GrooveShark Rocks!

I’ve been trying out GrooveShark for the past few months. It’s been more of off and on but still enough to get a feel for the service. At first I was skeptical but the service is definitely amazing and it has great potential. The website is easy to navigate and it’s extremely easy to find music, on top of that a great feature they provide is a friends list. I haven’t dove into this too much just yet so I can’t quite comment on what it exactly does. However I’m assuming it allows you see what your friends are listening to and it allows you to listen to their library of music as well.

What is really interesting though is how they go about paying the artist. You as the user download the GrooveShark Application called SharkByte and it searches for all audio files on your computer and uploads them. Then if some one finds that song, they purchase it for 99 cents, and then artist gets paid for you sharing their music. But it gets better not only do they get paid but you earn some money and so does GrooveShark. At the moment the software you download doesn’t do much and only uploads your audio files, but it is my understanding it will do more soon.

One downside however is you cannot listen to music from the site with out the application installed on your computer. I emailed their support team about this recommending that the user should be able to listen to music from the site with out the application. With in about a week I got a response saying the following:

“Hey David,

Thanks for the feedback!

The user relations team has been in Austin for SXSW this past couple of weeks, so I apologize for the delay in our response.

In response to your suggestion, we have a new feature coming out in late April that should address your issue.

Thanks again for the response, and don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions or comments!

–
Nathan Thompson
Editor/Marketing/User Relations”

It amazes me that there is also another company out there that cares about it’s users just like Mixx does! So something is coming in about a month to solve this and hopefully it will work the way I’m expecting it too. GrooveShark has a ways to go but it has a lot of potential. It’s currenly in Private Beta so if anyone wants an invite to check it out let me know!

Ya see I told ya guys this would be a positive entry!

Why do I keep going back to digg?

Today mixx announced a new feature called “Breaking News” where if your a “Super Mixxer” you can move a story thats news breaking to the front page so everyone can see it before it gets old. Then when it hits a certain amount of votes it gets moved to the Popular Category.

Well a user submitted the story on digg and it got about “61 diggs”. I made a comment on the digg submission saying the following:

” Congrats to the Mixx guys on this! Another reason why Mixx is 10x better then digg.

Friendlier Community, A staff that cares and responds to it’s users, Suggestions taken Seriously, Open mindedness, First to have a photo section before digg, working comment system w/ nested comments coming soon, more interesting and new content that usually hits mixx first, related categories, tagable submissions, Super Mixxers, no autoburies, no bury brigades, no hidden moderators and now another great feature that no one including digg has ever done.

So explain to me why digg is so great. Oh you say cause krose runs it? Yeah umm nice try…. “

I was originally voted up at least 4 times but then the bury brigade came around and voted me down. I then got a comment response from a user saying the following:

“then why the fuck are you still here?”

I’ve been told by Honest_Ape to leave digg behind but for some reason, I find the need to always go back to see what submissions are worthy of Mixx, see how bad the flaming has gotten over there, and make a response to some ones comment if I find it necessary. You can read the rest of the comments here that were made on the article, which proves that the diggers feel threatened by mixx, don’t want a friendly community, etc. It probably didn’t help with me taking a stab at the guy and calling him an “ass hat” and that made me look like a hypocrite but hey what can I say I’m only human and I make mistakes.

I really should just let digg go as Honest_Ape suggested and just keep my eye on teamxbox, gamespot, engadget, etc. This community is hard to get respect in and hopefully people will start taking Mixx more seriously. Let’s see what next year brings, I’m sure things will be much different and maybe just maybe the users that are trash talking Mixx will swallow theirs words.

I also hope that these “diggers” will understand that the staff behind Mixx does not hate digg! Chris McGill has even stated that he doesn’t hate the site. Hopefully I can move away from that site 100% and focus on Mixx as I have a good rep there anyways and a very good following of people who think I submit quality content which I’m grateful for.

Well tomorrows another day and hopefully my next submission will be a brighter and happier one. Mixx on everyone!

Why so close minded?

Hello all I hope the last week and this past weekend was a great one for all of you. Before I dive right in I want to take a  moment to thank two of my friends. They are Julie aka calinazaret and Honest_Ape.

Thank You Julie for your honesty  and the advice you provided. I will be speaking to my friend about it today and figured that honesty is best as well. If I’m upet with her lieing to me, how am I being any better pretending it never happened and waiting for her to say something? If my other friend gets mad, then so be it. I’d be a complete hypocrite if I was to lie as well.

And Honest_Ape, thank you for your comments on all of my submissions and your advice has helped me in words I cannot describe. Thank You for taking your time to read each entry. It’s good to know that there are people out there, who are interested in what you have to say and who care enough to read it.

So I wanted to write about this whole Good Friday and Easter thing. But now this sort of a rant I guess about the differences I’m noticing in our views about God and what not.

Many people don’t know that I’m a follower of Jesus or as it was called back in those times “A Disciple”. I’m not very outspoken about it but more and more so I’m starting to and not in a negative way or in the ways the media depicts it to be.

As usual the first thing I do when I get to work is I check my corporate email, personal email, mixx and then digg (to see if there is stuff worthy of being over at mixx). I came across a submission titled “Lying for Jesus?” by Richard Dawkins”, now I didn’t actually read the article as I first was checking out the comments as I like to hear what people have to say first and to avoid the “NSFW”sites (However I will be reading it after posting this). It honestly amazed me how many negative comments there were about God, I didn’t know there was such a big and strong following of Atheist’s on this site. Every comment that had to dowhere some one admitted being a Christian they were dugg down. Has it really reached a point where the users over at digg don’t want to be open minded? Have these users been hurt so badly by people who call themself a Christian? In all honesty I don’t have the slightest clue because I’m not them.

But the ironic thing is that there is a user over there who was saying to investigate and read through the Bible yourself and see if this is for you or not. Now this is where the ironic part comes in, when I was at Liquid Church the other day our lead pastor was even saying that it’s ok to question what is said in the Bible, and to investigate it yourself and that if it’s not for you it’s ok! Crazy huh?!

I’m not here trying to say your wrong for not believing in God or anything of that sort. That wasn’t the point of this entry by any means necessary.  I’m just trying to figure out the hatred others have towards Christianity and Christians in general.

I personally had a bad encounter with my Senior Lounge teacher in highschool. My friend and I were talking to him about Christianity why we believed in it, etc. We weren’t making a goal try to convert him or anything and nor’ should that be a goal for any Christian at all, shoving your beliefs down some ones throat is a terrible thing to do. Anyways as I was saying we were talking to him and he would ask us why this and why that and we would answer it as honestly as we could. The next day he apologized to us for getting so upset about it and for snapping on us which apparently resulted in him drinking the night away.

It’s encounters like these I wish we could avoid but alas I don’t think that will ever happen. And by no means am I saying that I’m perfect and didn’t do anything wrong with what happened on that day. Hell there’s so much junk I have in my life I sometimes even question calling myself a follower. But what I was doing was pointing out a typical conversation about Christianity that just goes sour. Can’t we just have peaceful conversations with out the bashing?

I wish the video for the Easter Sunday message was online but unfortunately it is not and wont be until at least tomorrow or Wednesday. When it is however I will post it so those of you who want to can watch it and get an understanding about this whole being open and investigating thing I was talking about.

I’m so glad I’m part of the community over at mixx where I can have a discussion with other users such as this where they are willing to have a discussion with out being close minded. If only digg were the same.

How Do You Deal With Frustration?

How do you deal with frustration after receiving bad news, something you didn’t want to hear, something that didn’t work etc? I wish I had an answer for this as I’m currently going through this. I can’t explain or even describe how much hurt/pain, betrayal I currently feel right now.

 You see long story short a friend of mine just recently got out of a really bad relationship. She has been changing her mind left and right about the reltationship being over for good or if she should get back with him. It appeared I had one of my closest’s friends back because she finally decided to not get back with him. Well I just recently learned that she stayed over his place with him on Sunday night. Lying to me telling me that they had to go over the rig at a squad they are joining because it was the only night their sister was available.

Now knowing this I now officially know I don’t have one of my closest friends back. How do you deal with this and go about confronting the person about it? How do you deal with feeling betrayed? I hate it when frustration gets the best of people especially with me. If I get frustrated like there’s no tomorrow I’m like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. And that’s how I exactly was a bit earlier and still I feel some of that frustration.

So as I’ve been asking through out this what do you do to deal with that anger, hurt/pain, betrayal of that sort?

Comments Welcomed.

It’s Spring Break!

It is now Spring Break for me all this week. This down time is greatly needed for me as it will allow me to start blogging a bit more, will allow me to make some changes to my card game (more on that later…maybe…), and will also allow me to catch up on my readings for my Programming class and Game Design class.

So what have I been up to the past two months?

Mainly College and Work but also continuing to support and promote mixx. I’ve been tweaking the forum layout for “The Mixxing Bowl” and everyone has been patiently waiting for it over there. I’m no longer going to give a time frame as it keeps getting pushed back. So I’ll just leave it at that it’s coming very shortly!

I’ve also been working on my card game for my Game Design class and as I mentioned I have some tweaking to do. Tonight might be the actual first play test outside of class. It’s a turn based attacking game and your goal is to beat your other opponents from collecting some thing. I’ll leave it at that as I don’t want anyone to steal my mechanics, the overall look and feel of the game and more. One day if it ever get’s published and a date is set for release I’ll post an announcement about what the game is about.

I just recently started getting back into twitter so expect some more updates from me there.