News

Hello Again

I was hoping that this blog would be updated with my Twitter, but alas it seems to have failed.

I'm now also blogging at myAWOL.com and I'll just be posting here occasionally with my more personal commentary.

Right now though that is difficult as I grasp with the challenges of turning a piece of paper into a multi-national social networking site. That will launch at the end of the Summer, so I may be a little quieter than I hope until then.

In the meantime, here's a note I mailed to some of my friends and contacts:

Hey All

This is an update to my friends and colleagues who I thought would be interested in the new start-up business I joined.

It’s a Social Networking based music site called myAWOL.com and it will launch at the very end of the Summer this year. It’s got a great pedigree, our CEO used to run chunks of EMI Music, and we’ve been backed by members of the band Genesis (although that is kind of a secret).

We’re not a record label per se, but we’re not a million miles away from it either. Think of the best bits from iTunes, mySpace, Facebook, imDB and VH1 all rolled into one.

The 2 cent intro is: We’re a service aimed at helping music artists help themselves in building a career and an income, we’re a place where music fans can discover, enjoy and learn about new bands and music, watching great TV shows. This is all underpinned by an Music industry section that allows professionals to connect, to collaborate and to help in their daily lives through a suite of tools and services.

So, the point of the email is, as we head towards our site’s Beta (test) phase we are looking for friendly faces to start populate our site, tell us what works, and who knows, maybe even make some business connections. We’re especially interested in finding music artists with talent, who write or have access to the copyright of their music who we could promote and turn into ‘featured’ artists.

I’ve created a ‘brochure’ about what the website will be at www.myAWOL.com and tells you more about what we can do for you, and what we are looking for.

Let me know what you think!

Best

Vlad

Locate TV; its quite nice really

I’ve recently started a conversation (via this blog) with the nice people at Locate TV.

Locate TV is in very early stage Beta, but aims to be a kind of TV Show Google/ Radio Times/ Internet Movie Database kind of search engine. Essentially say if you want to see the next episode of Heroes it will give you the times of the next TV screening, connect to a DVD store and tell you where you can download it ,all with a little descriptive blurb. All legal stuff too, which is either good or bad I guess depending on where you stand – student sci-fi nut, or responsible media Rights Manager.

If you’d like a Beta invite and make your own mind up, send me a mail (link in my profile) and I’ll get the nice lady to mail you a password.

I like the concept of this site, especially as you may be aware of my previous comments about broadcasters pushing premiere showings, making it hard to catch up with water-cooler TV after the BARB (ratings body) aimed promo’d slot.

Locate need to sort out their Genre search for this thing to become truly useful, but that is on the cards. As I’ve talked about before, it would be so useful to (potential) audiences if producers start attaching tags of content and likely interest groups to their shows to aid discovery.

The site also has some nice other little widgets and upgrades planned, which I’m loathed to say too much about (Ok, Facebook is a clue for one thing) as new businesses need to keep things close to their chests.

So, take a look and see what you think.