As those of you using the popular “social utility connecting you with people around you” are aware of, Facebook has changed their look and now their tagline. Getting some bad reviews to their claim of not being a social networking site and punishing users making online friends as oppose to strictly offline contacts (high school, college and work colleagues) , Facebook has redesigned their Home page (you must be logged out to see it) and came up with a new tagline. Facebook was deleting accounts of those who were creating multiple accounts for online purpose. With the negative response that Facebook started receiving, they made the move of “refreshing” their home page and changing up the tagline to reflect their new “flexibility” with users wanting to keep contact with online friends. I, for one, think it is insane to not allow people to have online connections on an online “social utility“. Facebook claims to not be a social networking site, but realistically, isn’t that what everyone is using the site for? I connect with current friends, college friends, old high school friends, co-workers and even people I have met through face to face AND online networking. If I am only allowed to connect with people around me then I would only be talking online to the people I see everyday! I have friends in other countries and they aren’t exactly around me. Were would Facebook put the limit on controlling everything? I believe that Facebook has made the realization that they can’t take over accounts and punish users for wanting to make new friends. With the new look, Facebook rephrased their viewpoint on how users should consider the site, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life”. Check it out for yourself and see what you think.

For about 7 years now, I have had the pleasure of being good friends with Frank Ishman, formerly a Chicagoan now in Manhattan, and wondered why he hasn’t yet struck the big time with his photography. He recently re-launched his website, and is in the process of putting together a small group of NYC shooters to form a collective rep agency (more details to come).

Please take a look at his work if you get a chance. There’s some really beautiful images, especially in “the book: new york”.

Enjoy!

So, I am aware that I am pretty behind when it comes to discovering new technology. I have never really been a big fan of internet radio, but my co-workers, here at Blueye, have been using it and my curiosity of this website has grown. Being a music lover and Loving the ability to discover new artists, I have, so far, enjoyed pandora.com very much. I didn’t like it for the first hour or so, simply because I didn’t get the fact that they would replay some of the same songs over again (one fallback on this site), but I soon grasped the idea of “driving” the station, as Uncle Brice puts it. Basically, for those of you unfamiliar with this internet radio website, you can do a “QuickMix” or you can type in any artist that you enjoy and they will begin playing a mix with songs by your selected artist, as well as songs by other artists who are within the same genre or style of your artist. You can Bookmark the song to your profile, rate the song with either a thumbs up or thumbs down. You can even mark a song to not be played for a month, in case it’s been over played. Like other internet radio stations out there, Pandora can only allow you to skip so many song within an hour. The plus side, if you know how to “drive” your station, you can give a song a thumbs down rating and Pandora will automatically skip that song and play something more to your liking. When you bookmark songs on your profile, you have the option to purchase that song from Amazon.com or iTunes. You can also just save the song on your profile to share with your friends who are also using Pandora. It even saves the radio stations that you start, so there is no need to retype anything in when you sign back in later. I am certain that most of you out there have already heard of Pandora, (Tim has been using it for years) but if you haven’t, now is the time to check them out, you may discover some great finds.