- Case of the game
- Instructions
- The game itself
- Info about Wii's Band Brothers DX Speaker Channel, on the back of this sheet is a code to redeem it from your Wii
- Serial number to enter for points in Club Nintendo
- Botice about the recent recall of AC adapters for DS Lite
- Booklet about Nintendo wi-fi connection
Band Brothers DX, the latest in the Band Brothers series from Nintendo, was released last week in Japan. The latest installment has some new and significant features that the last game didn’t have.
New Modes
The are two new modes to the game:
Sing:
- This time the game utilizes the mic to let you karaoke. It doesn't seem like you will be able to record your singing probably due to the memory.
- The game comes with 30 songs, and you can download up to 100 more songs from the Internet using a wi-fi connection.
Songwriting:
- Tools to let you create a melody
- Auto arrangement / accompaniment features
- You can also “give” songs to other people that have the game. The interesting thing is that you literally give the song away meaning you cannot keep a copy. It doesn’t really make sense and is limiting, but I guess it’s probably for copyright reasons. For example, if you replicated a copyrighted song, this stops the song from being copied and passed on.
- If you did an arrangement for an existing copyrighted song, Nintendo allows you to submit it. If Nintendo likes it, the submitted version of the song will be available for others users to download.
Connectivity with the Wii
As for the performance mode, the coolest enhancement has to be the ability to connect to the Wii. Band Brothers DX comes with a special code that lets you download a piece of software called “Daigasso! Band Brothers DX Speaker Channel” on your Wii. By using this software, the sound will be played through the speakers of your TV or stereo system connected to the Wii. In other words, it’s like the DS is channeling its sounds through the Wii. Up to 8 players can play together and have the performance be played back from your Wii’s sound set up. That’s pretty neat.
Stay tuned from unboxing pictures and videos when I get a copy.
So you got a website or blog, it’s done, and it’s ready to go live. What next?
A project I’m involved in with right now is at that stage. Having to develop a promotion plan for the site, I looked around on the net and found some helpful articles.
Ones I liked and recommend:
- By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09
- 7 Ways to Launch a Website (number 7 provides you a list of ideas on how to promote)
- How to Launch Your Website
- How to Promote Your Website
- Got 100 dollars? 7 Experts share budget website marketing tips
- Startup Metrics 101: a Product & Marketing Workshop (@ Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008) - provides framework to think about marketing your site, and shows you which metrics are critical
- How to market your website on the cheap, by co-founder of reddit.com
Other articles I found in case your interested:
- How to Promote a Website
- How to Promote a Website (article marketing)
- Use Article Marketing to Promote Your Website Effectively Writing Articles
- What is the best way to promote a personal blog? @ askville
Four Steps to Developing a Launch Plan
As I develop this plan, I’ll try to share the process through on this blog. I imagine there are four big steps:
- Brainstorm and research: Brainstorm and find out all the possible ways to promote your website
- Schedule: Look at what fits, plan, and schedule it.
- Do it: Yup, follow your schedule and execute.
- Track: Make sure you track and figure out which ways are effective, so you can revisit and fine tune your plan.
Right now I am about finished with step 1 and ready go to step 2. I just grouped all the ideas in the following four groups for execution.
- Quick and free ways
- Not so quick and free ways
- Requires some time, but free
- Ways that require monthly
As for scheduling, I'm considering to schedule the activities in the order above. The other factor to consider is how spread out or concentrated should the promotional activities be scheduled. By spreading out the promotional activities, you can easily isolate and understand the effects of each promotional activity more clearly. In contrast, if you group everything in a concentrated manner, you might be able to create more momentum. So this is something to discuss about with our team.
Well, the next step for me is to share what I have with the team members and we'll go from there. That’s all for now. If you have any suggestions on how to promote and launch a site, please let me know!
To the everyday people, music is meant to be listened.
I think that is going to change. Right now music is static, but as technology gets more advanced, music is going to become more dynamic, and it’s going to become more interactive. Listeners will no longer be limited to the listening role. They could interact with music similarly to how a conductor interacts with the orchestra.
With the right interfaces and hardware, people will be able to change the speed of a song and control the volume of separate parts like drums and guitars. But that’s just scratching the surface. We are going to enter an age where listeners can “customize” their music easily. Listeners are going to be able to swap guitar sounds for piano sounds. If on a particular day, they feel kind of blue, they can convert a pop version of a song to a jazz version.
How will that affect music creators?
To accommodate this change, for music creators the final
output will no longer just be a music track, it going to be about providing an
interactive experience to the listeners.
Music right now is like coffee before we had Starbucks.
My question is why can’t we customize
music like how we customize our drinks at Starbucks? Maybe one day, as you checkout from iTunes, you can decide,
for example, the jazziness and speed of your song.
Here’s what I have been blogging about on my gadget blog at Shiny White Gadgets for the past week.
Pandora has released an Adobe AIR application that allows you to “play your Pandora stations right from your desktop – without opening a new browser window.”
Pandora is an Internet radio service that offers music recommendations based on what they call the Music Genome Project. According to Pandora, the Music Genome Project is the “most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected. It represents over eight years of analysis by [their] trained team of musicologists, and spans almost a century of music (and soon several centuries!).”
Songs are categorized with 400 distinct musical characteristics, and the data is used to recommend music to the listeners based on their music preferences through Pandora.
Unlike most web 2.0 sites like Last.fm, which leverage collective wisdom, Pandora is heavily centered on the expertise of music analysts. It’s definitely not scalable though it might be more accurate. It reminds me of the comparison between the traditional encyclopedia and Wikipedia.
Also considering music production is getting easier, there’s going to be a whole lot of music to analyze down the road.
Too bad the service is not available in Japan or other locations outside of US due to licensing constraints.
Source:
A business acquaintance introduced me to MySound, a Japanese site operated by Yamaha. According to the description, MySound is an online music store integrated with a community site. Users can buy music and have access to basic SNS features.
What's Unique
Users that have musical talents can upload their own works. Other users and listeners can download these songs for free.
What is really cool is that you can legally cover other artists' songs. MySound/Yamaha will pay the royalty fees associated with covering the song. This reminds me of Google/YouTube's agreement with Japan Rights Clearance earlier this year. According to NikkeiBP, under the agreement, in exchange for a fee from YouTube, users can post videos of "someone playing or singing songs licensed by JRC and share them with other users through YouTube." On MySound, listeners can stream covered songs, but cannot download or share them using widgets like YouTube.
My Two Cents
Although the site seems heavily oriented towards mainstream music and downplays user generated contents, I think it's a step in the right direction to try to make independent music and user generated music more visible and acceptable to mainstream listeners.
Currently, music is segmented into distinct categories such as mainstream, indies, and amateur / semi-pro music. And as music creation gets easier and more affordable, the long tail of music will be unlocked releasing a tremendous amount of music from the amateur and semi-pro level. This means we will get more good music, and on the downside, we will have a lot more music to filter through. Luckily, services like Pandora and Last.FM are showing us better ways to search and get recommendations. Over the time, with collective wisdom filters and music recognition technology, I believe we'll move to an era where users can forgo this kind of categorization and instead search and find music based on their musical attributes like genre, style, tempo, and etc.
Here are some books on my wish list right now.
- Inside Steve's Brain
- Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, A Parody
- Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0
- Presentation Zen
On the topic of books, I am currently re-reading The Long Tail, and I just found out on Amazon the revised edition is coming out in July.
It’s a very insightful book, and I recommend it for everyone involved with web 2.0 as it contains theories and frameworks that are helpful for web 2.0 projects.
"You will be able to compose music in 20 minutes." This is what a developer of TENORI-ON, a new digital musical instrument from Yamaha, told AFP. The TENORI-ON, which translates to “sounds on your hand,” has a form factor of a square silver tablet. It comes with 256 LED buttons, which are arranged in a 16 by 16 matrix. By pressing the buttons, sounds will be played and buttons will light up. Yamha says that it “allows everyone to play music intuitively, creating a 'visible music' interface." Some more info: You can switch between six different modes while you play. More info about the modes and functions can be found on Yamaha’s website. Videos
The horizontal axis represents the time and the vertical axis represents different musical notes. There are 253 kinds of instrumental sounds you can choose from such as violin and piano. In addition, you can also use your own original sounds with a SD memory card.
Here’s a demonstration on YouTube:
In Japan the TENORI-ON costs 121,000 yen, which is about 1,200 bucks. It's available in US, Europe, and Japan with limited quantities. If you are in the States, you can get on the waiting list at KEYFAX.
