Music

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Ronnie Drew R.I.P.

August 16, 2008 by 0 Comments

Today will go down as a say day in the annals of Irish folk music as it marks the death of Irish musical legend, Ronnie Drew. Most famous for his role as the singer with the Irish folk group, The Dubliners, Ronnie passed away earlier today in Dublin after a long illness. He was just 73 years of age.

Ronnie was almost as famous for his immaculately groomed white beard as he was for his unique voice. Whether he was talking or singing, or looking down the lens of a camera, Ronnie was unmistakably himself. He was truly one of a kind in every way possible and his passing will leave a void in Irish life for some time to come.

As we say in Ireland, “Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam” which translates to, “May his soul be on God’s right side”.

Multimedia

Take This Dance

March 13, 2008 by 0 Comments

Check out this clever music video from Take This Dance. When you play it, it attempts to detect your physical location (based on your Internet connection settings) and then downloads data from the likes of Flickr, YouTube and various other RSS-based Internet sites. Snippets of this information then appear at various stages throughout the music video.

Whilst it seems to work very well from my work office (i.e. my location is accurately detected), when I run it from home, it seems to think I am in Dublin, Ireland when in fact I am 100 miles away in Waterford City. I guess this is down to my Internet provider (BT in this instance).

Still though, it’s a neat idea and is lots of fun all the same!

Source: Paul Watson

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Rewriteable Song Lyrics

July 18, 2007 by 1 Comment

For the person in your life who has absolutely everything … check out this new idea from Tailored Music Group. You download a song from them and then write your own replacement lyrics for it. You then send the new lyrics back to them and they will have the original artist re-record the song with your custom lyrics.

Whilst this is something we’ve all probably tried at one time or another during our teenage year, I can see it becoming very popular and will undoubtedly make it’s way onto several Christmas/Birthday shopping lists sooner rather than later.

The words Copyright and Censorship spring to mind though…

Source: SlashDot

Multimedia - Technology

New Free Music Download Service – We7

May 11, 2007 by 2 Comments

I heard a short article on The Last Word yesterday (on Irish Radio Station Today FM) about a new music download service that claims to provide you with free music that is completely safe and legal. The service is called We7 and is being backed by Peter Gabriel.

The way it works is that when you listen to the downloaded music you also have to listen to a short advert. However, after a certain amount of time (4 weeks I think), the advert disappears and you then own the music. The music is in MP3 format and is DRM free so should play on most music players without issue. The artist gets paid by the advertiser and this is how the music is paid for. Initially, they are planning to release with audio files only but later plan to release video and other content.

Overall, quite an interesting service but not a great name as I don’t like numbers in a company name (it took me a couple of attempts to get the domain name correct).

Click here to download a Podcast of the radio piece from The Last Word. It starts at precisely 35 minutes into the show.