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Headlines to Your Site or Blog: Widgetbox MuseStorm Widget ProHipHop Network |
Hip-Hop News Plus Tupac Shakur Info |
Hypebot has a list of TVT's unsecured creditors. I'm not sure how this was obtained but it's well worth a bit of browsing.
Plus, it's the first opportunity I've had to embed a Scribd document.
Document at Scribd:
TVT list of unsecured creditors
Spinlets Widget for The Pack's Standing In My Car
Just found out about the widget site Spinlets via a publicist promoting Dolla's Spinlets widget.
I went with The Pack's Standing In My Car because Dolla's Who The F*ck Is That drops both the F-word and the N-bomb to excess. Not a real problem for me in his case but it just doesn't fit ProHipHop's inching progress towards mainstream values. Of course, The Pack ain't no saints.
But I like both songs just fine.
Over at VidRap:
Dolla f/T-Pain & Tay Dizm - Who The F*ck Is That
The Pack - In My Car
Ego Twitter'in Just Like Snoop Dogg
So, Snoop Dogg's got a Twitter feed, or whatever they're called, and that's given Twitter and Snoop Dogg a widget based marketing opportunity.
Yes, you can now Shizzolate Your Twitters for minutes of...fun.
Considering that Twitter is designed to be a very lightweight app I find a bulky widget to be an odd promotional device for them [especially now that's it not showing up on my blog or their's, at least for the moment].
Snoop Dogg - Ego Trippin'
Note the use of the Ego Trippin' cover art in the widget.
I would think a lot of the people on Twitter will get a big kick out of this because the tech crowd eats this stuff up but I'm not sure if it will do much for Snoop's upcoming album.
But I may be wrong about Twitter users' response since some are now looking at the appearance of this widget as a sign to leave Twitter.
Widget distribution by Gigya.
ProHipHop's Jango Jukebox Widget
This Jango Jukebox widget is pretty darn cool though you never know who they're going to have at this stage and who's still missing. The lack of photos for some of these artists is kind of odd as well but it's still pretty darn cool.
It's getting so that bothering to license stuff makes a lot less sense than tossing up a widget from a Web 2.0 company doing the heavy lifting and that's one more piece of the puzzle to make small fry competitive with those whose pockets are much deeper.
Web 1.0: Business Development
Web 2.0: Widget Distribution
On a sad note for Jango, their press release at PR Web, which includes a framed version of the site at the bottom of the page as on many PR Web releases, automatically redirects to Jango.com.
You can hit the back button and then stop to keep it from doing that but if you're not interested in toying around, you can read what they're claiming over at Hip Hop Press.
Now if the width was customizable so you could add it to a blog sidebar, these guys would really have something. I don't understand why so many widget makers are ignoring the obvious but that's a lot of opportunities to pass up especially when you claim to have created a widget for "personal blogs".
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Gydget for Langarado Music Festival
The Langarado Music Festival is a rock, roots and world music festival that includes the Beastie Boys. But you're hearing about it here because I like this widget, or Gydget, as the creators call it.
It's a pretty cool self-contained widget that efficiently crams a lot into a small space without overloading it. There's also a contest for tickets and airfare to the festival for people who post it on their sites.
The Gydget service is free though the Learn More button currently takes you to a sign-up page before they'll tell you more.
A-Trak's Photo Widget
RCRD LBL launched in November and it's a pretty interesting experiment however I just wanted to post a couple of widgets from A-Trak for my ever growing, slowly loading widget collection.
Actually I just pulled one because it's pretty dodgy. And I haven't posted any of them before because they weren't working right when I tried. This one won't even center but there may be a simple reason I'm missing.
Anyway, I'd say they have widget problems.
Nikon Press Release:
NIKON PARTNERS WITH RCRD LBL,
HELPS MUSICIANS AND THEIR FANS CONNECT THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
Official Site:
RCRD LBL
Imeem Widget for The American Godfather
How is this even still online? I'd ask Google.
Man, this widget just fades out on its own. The issue of designing one thing for multiple online contexts is clearly going to be an ongoing problem.
MTV Leak Widget for Lupe Fiasco's The Cool
Is this a widget or a takeover plot?
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Lupe Fiasco's The Cool: Promo, Blog, Tour Dates, Marketing
ProHipHop Network @ Netvibes Widget
The ProHipHop widget from Netvibes I discussed previously can be added to any site or blog.
<iframe src="http://nvmodules.netvibes.com/api/uwa/
frame/uwa_standalone.php
?moduleUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.netvibes.com%2Fmodules%2FmultipleFeeds%2FmultipleFeeds.php%3Fprovider%3Dprohiphop" frameborder="0" height="350" scrolling="no" width="320"></iframe>
ProHipHop Network @ Netvibes Widget Code
Here's the code. You can change the "height" if you want to display more headlines. Unfortunately it's not able to respond flexibly.
And you can click on any of the following to add to other sites:
www.flickr.com
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I can tell this widget thing ain't going away and I actually have a backlog of interesting widgets to post so, here it is, the birth of ProHipHop's Widgets Category presented by SugarSkull!
Widget by Flickr badge.
TuneWidget for Troya
I've been checking out ReverbNation and their services for artists after being informed of their new TuneWidget and I think they're well worth a look for indie artists.
If you go to Troya's ReverbNation page you'll see a group of tabs right below the first blocks of information on the artist. Those are a good way to get a sense of some of what you can do with ReverbNation though I haven't looked closely at the full range of tools now available.
The widgets offered to artists are clearly quite useful with the above TuneWidget the most recent offering and, as you'll see if you click through from Troya's page, additional widgets include Music Players in two sizes as well as some nice Show Schedule widgets with a tour map option.
Why I chose this artist's widget in case you're wondering how to pitch ProHipHop:
I decided to choose an artist from Wilson, NC when picking out a TuneWidget because I've been looking quite closely at their attempts to encourage development in their Historic Downtown and because they are installing city wide municipally owned fiber optic internet access throughout the city.
That would be hard to pitch since you wouldn't know that.
I picked Troya because she was the only woman in the small group of Wilson, NC artists at ReverbNation.
That's easier to pitch. I support women in hip hop at almost every opportunity so they get privileged when I pick something like a widget or an album cover for a post.
However, if you've followed ProHipHop's coverage of such things, you'll probably realize that one of the best ways to get an artist featured on the site would be to tell me about a really awesome service that I haven't covered. That way your widget is the one I feature and all my other little quirks get taken out of the equation.
Know what I mean?
Thaddeus Clark and Ianeq are Side Hustle
Here's an example of a SplashCast audio widget featuring music by Side Hustle.
Via Different Kitchen who agrees that this is music worth listening to.
But, FYI, it made it on ProHipHop because it was the first SplashCast widget of relevance to come my way. Though the SplashCast widget wasn't pitched to me as related to my interest in hip hop and web 2.0, that would be one way to get your music on a blog that doesn't do music reviews or artist interviews but is interested in marketing.
Or that would be one way for a few more weeks until widgets are really old news!
Random House Widget for David Simon's The Corner
In an extended profile in The New Yorker, David Simon, creator of The Wire, reveals that he is planning to set his next show in New Orleans.
This guy is one of the best researchers working in television drama and such a show will most likely be an amazing thing.
Via Ethan Brown.
Background on David Simon:
David Simon researched and wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets which led to NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street.
He then researched and coauthored with Edward Burns The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood which resulted in HBO's The Corner.
Finally he created, executive produced and cowrote The Wire, one of the greatest gifts to television and for that we thank him many times over!
Amazon Affiliate Program Product Cloud Widget
Considering Yahoo's Ian Rogers' comments on Amazon's MP3 store caused me to check and see what they're doing with widgets these days. I'd hope for one for the MP3 store and that will probably emerge but the above is an example of their keyword cloud widget that features products from the Music category that are supposed to be relevant to the page on which one encounters the widget.
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Karmaloop Widget Jacked from Be Unequaled
Back in July Be Unequaled interviewed Karmaloop CEO Greg Selkoe who discussed the early days of this Boston-based streetwear retailer:
When I started the company I had another job I used to pack the orders myself take them on the subway in the morning drop them at the post office and then go into work in a cubical.
Selkoe had some interesting comments on the Kazbah section of Karmaloop's website:
Kazbah is an underground marketplace for the most up and coming underground brands. People kept hitting me up wanting us to carry their brand on Karmaloop like 10 a week, a lot of them were amazing but were to small to carry on the main site so we set up Kazbah selected only the best of the best and let them sell through the site meaning they do all of their own customer service and fulfillment.
The response has been crazy! And it feels really good to see some of these brands just coming up killing it, some of them had little or no distribution before Karmaloop now they are global growing like wildfire! People need to check brands like 9 Grand, Beandip, Jeepney, Methods, Gold Coin...these brands got next, these are some talented cats, hustling and building the next LRG's the next OBEY's.
The interview also mentions the upcoming debut of Karmaloop TV, the "first online channel for streetwear culture", that is coming "Fall 2007".
Yes, more online businesses becoming media companies!
Official Site:
Karmaloop.com
I was going to post a sample SongSpot widget from Sonific after hearing that they would make them free for indie labels to use. I would have posted a widget with music chosen as a fan.
But then I clicked yes on the terms of service and a popup said I couldn't use the widget on commercial websites though bloggers can post them on any service such as AOL.com, which is a very commercial website, and I couldn't find the statement in the actual terms of service themselves.
I then found that when creating the widget I had to specify the exact page on which it would be posted. Since many bloggers would add such a thing to a sidebar there wouldn't be a particular page though there would be a particular site.
Maybe it would work anyway but that's too many wrong turns for me.
The idea is to offer the tools so people can make magic happen but magic can't happen with bizarre restrictions that ignore actual Web use. Roadblocks lead to finding other routes and in the current environment I would strongly suggest keeping that key point in mind.
After seeing that will.i.am will be selling his next single through Musicane, which uses stand-alone store widgets that can be embedded on blogs and websites, I went ahead and set up the above store featuring Public Enemy's How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???
Public Enemy recently announced their participation in Musicane's program, a reminder of Chuck D's continued willingness to explore the next step in digital music. They seem to be the biggest act among the current hip hop selections and possibly of the site itself. will.i.am will definitely up the star ante for Musicane.
One of the roadblocks is that people will have to sign up for a Musicane account. Another question mark is whether or not folks are ready to treat free standing widgets as secure options for ecommerce.
The widget is currently offered in one size only and that's a drawback for folks who might want to drop one in the sidebar of their blog as I might have done. Easy customization is definitely the way to go in widget land.
It would also be nice if the singles had accompanying graphics or if one could upload one's own logo as a default graphic. The quick response of the audio and video samples is a huge plus and any additions to the widget should avoid losing that key quality.
Official Site:
Musicane
Talib Kweli Ear Drum Widget
This is the most complex yet least satisfying widget I have ever encountered.
But that's just me. Enjoy!
PS - You'll have to disable popup blockers for full functionality. I am now biting my tongue.
Actually, the Talib Kweli website version requires popup blockers but this one doesn't let me go anywhere to pre-order. I'm running Mac OSX and Firefox, if that matters.
Please let me know in the comments what's happening for you.
Take Two:
It wasn't fair to say that this isn't satisfying in certain regards but it seems like a lot of work to get a series of sentences out of an interesting and in many ways attractive design. Bear in mind that I regularly leave sites that require much waiting at all and would probably diss ProHipHop for related reasons if it wasn't my site.
The screenshot provided for pr purposes gives one a different sense of the underlying design, though it's not quite as enticing and obviously not optimized as a still graphic:
Screenshot of Widget on Kweli's Website
It's an interesting idea with poetic aspects and I do generally advocate experimentation but I just have a strong reaction to things that make me wait and that make me work to get little nuggets of content. Considering the popularity of MySpace with its wide range of clunky bits of coded baubles I'm not the best judge of these things but I typically wouldn't have taken the time to discover the positive side if I wasn't trying to make some sort of judgment call. And this is obviously a much more interesting and attractive experiment than the junky additions to MySpace.
Whether you agree or disagree, here it is, you can judge it for yourself and look forward to more cause I don't see folks stepping back from this kind of thing.
does that heading sound obscene?
back soon with a complete post.
oh, heck, mike jones has a new album on the way and here' s an embeddable game to promote it.
We've long made headlines from ProHipHop, Hip Hop Press and Holla at a Scholar! available via Feedroll Pro.
Now we're getting in on the widget craze and offering headline widgets from MuseStorm:
ProHipHop ~ Hip Hop Press ~ Holla at a Scholar!
And from Widgetbox:
ProHipHop ~ Hip Hop Press ~ Holla at a Scholar!
These are all designed to be easy to add to your blog or website and, since we're getting ready to see a veritable Widget Storm in the days ahead, I thought I'd do an early roundup of hip hop related widgets at Widgetbox, mostly from blogs:
2 Days Hip-Hop
Bump Magazine Blog
Forum - In German
GreasyGuide
Hip Hop Blogs
Hoodstar Magazine
HustleKnockin'
Street Knowledge Media
Producing Hip Hop Made Easy
UK Hip Hop and Rap - Community Forum
Plus the UrboPod - Beat Blaster!
Feel free to drop links to your hip hop widget experiments in the comments.
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