Once upon a time, UK is the center of the world's cultural movement. From punk, skinhead, working class music... britpop, doc marten... name it. And then there's a shift, with the help of a bunch of good looking boys that adding the word 'band' as their last name and also some teenage girl with revealing outfit and ability to move as elastic as rubber, American music become the dominant force in the world. But maybe, just maybe, like what The Beatles did in the 60s, and britpop in mid 90s, once again british music will dominate the world.
And the first strike is a group of heavy talented girl with over the top voice, Amy Winehouse and Adele. Those two girl dominate the US chart and also global chart without being half naked or move like agitated snake, they does it with their amazing voice and beautiful live performance. They just great just the way they are. From Amy and Adele, I travel over the web and found other talented british musician like Ellie Goulding, and now Birdy. This girl is only 15, yes, and yet she can play the piano, she can sing and she can write and compose a song, duh! I fall in love with her voice, and her modest composure. Hey, not every teenager has to be like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez or whoever else. She just amazing in her own way.
I watched this trailer of Adele's concert in Royal Albert Hall and feel so emotional. Adele is a wonderful singer. I fall in love with her music from the first time I listened to Chasing Pavement in the radio. I scream with joy when she won her first Grammy, and I definitely one of many people who swore that 21 is the best female singer album ever!
She shared the same birthday as my mother in the same year as I am, which make her just 3 days older than me, yet, she has inspired many girls in the world. You know, when I listen to her music, as a girl, I always think... "it is alright to be brokenhearted, it is great to pour your heart out of your sadness, but the most important thing is to get back to your feet and show the world that you are a big girl! Yes, big girl do cry, but we're not crying forever!"
"It wasn’t that important, because I never did it for the money … I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things, enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short term payback and things like that … But, especially at that point in my life, it was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the company, the people, the products that we were making, what we were going to enable people to do with these products … I didn’t think about it a great deal … I never sold any stock — I really believed the company would do very well over the long term"
New book on my book-to-read-list : In the Plex, How Google Thinks, Works, and Shape our Lives by Steven Levy. This is the second book about Google that I read, after Googled by Ken Auletta. I read Googled last year, and got a brief history and understanding of the internet giant, from the idea and project of two Stanford graduate students, to a realization of multibillion company that become our main source of looking for information.
In the Plex is said to be written with cooperation of Google exec, with detail under the hood information about the development of Google culture and business. I found that some blogger using this book as trusted reference to understand Google strategy today. I just googled the book and decided to read it as soon as I finish Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson which is still in progress. It means I push the Heroes of Olympus series, and The Hunger Games series down to the bottom of the list. Well, I have little time for fiction and the moment, which is still makes me feel uneasy for being a little too busy than usual.
I just starting to read the new issue of Fast Company : The Great Tech War of 2012. Who will win the battle for the future of innovation economy? wooohooooooo... it really great to read it. They compare 4 companies with different starting point which has grown ahead of others to be the leader of digital world, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. This is quite a thorough article on each company's excellence, competitiveness and value. And a nice reading for all the tech enthusiast out there... I will update my comment when I finish reading it.
“I thought to myself, If this is my last day on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?” Then he ran across the parking lot and asked her to dinner.
Back at 2004, I was a freshmen at School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at Bandung Institute of Technology. At the time, there was a competition hold by the student association aiming at High School student, it called LED : Light of Electrical Dream. The competition is simple, you just have to dream, dream about an innovative electrical-electronic technology that will give huge impact on human life. It is a very successful event, and I feel bad that I have enrolled to college at the time, because I want to participate in it so badly. But still, me and my friend talk and toying around about what we would dream of if we can participate in the competition...
There are so many ideas. With no limitation of feasibility, it is great to dream about almost everything. One of my friend talk about biometric identification, where human being can digitally identified with their fingerprint that connected to integrated database of all of their information, from date of birth to bank account. She said, "we don't need any money, we don't need to registered for a passport, all we need is our thumb". Indeed, that is a very brave dream, right? Very Minority Report :)
And then my turn, and I simply think about automatic housing system. Where a house can be so smart that it can detect our mood for music, adjust the room temperature, manage the utilities and most of all can communicate and manage our need by simply directly asking us. Well, it sort of like Tony Stark's Jarvis. Oh hell, I really head over heel for Jarvis. I'm craving to have one :P
That was dream. But I remember about it again last Wednesday, Apple announced their latest upgrade on the iPhone series, iPhone 4S, exactly one day before they lost they co-founder. Nothing so special about the device. It looks exactly like iPhone 4. They said it is faster in processing, and faster in browsing. They said the camera is better. But nothing really interesting in both, it just old song. What really caught my attention is Siri, a virtual voice-operated personal assistant. They said Siri is so smart, and she can tell you exactly what you want as far as you tell her clearly what you want. Wow... they make mini-Jarvis, the iPhone-sized-Jarvis, and really I'm craving for one.
People said Siri is the new innovation that finally will disrupt Google-search domination in the internet and mobile domain. I'm not really sure about that, but it really worth the attention. Well, we'll see, how far Siri will boost iPhone 4S sales, and how the market react to it. And one more thing, it really will be interesting to see how Google will response.
