Review: Phiaton PS 200 for iPod

Two hundred and fifty dollars for earbuds for your iPod is quite a sum of money, particularly considering that you probably didn’t spend that much to buy the iPod itself. But for those discerning users who can’t stand the audio quality of the iPod’s included earbuds, and who aren’t even satisfied with any of the several excellent third party options in the $100 range, Phiaton’s PS 200 earbuds fall into an exquisite category of earbuds whose audio quality is so expansive, so three-dimensional sounding, that you almost start to believe you’re wearing full cup-style headphones instead of tiny earbuds.



The first thing I noticed with the PS 200, beore I even turned on the music, is that they made probably the tightest seal with my ear canals that I’ve encountered with any rubber earbuds. I never have a problem with earbuds falling out of my ears, but these in particular stood out as being so secure I thoought maybe I could go on a roller coaster while wearing them (not that I tried that particular stunt, nor should you).



Generally speaking, the sound quality is everything you’d want in super high-priced earbuds: while listening to your favorite music with the PS 200, you start to notice new details in that music that you couldn’t even hear with measly $100 earbuds.



The trouble comes, however, with the bass-to-treble ratio. Usually it’s a matter of the earbuds having more bass than treble, and it becomes a matter of whether the bass is too amped up to be considered a mainstream product. But this is converse, where the bass on the PS 200 is the feintest I’ve ever heard on high-end earbuds. Not to be mistaken with cheap, crappy $10 earbuds where there’s literally no bass; in this case the bass is there, and it sounds great too, but there’s just not enough of it in comparison to the upper ranges. I honestly don’t know how many people are going to pay $249 for earbuds whose bass is this feint in comparison to nearly every other option on the market – but I’ll leave that up to each of you. That leaves the PS 200’s quality very high overall, but its market appeal questionable, hence the four star rating out of five. You’ll each have to make your own call on this one.

Learn more at Phiaton.com or buy now.

review by Bill Palmer

iProng Magazine #43: Paul van Dyk, Phil Rossi, Burn Halo, War Tapes and more

iProng Magazine #43: Paul van Dyk interview and more

iProng Magazine has released its 43rd issue featuring a cover story interview with Paul van Dyk, podiobook author Phil Rossi talks Crescent, and reviews of Documents To Go and Bed Bugs. Also interviewed: Burn Halo, War Tapes, Daniel Brusilovsky, Jamie Lynn Noon and much more.

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iProng Magazine 42: Black Eyed Peas, iPhone 3.0 and 3GS, iProng 50 and more

iProng Magazine has released its 42nd issue featuring a cover story interview with the Black Eyed Peas along with the iProng 50 Awards, hands-on with iPhone 3.0, and reviews of TweetDeck and ooTunes. Also interviewed: Butterfly Boucher, Davy Knowles, Endless Hallway, Gretel, Kingsfoil and more.

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Scott Sigler interview

New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler has just released THE ROOKIE as a hardcover novel and sales are strong already, which is impressive for a book that’s been available for free as an audiobook in podcast format since 2007. But that’s the winning formula that’s allowed Scott to build a loyal audience, make a living from it, and achieve mainstream success. I caught up with him to learn how it’s all happened.

You started out trying to get EarthCore published as a print novel through a major publisher. What led you to change course and give it away as a podiobook instead?


I did land a print deal with an imprint of AOL/TimeWarner, and EARTHCORE was supposed to be out in mass market paperback in May 2002. However, in the post-911 recession, TimeWarner scrapped everything that wasn’t profitable. My imprint wasn’t profitable yet, hence, the whole project was shut down. It took me about three years to get the rights back. By then it was 2005, I discovered podcasting, and thought it was going to be the future of novels, short stories and storytelling.

Wasn’t it a bit scary, at the time, to give away content you’d been hoping to charge for, without knowing if you’d ever see a dime from it?


It wasn’t scary at all, it was a huge opportunity to be the first to do something like this, and use that to build an audience. I saw the connections people make online, and knew that if I created a great product, some people would like it and instantly send their friends MP3 links via IM, forums, chat rooms, blog posts, email, etc. Giving the first book away was about building a brand name, and proving that my work resonated with the marketplace. At the time, I assumed I’d pick up 10,000 subscribers and land a print deal. I hadn’t counted on the fact that publishers had no idea what podcasting was, or MP3s, or downloads or really even the internet, for that matter. I accomplished the goal, but it took five books and three years to get there.

How exactly did you go about building up an early audience for your podiobooks? Was enough to just put it out there for free, or did you have to actively spread the word?


I’ve worked constantly to spread the word, pick up fans, and get them to spread the word. Just putting a free work up isn’t enough, you have to market it. A lot of people will listen because it’s free, and a certain percentage of them will like your work and become fans. Therefore, my real goal as an entertainer is to make sure the most possible people find out about me and give me a shot. The larger the base, the more fans generated by that same certain percentage.

Now that you’re a New York Times bestselling print author, and people are clearly willing to pay for your work, why do you still give your content away? Is that just because you’re a nice guy, or is it part of a strategy to sell more content?


There’s a few reasons. First, my father had a phrase, “you dance with the one that brought ya.” I got to where I am because of my fans. They helped me in a lot of ways because my work was free, and I’m not going to bogart it from them now that I’ve achieved a couple of goals. Right now I give everything away for free, even the stuff that’s on sale. It’s up to the customer to decide how they want the story — free podcast, free PDF, paid iPhone app, paid book. And times are tough; some people want to buy the books but they don’t have the cash right now. So no problem, that’s what the free podcasts are for. Maybe someday they buy my books, maybe they don’t, doesn’t matter to me because that’s the customer’s choice to make. Second, “free” still gets me new people who try my stuff because they don’t have to shell out the bucks. If you have a choice between spending $25 on a Stephen King downloadable book, or get mine for free, odds are you’ll try mine first, even though King is a proven author and always delivers. You know if you don’t like mine, you can go back and spend the $25 anyway, so there’s no risk.

You released a hardcover version of THE ROOKIE last weekend. What’s the premise of the book?


Basically, it’s projecting professional football 700 years into the future, after we’ve discovered alien races, and trying to figure out what the game might be like. From there it gets much deeper, illustrating the integrative nature of sports and sport as a meritocracy that destroys racism (you have to learn to play with the best players, regardless of race, if you want to win). Finally, it’s a kick-ass coming of age story and chock-full of awesome, high-tech football action.

I’ll give you the synopses:


Set in a lethal pro football league 700 years in the future, THE ROOKIE is a story that combines the intense gridiron action of “Any Given Sunday” with the space opera style of “Star Wars” and the criminal underworld of “The Godfather.”

Aliens and humans alike play positions based on physiology, creating receivers that jump 25 feet into the air, linemen that bench-press 1,200 pounds, and linebackers that literally want to eat you. Organized crime runs every franchise, games are fixed and rival players are assassinated.

Follow the story of Quentin Barnes, a 19-year-old quarterback prodigy that has been raised all his life to hate, and kill, those aliens. Quentin must deal with his racism and learn to lead, or he’ll wind up just another stat in the column marked “killed on the field.”

How are your years of participating in social media paying off as far as promoting the print version of THE ROOKIE?


I’ve built up an online following in various social media places, like Facebook, Twitter and on my own site scottsigler.com. Simply making the product available in these different areas lets people find the book based on their preferences. Some find it via Twitter, some via Facebook, and some via my podcasts or my website. The larger the following, the more people want to buy the product, so that’s why doing this for several years gives me the best chance to find customers that really want the book.

Don’t forget, I already gave THE ROOKIE away for free as a podcast, and it’s still available for free. Most, if not all the people who have pre-ordered so far have already heard the story. They liked it so much they want a print copy to read again or to share with others. That’s what social media does for me – when my fans finish a story, I’m still right there, accessible, they can stay in contact and monitor what’s coming next.

Is Quentin Barnes, your protagonist quarterback of the future, based in part on any real-life football player?


I wrote this book years ago, so he was initially based on Daunte Culpepper. When Culpepper came into the league , he was 6-foot-4, 260 pounds. It was almost unheard of for a quarterback with his skill set to be that big. So Quentin is huge for his position, which helps set him apart. Personality-wise, I tried to imagine an incredibly talented kid that’s played his whole life in, say, the Ku Klux Clan minor league, but he wants to be the best so he works his way into the bigs, where — hold on to your hat — he has to have sub-races on his team. The final step was gauging his maturity level. Quentin joins the pros at nineteen, so I channelled a bit of early Kobe Bryant behavior in there.

You’ve said that what you like about Stephen King’s books is that he’s willing to whack any character at any time. You’ve announced an upcoming sequel centered around Quentin Barnes. Is there a chance he bites the dust in that book?


Absolutely. In my books, no one is sacred, and dead stays dead. That being said, THE ROOKIE series isn’t like my modern-day horror/thrillers. This is a scifi series, so odds are everyone’s favorite quarterback will be there to play another day. With a thriller, much of the fear-of-loss revolves around a character’s life. To draw the reader in, you need that specter of death. With a sports series, you get a different specter — losing the championship, the big game, the career, etc. So you can really put a reader through the wringer without having to put the characters’ life on that line.

Speaking of quarterbacks, you’re a long-suffering Detroit Lions fan. What do you think of their drafting of Matthew Stafford with the first overall pick this past weekend?


Paying the kid $41 million guaranteed is a huge mistake. The Lions have needs everywhere, particularly the offensive line. Detroit destroys quarterbacks. Not the other teams’ quarterbacks, mind you, our quarterbacks. If you just look at the statistical trends of Detroit, Stafford won’t be the starter in three years. I wish they would have traded down and loaded up with three first- or second-round offensive line picks. Franchises that had dominant runs, like Dallas, New England, Pittsburgh, they all spend the dollars to develop and retain a great offensive line. I’d love to think Stafford is The One for Detroit, but this ain’t my first trip to the rodeo. At least we didn’t use our first pick to draft another goddamn receiver …

Late last year you released THE ROOKIE as an iPhone app. What role do you think iPhone books and readers like the Kindle will play in the near future of books?


I think portable devices are the future of books, period. There are 20 million iPhones and iTouch units sold so far, in only two years. I don’t even use my Kindle anymore now that the Kindle App works so well on the iPhone. So that’s a market of 20 million potential readers, who can now buy books, stockpile books, and most importantly impulse-buy books. As the cost of eBooks comes down to the $3-$5 range, the same cost as most apps, I think readership is going to go through the roof. The reason it’s going to keep getting bigger is that the iPhone and other cell phones are lifestyle devices. A book is just a book, but an iPhone is your phone, your email, your calendar, your social media, your video, your music, your games and now your books. People will continue to be more attached to their phones. They are already ubiquitous, and if you can read a book on your phone, there’s no reason to read it on paper — it’s just one more thing to carry.

For an aspiring book author who’s just starting out, what advice would you offer them? Has your successful career path written the definitive blueprint, or have things shifted already?


There is no blueprint, things are changing too fast. The first piece of advice is get used to the fact that you are in the minor leagues, there is clearly a minor-league system, and in the minors you have to give your content away to build up a following. Be prepared to do that for three to five years before you have enough people to make a difference. It will not happen overnight for you, nor do you want it to, because audience feedback will help shape your storytelling style. The second piece of advice is that the days of “just writing” are gone. You may hear the old guard talk about how a writer should write, and how they “let other people handle those other things.” Well, that was because these guys signed their publishing deals fifteen, twenty years ago, when there weren’t 500 channels, when there weren’t metroplexes, when video games were nothing like they are today and the internet was basically non-existent. People have so many entertainment choices now, you have to fight for your customers’ time. You have to market AND write, you have to be a businessperson AND an entertainer. Third and final bit of advice, understand the fact that readers want to connect with the author. Embrace social media, reply to emails, to blog comments, interact with them whenever possible. Don’t be an arrogant douchebag. You are not important. Your work is not important. What’s important is giving people value for the time they spend with their works — write great stories, and be accessible. The days of the author’s ivory tower are long gone.

Aside from promoting THE ROOKIE and writing The Starter, what else do you have on the horizon?


Right now I’m working on ANCESTOR, which will be the third hardcover published by Crown Publishing. Should be out March of 2010, and we’re gunning for a top-15 spot on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list. That’s my new goal, and I’ll be unleashing every trick in the book to make people aware of the book, and what it means for user-generated content and social media if we hit that mark.



App review: Chop Sushi

There are many match-three games in the App Store, but “Chop Sushi” stands out in this genre. This game proves to be a tasty treat! The object of the game is to match at least 3 types of sushi. The more sushi you match, the more turns you get.

The unique part about “Chop Sushi” is the role-playing twist. You venture into the game as the character, Master Chef. His main goal is to serve the freshest sushi and to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, everyone he runs into has a personal demon that needs to be dealt with. As he challenges them to a match-three sushi battle, he also levels up, gains health, adds new weapons, and defeat the customer’s demons.

The game starts out simple with very helpful tutorials. Tapping on a sushi piece or stone will signal the chopsticks to pick it up. Move the piece by swaying the chopsticks up, down, left, or right. Matching pieces will disappear and more will appear in their place. If you match more than four pieces, you will get another turn. You take turns with your opponent and the battle ends when you or your opponent have 0% health. Match wasabi pieces to damage your opponent’s health. When no moves are available on the board, all the stones crack to reveal what’s underneath them.

There are three modes to choose from — Adventure, Quick Battle, and Challenges. In Challenges, you have to match items in a specific number of moves. In Quick Battle, you can select which land and demon to battle with. But the game is mostly centered around the Adventure mode, where Master Chef can wander around, talk to people, and swim to new lands.

As the game progress, you start to earn new recipes that can help you with your battles. New weapons and healing recipes will have you thinking about your next move as well as your opponent’s. This adds another level of gameplay to keep the game fun and challenging.

Sometimes selecting a sushi piece to move is difficult. The pieces are small, so you’ll find yourself picking up the wrong piece. However, you are not penalized and there is no time limit in the game. This is nice because you never feel rushed.

If you would like to try out this game, download “Chop Sushi Lite” for free and give it a test drive. You’ll be able to play one level and battle three different opponents. The full version is only $2.99 and is worth every penny!

Carlos Santana interview

Carlos Santana and I are sitting on a couch and he’s telling me everything from why he feels younger today than he did when he performed at Woodstock forty years ago, to what the next chapter of his storied musical career might entail, to why he’s about to start playing a few dozen shows in Las Vegas each year. But in addition to being one of the most celebrated, popular and influential artists in the history of recorded music, he’s also likely the most famous person to release his own app for iPhone users.



So what led Carlos Santana to the iPhone, both as a user and as the namesake of an iPhone app? “I’m through with the smoke signals,” as he puts it. “I was the guy who went from the smoke signals and the mirrors, like the Apaches, straight into the iPhone, so I have no concept of computers. I was still with cassettes. And so it fascinates me just how much the human imagination has gone into making things accessible. I can put all my library of records and cassettes and CDs into my laptop and then into my iPhone. And I’m basically more than just curious now. I’m eager to ride that. It’s kind of like a highway, kind of like a freeway, and this stuff is like billboards. So I wanted to join it.”



The Santana iPhone app is a gateway into the world of Santana, with full-length music videos, a sampling of songs from over the decades, recent news and upcoming tour dates (the next version of the app, already in the App Store cue, will include web links for buying tickets), and even instructional videos from Carlos on how to play Oye Como Va and Black Magic Woman on guitar – along with a link to the “Architects of a New Dawn” website where Carlos isn’t afraid to express his current worldview. Nor was he afraid to do so during our interview.



“I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa. And with those songs from John Lennon or Bob Dylan, ‘Blowing in the Wind’ or ‘What a Wonderful World’ or ‘One Love’ or ‘Love Supreme’ I realized that it’s all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba. There’s a lot of walls still up. You know, the walls here in the United States between Fox Networks and just regular people who aspire to change the world without being cynical or arrogant. Because we do believe that peace is possible.



“So I utilize everything, whether it’s Maria Maria’s restaurants or shoes or music with Clive Davis, Yo Yo Ma, Justin Timberlake or Kirk Hammett from Metallica, we utilize everything that is available to us to give back, to invest. And what Arnold is not investing, or Barack Obama so far, which is invest in education for teachers in schools, bring the boys home, and legalize marijuana so you can make more money and pay more teachers a higher salary and erect more schools. I’m not afraid to create a website that is called ‘Architects of a New Dawn’ so we can ask ourselves how far have we come fighting like gorillas over a water hole and now fighting over oil, because clearly that’s what we’re there for, and going into a new dimension where we can actually, again, ask ourselves how far can we go instead of how far have we come?”

Santana’s live shows are legendary for their energy. So is there anything special Carlos has to do to get himself in the right mindset before he heads on on stage with his band each night? “All the musicians in my band, they’re leaders in their own right. They all play with John Scofield, Michael Stern, Pat Metheny, the best musicians in the world. Miles Davis, Prince, you know? Tower of Power. So I’m surrounded with le creme de le creme of musicians that can go anywhere we want to go, whether it’s jazz or reggae of African. The only thing we haven’t done so far is country & western and Riverdance music. But I think if we combine those two with some ska (laughs), it can be done.



Would he really go there? “Nothing is impossible at this point. The only thing that we need to do is first accept that the only reality is God’s love. Everything else is an illusion. And then you’ve got that energy that you can go on stage and do it. Like Elton John says, play Black Magic Woman, Maria Maria, Smooth and every song in the set like it’s the first and last time you’re ever gonna do it. It’s not wishful thinking. You can actually will yourself to do it because as you know, your body just follows your thoughts. If you think like a loser then you’re gonna be a loser, your body’s gonna get tired. If you think like a winner, everybody benefits. Your body will have, like, boundless energy because you’re inspired. You’re not depending on food. Kind of like when you fall in love, you know? When you’re in love man, you don’t need food, you don’t need a lot of things. You’re about this high off the ground, want to know what she smells like, what’s her favorite song, color, what she tastes like, all that kind of stuff. And so it’s important to stay in love with life and with the possibilities and opportunities.



Many fans have divided Carlos‘ music into two chapters, the first being the classics like Everybody’s Everything and Oye Como Va, the second being the genre-bending collaborations from Supernatural onward. So does Carlos foresee a third chapter in which his music takes on a whole other incarnation?



”Oh sure, you know? To combine Yo Yo Ma, Andrea Bocelli with African rhythms, some real far out Grateful Dead, Screaming Jay Hawkins for humor. You know, the main thing is we’re not afraid to try things. We’re not afraid to go hang out with Alice Coltrane when she was here, or Wayne Shorter or Herbie, we’re just not afraid because we’re bringing an element of openness and we want to complement, you know? So it’s not competition, it’s not comparing. And for me it’s just one breath, you know? It’s just that in that breath we’re able to cover from A to Z in music. It’s only eight notes. Actually seven, the eighth one is the first one again. Twelve if you count the ones in between. So I agree with John Coltrane: damn the rules, it’s the feeling that counts.”



This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, a event that saw a young Carlos Santana take the stage and launch his career. What does he think of his younger self now, looking back? “I feel like I’m younger now because I’m not with fear. I was with a lot of fear back then. There was a lot of fear and anger and distrust. But at the same time there was a lot of acceptance to go almost from junior high school to being on stage with Sly Stallone or Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Michael Bloomfield. It was quite a gift, man, to walk into this door that Bill Graham provided for us, and Clive Davis, and then again Clive Davis with Supernatural, and I look at them just like doors, just like this is another door here in Las Vegas. They’re doors of opportunities and possibilities, you know? I started playing the guitar in Tijuana and basically being a dishwasher in San Francisco, and I dreamed that I could hang out with Michael Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia, and I just kept going.”



This month Carlos announced that he’s taking up residency at The Joint at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, a deal which will see him playing about thirty-six shows in town per year. How does he feel about spending so much time in Vegas, a town that appears to be a polar opposite from the San Francisco Bay Area he calls home?



”I’m having fun hanging around with me no matter where I am now. So it could be Las Vegas, a parking lot, I mean I’ve seen Bob Marley, he played in front of Tower Records in San Francisco, same thing with Traffic. So I said damn, you know, if they can play in the streets. Real musicians, it’s an illusion that Carnegie Hall or Madison Square Garden, to me it’s all one heart at this point. Coming into Las Vegas, which is a city that’s based basically on investing in illusion and luck, chance and fortune, we’re bringing another element, the element of God’s grace, which has nothing to do with luck, fortune or chance. It brings the guarantee and reassurance that God guarantees a happy outcome for everyone. That takes care of that. To the illusion, we bring a genuineness. Genuineness is knowing that we can play in South Africa, 2010 World Cup, center stage with all of the drummers from Africa, Brazil and Cuba, very few bands can do that. Very few bands can understand the language of those rhythms and take it to the next level without showing off or anything like that.



“It’s a language that if you speak it correctly then you touch all the families of the world. So no, I don’t look at Las Vegas like I used to, like it’s a duality or in opposition to who I am. No, not anymore. To me it’s an opportunity, possibility to be of service to more people who need financial assistance like students. There’s no greater satisfaction than being of service to humanity than by providing financial assistance to students who can go to the next step in their lives because they graduated with supremely high honors and grades from high school but they don’t have money to go to universities.”



Looking out into the audience, what’s more gratifying, seeing kids enjoying his music or seeing adults who’ve been fans all their lives? As it turns out, the answer is a little bit of both. ”They’re bringing their children,” he says of his older fans. “I’ve never seen so many kids. You know, I swear to you, children under twelve and they’re freaking out, they’re bugging out. We invite them on stage in the last half an hour and it’s an incredible blessing from God to be able to be sixty-one and become like what I wanted to be, like my dad and B.B. King.

interview by Bill Palmer

Lady Gaga interview

iProng Magazine talks with Lady Gaga, in her first-ever cover story interview, about her transition from songwriter to pop star, the difference between fame and The Fame, and more…

Here in 2009 it seems there are only two types of people: those familiar with Lady GaGa, and those who are asking “who is this Lady GaGa I keep hearing about?” Her hit single “Just Dance” is simultaneously at #1 on six different Billboard charts, and yet her seeming meteoric rise to fame over the past few months belies the years she spent working as a hired songwriter for everyone from Britney Spears to the Pussycat Dolls while trying to break in as a performer but being told by record labels that she was “too theater” and by theater people that she was “too pop.” When I caught up with Lady GaGa she explained that “The Fame” she named her record after is very different from the kind of fame that landed her on the cover of this magazine – and during our conversation she went out of her way to be overly complimentary to everyone from Freddie Mercury to New Kids on the Block to yours truly. If Lady GaGa’s newfound fame is going to her head, she sure isn’t showing it…

How were you influenced musically by growing up in and around New York City and going to school in Manhattan and having that kind of childhood?

I studied classical music and I grew up hanging out in jazz clubs, and being in jazz bands and choirs and rock and roll and stuff. So I was just surrounded by it growing up. I wasn’t the girl that was hanging out with boys after school, you know? I was always doing something artistic.

When you sit down to write a pop song, what’s your approach for writing a song and trying to make sure it fits into pop music?

It’s got to have that undeniable melodic big chorus. It’s something that I’ll really, really look at, and I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like the song comes on and that thing kicks in, and you just know it’s a hit record. It’s not really explainable. I always say that the best songs ever written kind of write themselves. You start writing the melody and then you get the lyrics real quick and then it just kind of goes. If it takes you longer than, like, ten to thirty minutes to write a song, it’s probably not a good song.

Is your approach different when you’re writing for someone else as opposed to writing a song you know you’re going to be performing yourself?

Sometimes when I do something for myself I’ll be a little bit more risk-taking. I’ll just think about something that I could maybe handle that nobody else could. But I pretty much approach them the same way. Writing a pop song and a big chorus, it’s like it’s kind of just special for each song. And sometimes I’ll tailor-make something for a particular artist and use them as my muse, but in terms of melody and stuff I always sort of come from the same soul place.

Just Dance is your big hit single right now. Is there a deeper message behind that song, or is the message really “Just Dance”?

There’s a couple messages. The song is really an ode to New York and being out in the clubs, getting too drunk and you really should go home, but instead of going home you just dance through it and get yourself through the night. But I think on a deeper level, the song is about pushing through in general. I was at a time in my life when I was writing record after record after record, looking for that undeniable first single, and Just Dance was my hit.

Your album is called The Fame, which seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy because you’re at the top of the charts now. Do you consider yourself to be famous at this point?

I always thought I was famous, even when I wasn’t (laughs). So I don’t really consider it now. I mean if anything I’ve grown up a lot making this record. The fame for me is something that really comes from within and is really deep inside me and my work, and it’s something that has infected me and my group of friends in the downtown scene for a really long time. Fame, which I’m experiencing now, is very different from the fame. The fame is when nobody knows who you are but everybody wants to know who you are. I still experience a lot of that. As big as Just Dance is getting, and The Fame climbing the charts, because people are still discovering me.

That kind of fame, to me, is the kind of fame that everybody knows about, and the kind of fame that I write about is a very special kind of fame that I think is really positive and can affect people’s lives in a really, really amazing way. And I think that that other kind of fame that you’re talking about is much more ego-centric and has to do with making sure that people are recognizing me for my work. If anything I really love it when I see that my music and my fashion is affecting pop culture. That makes me feel famous.

For me it’s much more important to see young girls wearing shoulder pads, you know what I mean? Or having their hair in a different way or speaking differently or using new words or listening to music in a genre that they’ve never maybe tapped into before, that to me is what fame is. And it’s inspiring music to be less lazy. When I first started out people, I used to notice on blogs, they would say “We can’t tell if she’s the real deal or if she’s trying too hard.” But it’s kind of a mixture of both. It’s like I work so, so hard and I work tirelessly and endlessly on the fashion and the show and the music, and it’s because that’s what I love, that’s what I do. I don’t wake up in the morning and I’m too good to do an interview, or too good to write a new song, or too cool to play a show for a small stage. I do anything and everything because I really, really love what I do.

A couple of your songs have been featured on Gossip Girl. Do you watch that show?

Yeah, I like Gossip Girl. It’s very entertaining.

Have you ever been watching and one of your songs randomly comes on and you didn’t know it was going to happen?

That happens all the time, and I call the record label and I’m like “oh my god, I didn’t know that song was on that show.” There have been so many licenses recently that I don’t even hear about all of them. But that makes me feel great because it tells me that my goal, which was to analyze and reckon and struggle with ideas about pop culture, it’s really working because all of these shows that are so emblematic of modern television and modern film and modern movies and modern club shows, it’s like they’re all gravitating towards my stuff, because I guess it’s speaking to something that’s very today.

I have to ask you about the name Lady GaGa. I’ve heard different stories about how you got the name.

It came from the Queen song Radio Ga Ga. I used to perform at the piano doing these really theatrical stage performances where I would do hand choreography and then slam my fingers back down on the piano, and I would wear lingerie and it was kind of like this pop burlesque show, and he just told me “you’re so Ga Ga, you’re so Freddie Mercury.” And I was like, “you mean Radio Ga Ga?” I just thought the name was fitting, so I kept it. He kept calling me that in the studio, so it kind of stuck.

It’s almost like you’re a female version of Freddie Mercury then.

Yeah I think so. I think it’s part of me and what I do, there’s like an androgyny to my stage show. I’m super-feminine and sexy, but then again I sort of carry myself like a dude. You know, the music is a reflection of who I am, and I grew up as a theater kid and studying musical theater and auditioning in New York. I was a dancer, I was a singer, I was an actress. So doing theatrical pop music was a way for me to blend all of those worlds together. And Freddie Mercury was an inspiration for me when I was at a record label and they’d say “you’re too theater” and I’d be at an audition for a musical and they’d say “you’re too pop,” you know? I was able to bring both worlds together.

You’ve been touring with New Kids on the Block. What’s it like being on the road with them? Were you listening to them when you were a kid?

Oh yeah, they’re really really amazing, and I was a huge fan of theirs when I was younger. And they’re the ultimate in pop, in boy-band pop. It’s like they were the test kids, and I’m really inspired by them. If anything I’m so, so humbled by what they have achieved as a band that’s been around for so long, and how humble they are. As a new artist, for opening acts they usually hand you a microphone and an amp and they say “go, you’ve got five feet of stage.” But these guys, they really gave me a lot of creative freedom, and they knew how much my stage performance was an integral part of who I am, and they let me do the show of my dreams.

I’m looking at your tour schedule and it looks really packed. Do you have that workaholic vibe, like you need to be out there doing as many shows as possible?

Sometimes my tour manager and I will book shows on the fly. We’ll say “well we get off at nine tonight, why don’t we see if the gay club around the corner wants Lady GaGa to come.” And they’ll almost always say yes, and then we’ll do a show for free. I love to play and make music. It’s funny when you ask me about fame, because it’s like I’m not on the road right now working towards some ultimate orgasmic explosion of fame that I have in head. I’m living my dream right now. I’m on the road, I’m making music, I’m making art, I’m performing at arenas and in nightclubs and people know my lyrics, they know my fashion and they know what I’m trying to say and it’s affecting them. This is great. This exactly what I’ve always wanted.

What else should the world know about Lady GaGa?

I’d just like to stress that I wrote, obviously, the whole album and that I have a really heavy hand in all of the creative content and the videos and the films and the TV, and I just really care about what I do. So I actually really appreciate your interview. You asked some really poignant, amazing questions.

interview by Bill Palmer

September 2nd issue with podsafe musician Jonathan Coulton and more!

Natalie Coughlin interview

Six is the age at which Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin first began swimming competitively. Six is the number of iPods she owned when I first met her late last year during a west coast Olympic promotional tour. And six is also the number of medals she’s bringing home from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, whose closing ceremonies took place just last night. I caught up with Natalie late last week to ask her about her just-concluded Olympic experiences – and of course to talk some more iPod and iPhone.

You just won six more medals, including two gold, in the Beijing Olympics. Is it fair to say that you surpassed your own expectations?



Although I am very happy with my performances, I definitely did not exceed my expectations. It’s important to aim high. (Also, only one gold.)

You developed the iSH2 for iPod shuffle with H2O Audio. How were you able to use the product for your own Olympic training and  preparation?

There are several different training groups while you are training  prior to the Olympics.  On the days that I was in my own group I used my  iSH2 to help keep the workouts interesting and so I wouldn’t get too  lonely.

Last time we spoke, you said you couldn’t wait to get an iPhone. Have you taken the plunge and what do you think of it so far?

I’ve had the iPhone for quite a while now and just got the new one.  I absolutely love it and all the new Apps are incredibly addictive.

Now that the Olympics are over, what’s next for you?

A nice long break :)

•••••

And for the complete story, here’s the full text of my earlier interview with Natalie from late 2007…

“My first iPod was probably the second generation of the original iPod. I held out for a little bit,” Natalie told me as we sat poolside during a break from a campaign which included promotions for the U.S. Olympic Committee and NBC. Life isn’t always this hectic for her, but the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are fast approaching and “things are pretty crazy.”

“I have not been to China before but I’ve seen pictures of the facility and it looks like a giant glass bubble. It looks really, really beautiful and I can’t wait to see it,” Natalie said of the Olympic facilities being constructed in Beijing. The 2008 games will be halfway around the world from Athens, the site of the 2004 games where she cleaned up with two gold medals and five medals in all.

Natalie has different goals for Beijing. “I feel like I have less pressure this time, just because the way swimming works is you’re validated through the Olympics and you only have that opportunity every four years. Going into the last Olympics I remember having these interviews where the interviewer would say, oh you have world records and American records but you don’t have that gold, and things like that and it puts so much pressure on me to get that Olympic medal and I feel like I’ve done that. And now I can just focus on myself in the next games.”


Traveling the world means that Natalie reaches for her video iPod the most often, downloading shows including The Office and Ugly Betty and watching them when she finds herself in a part of the world where those shows aren’t available.

While the iPod has played a role in her life for the past five years, swimming has been a part of it for much longer. “When I was six years old I dreamt of being in the Olympics but that really meant nothing at that point. I had no idea what the Olympics even were let alone how you would get there. I was thirteen years old when I realized it was a possibility that I could make the olympic team and I didn’t even think of swimming professionally until that actually happened.”

It was during her junior year of college, right around the launch of the original iPod, that Natalie started to think that she’d continue swimming beyond school and do it for a living. But it wasn’t until recently that she was able to begin taking her iPod with her into the water.

“I just partnered with a company called H2O Audio and they are in the process of developing what’s called the iSH2 and that’s my signature line and it’s an underwater housing for the little shuffle,” making Natalie one of an increasing number of athletes involved in the development of iPod-related products. So far she’s used her iPod during a thirty-minute swimming competition in Fiji.

If the professional athlete’s signature sneaker has now given way to the signature iPod accessory, perhaps it only makes sense when placed in the context of the music itself. Training can be lonely for Natalie, so she relies on music to get her through workouts. As she puts it, “it keeps me going.”

When it comes to music, Natalie finds herself listening to every modern genre but country, with current favorites including Paolo Nutuni and Alicia Keys. But not all of her music fits into every aspect of her life as an athlete: “I love Jack Johnson but I’m not going to listen to his stuff on the day of a meet.”

Along with her current iPods, Natalie wants to make another addition to her collection. “I can’t wait to get an iPhone. I’ve played with it in the stores and that’s about it. And I love it. It’s the coolest thing. I can’t wait because the screen is way bigger and then I’m really into photography, so to have all my photos in such rich color and bigger than on my video iPod.”

Natalie was hired by MSNBC to help cover the 2006 Winter Olympics as a sportscaster. She envisions moving to the broadcast booth full-time at some point, but likely not until after competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Now at age twenty-five, she’s encouraged by the increasing career lifespan in her sport but eventually wants to have a “normal life” and a family.

One thing isn’t likely to change though. With six iPods already, an iPhone on the way, a MacBook in tow, and a penchant for editing photos in Aperture and cranking out web pages in iWeb, Natalie Coughlin sums it up best herself: “I’m pretty obsessed with Apple products.”

AppMinute for iPhone

Why are third-party applications important to the iPhone platform?

Third-party applications will create functionality into the iPhone that it does not have out of the box. This will appeal to a much broader spectrum of potential buyers. At the moment, there is no one “killer app” that sells the iPhone. Eventually, a third party iPhone developer will come out with an application or game that people will buy the iPhone just to get access to. This is what happened with personal computers back in the 1970s. It was not until VisiCalc came out on the Apple II that people started to see a reason to even own a computer. All of a sudden, you could use a computer to do your finances on, even complex stuff, fairly simply. That will happen with the iPhone, or maybe the BlackBerry, eventually. 


What can readers learn about iPhone apps by visiting AppMinute?

We (Myself and Sam Levin) link to both interesting iPhone / iPod Touch news and the latest cool Apps worth downloading. There are a number of really great iPhone focused websites out there, providing original content that people want to know about.

Our site is designed to point people in the right direction, making finding content worth reading easy. We also search the internet to find iPhone related video, and post those on the site as well. These could include video reviews, previews, or what have you. 

What future plans for AppMinute can you share with us?

We have many plans, but most we are keeping close to the vest for now. However, one thing we are looking at is creating an iPhone Developer Connection service (free) on the site that will act as a gateway between developers, as well as companies looking to hire developers. We want to become a “one stop shopping” site for all things iPhone App related. 

What are your favorite apps so far?

I love AOL Radio, mostly for the two comedy stations. Uncensored and full of really great content. I don’t know who programs that particular channel, but they have great taste. I also enjoy a few of the 80s channels on there. 

Both the MySpace and Facebook Apps are decent, and in fact they facilitate me actually using both those services more than I ever did in the past. 
My favorite, however, would still be a toss-up between the iPod and Safari. The iPhone has now replaced my iPod, and the ability to browse the internet no matter where I am has spoiled me to no end. 

What’s the latest scoop with MyMac, your “other” publication?

MyMac.com is still my passion, and while I enjoy AppMinute.com, I don’t have the emotional connection to it that I do with MyMac. We are moving into our 14th year of publishing, and while we have come a long way since 1995, I have not lost my passion for it. We only publish original content, and have some of the most creative and honest writers on the Mac scene. Companies, both Mac and iPod / iPhone related, have been seeking us out to review their products in record numbers over the last year, so that is exciting. Our large staff is once again already gearing up for Macworld Expo in January, an event we usually have ten or so staffers covering. Things are going really well in the land of Macintosh for us, and I hope my newest venture, AppMinute.com, can become as popular as MyMac.

Photos from New Media Expo

Photos from the 2008 New Media Expo in Las Vegas. Thank you to everyone who stopped by the iProng booth, we hope you enjoyed our non-stop live podcasting…

Photos from Coverville 500

Photos from the Coverville 500 concert at the 2008 New Media Expo in Las Vegas. We enjoyed the show and hope you did as well…

August 25th issue with Olympic swimmer Natalie Coughlin and more – read it now!

Musician Diary: St. Louis

It’s been almost a week since I got back from the Indie Buzz Bootcamp in St. Louis. I had such a great time there and have been so busy since then working on my music that it took me awhile to sit down and write you about it!

First off I want to say hello to all my new friends from the weekend. Whether I met you at the conference, while street performing in the loop or six hundred and thirty-two feet up in the air in the arch looking over the flooded Mississippi, you made my weekend awesome and I love you for it!

It all started out Friday when I flew to St. Louis and immediately after arriving at our hotel Griffin and I took off for the arch. It was incredible to see it in person and I recommend taking the elevator/train/carnival ride contraption up to the top when you have a chance. And stop by below for some delicious hot cocoa mixed with a wooden spoon in the “old time” coffee and sweets shop below the arch. It’s delicious and the people are dressed up like they were when Lewis and Clark came through town in the nineteenth century. Correct me if I didn’t remember that correctly – I’m not good with dates.



After that I tried to pull Griffin over to the lake to look at the baby ducks but it was getting late and we wanted to walk through downtown more so we didn’t. On our walk we passed a fountain that was dyed pink in honor of the breast cancer walk going on. We wound up at Union Station where we tried some fudge after the employees at the shop sang and teased us for not participating in a fun call and response thing they were doing.

Most of the weekend was spent at the Indie Buzz Bootcamp. It was an incredible conference put together by indie music marketing guru Bob Baker and his girlfriend Pooki. They set up all of these great networking parties and events, fed us and made me feel very welcome. The speakers were all very motivating and super accessible.

I had the chance to perform on Saturday night with some hit writers from Nashville in the Behind the Song Café. I met Rylee Madison and Wil Nance who are both based out of Nashville. Wil wrote “She’s everything” for Brad Paisley. He teased me a lot about performing on the subway but he’s not so bad!

Sunday I must have woken up on the lucky side of the bed because I won a copy of the Indie Bible and thirty-six custom t-shirts from StickersAndMore.com. Look out for those soon! That afternoon Griffin and I got a little tour from Pooki’s son down to The Loop. If you haven’t been, I definitely recommend checking it out when you visit St. Louis. It’s this strip of shops and restaurants about a mile long and on Sunday’s there’s this happening hippy drum circle that you would never expect in St. Louis.

I like to think I am a hippy but after seeing these free spirits I know I’m nowhere close! One guy who was wearing a turtle shell for a hat that he had made after finding the turtle on the side of the road offered me his guitar string earring. He had taken an old string and cut it off to about 1.5 inches after the round threading and just put it in his ear and bent it around. “It has its own built in clasp,” he said. I couldn’t: 1) Take a prized possession like that and 2) Worry about getting some disease from the metal. If I didn’t realize that I wasn’t a hippy before, it became clear as day then!

Anyways, We hung around for a while listening to the drum circle and then headed over to a restaurant just as it started raining. I wasn’t expecting much but I had the most incredible salad at this place. The caesar dressing was made with curry and I think I freaked out the waiter by telling him how great it was about eight billion times.

After our tummies were full and merry I went out on a search for a place to play my music on the street and hopefully make some new fans. I found a shady spot under a tree where instead of competing with the trains I was up against about a hundred sparrows tweeting loudly because they were so happy the sun had come back out. I started playing and it was slow at first but some people hung around to listen and I met three stellar guys who jammed with me on the Uke.

In the end I got rained out and I had to run half a mile to the train. Griffin and I got back in the shuttle where we met the owner of the hotel we were staying at. He grew up with Sheryl Crow. Small world! Back at the hotel we wound up hanging out in the computer room with some conference stragglers as I entertained myself learning how to make paper cut out streamers of girls in dresses, hearts, fish and a guitar. I left them for some stiff workaholic to find the next morning.

I woke up late Monday before we left and spent about 30 minutes enjoying the Jacuzzi and pool before having Panera Bread (aka St. Louis Bread Co.) for some late brunch. The trip back to LAG airport was pretty painless save for a little two hours delay in Atlanta where we again went to Panera Bread (aka Atlanta Bread Co.).

After writing all of this I’m not sure who would find it all interesting but it put a huge smile on my face to think of all the fun I had and most of all the great people I met!

Till next time St. Louis!

xo
Natalie

First Look: ColorTilt for iPhone

Most games have a goal. Get to the finish line. Collect all the items. But ColorTilt is a “game” in the same sense that an Etch-a-Sketch is a game: there are goals, no checkpoints, no timers, in fact nothing specific you’re even supposed to be doing. A color screen flashes and you draw on it with your finger. Tilt the iPhone in any direction and the colors will change. That’s pretty much the gist of the application.



As such, your level of fun is dependent on your imagination and your willingness to participate a “game” that has essentially no structure. Write your name, draw a picture of a house, or just doodle. Use it as a time-killer, stress reliever, or because you like the pretty colors. And when you’ve filled the page, just turn your iPhone upright and shake it – just like an Etch-a- Sketch in fact – and the screen will erase itself so you can start anew. Kids will obviously enjoy this one, but I suspect adults with a sense of whimsy will as well.



ColorTilt is so simple that the ninety-nine cent price tag seems appropriate. That having been said, it’s probably worth the dollar even if you only use it as an occasional diversion. And you just know you want to use the shake-to-erase feature to impress all your friends who don’t have iPhones.

Katy Perry interview

“Tell me where you’re from,” Katy Perry asks me just after we sit down together at the bar of the Mercury Lounge in New York City. By the time she’s hit me with a couple of follow-up questions, it’s no matter that I’m the journalist and she’s the one with the number one song on the iTunes pop chart – it’s clear that she is in fact interviewing me and not the other way around. I never do end up figuring out whether it’s simply curiosity on her part or if she’s savvy enough to play upon a journalist’s ego (no pop star ever asks a journalist such humanizing questions during an interview), but either way it seems to do the trick and leaves her coming off as remarkably down to earth for someone who’s been tagged as the next “it girl” by everyone from Madonna to Perez Hilton.


Alright, time for me to do my job and work a few questions in myself. “Both my parents are traveling ministers,” Katy tells me of her upbringing. “I grew up in a very strict kind of religious household, although my family is very funny and infused with humor. A lot of people, especially my boyfriends, when they are about to meet my father they are freaked out because they think oh, he looks like a priest, he has a collar, and he’s gonna say I’m going straight to hell in handbasket. Not true. My dad has tattoos.”

Then comes the revelation. “Before they were into the Jesus movement, my dad was a drug dealer for Timothy Leary and my mom was a pot-smoking debutante from Santa Barbara. I mean they had their days, they just knew that they were at the end of them and they needed God,” she says with a laugh. “They aren’t very conservative but they’re very founded in faith.”

But are they open-minded enough to accept the songs on One Of The Boys, her debut album released today, whose first two hit songs are the equally provocatively-titled UR So Gay and I Kissed a Girl? As she puts it, “Twenty-three years ago when they popped me out, they probably didn’t paint this picture for me. But this is who I am, and so be it.”

As we move down to the other end of the bar to put some space between us and the band that’s just begun its sound-check, the discussion turns to UR So Gay, a song that’s that’s stirred up quite a bit of curiosity if not necessarily controversy. “We never released that song as a single,” she says of the song that first shotgunned her into the public consciousness. “It was just a song on my EP that came out in November of 2007. It was kind of a forewarning of the wrath of Katy Perry that is about to drop.”

Then she states the obvious. “With a title like that, everybody’s like, what the fuck is this song about? So it did get some views, and the label gave us like a couple of pennies to make a music video. They said let’s see if you can make a music video with a dollar, basically. And we were like well fine, let’s go, we’ll try. So we made this music video and we had a million hits in one week on it,” she says of the video which features a barbie doll made up to look suspiciously like a member of an emo band.

“This is a real person but it isn’t necessarily just about him,” she says of the guyliner-wearing target of the song’s lyrics. “It’s a concoction of things I put all into one pot, which was basically taking the piss out of those emo guys who wear the guyliner and use the straight irons and wear their girlfriends’ jeans, which is cool and all but, like, are you sure you’re really straight? No, it’s just funny, it’s like in 2008 it’s so common to have the boyfriend crying on the girlfriend’s shoulder rather than the girlfriend crying on the boyfriend’s shoulder. And I asked myself, where are all those jocks and footballers and and those men of chivalry that existed years ago? Come on, where are you, bro?”

So is she trying to single-handedly kill off the emo scene with this song? “Not necessarily the scene, because I really appreciate the music that comes out of that scene, but like, the fashion that it generates is, to me it’s like the hair band phase of of the 1980’s, that you see these men that look like total drag queens in skin-tight tights and showing their bellies and, like, the biggest hair in the world. I mean at that time everybody thought it was cool as shit and now we look back and we’re like what the fuck?”

Is there any worry that guys who are actually gay might be offended by the song? “I haven’t gotten that, actually, because you know, you listen to the song and you have to hear the whole song to realize the story. I mean there’s so many songs you could just take out bits and pieces of one song and get really offended by it. Because you know, a lot of girls, they come up to me and they say oh my god, thank you so much for writing that. Here’s a picture of my ex-boyfriend in clothes. You wrote this song about him. Thank you.”

“Us girls, you know, we live in a very metrosexual world and sometimes we’re thrown into a pot of boys and we don’t know who’s gay and who’s not. Which is fine cause I have a lot of gay friends and I am a big pro-gay everything, as a person and politically, even though I come from a very fucked household that doesn’t believe so.”

One of Katy’s early backers has been Perez Hilton, the openly gay celebrity blogger who’s been promoting her music at every turn and appeared alongside her on the Carson Daly show. “He’s definitely just one of those guys that has that ability to throw something up on the internet and it’s like boom, you know? The reaction is instant in very large numbers. So he’s cool.”

When I was given an advance copy of One Of The Boys, I was immediately curious to hear what Katy’s cover version of the Jill Sobule classic “I Kissed a Girl” sounded like, only to quickly realize that it’s not a cover song at all. Aside from the title lyric, the two songs don’t share so much as a single line or note. “The fourteen and fifteen year old girls don’t know who Jill Sobule is, but I’m sure Jill Sobule is gonna make some money some money this year in iTunes,” Katy says of the fact that the two songs share the same name. “I was thinking about should I name it, like, ‘Cherry Chapstick’ or something? And I was just like no, it is what it is.”

While Sobule’s I Kissed A Girl was cheeky and folksy, Katy’s is a brash tale set to a club beat, offering up the simple summation “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” While the song has shot to the top of the iTunes pop charts in advance of the album’s release, it runs the danger of being ultimately shown up by another potential single entitled Waking Up In Vegas, the sunny track that immediately follows it on the album. Another catchy track, Hot N Cold, has disco overtones. With each song on the album having its own style, where are the influences coming from?

While comparisons have been drawn that have matched Katy’s music against everyone from Avril Lavigne to Pink, she’s turned to quite different sources of inspiration. “I wanted to channel the essence of what Freddie Mercury, basically. To me he was just an amazing songwriter, always told a story,” she says of the late Queen frontman. “The way he talked to his audience, his audience was his friends. It’s not like, I mean these pop stars need to get over themselves. These girl pop stars are just amazing, I mean I feel like sometimes a lot of them are so afraid to make a move or say anything about their lives. I guess maybe I wear my heart on my sleeve right now because I haven’t had any reason to hide it.”

Now that the album has been released, summer beckons and the Warped Tour has come calling. “When I first got the call that said I was gonna do it, I was like oh my god, I’m so scared because I’ve had friends that have been on it and after they get off of that tour they’re physically exhausted, emotionally and mentally exhausted. I mean they need to go detox somewhere. So I know that it’s going to be strenuous but I’ve been gearing up for it.”

Seeing as how One Of The Boys is likely to debut in the iTunes top five today, I walked away from our interview impressed by just how down to earth and accessible Katy Perry is in real life. But at the same time I suspect she’s not one to be messed with. Or as she puts it, “Just don’t dump me, I’ll write a song about you and the whole world’s gonna fucking sing along.”

Learn more at KatyPerry.com

interview by Bill Palmer