Kong captured in one page.

Driving back from the beach yesterday we were trying to decipher the lyrics of a song. Which can easily be done if you google the name of the song etc. But we forgot the name of the song. Enter Shazam. Hold iPhone to speaker. Play song. Be amazed by your phone telling you what song you are listening too.

This app has been around for a while and available on other mobiles but just plain works on iPhone. You can figure out what the technology behind this must be but its still an amazing thing.

What’s even more amazing is that Shazam got the song info even when Otto was pointing the phone to the radio itself, not the speakers ;)

After being quite disappointed with other ‘electronic’ live gigs this year like Bookshade and Hot Chip I was extra specially impressed by Cut Copy.

This (open air) concert wasn’t an easy gig for them, the podium was facing a pond and people gathered around it sitting down which created quite a distance between band and audience. And since this was a festival (the Noorderzon ‘interdisciplinairy theatre festival‘) with lots of different bits and bobs it seemed most people didn’t know any of the songs (or the band) at all.

The leadsinger is a truly electric and energetic guy jumping up and down the stage and the band really bounce of eachother which reached its climax with a ‘punkrock mayhem’ version of ‘So Haunted’. This proofed highly contagious and got the crowd going and I think they managed to pick up quite a few new fans. Good. This surely was one of my favorite concerts this year up there with Erlend Oye and Radiohead.

The Noorderzon festival itself was a pleasant surprise, too. All situated in the lovely park of Groningen city and all just very nicely done - about four times as big as the Parade festival in Amsterdam. I’m surely going back next year.

Thanks Sashiko & Passie for your hospitality - it was well worth the trip ;-)

This clip popped up in one of the leaders during the ‘Pluk the Nacht’ open air cinema festival here in Amsterdam.

• Make sure your audience can understand your message

Spotted this roadsign on my way to a friend the other day. Made me wonder what this is trying to communicate.. ‘Tree Likes To Lean On Truck?’ or: ‘Truck Might Hit Tree?’.

I’m a bit behind on the at-least-one-post-a-day scheme lately which is all due to luxury problems; the main one being that we’re quite busy at Kong working on some nice projects.

My news aggregation situation has been a bit wonkey lately. Scanning RSS feeds on netvibes takes too long. I don’t have the time to visit marketingsites and blogs all day to see what’s up. And I decided Twitterfeeds aren’t really my thing - all a bit too fragmented. Which makes room for more newsletters in my life. Like this weekly one from Ad Age Digital which they recently revamped. Its good. I like. Thank you Ad Age.

… and I can’t wait to check it out. Heard its pretty good. 1080p with hardly any latency?

Korg’s new nanoSeries devices are designed to meet the needs of artists who like to make music on the go but don’t want to make any sacrifices in the control department. The range features three compact products: nanoKEY, nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL. All the nanoSeries controllers are bus-powered and connect over USB and cost about EUR 60 a piece.

• nanoKEY is a (you guessed it) 25-note keyboard with velocity.
• nanoPAD has 12 trigger pads and an X/Y pad.
• nanoKONTROL has nine faders, nine knobs, 18 switches and a transport section.

Brilliant. I’m ordering these on the double.

Tips & Tricks in Do-It-Yourself Advertising Part 1:

• Make sure your audience can read your message.

Spotted this bike on my way home from work today. I think its trying to say ‘Te Koop’ (which means ‘For Sale’ in dutch). But I’m not sure..