Following on my last post, Publishing Companies Are Getting it Right, I wanted to make mention of an organization that I recently discovered that aims to connect musicians with fans in an innovative way. NoiseTrade, founded by Derek Webb and friends, offers a unique - although not entirely new - method of artist/fan interaction. With the NoiseTrade model, an interested listener can go NoiseTrade’s website and find two unique ways to attain new music: a fan can choose to send an annoying email about the album of interest to five friends or the fan can pay a price of their choice for the album.

I find both options interesting. I’m not entirely sure either option garners more money for the artist, but I would imagine the artist would get a larger cut of the sales. I find both options very interesting, though. The second option, what I like to call the Radiohead Model, seems to be gaining steam after Radiohead popularized the concept, and I’ve noticed a lot of artists giving out singles using the first model.

Regardless, I’m excited that services like this are emerging. I’ve got some complaints about the NoiseTrade service, but I’m so pleased with the concept as a whole that I won’t even discuss them here. My only other thought is that it kinda makes me feel dirty to get an entire album just for emailing five friends about it or after paying only $2. This makes me wonder a bit about American consumerism or selfishness or something, but that’s for another post. Check out NoiseTrade for now.

HT: Brody Harper

This post is a result of some recent interactions I’ve had with two major Christian publishing companies: Zondervan and Thomas Nelson. There are three main things I’ve been impressed with, which I’ll expound on now.

First, I was surprised a few weeks ago to find Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, on Twitter. I believe I’ve mentioned this in the past in passing, but I wanted to make a point of it here. Hyatt also frequently posts on his blog, From Where I Sit, which I often find informative and interesting. Thomas Nelson maintains a list of their employees who blog, found on their Company Bloggers page. This kind of interaction with the public really impresses me, and I hope to see more executives taking this route in the future.

Secondly, yesterday I was contacted by Megan, a web manager for Zondervan, in response to my recent post on the National Pastors Convention. She humbly and helpfully informed me of several options which I had overlooked in my original examination of the National Pastors Convention website. I was extremely surprised to receive a personal email (it certainly appeared as though it was not an automated message, as it included direct references to some of the things in my post) from someone from Zondervan, especially so soon after my post had been written. I responded to her email, and she even followed up to that response. I quickly added a note to the post mentioning this.

Lastly — and I’ve mentioned this before — I was lucky enough to be included in a group of reviewers for Scot McKnight’s upcoming book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. Scot posted about this opportunity on his blog, as I discussed in the past, and I jumped on it. Zondervan’s purpose in doing this was to give 20 bloggers a chance to read and review the book. I was soon sent a copy of the book with the task of reviewing it and posting about it on my blog. I’ve had it for about 2 weeks now, and I expect to be done with it very soon.

This is by no means a summation of all that these or other publishing companies are doing on the Internet. I just wanted to discuss how I’ve been affected by their online efforts in the last few weeks. I’m excited about these types of online endeavors, and hopefully we’ll see much more of this in the future.

I just found the website for the upcoming National Pastors Convention held in San Diego, CA in February of 2009. On it is a list of all of the speakers that will be presenting during this couple of days. When I saw the list, I think I could have cried, as I would love to be able to attend something like this. Pretty much all of the pastors I admire and respect are going to be in the same place for a few days talking about the world-changing message of Jesus. I plan to whine about this for a long time, and maybe someone will take me. I definitely recommend checking this out.

HT: Skye Jethani

Edit: You don’t have to be a pastor to attend. They actually have lots of other options, including a student price and volunteer positions. A woman representing Zondervan cleared this up for me. I’ll be writing a future post discussing how impressed I’ve been with publishing companies.

This video was passed along to me by a friend and I had to post it. Apparently, there is a leprechaun hanging out in the trees in Mobile, Alabama. Personally, I agree with the crack lady in the video. What do you think?

Leprechaun in Mobile, AL

This weekend the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew 80 mph winds through northern Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana leaving me powerless and Internetless on Sunday. In the meantime, my Verizon Dare connected me what was going on. I could access weather maps 2 ways, through the navigation system which was really simple, or through the internet. I am really amazed that as 1.26 million people were without power and/or internet, I had the world at my fingertips. The small screen played YouTube videos flawlessly, checked Duke energy’s website for updates, checked my email, and provided up to the minute radar maps. It’s a little annoying to browse a large site on a little screen, because everything is adjusted and you have to scroll down forever, and the touch screen limits how far down you can scroll. Other than that, it was awesome. I charged it up using a converter in my car and it charged it from dead to lasting three days so far in about 1 hour.

For a limited time, the normally $10 Earthscape iPhone app is free to download (iTunes link)! I’m in the process of downloading it now, and it looks like it should be really cool, despite its lack of some important features. I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot if you’re an iPhone owner.

From Techcrunch:

“The app, which we first wrote about in May, puts a little globe in your pocket that you can spin around and zoom in to specific locations. It shows where you are based on your GPS coordinates, highlights locations with Wikipedia entries (and lets you read those entries as well) and flickr photos. Users can also take their own photos and add them to the application’s database.”

Just read this post on Andrew Jones’ Tall Skinny Kiwi. I think you should go check it out. Andrew took a poll a couple of weeks ago and decided to stop using the term “Emerging Church”. Now he’s discussing some things that the movement can use to improve itself, and I think he (and the article he’s referencing) bring up some good points.

So check it out:

5 Things We Got Wrong

Real quick, I wanted to give some first impressions that I’ve had about iTunes 8. If you haven’t heard, Steve Jobs and Apple held a special event today to announce new iPod Nanos and iPod Touches. One of the more exciting things in my opinion is the iTunes 8 update. This version comes with lots of minor updates, but perhaps the most significant thing is the Genius feature. Here are some things I noticed:

1. The set-up of Genius is very simple. iTunes does most everything for you.
2. The playlists are actually good. I have most of my songs rated and stuff, and I’ve tried several songs out as tests and have found that the songs Genius recommended have been very similar to the selected songs.
3. The right sidebar is pretty straightforward, although I’d like it if you could create that playlist in that right sidebar rather than in a new tab on the left sidebar.
4. Graphically, everything looks good and clean.

Just some initial observations. Take it for what it’s worth.

Last semester I stumbled upon the application Schoolhouse and have never looked back. The author brands the app with the idea that it is a homework management application, and I find that it is very successful at doing that. Schoolhouse has a number of great features that allow users to add assignments, keep track of upcoming due dates, and even calculate grades in a class based on inputted data. The author even claims that the next version will have iCal support, but it’s been a while since he has made any mention of his intent to finish the next version of the app. I’m hopeful, but regardless you should check it out.

I just finished reading Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. What a challenging book. I almost don’t understand any of it, yet I feel like I understand most of what he said. From the time I picked up the book to the time I put it down, I felt as though Shane was saying that almost as (or equally as, or more) important as placing faith in Jesus is living out that faith in Jesus as a radical disciple. Kinda reminds me of The Divine Conspiracy (or at least the Introduction, which is as far as I’ve read). I’d love to go into more detail at a later point, but I’ll leave it at that for now. I definitely recommend picking up the book, though.