A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K!

Cool new thing you should check out. Ever had a question but didn't know how to get an answer? Sure, you can hop online and see if you can turn your question into a search for which Google will return some results, but Google is an engine, a program, not a human. For example, Colleen and I are new to North Liberty and it's time for our six month teeth cleaning. Since we don't know anybody in North Liberty that we can ask for recommendations, we pop on the web to see what we can find. But how do you use Google for this kind of query? You can't exactly search "friendly dentist, north liberty" and hope to get any sort of legitimate return that you can use. So much for the most popular search engine in the world.

You should check out Aardvark. This is the new generation of searching. In the last five years we've seen social media and networking blow up like nothing anyone expected. It only makes sense that search and discovery would find a way to incorporate the social aspect into itself. So here's the deal with Aardvark. There's a text box in which you type your question in natural human language, anything like "Which is the friendliest dentist office in North Liberty?" or "What's the most reliable brand of tires?" or "What's the best bbq sauce that pairs well with Sam Adams beer?" Aardvark takes your query and finds another human user that can provide an answer. So rather than just getting a list of links that might or might not be what you're looking for, you get a response in human language from another human who has a better idea of what you're looking for.

It works like this, and this might be what turns some new users off initially. You do have to sign up to even ask your question. But it's nothing more than an email and a zip code. It also asks you what subjects about which you'd consider yourself able to answer questions. So you sign up, and Aardvark then takes your query and sends it on to its ever-growing set of users, hopefully one of which will answer your question. Depending on the type of question and the key words that are found within the query, your query is sent to users who have specified that they have some knowledge about the key word subjects. Real life example, I recently queried "What is the most trustworthy auto repair shop in North Liberty, IA that can repair a broken exhaust pipe?" The main key words picked out of this query were car maintenance and North Liberty and the question is sent to other users who have specified that they have some knowledge about car repair, and even more optimal, users who are located close to North Liberty. My query was received by Josiah M. in Iowa City, IA and he replied back through Aardvark "I can highly recommend All Season's Auto". Boom. Now I've got at least an idea of where to start looking for auto repair from someone locally.

This is such an awesome idea, even though there are some obvious cons. The pros are pretty great though. Firstly, the design and user interface is just perfect. The main page has great colors and hardly anything except just the one text box to enter in the query. It's very Google-esque in its design without immediately recalling Google. The other huge pro is that returns are going to be far more user specific than you'd get from Google. Having your query sent to other human users who can understand your natural language question lets them answer it in a way that you, another human user, will be able to understand. It's awesome.

Plus, by becoming a user of Aardvark, you also become an answerer. When you sign up, you pick a list of subjects in which you've got a little expertise, and if another user asks a question that involves one of your subjects, you might get an email or instant message (or whatever specific type of communication you've listed with the site) from Aardvark that says something like, "Hi (your name), want to try answering this question? (then it lists the user's question)" This is a great system because it allows the answerer many options. The answerer can go ahead and answer the question with an easy reply email, they can simply choose to ignore it and the query will get sent on to another user, they can flag the question as inappropriate, or they can refer the query to another user they have in their network that might be able to answer it. Example: I get a question from a user about the best sushi around North Liberty. Unfortunately, I don't like sushi so I know I can't give a good answer. Luckily, I have a friend in my Aardvark network that does live in the area and loves sushi, so I refer the question on to them to see if they can answer it. Also, as you get answers to your questions, you can add the users whose responses you like the best to your network to continue to query those users most often. That's what makes this interface so great; it is so user-centric and really boosts the social networking aspect of search and discovery.

More about the communication that this interface allows between users. With a site like Google, you query some terms and get some returns. That's the end of it. You can tweak your query a bit to get different returns but it's still querying a generic machine search engine. With Aardvark, the whole search/return system is like a giant conversation between users. I query something, another human user responds, and if I want, I can respond back to continue on a conversation between us. This allows a huge amount communication, conversation, and concept searching among users.

Here is a great example of this. I submitted a query, "What are some good blues albums that are stylistically and sonically like the album 'Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton' by John Mayall?" I got four responses:

1. Vera S. (27, female, from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine) said: "you can check out 'Similar Artists' section at http://www.last.fm/music/John%2BMayall%2B%2526%2BThe%2BBluesbreakers"

2. Jim B. (59, male, from Bowling Green, KY) said: "Hi, Try Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Derek and the Dominoes, Otis Rush, Cream, Johnny Winter, and one of my all time favorites Albert King. Jim. Also, try Peter Green Jim"

3. Tolgahan K. (22, male, from Rockville, MD) said: "John Mayall has plenty of albums with great guitarists, Clapton is just one of them. "A Hard Road" with Peter Green, and "Blues Breakers" with Walter Trout are very similar to the one with Clapton, just pure electric blues. Also check out Clapton's "From The Cradle", one of the best blues albums that is modern, yet pays respects to the traditional stuff."

4. Michael E. (male, Chickawauga, GA) said: "Try Jonny Lang, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Taj Mahal, Little Ed and the Imperials, Steve Vai and the rattlers, Robert Cray, Dr. John. Just to name a few Mayhal was a St. Louis style Blues. Try a little Chicago style with South Side Johnny(has a brass section) Hope this helps."

This is a pretty good sampling of responses I'd hope to receive from most queries. The first one is pretty dumb; if I had wanted to use Google for this query that's what I would've found. Not helpful. But the other three are great; people who have actually listened to the album and know what other albums sound like it suggest those and artists with similar styles to John Mayall. The last guy even got specific with different genres of blues style. Awesome. And I can respond back to any of these that I want to, basically starting an online dialogue.

Clearly this engine is not without its set of disadvantages. The fact that the entire system is based upon communication with other human beings rather than just pulling up a list of links means that timing is an issue. For every query I've tried so far, responses have taken upwards of an hour to come back. Not optimal if you're looking for the best Mexican in town and you're hungry right now. But for less urgent queries, this is such a unique way to find answers to questions.

Another big con for me is that Aardvark was recently acquired by Google. I was a little disappointed to hear this, even though it will mean the system getting more publicity and more users, thereby improving the quality of its output. Google is such a giant monopolistic company, and while the products that they offer are absolutely great, it's always nice to see an upstart with an idea that actually has something to offer that Google doesn't. But this isn't a dealbreaker for me, and I'll still continue to use it when I need.

Here's the link again: give it a try. It's not a perfect replacement for Google; for most queries, you'll probably want to stick to Google. But for those times when you need an opinion from someone, have some time to spare before you get an answer, and want more returns than the top ten corporate sponsors from Google, try Aardvark. And then let me know what you think. It's a pretty cool thing.

-Jon

Open Letter to John Mayer

Dear John,

I watched the 2011 Grammy's last night. What has happened to our music culture?

I am glad I kept watching through the first quarter of the show, because it got far better as it went on. But it started out rough because Lady Gaga performed. And more than anything I was confused. I have been for about a year now actually. I've listened to her stuff; I enjoy dancing to it about once and then it fizzles out for me. How has she become such a powerful force in the industry? It's her persona. It goes so far beyond her music. She is all spectacle; rather than just releasing killer dance music and not dressing it up, she promotes her persona through everything she does. It has never seemed to be just about music with her. Releasing a new album isn't her end product, and unlike musicians in the past who have used their music to promote some sort of social ideal outside of themselves (I don't need to give you a music lesson here, but Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come is the first one that comes to mind), Lady Gaga seems to use her music as one facet of her persona for the end result of promoting herself, but it's dressed up in the garb of "Be whoever you want to be! For me that means shoulder spikes, fake blood, and dinosaur eggs." I've seen her performances on different televised events and rather than seeming inspirational, it all comes back to her. What would a performance of hers be like without looking like an extra off of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? What would be left of Lady Gaga if you took away all the pomp?

Same with Justin Bieber, but in a different way. Everything I see this kid do seems contrived. His documentary just came out this weekend. Wait, his documentary? He's sixteen years old. How does this kid deserve to have a documentary? He has no story yet! Someone found a cute young kid on YouTube, realized how well he could be marketed in the right hands, and the gamble paid off. How many sixteen year olds have as much musical talent as Bieber has? Lots of them. And most of them go on to music schools or perform in orchestras or sing in church choirs. I didn't see any real musicality from him last night, all I saw was some slick dance moves and a baby playing left-handed guitar chords. Not enough, Justin.

What about spectacle done right? Look to Cee Lo's performance with Gwyneth. I loved it, mainly because they both have the chops to back up how visually grandiose their performance was. They both sounded amazing and it was so much fun to watch. Yeah it was over the top, there was a fake rocket ship on stage and Cee Lo was dressed like a giant rainbow-colored chicken. I laughed each time the back up puppets shushed to keep the performance TV friendly. That's the kind of spectacle I want to see in our culture. Glam done right, not shock value for shock value's sake.

I need more of good stuff, like Dylan's performance with Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers. Sure, Bob Dylan is old and his voice isn't what it used to be, but he has earned his place on that stage. He gets to go up there and sing whatever he wants and however he wants to. It was great to see an old legend perform with new talent; they looked like they were having a blast.

So here's why this is penned to you, John. I wish the real talent in our culture produced more. I know real music takes longer to write and produce and output but it's disheartening to see what a powerful market force Justin Bieber is and how he is dominating everything when all I wish I had was a new Coldplay album or a new album from you. I want less choreography and more playing. I want to see collaboration and creativity in a musical sense, not who can come up with the craziest dress. I loved seeing Raphael Saadiq dancing around on stage with Mick Jagger. I want to see which musicians D'Angelo has back him on his new album and figure out as much about them as I can. I want more albums like The Roots/John Legend's Wake Up! from this last year. I can't wait for Adele's album to come out next week. I know it's selfish of me as a consumer to demand so much output from the talent, but what is a consumer without a producer?

And ultimately, the Grammy's weren't as discouraging as I thought they would be. I cheered when Esperanza Spalding won Best New Artist over her tough competition and when Arcade Fire beat out the other huge smash records for Album of the Year. And please don't stop making music. Your performance with Norah and Keith was my favorite of the night. Rhythmic, sexy, succinct, understated. Such an awesome tribute. And it was nice to know you don't have the lyrics to Dolly's entire discography memorized.

-Jon

Musical Connections

Uncovered a new gem in my music collection last night. As is my custom with the new year, I am currently listening through my entire collection in a systematic fashion. I have two different playlists I choose from: all albums with 0 play count (just ones to which I haven't listened), and albums with a "last played" date from the year 2010. I was getting ready to read in one of my class books so I went to my jazz section to choose something light. I stumbled upon Cannonball Adderly's classic Somethin' Else. I've listened to this one quite a bit, it's a really great album featuring Miles Davis. I've had this album in my library for probably five or six years, at least since 2005. And originally, I only got this album because the cover art for John Mayer Trio's album Try! was essentially an exact copy of the cover art for Something' Else. Cool connection there. Thanks John.

Anyway, I play the first track, entitled Autumn Leaves. Again, nothing special, I've listened to this tune quite a few times and have enjoyed it. But this time, I hear the melody kick in right around the 1:30 mark. Normally with jazz tunes, my ear isn't good enough to actually know what the melody line is unless I've heard the tune in some other context (i.e. John Coltrane's cover of My Favorite Things, as that's a famous song outside of Coltrane's recording, I know when he plays the melody line). This was the case with this song. The previous times I'd heard it I wouldn't have been able to pick out the melody line. This time, however, I heard something familiar around the 1:30 mark that pricked my ear. I couldn't figure out where I'd heard it before. I checked the song title (I hadn't really thought about what I was listening to other than the album title) and realized this was a song I fell in love with a few months ago after I got Eric Clapton's latest album, Clapton.

It was a pretty good album; I'd given it a few listens but didn't go nuts over it. Except for the closing track, Autumn Leaves. I didn't know when I first heard it that it was a cover, I just thought it was a beautiful, heart-breaking, gorgeously-played tune written by Clapton. It didn't seem like an off-base assumption; many of his songs feature chords that fit so well together iced with breathtaking guitar lines. I listened to this song over and over when I first got the album, I could not get over how simple and how beautiful the chords sounded. And his solo at the end just blew me away. More than anything the tone of his guitar sounds so rich.

So I loved the song. I had no idea the song was 65 years old. It was originally a french tune written by Joseph Kosma entitled "Les Feuilles Mortes" ("The Dead Leaves") and English lyrics were written by Johnny Mercer, a stalwart contributor to the Great American Songbook. It has been recorded by a variety of different artists, and is a fairly common jazz standard due to its simple yet creatively beautiful chord progression.

This was mainly an exciting find to me because of the potential that still lies in my music library. I've been listening to it, adding to it, trimming it, editing it for years now, and still, I just now found a new musical connection that blew me away between two completely unrelated albums. What other awesome links are waiting for me to find?

Here's what I found:

-Jon

"I don't make home videos, I make home films."

I've been wanting to write about this for three months. Colleen and I finally gave our Christmas present to her family; the (nearly) comprehensive collection of their VHS home videos on DVD.

First, the how. Here's what you need:

Computer (I used my Mac)

VCR

Adapter with audio/video cable ports and USB ports (and included software for capturing video) (Elgato Video Capture Device for Mac users)

DVD burner

Blank DVDs

Video editing software (iMovie for Mac users)

DVD burning software (iDVD for Mac users)

Photoshop software

VHS tapes

In a nutshell, here's what we did. Recorded all the VHS tapes using the VCR and adapter software, loaded the raw video files into iMovie, edited all unwanted portions out, placed chapter markers on the files, grabbed still frames to use for menu screens and the DVD covers, transferred edited video files to iDVD, picked the specific menu template, formatted the menu and chapter selection screens so they would fit a normal television screen, loaded stills into the menus, double-double-checked everything and then burned the DVD. Time-intensive parts were capturing the raw footage from the tapes onto the computer and burning the actual DVDs because capturing the video required just starting a tape and letting it play the whole way through in real time and burning the DVDs took like 6 hours a piece. Thankfully they were time-intensive and not labor-intensive; I could get one started and go do homework or something. The labor-intensive part was the editing. The most frustrating part was making sure everything worked. The worst portion of this entire project was the afternoon I got a video down to the final edit and tried to burn it. For some reason, the software kept saying I wasn't putting in a recordable DVD in the drive when clearly I was putting in a recordable DVD. I couldn't find an answer anywhere, online, I called Best Buy, Staples, everybody's gave me the same answer, "Huh. Weird, it should be working." Thanks a lot everybody. So I ended up having Staples send in the drive and get me a replacement drive, which worked perfectly. But for that afternoon...yikes. I was not a pleasant person to be around. But for the most part, the editing went fairly smooth, the biggest hiccup was trying to find a version of iMovie that had a chapter marker functionality. For some insane reason, Apple removed that tool from the previous version of iMovie when they upgraded to the version I have on my Mac (iMovie '09). Thankfully, Colleen's Mac is still kicking four years in and that had the older version of iMovie so we used that. The only problem is that hers is wicked slow so the process was slowed down a bit, but we still managed to get it done.

The covers were easier; Colleen and I went to the UIowa Main Library and used Photoshop to create the covers. I found a free cover template online that I loaded into Photoshop and changed around to feature our chapter titles, DVD titles, and stills from each video. We also made the backgrounds of each a different pastel color so put together the set of eight DVDs looks awesome. We just had them printed at Copyworks after their graphic designers resized the file so it would print to fit an actual DVD case.

Now a bit of the why: this is very possibly the biggest gift I've ever given or been involved in. Not physically big but more in the emotional attachment Colleen and I have to it. I've given some gifts in the past to Colleen that I was excited about, but this one was different, because it was really a joint effort between the two of us. It connected me to her and her family in a way that I hadn't really expected. We spent many hours recording the raw video, figuring out chronological orders, adding clips together, editing out the many unwatchable, damaged parts of the VHS tape or random stuff like the 1988 Iowa/Iowa State basketball game Jim had preserved. In the past, when the girls would get out the old VHS tapes and watch them, I would usually watch and enjoy them to a certain extent, not as much as the girls but still laughing at seeing how they were when they were young. But working on this project connected me to this videos more deeply because the end result is ultimately ours. I wouldn't label us "creative" types, and I don't mean in the sense of being a unique personality (we are both pretty odd), but more in the sense of doing actual creating. We don't paint, never had many drawing skills, never been much for creative writing, and we both are very musical but we don't exactly create it. However, this project was an act of creation for the two of us. We took raw materials in an untouched form and turned them into something beautiful and creative. And finishing it up to give away is an emotional thing because it's like your baby.

What made this gift especially meaningful for me to give away is that it's exactly what I want to do with my career. At the core, librarianship is about getting information into the hands of people who want it and can't find it. It's about preservation of information and extending access to anyone who needs it. Colleen and I had a lot of raw information and a specific user set and we've connected the two beautifully. It was a very rewarding experience and I hope to do it again soon. The best part about it is that next time I do this type of a project, it will be so much more efficient because I've worked out 75% of the kinks and can visualize each piece of the process so much better than before. That being said, anybody who's interested in hiring me, I'll do a better job than Walgreens and for an insanely lower price. Just let me know. Seriously, I am itching to start another project.

But after all is said and done, can you really put a price on this?

That's what our kids will look like.

-Jon

Facelift.

Thought it was an appropriate background. I was close to choosing something else; it's almost sensory overload. I also figured out how to make the entire blog space wider so it will stop cutting off the right side of YouTube videos I embed. Niiice.

In approximately 4 hours, Semester 1 is done. Today Colleen said, "If you think of it like a pie, you're 1/4th done with the pie!" What a delicious metaphor. I would say my graduate school experience so far has been like French Silk.

Speaking of blogs, this is a super sweet one that was featured on Neatorama. These two guys decided to pick a random place in the world and stay there for three months, their thinking being that three months is a good amount of time to get to know the location, not as well as the locals but certainly better than the average tourists. The main reason it caught my eye was that their first 91 days was spent in Oviedo, Spain. Going through all their blog posts was very reminiscent for me, as I recognized tons of the places they visited. It was cool to see somebody else living in the place where I lived, taking pictures of foreign places that became so commonplace to me and my classmates. So it won't be nearly as great if you haven't been, but it's certainly worth a peruse. The duo are currently in Savannah, Georgia, taking pictures, chattin' up the locals, and experiencing Georgia as it's meant to be experienced. I guess. Who knows, I've never been to Georgia. Here's their blog:

Savannah & Oviedo

So that's cool. I also wanted to put up the final project I worked on for my computing class. I worked with a guy named Jon on it; surprising we didn't come up with some clever play on having the same name. Our project was to design a site or system that was interactive for web users and met some information need. Clearly, we went above and beyond that. Check it out: Live in Iowa City. Jon came up with the idea and I wrote a killer proposal and then we put the site together. That's not completely accurate. Jon constructed the majority of the site since he had access to an external server and had some experience in PHP coding and I contributed a few pretty simple HTML coding pages, Javascript, etc. Right now, the site has a lot of things to update and fix, but the functionality of most everything is there. Be sure to click the events to see the sweet drop down animation. After we presented our project to the class, our professor said this was like halfway through his next class' coursework as he didn't really get into the details of PHP in this class. So that's great. Even better, Jon and I are both the class in the spring so I smell a continuation project happening. Look out for this site to blow up soon. I'm predicting the Facebook of the next decade.

I hope we get snow soon.

-Jon

Rap Doc.

So...this looks awesome.

The audio is off, and it's directed by actor Michael Rappaport, which is unexpected. But other than that, this whole documentary looks super interesting. Tribe is almost certainly my favorite hip hop "group" versus single rap artist, and getting to hear thoughts and interviews by the group members themselves along with other prominent members of the hip hop community is bound to be very interesting. Sign me up for anything where ?uestlove talks about music. I'll keep my radar up for this thing on DVD.

-Jon

The Ghost Inside

This is awesome. Continuing the tradition of DJ Danger Mouse flipping conventional music media on its head, here is the latest video from Broken Bells, the pairing of Danger Mouse and Shins lead singer James Mercer.

The song is The Ghost Inside off of their self-titled debut album. This is the second video released for this song, and this one is far cooler in terms of being really off-the-wall zany. The whole thing is basically the entire video of Private Eyes by Hall & Oates, with Mercer's mouth interposed over Daryl Hall's. So you're watching what was a terrible video from 1981 co-opted to make a cool video from 2010. Very reminiscent of Danger Mouse's video mash-up from The Grey Album. The result is a little creepy looking, but man is it unique. This probably breaks several copyright laws of some kind. Danger Mouse rules.

-Jon