[Weekly Wrapup] Wanna buy MySpace?; Tweets Hit Techmeme

MySpace Is For Sale

Big news:  MySpace still exists.  No, I’m not kidding.  And they’re for sale.

Parent company News Corp. has admitted that they are considering selling MySpace, just a day after announcing massive layoffs affecting nearly 50% of their staff.  “News Corp. is assessing a number of possibilities including a sale, a merger and a spinout,” spokesperson Rosabel Tao told Bloomberg.  News Corp. bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million, but the site has been declining dramatically and it has proven unsustainable.  It was one of the first large social networking sites, but it was quickly overtaken by Facebook.  MySpace recently tried to make a comeback by redesigning the site and calling themselves “the leading social entertainment destination powered by the passion of fans.”  MySpace was originally cool because it gave musicians a place to hang out virtually and share music.  The redesign is probably an attempt to recapture that initial appeal.  But their 65 million users simply fail to compare to Facebook’s 600 million users.  If News Corp. wants to sell, they need to sell now.

Tweets Hit Techmeme, Blogging Officially Dies

Tech news aggregator Techmeme has announced that tweets can now become headlines or discussion posts on the site.  This is yet another indicator that Twitter is becoming a mainstream source of news and information, which is a big step forward for Twitter as a company.  But could it also be an indicator that blogging is dead?

I sure hope not.  But a blog aggregator full of arbitrary tweets sounds like a recipe for disaster in the blogging community.

Techmeme says tweets are not taking over the site; they are going to be tactfully blended with the other types of headlines:

Since 2007 I’ve been asked about 200 times about whether we would introduce a “Techmeme for tweets,” i.e. a Techmeme made up of just tweets. My answer for this has always remained “no”. Any news site aiming for a certain level of comprehensiveness can’t limit itself in such an arbitrary way. Most of the time, the best headline for a story, and the best link for a story is, well, a story, not 140 characters. But omitting tweets from Techmeme wasn’t the best approach either. We believe a mix of blog posts, articles, and a smattering of tweets (plus other new forms of content), is the best way to distill what’s happening right now in technology. We hope you’ll agree, enjoying Techmeme all the more, and will maybe even contribute something to Techmeme now that it requires only 140 characters.

[Weekly Wrapup] New MySpace; HDTV Deals; Beatles On iTunes

This Week:

• The New MySpace
• Best Buy HDTV Deals
• Apple’s BIG Announcement:  The Beatles Are On iTunes
• Donate To Wikipedia!

The New MySpace

MySpace has finally rolled out the long-awaited redesign of their website.  Is it good?  Kinda.  Great?  No.  Better?  Definitely.  I did a long piece on United Tech Guys about the positives and negatives, but to sum it up, the negatives outweigh the positives.

MySpace is dropping the “a place for friends” tagline in order to become “the leading entertainment destination that is socially powered by the passions of fans and curators.”  This is an attempt to redefine what MySpace is as a whole, so as not to be the loser in the battle against companies like Facebook and Twitter.  The new design is cleaner and more organized, without a doubt.

The negatives include the backlash on Twitter, the busy and disorganized homepage, the head-start that Facebook has (with 500 million users, compared to MySpace’s 61 million), and quite a bit more.  Also, have you seen the MySpace Logo Video?  Bizarre.  Very bizarre.  

Staying “off the grid” [volume.2]

As my intentions were for the second volume of Staying “off the grid”, I would like to present to you part of the inspiration for the interest in this lifestyle: 30 Days by Morgan Spurlock, and in this episode, 2 big time “waste consumers” live in a small off the grid experimental area with other people who are accustomed to living off the grid. Whether or not you agree with the lifestyle, the show itself is very entertaining, and offers things other than how to live an off the grid lifestyle. Please watch:

This was the ONLY place I could find this video, so for the MySpace haters out there (you know who you are 😉 it’s ok.) try to grin and bare it. You don’t need a MySpace account to watch, this is a direct link to the video page. Enjoy!

30 Days – Off The Grid

God speed, and Best Wishes.

¥

[Misc. Monday] Music Is Missing?

Hello everyone. Did you miss me? Unfortunately that is probably a “no” if your name is “Offbeat” or “God” but I can take that. So here is my Misc. post for today…

Why you haven’t seen me (Music/Musicmasteria) post that often:

Well I guess I’ve just been busy… School mainly but that will change soon. In about 1 month I and Millions of other students get to go on Summer Vacation! So that will be fun for everyone, adding time to spend to every ones schedule. Hopefully this allocated time will give all the writers here on The Underground that have wandered off time to come back and post a little. Yes, we all know Versatile1 just loves to write stuff every day and watching him struggle to find contributors with Sucker Free Sundays is fun to watch and laugh at. Seeing our beloved Main Writer Versatile1 wither away in confidence in his fellow writers is what we live for but with all jokes aside, we need new (and old) writers for the blog to help him out, myself included.

So to get to a point, but not the point (because we are supposed to be random/miscellaneous today), I’ve been spending most of my time on a little project which actually gives a reason to my name, Music-Masteria.

That’s right, I’ve been trying to write my own song(s) using a nice program called FL Studio (aka Fruity Loops). All my work is a work-in-progress so it really isn’t anywhere near being finished but it’s a start I could say.

Both my songs are techno-like but I have very little experience in making this kind of music compared to others so please bear with me as you listen to them.

All my Music can be found on my Myspace Music Profile found here: http://myspace.com/musicmasteria 

Please check out my music! I love constructive criticism and all comments are very appreciated.

My main song right now is called “Journey”. I currently have 4 versions of it uploaded on Myspacefor all to hear and hopefully give me tips on. It is about 2 min. long at the moment and I’m still in the middle of making it. Check my myspace page every once and a while for a new version of it.

Journey 4 (Just rest you mouse over this and listen to it in the “SnapShot” player that comes up OR go to my Myspace Page.

I also have another song called “Rise” but it is very underdeveloped at the moment. It can be compared to “Journey Unfinished 1” in the list of my Myspace songs because I had 2 starting idea sounds (which i called ‘Journey’ and ‘Rise’) and then I started developing Journey first.

So ANYWAY… for this day of randomness I have 2 requests:

1. PLEASE listen to my songs on Myspace.com/Musicmasteria and then if you can, give me some tips/ideas for how either songs might continue or what might change in what I already have to make it sound better.

2. PLEASE HELP VERSATILE1, AND THE UNDERGROUND, OUT BY BECOMING A CONTRIBUTOR so you readers don’t have to listen to my randomness instead of some Quality Underground Guides, News, etc.

Thanks for reading this weeks issue of Misc. Monday!

I’ll see you when I see you!

~Musicmasteria

New Proxy

I am proud to present to you….. the TCSU Proxy. I have upgrades hosting companies and I am getting a $1500 server (free). The new proxy will not allow you to view Youtube videos but will allow most other things. Please click the ad to keep this proxy up! Click the picture to go to the proxy!

[Edit 6/28/08] UltraSurf – World’s Best Proxy Surfing Technology

[EDIT: 1/30/08 – We at The Underground strive to get you the best programs, information, etc. It has come to my attention that Ultra Surf is not working as well as it should. Anti-virus programs have now named it a Trojan and will not let you install it with the anti-virus on. Because this file is marked potentially dangerous, you are downloading it at your own risk. If you have already downloaded it, you may remove it if you wish. There hasn’t been any large complaints about it but for the security of your info, you may want to scan your computer, delete the ultra surf file (if necessary), and find an alternative proxy program (or wait for us to do the searching for you!).]

Addition: 3/7/08 – Download link for a newer version of Ultra Surf has been added

Addition: 6/6/08 – Removed Rapidshare links to not violate WordPress ToS.

Addition: 6/28/08- Added Direct Download Link From UltraReach/Wujie (UltraSurf’s Company)

So at one point we had a post telling you all a bunch of proxies that would let you access blocked sites at school, libraries, etc. Well we found that, actually, the blocking programs got a step ahead and even blocked those site so you couldn’t even get to the proxy page in the first place. Well guess what, here at The Underground we like being the one with the step ahead so I did a little searching for you all… and found this- UltraSurf!

Why does this work instead of the proxy web site?

• Because the web blocking programs block the sites but they can’t block a proxy program running on the computer itself.
• That’s right, this is a program, not a website.
• UltraSurf is the back door you are looking for!

Here is some info on UltraSurf:

“So what exactly it is??

It is the flagship software product from UltraReach Internet Corp. for Internet anti-censorship. It enables users inside countries with heavy Internet censorship to visit any public web sites in the world safely and freely. it enables users to browse any website freely just the same as using the regular IE browser while it automatically searches the highest speed proxy servers in the background.

Learn More

What does it means??

• 100% freedom to have 100% information in most secure way.
• It means no matter where you are you can access 100% freeversion of internet I mean no firewalls no restriction nothing….
• Almost all schools, universities and corporate offices raise firewalls to filter out not work related sites, now those firewalls will be of no use or they have to change their plans.
• Everybody can access various social networks like Orkut, Youtube, Myspace, Hi5, Facebook, Linkedin etc. which are blocked almost in 99% schools and offices.
• 100% real time and it’s encryption is better then any online banking system.

How to get going??

It’s very simple you have to just-

• download an exe file [Download Below]
• then extract it
• and run
• Set proxy if u have any (generally in offices internet are provided through proxies, you can find that, through tools>>internet options>>Connections>>LAN Settings>> there you are with proxy server for your LAN and it’s port
• Just copy that to proxy settings of Ultrasurf.
• Then a window will pop up, says some thing in Chinese, just close this window
• And open fresh internet explorer
• There you are, you can surf any information.
• For office people: beware don’t spread words to your colleagues keep this info as limited as you can, coz if system people got to know about it then they’ll take your comp for scrutinizing.

What is the Flip Side??

I should start with a quote that I’ve learnt in my life

“Too much freedom can Make you or it can Break you”

The flip side is that you can access to anything, I think you got my point, In school, universities and Work office various sites are blocked to raise their efficiency and productivity, and it is very much likely that if anyone get freedom he/she will definitely try to miss use it.
“

– Source

So do you want this program now, or should I just give it to you later? Lol, like I guessed, you want to Now. Well fine I guess I can give you a couple of download links…

• Rapidshare: [download removed]
• NEW – VERSION 8: [download removed]
• Geocities: on request
• Other: on second request (shouldn’t need this but just in case)
• Direct Download Link From UltraReach/Wujie: DOWNLOAD

Please Use Rapidshare if you can because I’m gathering points for your downloads. THANK YOU!

OK so once downloaded, unzip it (if at school, put it on your student folder so it will go with you from computer to computer, just hide it a little) and run the program. It will open up a web browser and another small program window. You will also see a Lock in the bottom right corner of the screen (I don’t know how to get it off but it doesn’t really bother me). Minimize the small program window and surf away on the web browser!

Enjoy your surfing freedom! Use it wisely and try and keep it a secrete because the schools, libraries, etc. will eventually find out if enough people are using it. This thing would spread like good gossip!!!