Bill Wishon's News and Views

The best album I heard in 2011 was High Violet by The National.

The first song I heard of theirs was Fake Empire of a previous album, while I like that album okay when I heard this one it was like they had struck a chord I hadn’t heard before.  The combination of the lead singer’s voice with the poetic / non-sensical lyrics and a simple but layered musical sound is really unique.  That combined with the fact that I can put this on heavy rotation and not get tired of it, makes this my pick for best album of 2011.

Today I finished building two custom raised planter boxes.  They turned out really cool so I figured I’d post an article detailing how I made them in case anyone else is searching for how to build these things.

I consider myself moderately handy and have a few tools laying around, but nothing particularly fancy.  This project was a big project for me but it was fun to do and worth it to get the custom fit I needed.  The full bill of materials was a few bucks less than $300 for both boxes and it took me most of two weekend days.

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The best new album I heard this year is Black Sands by Bonobo.

I first came across this album and artist from a music blog I follow called ScissorKick around memorial day and it’s been in my rotation ever since.   Black Sands is a sexy downtempo / chillout music that has a mix of electronic and live instrument sounds.

Ray

Ray, also known as Raydog, Buddy, Dude and lately Old Man, is no longer with us.  He was the best dog, a loyal friend, gentle, loving and smart.  We had a lot of fun together over the last 14 years.  I miss him badly, but I will always cherish my memories of our time together.

Janko over at P2P Blog just pointed out some interesting facts from the new Study Commissioned by the European Union.

The part that got my attention was the fact that of the people who currently pirate content only 20% of them would be likely to pay, they’d rather go without than pay for content.

In my previous thinking about how business deals with piracy this was one of the key questions, because if this is true then it doesn’t really matter what business does with pricing, quality improvements, user experience, etc…  People just won’t pay, even if there is no other option.

If the data had been different and 80% would be willing to pay, given some change in situation, price, quality, etc… then the onus was on business to work hard and find the right combination of price vs. quality and user experience to get paid.

I guess this means that the future of online content is ad supported, or other methods where the end-user doesn’t perceive the exchange as “paying for” content.

• Giving up personal data to get content.
• Content attaches itself to payments that the user is willing to make, for other goods and services, etc… and the content comes across for the ride?
• Maybe someone like a Comcast can hide it in a monthly bundle fee, or at least throw in the online content service as a way to sweeten the deal vs. DSL even if the pricing for each is the same.

I don’t know, but this data seems to indicate that if the user perceives it as paying for content they won’t do it.