News Trust Experience

News Trust is a tool by which users rate and review articles from around the web, on everything from politics and technology. To discover what it’s like to use the site, I submitted three technology articles:

Why has Twitter been lagging? It just got Spanish last November

Apple introduces mobile app system

Leading iPhone Game Publishers chime in on Apple’s ‘Game Center’

News Trust allows users to submit reviews of articles

Reviewing and rating articles is easy enough, as when you’ve found an article you’d like to submit you can copy and paste the link into the “post story” section on the front page of News Trust.

The site itself, however, focuses too heavily on politics to be something I would use on a regular basis. It’s not a fault of the site that its users submit primarily political stories, though, so I can’t fault it for that.

One thing that I can fault it for was pointed out to me by another student. The review system may be fine for users who will never want to get into writing, but for others, like journalism students, there is a risk involved when using it. What if the author of a post I rated negatively is interviewing me for a job in the future? It’s not unlikely that they would track down my News Trust reviews, especially if they too are users of the site.

In the end, I just don’t see the point of using News Trust very often. I know what sources I trust and where I like to get my news, and if I want to know everyone else’s opinion I’ll probably use Digg.

2010 music preview

I wrote this for Debonair Magazine, but they double booked the 2010 music preview, and another writer did the same thing. So I volunteered to just use it here instead. The writing style is a bit less casual than what I would normally post on my own blog.

2009 was, at best, a mediocre year for discerning music fans. Although albums from Wilco, Grizzly Bear, Passion Pit, Phoenix and Girls kept us going through the fierce blizzards and the rainy summer, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “It’s Blitz”! was, at best, disappointing, and Animal Collective’s muddled “Merriweather Post Pavilion” was a step backward from 2007′s accessible “Strawberry Jam.”

Thankfully, tons of our favorite artists seem determined to make 2010 a much better year. January alone saw four well anticipated official releases, as well as several excellent early leaks.

Spoon’s “Transference” is a departure from their usual polished sound, and marks the first time the Austin, Texas rockers have produced their own album.

On their sophomore album, “Contra”, New York’s Vampire Weekend continue to create the kind of elegant, upbeat pop songs that make me feel like traveling somewhere sunny and warm.

If you prefer your winters chilly, Baltimore band Beach House’s “Teen Dream” is a hushed landscape of lush, mid tempo tracks perfect to listen to while sipping cocoa or gazing out the window earnestly.

For those of us who’ve grown depressed from staring earnestly out the window at the grey winter sky, E of Eels has crafted his bleakest album yet, despite some upbeat tracks. “End Times” comes in the wake of songwriter and front man E’s divorce.

English electropoppers and grammy nominees Hot Chip’s latest album “One Life Stand” delivers more honey-sweet vocals, thumping beats and synthesizer hooks.

San Diegans (Diegoans?) The Soft Pack have unleashed their sincere and energetic indie rock into the world with their self titled debut full length.

Among Pitchfork’s favorite new albums so far are Florida band Surfer Blood’s well-hyped debut “Astro Coast” and the classically inspired “Heartland” from Owen Pallett, who has previously  released a number of albums as Final Fantasy.

Speaking of “Final Fantasy”, Boston’s own Tim Jacques recently released his third hip hop mashup album, and his second hip hop/video game music mashup, “Vinyl Fantasy 7.”  It fuses the lyrics of rappers like Jay-Z, Outkast, Kool Keith and, for some reason, Tom Waits with- you guessed it- the music from “Final Fantasy 7,” one of the most beloved games ever made. Though the album was taken down at the behest of a cease and desist letter, it should be floating around the internet somewhere, and it’s well worth discovering.

I only just realized that Patrick Stickles has been going for the Abe Lincoln look all along

Also available “somewhere” on the web is Titus Andronicus’s upcoming release, “The Monitor.” Here Patrick Stickles continues trying to make us as disillusioned as him on the New Jersey band’s sophomore release. It’s a concept album featuring a guy who moves from New Jersey to Boston and back again, bitching all the way, and for some reason thinking a lot about the Civil War.

Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, known collectively as She and Him, will most likely melt our sentimental hearts yet again when “Volume Two” is released on March 23. Listen to the delightful new track “In The Sun” here.

MGMT were inspired by Lady Gaga and Kanye West when they recorded “Congratulations,” according to Spin.com. The follow up to 2007′s extremely popular electro-pop power album “Oracular Spectacular” and is tentatively scheduled for an April release.

Damon Albarn’s cartoon fantasy side project turned international phenomenon Gorillaz continues to draw from a diverse talent pool on “Plastic Beach,” which features appearances from Snoop Dogg, De La Soul, Lou Reed, Mark E. Smith from The Fall, Gruff Rhys, and both Mick Jones and Paul Simonon from The Clash, according to RollingStone.com.

New LCD Soundsystem material can be sampled on NME.com. The new album from James Murphy is expected out this Spring.

Radiohead and The Strokes were both planning to enter the studio in January, last we heard, and the Arcade Fire are tentatively planning to release their third album in May, with a single out (possibly) soon.

Other albums expected to hit virtual and physical shelves this year include as yet unnamed and undated albums from Canadians Tokyo Police Club and New York’s Interpol, and I’m definitely looking forward to those.

Well, now you know what I’ll be listening to for the first half of this year. You’re welcome.

Titus Andronicus photo from http://www.myspace.com/titusandronicus

Guest Speaker: Caleb Epps of Harmonix

Caleb Epps, the Senior Sound Designer at Guitar Hero and Rock Band creators Harmonix, stopped by my Interactive Media & Society class today to discuss gamer culture and the nature of Rock Band. As a huge Rock Band fan and someone looking for a way to jam a foot through the door of games journalism I was pretty excited to talk with him.

"The Ever-Expanding Gamer"

Epps, a “life-long gamer,” started out with a presentation titled “The Ever-Expanding Gamer.” Pictures of stereotypical gamers (fat, ugly teenaged boys) gave way to his real topic: societal acceptance of gamers and the rise of the “social gamer.”

“Anyone who plays games I think can be defined in this day and age as a gamer,” Epps said. All we have to do is “expand the definition of gamer a little bit.”

Who are gamers? According to Epps’s presentation, about 63 million more people played social Facebook semi-game Farmville last year than purchased Modern Warfare 2, by far 2009′s most popular console game. Are Farmville players “gamers?” I’m still going to say “no,” but the question was posed in a way that made my brain hum nicely.

Epps also pointed us toward web sites like Gamer Moms as proof of the sea change affecting society’s opinion of video games, and students had anecdotes to share about moms, dads and seniors enjoying The Beatles: Rock Band and Wii.

smart dude

When the Q&A began, the gamers in the audience (myself included) started grilling Epps about the games industry, the future of Harmonix, and game piracy.

“We’re working on a bunch of new stuff and a bunch of cool prototypes,” Epps told the class. “I would be promptly murdered by our PR department if I told you.”

He did give us a few hints, however. “What people are starting to realize in the games industry is that it doesn’t have to be on a console,” he said. “People want to game everywhere, and we should bring them games everywhere.”

He proposed a model in which a song downloaded for a console version of Rock Band could also be played on the iPhone or other platforms. He quickly added that Harmonix isn’t working on that at them moment, but that he “may be trying to convince people to work on that.” Wink, wink. I’d be a lot more likely to buy Rock Band on the iPhone I could play all my console DLC on it, but I’m guessing the prospect of creating new, portable note charts for the hundreds of existing downloadable songs probably doesn’t appeal to too many people at Harmonix. Sounds like a daunting task to me, and one not likely to actually happen, at least not any time soon.

Though Epps is, understandably, not a fan of game piracy, he told students that “mod communities are totally awesome” when asked about the origins of the burgeoning Rock Band Network. The Network gives musicians proper tools to chart their own songs and allow others to play them In Rock Band‘s PC version.

Epps said the opportunity to make a Beatles game is not something you pass up. The game helped to expand their audience to include non-gamer generations.

“The Rock Band Network was totally born out of the guitar hero customs community,” Epps said. “That’s a community of people who bought our game and supported us in doing that, and then wanted to mod it to do something different, and that’s totally cool.” He added, half-joking, “If a hacker can do my job better than I can, I guess he deserves to make money off it more than I do.”

When Professor Norris reminded the class of a discussion we had last week about how games like Rock Band affect musicians and music fans, Epps told us that he thinks Rock Band is helping to bring an interactivity to music that most people have never experienced.

“The experience of listening to music through playing Rock Band is substantively different from sitting down and listening to a song,” he said. “You get to discover things that you normally wouldn’t hear.”

Epps also told me that he thinks Microsoft’s new peripheral-free motion technology, Project Natal, “is really cool.” I’ve been pretty skeptical so far- Peter Molyneux’s Milo seems like little more than a rabbit in a hat to me- but Epps has actually used it, and said that its ability to detect a player in a 3D space is surprisingly accurate. He suggested the technology might be used “in conjunction with a controller” to give orders to squad members using hand gestures, a la Minority Report. That’s something I hadn’t thought of before, and it makes me think about what Halo: Reach might have been like if Bungie had decided to utilize Natal. Consider me intrigued.

“Beatles: Rock Band” image taken from thebeatlesrockband.com/press.

“Vinyl Fantasy 7″: second video game/hip hop mashup album from Team Teamwork is awesome

Update: The links and the album stream are no longer working, because.. drum roll.. some douches issued Jacques a cease and desist. Apparently the letter was specifically in response to the mashup of M.O.P.’s song “Ante Up” and the battle theme from FF7, according to Gamepro, who once again have the scoop. So either someone representing M.O.P. or their label or someone from Square Enix finally took notice and decided it would be in their best interest to silence another talented, dedicated artist who was paying tribute to their work while at the same time attracting new fans to both rap and video game music. Nice job, assholes.

Anyone who wants the album (or his previous two, including “Ocarina of Rhyme”) can send me an email.

* * *

Previous combinations of hip hop and video games include Parappa the Rapper, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, and even more crappy, regrettable games. Thankfully, Team Teamwork’s mashups of game soundtracks and hip hop songs are a lot less insulting to both forms of expression.

duuuuun dun dun dun dun duuun dun dun

Though the name implies multiple mixers, Team Teamwork is in fact the sole work of Somerville resident Tim Jacques, a gaming and music enthusiast who was inspired to start mixing different genres of music by DJ Dangermouse’s 2004 “The Grey Album,” according to the Teamwork Tumblr.

Jacques mixed popular hip hop songs with Koji Kondo’s soundtrack from 1998 Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on last year’s “Ocarina of Rhyme.” For his latest album, the equally cleverly titled “Vinyl Fantasy 7,” songs from Jay-Z, Outkast, Ghostface Killah, Kool Keith and more are mixed with Nobuo Uematsu’s iconic soundtrack for 1997 Playstation hit Final Fantasy VII.

The soundtracks to Zelda and Final Fantasy games pack such a powerful punch full of nostalgia and childhood memories that I still listen to them pretty frequently, especially FF7. Teamwork’s albums treat the original material with a loving reverence, and the songs are matched up perfectly with hip hop beats and lyrics from some great rappers. “Vinyl Fantasy 7″ even features Tom Waits vocals for some reason, which is weird, but great.

you're welcome

Team Teamwork isn’t a one trick Epona, though. Jacques also released “The Good-ass Remixes: Volume 1,” an indie rock/hip hop mashup album a la Girl Talk,  in 2009. The dude is obviously talented as hell, and I’m already looking forward to the Mega Man album Jacques told Gamepro might be coming in the future.

Check out the interview for more from Jacques and download all three Team Teamwork albums, for FREE (or a donation of your choice), here.

Listen to “Vinyl Fantasy 7″ below. Every track is crazy good.