Covert Curiosity, A Good Music Blog

If you don’t know by now, my “job” is recording and producing bands. I have made it a huge priority to try and use these social media tools we learn about in class to find more clients (bands) in the local Austin music scene. As I have been exploring the Austin music scene’s blogosphere it seems that Covert Curiosity is the leading blog voice about music. Based in Austin, Covert Curiosity does a great job at providing an entertaining music related blog. Not only do they update their blog daily but they provide their audience with a look at unknown bands around the world with mp3 samples and intellectual insights about music. They also have tons of links to other blogs and a calendar highlighting some of the great shows to see in Austin.

The only thing I wish they would do more, is blog more, about local bands. I imagine their interested in having a larger fan base than just Austin, so that is hopefully why they don’t spend enough time on the scene. But for someone who knows that there is an abundance of great music in Austin, it would be nice for someone to inform the public about bands other than the Austin Chronicle.

But all in all, it is a good blog and I recommend it and it’s “ad free” too. Also I recommend checking out our fellow communication major friend Ian Morales’ blog, Ian’s Music Blog. Ian is honest and has a great love for music.

You Twitt Er

I recently decided to explore another social media Internet tool called Twitter. Twitter is sort of a combination between instant messaging and blogging. It's blog feature is similar to Facebook's status update but your able to write up to 150 words while at the same time your allowed to have direct contact with other twitter members. You can also follow different twitter members and read their daily blogs (tweets) while others are allowed to follow your blog.

After having a twitter account for more than a week I’m now following 8 people and 6 are following me. I’ve found it to be interesting but I haven’t been able to fully explore it since its search engine has not been working the whole time. Hey Twitter fix your search engine!!! It’s been more than a week!!! Needless to say I’ve been less than impressed with Twitter. I’ve heard that it has such a great upside but yet I haven’t been able to explore it. Hopefully they will fix it soon. Also if you’re on Twitter follow me and I’ll follow you. I’m located at http://twitter.com/adamraven.

Quad 3 Podcast

The group podcast assignment was yet another great way to explore the Internet and social media. For our podcast we interviewed Kristine Gloria from Waggener Edstrom PR firm. Kristine is an account executive at Waggener Edstrom and was very insightful on the current world of social media. We recorded and produced the podcast at Premium Recording Service and I Royal Raven was the announcer while Ashley and Sloan conducted the interview. Here is a brief outline so you can follow along with the podcast.

0:00 Intro

0:35 Describe Wagner Edstrom and your role at the firm?

a. Wagenner Edstrom (WagEd) specializes in technology and is incredibly relationship oriented. Specifically, WagEd has a long track record with Microsoft.

b. Kristine Gloria is the liaison with account work and digital strategies.

1:17 How has social media evolved and what is your role?

a. Social media has grown from social networks such as Facebook, to micro blogging on Twitter, and has developed into a tool for both personal and professional purposes.

WagEd often uses LinkedIn to do bio searches on their clients and future employees.

b. Kristine's role has been to implement these tools in the business. She is not an early adopter, but watches the space closely.

2:27 How did you gain an initial awareness of social media and how have you implemented it at Waggener Edstrom?

a. SXSW 2007: Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg Interview and the importance of Twitter

b. Took this momentum to the office.

i. Began a WE Digital Think Tank

4:06 What forms of social media do you use and how does it benefit you as a P.R. firm?

a. Twitter: "Everyday, every hour"

i. Relationships with reporters

b. Facebook

c. LinkedIn: Bio searching specifically

5:11 Commercial

a. FriendorFollow.com

5:41 What is Wagner Edstrom's involvement with the blogosphere and how do you approach bloggers with pitches?

a. Active bloggers on external side of WagEd as marketing

b. Use of blogs internally

6:13 What do you think the relationship between bloggers and P.R. firms should be?

a. Understanding the avenue of communication is key

b. Building relationships is essential

c. Bloggers write what they want to write-it's not personal

6:50 What social media tools do you use on an everyday basis and how have these tools expanded your personal and professional relationships?

a. Keep things professional

b. Social media has helped expand Kristine's network

i. Helps others understand social media tools

7:41 You mentioned social media as a double-edged sword, can you elaborate on this?

a. Blurs personal and professional life

b. Social Media is extremely self-involved

c. You must be in tune to your own personal brand

i. Austin 3.0

9:12 Where do you see social media going in the future in both public relations and personal lives?

a. Kristine does not see blogging as taking over the journalistic venue

b. The public will begin to understand idea of the "double edged sword."

9:53 Outro

Poverty: Blog Action Day

As the rents in Austin begin to rise, the rich is getting richer but unfortunately the poor is still poor. Though recent studies have shown that the percentage of poor people in Austin has dropped by .5% it still hasn’t disappeared (Austin Business Journal). So what can we do? Well, as a St. Edwards University student myself I have noticed drop sites for non-perishable food items. Also one place you can contact to help is the Community Partnership for the Homeless at austinhomelessness.org. Founded in 1990 Community partnership mission is to help end homelessness by providing safe, affordable housing and access to supportive services.


Lets also be respectful of the conditions in Africa where the poverty conditions are far worse. In a nation of war and genocide, the world has not put in enough effort to stop the humanitarian crisis. So may are prayers be with them also, and may we make an effort to stop poverty around the world.

Thinking Of A Silver State

Recently my friends the band Lazertag entered their music video, “Silver State” in a contest on the website ourstage.com and won. Directed by my ex roommate Brad Ungar, the video chronicles Lazertag’s (Mitch Buttress and Ryan Spratt) journey from San Francisco to Austin for South By Southwest. The video is great and the song is too. Some highlights include the band playing in my friend Israel’s truck and Ryan eating a cupcake from Austin’s own, Hey Cupcake. There's an interview with my friends Lazertag. Apparently their video was viewed by over a 1000 people and has created some new fans for them and of course they won $1000. This is a great example of how bands can use social media to promote themselves over the internet. Here they uploaded there video and got people to vote for it and in the end exposed themselves to a whole new audience, all thanks to social media and the Internet.

Garage Band

After going through some of the basic features in Garage Band in class on Tuesday, I went home that night and started playing around with the software. As an audio engineer/producer I always use the software Pro Tools by Digidesign and have just used GarageBand for basic sound recordings for songwriting but as I began to amerce myself in it I found it was quite refreshing. It’s nowhere as detailed as a program as Pro Tools but GarageBand has a lot of cool stuff on it. First of all, it has a bunch of different loops and sounds that you can use to create a song. After playing with it for 20 minutes I had created a whole instrumental song with: drums, dance beats, bass, guitar, synths, piano and strings. It was really simple too, just locate the sound file you want and drag it on to a track. The key here is to set it to snap to the grid! Which can be found under the control tab. This way when you move sounds around it will always be adjusted by the right time-frame, meaning that it will always be on the the same beat as the rest of the tracks. Check it out, you’ll be surprised how easy it is.

Facebook Privacy

I recently was sitting in class next to my friend and was on my Facebook homepage when she noticed that her info was popping up in my news feed. She was shocked! She had no clue that every picture she posts, every time she is tagged in a photo, and when she talks to a mutual friend that the info pops up in my reader. I too at first had no idea this was going on and have recently stopped all my stupid narcissistic status updates and have taken away information on my profile. As a person who does not believe that the Internet has ever been or ever will be private I have always used a different last name for my profiles. I’m not surprised to hear about all the privacy issues on Facebook discussed in class. It is an Internet site designed for one to spy on another so it’s likely that while its users explore others personal information, its not surprising that the company is allowing other businesses to do the same.