Track of the Week: Cooler Than Me by Mike Posner

This week’s track is Cooler Than Me by Mike Posner, off of the A Matter of Time mixtape. Somewhat unusual for a TOTW, I first heard this song off the radio, then found it again when it showed up on the Hype Machine’s popular charts.

It kicks off with an old school overdub sound over an electric guitar, but less than a minute a the modern electropop sound kicks in that carries it through the rest of the track. While the production is catchy on it’s own, it’s fairly minimal and Mike Posner’s scratchy voice and the fun / interesting / amusing lyrics give you something to sing along to. Espically amusing is the lines he borrows from Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain, which is quite apt given the overall story of the song.

You got designer shades
just to hide your face and
you wear them around like
you’re cooler than me.

Short Trip to Asia, Starting in Beijing

I’m in Beijing at the moment, typing away on my laptop tethered via my Blackberry to the CHN-CUGSM 3G network. Technology is something, isn’t it?

We got in to Beijing last night for two customer meetings we have today, then we’re off to Korea this evening for a workshop with another customer of ours on Thursday. Beijing is an exceptionally short trip as we kind of tacked it on in front of our meetings in Korea. Since we got in last night we did a quick run through of Tian’anmen Square and then had a fantastic dinner of northern food (including some great knife cut noodles and some amazing jao zi).

I miss China a bunch. The sights, sounds, people and everything about it makes me think back to the times I lived in Shanghai. What I don’t miss is the pollution. I’ve only been to Beijing once before and I don’t recall it being this hazy and, well, gross.

Track of the Week: I Need a Dollar by Aloe Blacc

This week’s track is I Need a Dollar, by Aloe Blacc. I first heard this song as the intro song to How To Make It In America, HBO’s new show chronicling the life of two young men hustling in New York City to try to enter the fashion business.

Lyrically great, and searching soulful, the song centers around the coming of bad times and the path towards losing one’s job. It’s acutally a pretty sad song of a man in desperate need of a break. Even though it has a pretty classic soul sound it was recorded Feb 2010, which makes me feel like it codifies the life millions of people must be going through as they lose their jobs or fall on hard times during the recession.

I had a job but the boss man let me go
He said / I’m sorry but I won’t be needing your help no more
I said / Please mister boss man I need this job more than you know
But he gave me my last paycheck and he sent me on out the door

Flash Player 10.1 on Google TV

I posted over on the Flash Platform blog over work we’ve been doing to bring Flash Player 10.1 to the Google TV.

Adobe and Google are working closely together on a number of different efforts including support for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR across various platforms and devices. One of these new platforms is Google TV, Google’s new Android based platform that brings the power of the web in to the living room. Google TV includes Flash Player 10.1 integrated directly into the Google Chrome browser delivering the full Web to consumers on their television sets. The digital home is a huge step for Flash and it represents an amazing new screen for developers and content creators to bring rich interactive content to the TV.

With support for Flash Player 10.1, Google TV customers have access to the full web. This includes the approximately 75% of online videos and web games that use Flash, the vast numbers of rich Internet applications, and content across social networks. Flash Player 10.1 will support hardware-accelerated video playback and deliver smooth, HD (1080p) quality video on Google TV devices. We’re excited that having Flash Player 10.1 as a key part of Google TV will enable an additional screen for the more than 3 million Flash developers to create content for.

We are seeing widespread interest from our partners in the digital home space and we are working closely with them to include support for Flash. Today, consumers can experience rich Flash-based applications, content and user interfaces in televisions, set-top boxes, and Blu-ray players from Samsung, Vizio, Haier, BestBuy Insignia, and Tivo. Game consoles such as Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 also feature Flash technology.

Want to see it in action? Check out this video we shot on site at the Googleplex showing Flash Player running on Google TV.

Track of the Week: Weekend by Black Eye Peas

It’s Wednesday and I’m already ready for the Weekend, this week’s track from the Black Eye Peas’ Bridging the Gap. While typically I’d go on for a while waxing about why I like this particualr track, I think most people probably know this song. I’m going to spend a few inches lambasting the fall of one of the greatest acts in hip-hop.

I remember vividly when I went and saw BEP play in 2001 at the University of San Diego. Live drum set, real instrumentation, a DJ, no Fergie and one of the highest energy shows I’ve ever seen. At the end of the show will.i.am, apl.de.ap, and Taboo were all outside signing autographs on ticket stubs and milling around. I wonder where my signed ticket stub is these days. I remember hearing BEP on Jurassic 5 and Ozo albums back then, all with innovative sounds and a positive message — very different than typical West Coast / LA rap.

Then came Fergie. And Where Is the Love. And My Humps. And the nail in the coffin, Boom Boom Pow. Look back at their track, Original, with these verses:

Many people can’t be real, so they gotta chase the steel
What the deal? Is it really all about the bills?
What’s the thrill? I’d rather have my soul fulfilled

So sad, that’s exactly what they’ve become.

Eight Hour Email Break

You know you’re probably doing something wrong when there’s exactly eight hours between your last email from the night before and the first from the next day. At least I’m sleeping eight hours a day. I call it my eight hour email break.

Track of the Week: Healesville Sanctuary by Roger Shah & Signum

A little bit of a change of pace this week, track of the week comes off of Armin van Buuren’s Universal Religion Chapter 4, it’s Roger Shah & Signum’s Healesville Sanctuary (Roger Shah Mix).

On a early morning like today, after I’ve been napping on the train trying to catch some sleep before I arrive to work this is exactly the kind of music to wake me up when I get off the train, put the headphones in the ears and walk in to the office. It’s a Friday and if you’re looking for a wake-me-up, put this track on and it’ll set you straight.

The is a beautiful little trance track, that starts over soaring vocals and plucked strings. This mix is recorded live, and there’s an energy as the crowd gets in to it. As the first progression builds the cheers and whistling from the ground grows as everybody is waiting for the melody to drop. In typical trance style the song goes huge, drops away again and the crowd goes wild waiting for the same beat the second time. Give it a full listen through to hear both halves of the song.

The entire Universal Religion Chapter 4 mix makes for a great 80 minutes of solid trance. It was was the latest work available from van Buuren for a while but A State of Trance 2010 was released at the beginning of the month so expect a TOTW from that later in the spring.

FYI: unfortunately the YouTube link is a slightly different mix from the email than the van Buuren mix, so listener beware.

Track of the Week: Don’t Be Too Late by Montana 1948

The second appearance of local band Montana 1948 in track of the week, this week’s track comes from their latest album Picket Fences, Don’t Be Too Late. I first heard this song about a year ago while going to a MT48 show in San Francisco. It had been at that point one of the first songs they had written after their Tiny Drawings EP. Like most Montana 1948 songs, it’s a catchy, pop-y rock song that finds the chorus stuck in your head after a while. When I last saw them at Cafe du Nord, I took a few friends and over the next few days we all ended up having some of their songs stuck in our heads.

My favorite parts are the bridge at about the 3m mark, and the strong close as the band jams over the singer’s lyrics. If you’re in the Bay Area, I recommend going to one of their shows. They have great stage presence and are a ton of fun to watch play. “don’t don’t tell me no / don’t, don’t tell me no”

New Year, New Job (Same Adobe!)

What’s a better way to start a new year than a new job? In January, I moved over from our AIR group, where I was doing iPhone stuff, to our Digital Home group, helping to bring Flash in to the Digital Home and connected living room segment.

I’ve had an amazing time working to bring AIR to the iPhone (and now the iPad!). It was a very unique opportunity to work within the company on a small, motivated, focused and talented team to bring out what was effectively a secret project and launch it at MAX. With the CS5 launch right around the corner, it’s super-exciting to see the technology ship in Flash (apparently our team is in the credits!) and get developers access to what we’ve been working on.

It’s a very exciting change and I’ve been having a blast these last three months working in the new team. We’ve been working hard to build out our strategy and get all the pieces in place to really execute and bring out a whole new set of TV experiences over the next few years. Having spent the last few weeks traveling and talking to customers it’s amazing what kind of innovation will happen in this space in the next few years. Hardware specs in TVs, Bluray Players, and set top boxes are growing rapidly which will enable content creators and developers to unlock the TV in ways we haven’t seen before. To give you some flavor of this, we’re seeing a quick move in the industry from 300MHz CPUs last year up to nearly GHz CPUs in the next 6-18 months.

So what is Adobe doing in the Digital Home space? Well, there’s some stuff that’s pretty obvious, some stuff we’ve shipped, and some stuff I can’t mention just yet. I’m lucky enough to be working with a team that has the first release under their belt which is a Flash Lite 3.1 based runtime optimized for TV-style devices. We’ve got a ton of customers building content and others shipping that content on their devices. As we go in to the year we’ll see a lot more devices ship with Flash. Plus, we’re hard at work on the next version of our runtime and our software solution (hint: it’s a lot like we’ve done for mobile web browsing). But more details on that later!

BTW: I’ll be at NAB next week in Las Vegas if anybody is there and wants to chat about what Adobe is doing in this space. DM me @hyperionab. I’m also presenting at the theater in the Adobe booth Tuesday at 230pm in the Las Vegas Convention Center, giving a talk entitled “Extending the Adobe Flash Platform Across Screens”. It’ll also be on Adobe TV if you missed it and wanted to see it.

Track of the Week: Good Times by The Holdup

I’ve been traveling a bit the last few weeks, and it’s starting to feel like spring outside. Nothing better to it off than this week’s track: Good Times by The Holdup, off of Stay Gold.

It’s a lazy reggae-esque track that feels like a good time hanging on on a warm summer evening, celebrating the main priority of “having a good time”. The singer’s voice isn’t what I’d call classic reggae and he’s a little high pitched but it adds to the feel good vibe the song gives.

Opening over a simple guitar riff, and building up with simple drums and the lead guitar, it’s an easy song to listen to while you’re waiting for the days to get longer and the sun to be warmer. “Cuz it’s been a while / since the last time you smiled / and I’m waiting for the next good time”.