The MOG-GAZETTE - The MOG Gazette (February 27th, 2007)

New Feature on MOG! We have just launched a "one-stop-shop" on MOG to get instant music recommendations that are custom tailored to your personal taste, with sound samples you can listen to and videos you can watch!

Check it out here: http://mog.com/recommendations or just click on the Recommendations link that is now on the MOG navigation menu.

You can click on the different options on the left sidebar to see top songs and albums from Featured MOGs and your Trusted MOGs. The songs and albums update constantly as people continue to listen to music. And the best thing about Recommendations is The Magic Button, where MOG calculates which moggers have the same music taste as you, and gives you quick and easy access to listen and watch videos from their top songs this week, this month, and their last songs played. Also, all songs link to purchase on iTunes. Sweet.

To make this feature extra tasty, you'll never see a song there that you already have, we've removed them for your convenience! If some of your peeps are missing from Recommendations tell them to go play some music because we only show people who have played music in the past week.

If you are not using MOG-O-MATIC yet and you want to make MOG Recommendations more personalized, download MOG-O-MATIC (http://mog.com/download) - once your digital music collection has been MOGified and your listening stats are being tracked by MOG-O-MATIC, you will be able to use The Magic Button to get personalized recommendations that will update constantly.

Enjoy this habit inducing feature!

Peace out, The MOG team.

Testers wanted: new MOG-O-MATIC for Mac

Thanks for hanging in there, Mac moggers. We have a new version of the Mac client we are testing - this new version uses a spanking new database format which fixes the issues with crashing during indexing as well prevents incorrect play reporting. If you are a Mac MoM user and would like to help us test, please email support@mog.com with subject: Mac MoM Testing and we will send you the test version. Please include in the email what version of MacOS you are running, what type of Mac you have and how many tracks you have in your collection.

NOTE: your existing local database will be deleted and the client will need to re-index once you install it.

Vote for MOG in the SXSW People’s Choice Awards!

We’re proud to announce that MOG is a finalist for the South by Southwest Interactive Awards, in the Community category. There are some great sites up for the award, but we think you’ll agree that MOG kicks their collective butt.

Lucky for all you MOG lovers, we’re up for the People’s Choice award too! And we need your help to win. (http://www.sxsw.com/peoples_choice)

You can vote once a day, every day through March 2nd. So hurry and vote now, and then keep on voting every day! It’s up to you to make sure MOG wins. In return for your efforts, we promise to keep making MOG awesomer and awesomer all the time. How’s that for a deal?

-What's hot on MOG

The new Nine Inch Nails album: There is a ton of buzz about the new NIN album, "Year Zero", especially because of the intense viral marketing being done to promote it. pfranco007 has a list of all the strange websites set up to confuse and entice you into checking out the album. http://mog.com/pfranco007/blog_post/46975. wgraham76 has details about another leaked NIN track here: http://mog.com/wgraham76/blog_post/46677 and watchedpots delves into the mythology of "Year Zero." http://mog.com/watchedpots/blog_post/47081

MOG's own musical Picasso: If you are a fan of jazz and blues, you absolutely must go visit Has' MOG page. (http://mog.com/has) Has is a fine artist in the United Kingdom who shares his incredible screenprints, drawings, paintings and digital work with us weekly. Inspired by musicians from Bill Evans to Professor Longhair, Has' work is the perfect visual accompaniment to classic tunes.

Videos of the week:

Getting chased by the cops? Here's the perfect soundtrack. http://mog.com/Rawkkiddo/blog_post/47003

Is "Rocket 88" the first rock 'n roll song? Watch this video and judge for yourself. http://mog.com/CrashPryor/blog_post/47195

Get seduced by a monster. Let Gollum sing a little Barry White to you! http://mog.com/levek/blog_post/47006

-Mogger of the Week

Say hello to mogger Joxley (http://mog.com/joxley). There is some speculation about Joxley's age, perhaps because his writing is generally excellent and far more mature than that of your average 17 year-old, but Joxley is most definitely a high-school student in England. He first heard about MOG through Spin.com, and has been a user since June 2006. Joxley's favorite artists are Gogol Bordello and Bright Eyes, and he can often be found regaling us with tales of the many concerts he attends (a highlight being his experience of seeing James Brown live in 2004.) In addition to turning many MOG users onto UK music, Joxley says some of his top discoveries came from the MOG community, including Amy Winehouse, Sufjan Stevens and Jarvis. A comment by fellow mogger Mike the Knife (http://mog.com/mike_the_knife) spurred on the popular series of posts "Joxley: Rock Detective" (http://mog.com/Joxley/blog_post/42915). Now that your curiosity has been sparked, go check out his page!

-Word of MOG

Want to be scared out of your wits? Listen to this MP3. The Boy Flood: "The track is a remix of a call made to Art Bell of Coast to Coast AM (They cover the paranormal and other fringe stuff – Something I’m into BIG style). It was live on air, a guy comes on claiming to have worked at Area 51, and was trying to warn the world about the coming disasters and the alien link to it all. His voice, and the weird things that happened to the shows transmissions, only added to the whole scrazy incident. Don’t get it? You will . . ." http://mog.com/The_Boy_Flood/blog_post/46908

What's it like to talk to a Rolling Stone? Jonh Ingham: "It’s my policy if I like an artist’s or musician’s work to invade their skimpy privacy and thank them for the pleasure they’ve given me. I reckon that some geniune thanks makes up for yet another hassle and their response has always been a smile and a thank you. Ron’s art is good and some of it is a window into the soul of his sitter. (There’s an amazing one of Charlie Watts and if I had £15,000 I’d buy it.) So I went over to him." http://mog.com/Jonh_Ingham/blog_post/46992

Emiliana Torrini's voice will make you want to take all your clothes off. No, really! k8girl: "Although Emiliana Torrini has been around for quite a bit, and made some waves in the music world, I had never heard of her until a few months back. There have been a few MOG posts about her and her new album, Fisherman’s Woman, which I am going to try my best and pick up. The coolest unknown fact to me was that she has toured and collaborated with Thievery Corporation, and means I have heard her before, I just had no idea." http://mog.com/k8girl/blog_post/46798

Film reviewer, professor, bartender, pharmacist, retired bum: just few of the things Moggers do in real life! Lord Helmet: "Just curious what my fellow moggers do to make ends meet. What do you do for a living? (if Mogging doesn't pay the bills.)" http://mog.com/Lord_Helmet/blog_post/46656

Pixies fans? Help a brother out. Calvert: "I decided to make my next playlist: “World of Pixies,” wherein I dropped Iggy Pop, the Stooges… as influences of the Pixies… as well as Radiohead, David Bowie and Nirvana, all of whom cite the Pixies as an influence. I’d like to do more to beef up this playlist, so if any Pixies fan out there has some advice, drop it like it’s hot." http://mog.com/calvert/blog_post/46931

X-Clan are back! Celebrate the return of the legendary group, and their collaborations with today's leaders of conscious hip-hop. tfisher: "The resurrection of X-Clan has come back with fierceness. Featuring guest appearances from the Blastmaster KRS One, Abstract Rude, DJ Quik, Damian “Junior Gong” Marley and Chali 2na of Jurassic 5, to name a few, Return From Mecca embodies the type of quality longtime Hip-Hop fans have come to expect." http://mog.com/tfisher420/blog_post/47104

Drummers: the scourge of the music world? etcvisitor: "Once I was telling a history professor of mine about a spat that I got into with the drummer of an old band that I was in. He replied (really quickly I might add) with this: 'What do you expect man, this is a guy who beats on stuff all day long. Of course he’s got a temper, he’s a drummer.' Now I know this can't always be the case, but why is it that bands go through drummers more than any other member?" http://mog.com/etcvisitor/blog_post/46556

Amnesty for the Undiscovered: chandlersford: "I’m talking best kept secrets. I’m talking about the rare and ‘undiscovered’ nuggets that constantly amaze us by their obscurity. Well, how about an amnesty for the undiscovered? I know we all have a widget for recommendations, last played and all manner of check this out features. Looking at many Mogs I know some of you have a wide pallet of taste. I’m talking about the ones that you really don’t want to share because the bubble may burst, they may become famous and then everyone will have one, they may make it big and start producing endless albums that are all the same (no not Aerosmith or Oasis)." http://mog.com/chandlersford/blog_post/47191

Feeling down? Find solace in the dreamy world of Camera Obscura. Mike the Knife: "I was feeling somewhat melancholy last Friday. Missing absent friends. Needing a bit of empathy. The perfect tonic was a show by Camera Obscura at Bimbo’s 365 Club here in the City by the Bay. The venue has been the San Francisco home to the annual Tease-O-Rama burlesque fest, and is also notable for its novel girl-in-the-fishbowl installation in the lounge." http://mog.com/Mike_the_Knife/blog_post/47184

Impulse Records and revolutionary jazz: Reverend Geoffrey: " In 1961, Max Roach wrote a song called “Mendacity” which contains these lyrics: 'Now, voting rights in this here land, they cannot be denied. But, if I tried in certain states, from treetops i’d be tied.' That’s some heavy s**t right there, and for a mainstream label to release that especially when labels were run by old school white guys (they still are) is amazing. This label to me was the Def Jam of the ‘60’s, because in the beginning it followed the pattern all other jazz labels, but then Ray Charles did a jazz record..." http://mog.com/reverend_geoffrey/blog_post/46848

-MOG tip of the week

How to get the most out of the new recommendation tools: If you aren't running Mog-O-Matic, you should, because then you will be able to take full advantage of the new tools. Invite your friends to MOG, then get them to run Mog-O-Matic, that way you can guarantee that your friends are giving you recommendations. The more trusted MOGs you have, the more recommendations you can get!

-MOG under the hood with Christian Richter

Hi folks. I am writing to tell you a bit more about how Recommendations work when you turn the Magic Button on. First I need to explain a concept we call Similar MOGs – when you run MOG-O-MATIC and we get information about your music collection and what you are listening to, this enables us to match you with other moggers based on the similarity of your musical tastes. When you click the link “Find MOGs Like Me” from your MOG page, the people listed are your current Similar MOGs.

When you first run MOG-O-MATIC, we know a lot about your collection but not a lot about what you listen to. So your early Similar MOGs are based largely on your collection. As time goes on, we learn more about what you listen to, and so Similar MOGs are constantly re-calculated over time to match people more and more based on what they are listening to in order to get the best results.

Now, back to Recommendations. When you turn the Magic Button on, the recommendations you see are from your Similar MOGs, in order of most to least similar. The idea here is that a great way to find out about new music is to see what the people who share your taste are listening to. We hope that this will also introduce you to new people on MOG who share your tastes.

-MOG looking to hire

Rock star web developer: Ruby on Rails expertise a must. MySQL experience a plus. Must be able to work on site in Berkeley, CA.

Email adam@mog.com if you're interested.

That's all until next week. Keep on moggin'

- Kate http://mog.com/kate

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Posted on 02/27/2007