I’ve been spending a lot of time lately working on a project of ours in Basecamp and constantly flipping back and forth between my to-do list and the project itself in Firefox.  I just found this add-on called Split Pannel that lets you create another “tab” on the left of your Firefox window, much like the history pane, so now I have Basecamp open and my project — side by side.  Works great on big monitors.  I’m sure I just increased my productivity by at least 10%.

Pollstar, founded way back in 1981, is probably the largest and most authoritative resource when it comes to concert schedules and tour itineraries. As a lover of music, especially live music, it’s been at the top of my bookmarks for many, many years. Even before I was old enough to get into clubs.

Apparently they were online in 1994, which makes them an early adopter of the web by most standards. Kudos to them. The earliest version of their site I can find is from late 1996. That’s probably around the time I discovered them. But since that time their site really hasn’t evolved all that much in 11 years.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Pollstar. As far as concert listings go nobody could touch them. They had every venue, all the cities, and just about every band — right down to the obscure indie guys. I can’t count the number of times I’ve found out about some of the best shows I’ve ever seen from Pollstar. To express my thanks I’ve given them something very, very few sites have ever gotten from me. And no it’s not the Steve Palmer premium five star endorsement. I gave them my money. For probably 5 or 6 years now I’ve paid the $10 US annual fee so that I can track more than the 5 artists and venues you’re allowed to with a free account. In fact, I’ve got 95 of the 99 available slots filled on my tracking list right now and the only reason it’s not filled is because I recently moved to a new city so I’m just learning which venues I should be keeping an eye… er, ear… on.

But… I do have a beef with them and it’s a big one. While they might have blown the socks off me back in 1997, today their site just ain’t cutting it. In fact, it’s sucking it… hard. I’ve always cut them tonnes of slack because they served up such a tasty platter of precious concert listings (even though it was in the most Web1.0 way possible).

Ok. Fine. Maybe I couldn’t subscribe to an RSS feed by artist, venue, or city. And yes, there was an odd limit of only 99 artists and venues you could track. And fine, you can’t get updates to a mobile device or query their listings database by SMS like Google’s ultra useful service. And big deal, you can’t interact with other users to recommend music or bands to them… or plan to meet them at a show… or post photos after going to a show. And there’s absolutely no sign of a Facebook app on the horizon… so what?

No Ajax… in fact no JavaScript, really.

Tonnes of bloated markup.

Font tags.

Barely wider than 640 pixels.

Yuck.

Not that I’m critiquing their use (or mis-use) of technology, because “technology” isn’t equivalent to “good site”, but these are generally regarded as the tools needed to provide a good user experience.

That’s what it comes down to — user experience. I guess it’s the sheer crappiness and massively untapped potential in how they delivered their listings that really irritates me. I mean, daily email updates? That’s it? To quote Gob Bluth: “Come on!”

Then I got this interesting note in my email box (which, as you guessed it, prompted this wordy rant):

Dear Pollstar Premium Subscriber,

Pollstar.com is in the process of upgrading our site, including many of our online features. Because the changes to Pollstar.com will be substantial, new or renewed Premium memberships are no longer available.

We still offer all users our free auto-notify accounts for five artists or venues. If you wish to continue to receive these free notifications after your Premium expiration date you will need to edit your list down to five selections.

We anticipate launching more new features in the near future and hope you will continue to enjoy using Pollstar.com during our time of transition.

Thank you for using Pollstar!

Don’t you think it’s kind of a weird way to tell me, a paying customer, that you’re upgrading your site? “We’re about to boot your paying ass down to free account status!” But hey, you’re Pollstar and I love you — I’ll patiently wait for whatever super duper upgrade you’re cooking up in total secrecy. Hopefully you’ve partnered up with a smart and creative web firm that really understands user experience that can help you capitalize (as in, you will make more money for doing these things) on the tonnes and tonnes of opportunities available to deliver your content to users in creative, useful and innovative ways that let them share it and mash it up.

Pollstar: the 2007 internet is calling… will you accept the charges?

We’ve been following OpenSocial since it launched a little over a week ago. A few days later I posted a brief backgrounder and highlighted some of the neat things happening around OpenSocial.

A week later and it’s no surprise that some smart people are stepping up and jumping in head first — not to say that it’s foolish or risky but it’s still very early and even among the launch members adoption is slow. Regardless, momentum is gaining so I’m going to pluck a few of the more interesting and noteworthy developments:

• Yahoo! Mail and iGoogle are well poised to take on Facebook: both Yahoo and Google run massive web mail services, providing them with something it’s taken Facebook months to build: the social graph — the real-life connections between you and your friends (and something very precious to Facebook’s vitality). As Google and Yahoo make moves to roll social networking functionality into their email tools (where you’re already spending an important chunk of your online time) OpenSocial will certainly help them to catch up in the areas where Facebook still has a significant lead: applications.
• Movable Type Community Solution: SixApart has launched a new version of their Movable Type blogging platform called Movable Type Community Solution. It’s an enterprise tool that brings a lot of Web 1.0 technologies like forums, discussion boards and message boards into the Web2.0 age alongside blogging — taking advantage of new technology, search friendly content, and social networking concepts like credibility gained through recommendations from friends and popularity. SixApart was one of the members announced when OpenSocial launched and supports the API through the use of third-party widgets on the platform.
• OpenSocket puts OpenSocial onto Facebook: This is probably the neatest thing I came across all week. Dan Lester and Ignacio Blanco have created a “wrapper” called OpenSocket that allows developers to run OpenSocial widgets within Facebook! The motivation behind it is pretty cool:
  

  The initial goal is to bring OpenSocial widgets to Facebook before they reach MySpace, thus demonstrating the power of technology over business politics.This can be seen as a ‘petition’ to Facebook to open up once they’ve had a chance to evaluate OpenSocial.

  While this is a really nifty idea, when it comes down to it there aren’t a whole lot of OpenSocial widgets in existence and as pointed out on the OpenSocket site there are some technical issues around where widgets are hosted that still needs to be addressed. Best of luck to them though, it’s a really cool project. Hopefully they’ll realize the opportunity in developing the reverse version that would allow the thousands of Facebook applications plug into a wrapper that makes them compatible with OpenSocial. Now that would be huge.

This is something totally cool that I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out for myself. It’s called Sketchcasting and you can check it out at Sketchcast.com. The idea was hatched a couple months back by Richard Ziade at Basement.org and some folks decided to take his idea and run with it — so to speak.

What is Sketchcasting? Well it’s kind of a criss-cross of blogging, podcasting and sketching whiteboard-style. Basically, you talk into your microphone while you draw on a whiteboard. Not an earth-shattering concept — whiteboards and sketchpads have long been invaluable tools for communicating ideas and illustrating concepts quickly — but to do it you need to capture on video what you’re sketching and record what you’re saying while you’re talking. That would require a video camera, a microphone and some patience to get it onto your computer, compress and edit as required. Kind of loses the whole “in the moment” essence that makes it work so well in the real world. What Sketchcast.com does is fill in the gaps so that the entire process is now done via a web-based tool — recording AND sketching. You hit record and the site captures your sketches and voice (if you feel like talking) and then lets you save it and share it really easily. You can even embed the finished product on your site much like a YouTube video.

So what’s it look like? Well, they suggest you use a graphic tablet for sketching but here’s something quick and dirty I just threw together.

Ok – a graphic tablet would make that a whole lot easier… but it’s still a really neat idea!

steve got the ball rolling with a couple of beauty posts documenting our new project at 76labs
it’s temporarily top secret
but our development process
is inspiring a whole lot of blogworthy thoughts…

it’s no secret that ours is a music project
so i’d like to talk about musicians
and what kind of lousy dough they make
because they make painully little
playing in cafes, bars, clubs, theatres, festivals
50 bucks sometimes
a hundred bucks a lot of the time
and for every quality gig that pays 2 or 3 hundred
another couple that pay nothing at all
which is why one of the main objectives of our new project is to increase the amount of money working musicians make!

and while it’s true that the legends are rich
there are very few of them
compared to the countless fabulous musicians
lifelong musicians
who live poor
and die
more or less penniless

and if you know how the music industry works
you’ll know that even selling a million records
or having a number one hit
is no guarantee of significant financial rewards
because there are so many predators, so many ways to get screwed
that time and again musicians get famous and go broke all at once

and so the project we’re working on is in large measure for them
real musicians who spend their lives making people feel good
we’re building an economic engine
unlike any other
based on an understanding of the real lives of musicians
and their fans
and designed for them and no one else
and when it’s ready to test (soon)
we hope you’ll give it a whirl
and let us know what you think
js

Yes, I’ve been a negligent blogger… but let’s forget about that for now. I’m writing again and damn I’m excited.

A wee while back (in November to be precise) I talked about an initiative at 76design called 76labs. Since then it’s remained largely cloaked in mystery. I wish I could say it’s because we were secretly toiling away, building the web’s next big thing, but alas it’s been quiet because we had our busiest Spring ever and when you’re busy with client work that leaves little time for experimentation.

Well, that was then and this is now. It’s Summer time and while we’re still abnormally busy, 76labs has gained some new focus and a whack of momentum thanks to the efforts of a few motivated and bright individuals (the brightest of which is undoubtedly John Sobol) who are determined to bring some of our ideas to market.

I’m excitedly writing this entry because we’ve begun development on a new product which we plan to launch in the Fall, on a beta level at least. I wish I could go into more detail but at this point I’ve got to keep it under my hat. The thing is, it’s an incredibly simple solution to a really complex problem… and so I can’t exactly tell you what it is or else you’d go out and make the product and collect our millions. I’m kidding. We’re fully aware that as social media advocates we’re being a bit hypocritical in the anti-transparentness of our development, but really – if you knew how surprisingly simple this idea is you’d understand why we can’t share it quite yet.

All I can say is that it’s going to turn the music industry upside down. Big words, I know… I don’t expect you to believe me just because I typed that. Just be patient and we’ll show you what we mean.

Even though it’s strictly on the DL I do plan to blog the process as we go. After all, product development is new territory for us and comes with a whole new set of rules. While it is ultimately web-based and obviously requires a lot of the core skills we use on a daily basis, the move from service-for-hire to R&D is pretty substantial. I hope to offer a few observations and insights as we go. Without further ado…

We’re already midway through week 2 and just entering the architecture and wire-framing stage. So far, the process has been much like a typical web site project for us. However, the one difference I’ve found is the difficulty in nailing down the scope. By its nature, the sky’s the limit with this thing. Unfortunately, we can only invest a finite number of hours and in the Web2.0 spirit of development we really want to get a foundation built and release a basic version of the product done and in the hands of real users. That feedback will be invaluable and we hope that it will ultimately shape the development as we move forward.

Alright… gotta get back to looking for available domain names for this thing. As it goes in the online world, we’ll name it once we know the .com is available! Why do you think this company’s called 76design, anyways? 71 through 75design.com were taken, duh.