I’ve just stumbled across Grooveshark for the first time, and I have to say, I’m impressed! It has an ever-growing user base feeding more and more music into it, which you can pay to download or stream for free, legally. I’ve found it easy to get some great music out of it, and just finished listening throughout all of The Cure - Faith, Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On and Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures without any problems. The biggest issue I’ve had with it so far is that, thanks to badly labelled files being shared, there’s often multiple entries for the same song under the same album. This is easily overcome though - line up each song (I use Wikipedia to get the right tracklisting) and save the album as a playlist on your account and you’ve got a permanent, ordered album to be played whenever.

So far, I think that this must be the best free & legal music source I’ve seen. While Pandora & Last.fm are great for finding new music, Grooveshark gives you quick and easy access to all your favourites, anywhere. Including the entire Broken Social Scene back catalogue. Bonus.

With all the porny YouTube clones that have cropped up over the last year or so, I was pretty surprised today when I idly tried both

www.youboobs.com

and (perhaps even more of an obvious one)

www.boobtube.com

to find that both are just parked domains (with some fairly NSFW links on them).

Someone’s missing a trick there! If I was looking to move into the “adult entertainment” business, they’d be the first 2 domains I’d snap up.

EARTHQUAKE!

So did everyone enjoy last night’s act of god?

I was just drifting off at 1am this morning when my bed started shaking. Sadly I was alone last night, so it’s not as much fun as it sounds. Oh no, I, along with much of the UK, was in the middle of a fairly major (for us) earthquake. Crazy stuff!

Even crazier than that, however… I’ve just been invited to join “THE EARTHQUAKE AT 1AM IN THE UK!!!” Facebook group. It’s like we’ve actually come to the point where an event just isn’t worth talking about unless there’s a group on facebook in which to do it. It’s the same for causes and charities… I just don’t understand these “cure cancer now” groups sprouting up, like the disease is slightly more threatened now that there’s a social networking site dedicated to it’s eradication. Watch out diabetes, Facebook is on your case next!

Anyway, must be off, I have to set up the “MATT BLOGGED ON SEOTUNES, 3.30PM IN THE UK” Facebook Group.

Well, the paperwork hasn’t even been signed and dated yet, but the inevitable slanging match between Google and MicroHoo! has already begun, with big G taking the first pot shot over on their official blog.

Citing Microsoft’s history of etablishing “proprietary monopolies” within the market, Senior Vice President David Drummond explains that the merger between the two minnows to Google’s shark (at least in search revenue terms) could hinder the “competitive innovation” of the internet.

But wait, is this seriously a spokesperson for Google, the company that have successfully monopolised virtually the entire search realm, to the point that “googling” has become to “searching” what “hoovering” is to “vacuuming”. The same Google that has webmasters stressing over whether “paid advertising” is going to kill not only their site but their entire business, just because Google doesn’t like them? Read more

Is this the worst business website in the world? (Note: link removed as site has been changed and is now much better… and I was feeling bad that they were ranking number 1 for the term “worst business website”! It is now quite a nice website password protected a bit jumbled but looking better). Read more