Good times. It's okay for Apple to have an ad campaign involving Windows machines but apparently it's not okay for Microsoft to have an ad campaign involving Apple machines.

Careful iPhone 3GS users ... your phone may get a little warm. Is it a bug or a feature? Your iPhone can also be used to warm up a cup of coffee!.

oh my... clearly not too much though went into choosing that name: The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

Apple is one of the world's coolest companies. But there is one cool-company trend it has rejected: chatting with the world through blogs and dropping tidbits of information about its inner workings.

Don't get me wrong: I'm an Apple user myself, and appreciate the elegance of the technologies and their interfaces.

Oh my ... the boy chosen as the reincarnation of Buddah is shunning Buddhism.

[This is a test article]

Apropos of nothing, i'm test driving a new definition for the term "friend":

"Anyone who makes positive assumptions about my character & intentions".

Controversy Ensues?

I think this is relatively obvious... TeeVee fills up a void, but only if said void exists.

Gilli Moon is one of the busiest artists I know. In addition to writing her own music, she's also been producing music of other artists, as well as starting a label (Warrior Girl Music), organizing a music festival in LA (Females on Fire), and founding the artis community Songsalive!.

Her music has received many awards and has been on the soundtracks of both feature films, as well as on television shows on major networks like CBS and The WB. She's been interviewed by Newsweek and has won countless music awards.

I recently caught up with one of my favorite local artists here in Seattle: Steve Mason.

Steve is a very busy guy these days. Besides writing, performing, and recording his own music, Steve hosts the Seattle chapter of Songsalive! (more on this below). He also writes, and sometimes travels to perform, Connection Songs (also more below), and he has also worked with local organizations like Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Muzak Heart & Soul Foundation.

Here's an excerpt from from his bio on SteveMasonMusic.com:

I'm going pretty deep into indie territory here to bring you a young, talented, artist from Tacoma with an extremely bright future. Her name is Taylour Woodruff and her latest project is called Number the Stars.

Taylour has been writing acoustic songs for approximately five years, and soon after meeting Harrison Allen, they started a band called Taylour Makes Music, which more recently became Number the Stars.

The band is comprised of Taylour (vox/guitar), Harrison (guitar), Adam (drums), and Allen (bass), and these days they're actively writing, playing live shows, and spending some time in the recording studio working on a debut release.

I'm very pleased to have been able to catch up with Carrie Clark, fresh off of a West coast tour, and hook up a little Q&A.

Carrie has been writing and performing in the Pacific Northwest for more than ten years and has recently released her third CD Seems So Civilized. She's self-taught on both guitar and piano and her songwriting mainly falls into a great genre mix of alt-county and cabaret. For many live shows you'll find her accompanied by her highly versatile and talented band The Lonesome Lovers (Dayna Smith and Greg Fulton) but she also does a fair number of solo acoustic shows.

Carrie's two previous CDs (Release the Butterfly and Reverie) saw both national and international radio play including feature interviews on NPR radio programs and she's done a number of tours along the way, including one in Europe.

I'm extremely pleased to be able to publish a little Q & A with Seattle indie pop singer/songwriter Andrea Wittgens. I've met a lot of independent artists over the past few years and I have to admit that Andrea is one of the most talented, professional, polished, and hard-working songwriters out there.

If you like what you hear in the audio above (I have confidence you will), you can check out more on Myspace or on her personal web site. In particular, be sure to listen to I know Better, which is a sparkly little pop gem (it's under "audio" on her personal site).

The audio on this article is called Alibi and can be found on her debut album of the same name. Here's a link to her video, directed by Sue Corcoran of VonPiglet Productions.

The Fading Collection is one of the hottest electronica bands in Seattle and is in regular rotation on KEXP (for those who have tried to get one of their songs played on KEXP, never mind in regular rotation, this is nothing short of a miracle). Their debut release was called Interactive Family Radio (2003) and is in the same genre (trip-hop) as bands like Portishead and Massive Attack. This CD helped spark the emergence of the Pacific Northwest electronica music scene with overall sentiment for the band's efforts captured in just a couple of quick reviews:

Dylan Fant is a busy man these days. He's a founding member of the Seattle pop rock band JMinus as well as the owner and recording engineer for One Shot Studio here in Seattle.

JMinus has released two CDs, Under the Blue (2002) and Sun and Moon (2006), a double-CD whose songs are broken up into major key (on the Sun) and minor key (on the Moon). The band has developed a loyal following here in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, culminating in a west coast tour in 2007.

I was recently asked the following question by oldfogey:

Another thing, and I have been blaming this on Vista or my local wifi system but now realize there is some other thing going on. Sometimes my Newsvine page refreshes on its own and brings up a Google Search page. This also happens some times when I go from one Newsvine page to another.

I'd like to share my answer with everyone, lest someone else find this valuable:

Here's the deal with the google behavior:

What's happening "under the hood [of your web browser]"is that everytime your web browser makes a request to Newsvine, for example, you try to go to:

http://darkside.newsvine.com

... it needs to look up the Internet address (the IP address) on how to get there. this is called a "DNS lookup", which stands for "Domain Name Service" lookup. this DNS lookup, done by your browser, sends the following question to your DNS server:

"How do i get to 'darkside.newsvine.com'?"

The DNS server responds:

"darkside.newsvine.com has address 207.7.229.84"

Your browser receives this answer and knowing this, knows how to get to the right place to see Mykola's column.

This happens *every* time you go to Newsvine ... so there's a DNS lookup for each one of these requests:

http://farmer.newsvine.com
http://tom.newsvine.com
http://www.newsvine.com

What is happening with your periodic redirects to google while browsing Newsvine is that your Web Browser is not able to look up the answer to the DNS question on where to go, so, it's sending you to the default search engine as configured in your web browser.

Why can't your browser look this up?

I have no idea ... my guess is that your DNS server is periodically unavailable because it's overrated, so it periodically stops accepting lookup requests.

Some people will end up at MSN when this happens, others will end up at live, and others will end up at google.

So, you'll have to fix this by asking your ISP to provide better (or more) (or speedier) DNS servers so your web browsing is uninterrupted.

Overview

Newsvis is a visualization tool that shows you the following information:

• The most recent set of articles and seeds on the Vine for a given category (e.g.: Top News, Politics, etc).
• How popular these articles are, relative to one another, with respect to both how many votes they have as well as how many comments they have.
• Which of said articles you've voted on (along with your Vote Coverage).
• Which of said articles you've commented on (along with your Comment Coverage).
• Of the tags you're currently watching, which of these tags match articles in the visualization.

I'll break down the specifics of each of these below, as well as go over the controls and configuration options.

Good times. It's okay for Apple to have an ad campaign involving Windows machines but apparently it's not okay for Microsoft to have an ad campaign involving Apple machines.

Careful iPhone 3GS users ... your phone may get a little warm. Is it a bug or a feature? Your iPhone can also be used to warm up a cup of coffee!.

oh my... clearly not too much though went into choosing that name: The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

Apple is one of the world's coolest companies. But there is one cool-company trend it has rejected: chatting with the world through blogs and dropping tidbits of information about its inner workings.

Don't get me wrong: I'm an Apple user myself, and appreciate the elegance of the technologies and their interfaces.

Oh my ... the boy chosen as the reincarnation of Buddah is shunning Buddhism.

I think this is relatively obvious... TeeVee fills up a void, but only if said void exists.

[This is a test article]

Apropos of nothing, i'm test driving a new definition for the term "friend":

"Anyone who makes positive assumptions about my character & intentions".

Controversy Ensues?

Gilli Moon is one of the busiest artists I know. In addition to writing her own music, she's also been producing music of other artists, as well as starting a label (Warrior Girl Music), organizing a music festival in LA (Females on Fire), and founding the artis community Songsalive!.

Her music has received many awards and has been on the soundtracks of both feature films, as well as on television shows on major networks like CBS and The WB. She's been interviewed by Newsweek and has won countless music awards.

I recently caught up with one of my favorite local artists here in Seattle: Steve Mason.

Steve is a very busy guy these days. Besides writing, performing, and recording his own music, Steve hosts the Seattle chapter of Songsalive! (more on this below). He also writes, and sometimes travels to perform, Connection Songs (also more below), and he has also worked with local organizations like Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Muzak Heart & Soul Foundation.

Here's an excerpt from from his bio on SteveMasonMusic.com:

I'm going pretty deep into indie territory here to bring you a young, talented, artist from Tacoma with an extremely bright future. Her name is Taylour Woodruff and her latest project is called Number the Stars.

Taylour has been writing acoustic songs for approximately five years, and soon after meeting Harrison Allen, they started a band called Taylour Makes Music, which more recently became Number the Stars.

The band is comprised of Taylour (vox/guitar), Harrison (guitar), Adam (drums), and Allen (bass), and these days they're actively writing, playing live shows, and spending some time in the recording studio working on a debut release.

I'm very pleased to have been able to catch up with Carrie Clark, fresh off of a West coast tour, and hook up a little Q&A.

Carrie has been writing and performing in the Pacific Northwest for more than ten years and has recently released her third CD Seems So Civilized. She's self-taught on both guitar and piano and her songwriting mainly falls into a great genre mix of alt-county and cabaret. For many live shows you'll find her accompanied by her highly versatile and talented band The Lonesome Lovers (Dayna Smith and Greg Fulton) but she also does a fair number of solo acoustic shows.

Carrie's two previous CDs (Release the Butterfly and Reverie) saw both national and international radio play including feature interviews on NPR radio programs and she's done a number of tours along the way, including one in Europe.

I'm extremely pleased to be able to publish a little Q & A with Seattle indie pop singer/songwriter Andrea Wittgens. I've met a lot of independent artists over the past few years and I have to admit that Andrea is one of the most talented, professional, polished, and hard-working songwriters out there.

If you like what you hear in the audio above (I have confidence you will), you can check out more on Myspace or on her personal web site. In particular, be sure to listen to I know Better, which is a sparkly little pop gem (it's under "audio" on her personal site).

The audio on this article is called Alibi and can be found on her debut album of the same name. Here's a link to her video, directed by Sue Corcoran of VonPiglet Productions.

The Fading Collection is one of the hottest electronica bands in Seattle and is in regular rotation on KEXP (for those who have tried to get one of their songs played on KEXP, never mind in regular rotation, this is nothing short of a miracle). Their debut release was called Interactive Family Radio (2003) and is in the same genre (trip-hop) as bands like Portishead and Massive Attack. This CD helped spark the emergence of the Pacific Northwest electronica music scene with overall sentiment for the band's efforts captured in just a couple of quick reviews:

Dylan Fant is a busy man these days. He's a founding member of the Seattle pop rock band JMinus as well as the owner and recording engineer for One Shot Studio here in Seattle.

JMinus has released two CDs, Under the Blue (2002) and Sun and Moon (2006), a double-CD whose songs are broken up into major key (on the Sun) and minor key (on the Moon). The band has developed a loyal following here in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, culminating in a west coast tour in 2007.

I was recently asked the following question by oldfogey:

Another thing, and I have been blaming this on Vista or my local wifi system but now realize there is some other thing going on. Sometimes my Newsvine page refreshes on its own and brings up a Google Search page. This also happens some times when I go from one Newsvine page to another.

I'd like to share my answer with everyone, lest someone else find this valuable:

Here's the deal with the google behavior:

What's happening "under the hood [of your web browser]"is that everytime your web browser makes a request to Newsvine, for example, you try to go to:

http://darkside.newsvine.com

... it needs to look up the Internet address (the IP address) on how to get there. this is called a "DNS lookup", which stands for "Domain Name Service" lookup. this DNS lookup, done by your browser, sends the following question to your DNS server:

"How do i get to 'darkside.newsvine.com'?"

The DNS server responds:

"darkside.newsvine.com has address 207.7.229.84"

Your browser receives this answer and knowing this, knows how to get to the right place to see Mykola's column.

This happens *every* time you go to Newsvine ... so there's a DNS lookup for each one of these requests:

http://farmer.newsvine.com
http://tom.newsvine.com
http://www.newsvine.com

What is happening with your periodic redirects to google while browsing Newsvine is that your Web Browser is not able to look up the answer to the DNS question on where to go, so, it's sending you to the default search engine as configured in your web browser.

Why can't your browser look this up?

I have no idea ... my guess is that your DNS server is periodically unavailable because it's overrated, so it periodically stops accepting lookup requests.

Some people will end up at MSN when this happens, others will end up at live, and others will end up at google.

So, you'll have to fix this by asking your ISP to provide better (or more) (or speedier) DNS servers so your web browsing is uninterrupted.

Overview

Newsvis is a visualization tool that shows you the following information:

• The most recent set of articles and seeds on the Vine for a given category (e.g.: Top News, Politics, etc).
• How popular these articles are, relative to one another, with respect to both how many votes they have as well as how many comments they have.
• Which of said articles you've voted on (along with your Vote Coverage).
• Which of said articles you've commented on (along with your Comment Coverage).
• Of the tags you're currently watching, which of these tags match articles in the visualization.

I'll break down the specifics of each of these below, as well as go over the controls and configuration options.