good case study/ lesson in marketing communications and I applaud Invisible Children for pulling it off.