You’re probably wondering what type of qualifications this guy, on a random blog, has to talk about getting an indie band some exposure on the internet? The short answer is none. The long answer is… very little. I used to run this little site called Punkcanada.net, which then became Canadanoise.com. Don’t bother trying to check them out, I didn’t link them for a reason: they no longer exist. You might be able to use archive.org to check them out, but do so at your own risk. It started out as a Punknews.org clone, but specifically for Canadian punk bands, then became Canadanoise, which never went anywhere before dying a slow, relatively painless death.

None of that, however, is relevant. Now, I’m just a fan. A fan who loves to discover new music of all kinds, whether it’s an established artist I just haven’t heard of yet, or a new and upcoming band just getting their feet under them. There are lots of avenues to discover new music, but lately I’m finding some of the up and coming artists aren’t putting it all together in order to help people, like myself, discover their music. This is a simple list of things a band can do on the internet to help people find their music and get some much needed exposure. And not to toot my own horn, but if you’re missing something on this list, you’re really only limiting yourself.
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I’ve been using Gmail for years and foresee using it for years to come. I’ve just recently become obsessed with getting my Gmail contacts up to date with correct email addresses, phone numbers and addresses. I know people still use actual address books, but they’re bulky, usually left at home, and harder to update. Plus, for those of us with smartphones, Google Sync handles the task of getting your Gmail contacts into your smartphone and syncing them back and forth when changes are made. Google Contacts is now even its own stand-alone page instead of having to be accessed through Gmail.

There are a few things however that Google seems to be missing the boat on when it comes to their contacts, and judging from their competitions address books, they are glaring omissions. You can add your own custom fields for the options below, however custom fields do not sync to your mobile device.

1. Birthdays and Anniversaries – Google Contacts does not have a native field for these important dates. This would be especially handy if it created its own “Birthdays & Anniversaries” calendar in Google Calendar.
2. Websites – The masters of the internet omitted a section for personal and/or work website. Considering this is an option in basically every smartphone’s address book, it seems only logical to have a native field for this.
3. Photo – The option to add a photo to each contact (or grab the photo a person has already added themselves if they’re using Gmail) is great but it is not exported nor synced to your smartphone. This would be especially handy on an iPhone or Blackberry as the photo is displayed to identify a caller.

I found another blog post by Joseph Scott here that brings up similar points. Let’s hope Google hears our cries and gets these features under development. I hope one day Google releases an Outlook type application with Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and Gmail Tasks integrated. That would be heavenly because as great as it is to create Application shortcuts for each using Google Chrome, it would still be nice to keep them all in one desktop app.

As a side note, I attempted using Outlook’s “Home Page” feature to make Outlook open the Google applications instead of the built-in ones, but it just wasn’t the same.

The culprit

I received this in an email today and I’m going to warn everyone that the pictures contained after the jump are a little bit disturbing if you’re a pet lover. This Bull Terrier, named Inca, decided he would attack a poor Porcupine; but being brave and stupid, he learned the hard way that you can’t always win, no matter how tough you are. The vet sedated the dog and removed 1347 quills… the dog survived and hopefully learned a lesson.

1. There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity (Bull Terriers are known for being bold and brave)
2. Choose your fights wisely.
3. Don’t mess with Porcupines!

Again, I’ve put the pictures of the poor dog behind the jump so click through to see them.
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Normally I will just post this type of thing on Twitter but this begs for a post to itself.

With games like Fallout 3 now showing our children that “it’s easier to kill a super mutant with a grenade than a machine gun” are violent video games doing enough to adequately teach our children how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world? This panel gets down to the core issues at hand, and like most real debates, the decision is ultimately up to you, the viewer.

So I’ve decided to help a friend out with his new website by contributing articles about gaming, as well as being an editor. Thus far I’ve submitted the article I wrote a while back about Gears of War 2 and its co-op experience, with the article about not being able to finish games set to go up tomorrow. It’s just a startup blog, but if you get a chance to check it out, please do to help support it. Scott, the BIG CHIEF of the site, is an awesome guy and we hope to create a great community.

The Social Gamer

Go there and check it out. IMMEDIATELY!!

If you’ve read my About page you’ll notice that I’m getting married soon (September). I decided that since I’m in charge of getting the website up and running, as well as organizing the guestlist including RSVP’s that using some kind of easy to use form on the website would be best. I had a few things to consider for choosing how to set up the form.

1. Use of a spreadsheet to keep track of responses, regardless of whether or not they are accepting responses.
2. A form that is reliable and easy to use for those who aren’t computer pros.
3. Prefer not having a form that just emails me responses that I have to manually enter into the spreadsheet. Something automated would be nice.

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Torrents are the best way to share files on the internet. I’m not going to explain how torrents work. You can go here to learn about torrents. Rather this is a quick tutorial on how to keep on top of your TV Shows using mininova‘s built-in RSS search feeds.

First, sign up for Google Reader, the best online RSS aggregator. Then navigate over to Mininova and search for your favourite TV show. I’m going to use a few different shows for examples on how to choose the best torrents.
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