Archives For design

8.8.8 – Will you be watching? At 8:08pm~~ Be sure to watch, coz word has it that it will be spectacular. Also, word has it Jay Chou will be performing… will his vocal ability match Celine DionJay Chou‘s????

Apparently, Faye Wong was asked to do the Opening Song (a la Bjork, NE?) – Anyway, she refused… so they held a contest of sort… all very confusing to me. In the end, Jay Chou is singing~~~ obviously. Will you be watching him making faces… looking all cool and mumbling? You know, like in the S.H.E video?? Ha!

Moving on! Aside from all the controversy…. *rolls eyes* I am very impressed with the marketing that China’s come up for the Olympics. First and foremost, I am sort of… in love with the logo. Dancing Beijing by Guo Chunning.

Beijing Olympics Logo - Dancing Beijing

Dancing Beijing by Guo Chunning

There was a WHOLE spread on the issue of Communication Arts of months ago, read it all… devoured it. I am tempted on scanning it, LOL’ And the mascots! Maybe it’s my overly-occidentalized brain, but I thought their naming was smart. BeiBei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing and NiNi… you know, as in Beijing Huanying Ni – Beijing Welcomes You~~~~

Beijing Olympics - Mascots

Another reason to watch? Zhang Yimou~~~ his films are visually stunning, so it only promises visuals and colors! *SWOON!* ALSO~~~~ How awesome is the new Beijing National Stadium – aka. Bird Nest – My mom thinks someone smoked of the good one when making up that concept. When it was under construction, I told her it looks sort of like a nest, and she didn’t believe me. xD

NatGeo… or was it Discovery Channel? Someone was showing an hour special about its construction. Niftiest thing ever, and I don’t even follow architecture. The budget was around $500M USD… which is like $4B Yuan, and the design was the winner of a contest xD All very architecture stuff~~

Way before (film) award season began, I came up with a For Your Consideration campaign for Marion Cotillard, who ended up winning! *woot woot* – the funny thing about the whole thing was that the graphics I made only listed three awards, the Academy Award, the BAFTA and the Golden Globe. Yes, she didn’t actually get the Golden Globe for drama, but she got the one in the Comedy/Musical, to the disbelief of some Ellen Page fans (I’m an Ellen Page fan, but… come on, get real. lol’) – Anyway, I had totally forgotten about the SAG and SHE LOST THAT ONE! Now I’m better prepared.

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My thoughts on Deezer

October 4, 2007 — Leave a comment

Okay, last night I had a whole idea of posting a really elaborate post on Deezer, which I have just begun to use. Mainly because I had some complaints about using their upload function… more than anything else. But now, I’m just too lazy to take all that trouble of screen capturing and showing you what bothered me, and alternatives.

My main pet peeve was that I had to open a brand new tab/window to upload and browse at the same time. Maybe I’m just kinda silly, but the first track I tried uploading failed because I went to my “new playlist” while it was uploading hahaha. Oh, silly me~ So yeah, after that, I did the whole tabbing thing, but it made the upload transfer even slower. :(

Now, the upload experience was a pain in itself. Some tracks will go through, and some would begin but never make it… all the time, it seemed like the interface froze, and had to restart again and again. Until I finally called it quits. I successfully uploaded like 6 tracks out of the 12 tracks I had chosen… in like 5 hours or so.

I don’t think their upload function works really well, because it doesn’t let me know at what speed my mp3 is uploading, and at what percentage or how many kbs its uploading. It was really frustrating at times, specially with the freezing of the uploads… Moreover, the multiple uploads didn’t really work. 2/3 of the tracks never make it past the middle of the bar, and it went back to frozen.

I read some comments on it, because I was looking my problem up online, and it seemed I wasn’t the only one with uploading problems. I think there are a lot of users who won’t be sharing their music due to this issue, and I should include myself in!

Up until now, the most satisfactory upload feature has been that of Flickr. I love it. Haha… It lets you upload multiple files, lets you review your files, and then lets you begin your transfer. It shows you a progress bar that is constantly moving, and one by one, they begin their upload. Just simple.

What’s Deezer good for? Sharing playlists, finding music and probably listening to music, though it does take a few tries to get the song play fine because sometimes it takes time buffering, and sometimes it even just plays a second or two and skips to the next. I will still probably use this for a month or two… or maybe a bit more, until it finally gets screwed up like Pandora did. Yes, I am complaining because Pandora is now country restricted. It is funny that of getting digital music country restriction, yet I can purchase stuff off of anywhere on the net.

I should also add my comment on some of the add suggestions for a next release. I read on their forum that people wanted an application for Facebook, as well as other mambo-jambo features, which I think will complicate Deezer. I like Deezer how it is, simple, easy and useful. No users, no “check this user’s taste in music”, no “compare your taste in music” crap. Deezer, KISS! Oh yeah, I know it doesn’t really work on mySpace or probably other sites, but please… can we hmm promote proper Flash embedding?

<div style="top:0px; left:0px; width:180px; height:236px;">
 <object data="https://www.deezer.com/embedded/widget.swf?path=1559967〈=
 en&autoplay=true&id=627896" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
 width="180" height="220">
 <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
 <param name="movie" value="
 https://www.deezer.com/embedded/widget.swf?path=1559967〈=
 en&autoplay=true&id=627896" />
 </object>
 <a href="https://www.deezer.com" target="_blank"
 style="border:none;margin:0;padding:0;">
 <img src="https://www.deezer.com/embedded/footer.jpg" alt="free music"
 width="180" height="16" border="0" style="border:none;margin:0;
 padding:0;" title="free music" />
 </a>
 </div>

Gracias,