What to Put on Your Music Website

What to Put on Your Music WebsiteWhat to Put on Your Music WebsiteYour various social networking profiles can never take the place of having your own music website. When you have your own artist website, you have complete freedom to control the message and create a recognizable brand for your music. Think of labels like 4AD or album covers from bands like The Smiths- you know them as soon as you see them. With your own website, you can create a similar association for your groupies with your music. Thats all well and good, of course, but there are certain things you need to have on your website to get the most out of it. By that same token, there are things you should definitely skip. Lets take it from the top Things You Should Have on Your Website Music Well, duh Your website should have a place for people to listen to your music and links to places people can download your songs. If you are selling physical copies, have an order function- Paypal will do the trick- so people can order your CDs directly from you. Contact Have a way for fans to contact you and a way for press/promoters/manager/other industry people to reach you. If you have a PR company, a manager, a label or so on that should fielding certain requests for you, then make koranvers their contact information is there as well. It is really important. If you have, say, an agent and everyone is contacting you instead of them to book shows, it creates a lot of confusion. Bio Background information gives your fans a chance to learn more about you, of course, but when you have your bio on your site, it gives members of the media an easy way to research your band in one easy step which makes them more inclined to write about you/write longer pieces about you. News Whether you call it a blog or a news section, have one part of your site that receives regular updates. It is where you can announce new releases and tours, but it is also where you create a more personal connection with your fans. Tell the m about being in the studio, write about your new favorite song- anything that gives them a glimpse behind the scenes. Be sure to keep this section fresh. belastung update Nov 2015 is not a welcoming sight to see. Photos First and foremost, have your press photos on the site, and have a downloadable version that the press can grab and use in their publications. It is the most important thing to have. Beyond that, it is up to you to what extent you want to add candid photos to your site. Shots from backstage at your shows, in the studio, and so on can be fun for fans to look at. Links Post links to your various social networking profiles- this is a must. Beyond those links, links to your label, your favorite musicians, and so on are also good choices. Any site you like that you want to share with your fans is fine to put on the list, though putting up sites that are pornographic or that advocate violence probably are best kept to yourself (and yes, I say this because I have seen musi cians put these links on their sites). Feedback Whether it is a comment section in your blog, a forum/message board or something else entirely (or all of the above), make sure your website provides a way for fans to leave you feedback. Your fan feedback will tell you what is working, what isnt, and what your fans want that youre not delivering. Now, naturally, you should have fun with your website, and you can add games and other features as you see fit. This list above simply details that must-haves. Likewise, there are things- like a discography- that become appropriate after you have been working at things for a while and have a longer history. There are some things to avoid on your site. Things You Shouldnt Have on Your Website Spelling Errors OK, we all make typos. I happen to be something of a queen of such mistakes. However, do your best to catch them and pay special attention to words that are associated with your music career. What Im saying here is dont be songwriter. Use a spell check program and encourage your family and friends to set aside concerns over your delicate ego and point out mistakes that you have made. Bogus Claims Consider this the MySpace/Twitter profile problem. Just because you have decided that you have a record label, say, dont call yourself a CEO- a CEO is a real job with a very specific definition. Dont claim to be signed to a major label when you are an unsigned artist. Not only do people see through those claims, what is the point in telling people who may be able to give you a record deal that you already have one? Ditto for outlandish sales figures, doing the pretend-jack-of-all-trades routine (I am a musician/model/film director/actorwhen really, youve never professionally done any of the above), and other self-anointed titles. You may think that giving yourself a resume boost or talking a big game will lead to bigger things, but the opposite is true. It makes you look a bit silly and uninformed about how the industry works, plus it makes you look dishonest. None of these are attractive traits in a potential business partner. Honesty- it is more effective than you think. tHiS tYpInG If I can stop just one person from typing lIkE tHiS, then my work here is done. Booty Shots No, that photo of you leaning over, wearing next to nothing, that you snapped in the mirror using your cell phone does NOT belong on your site. Trust me.

An Army of Tiny Robots to the Rescue

An Army of Tiny Robots to the Rescue An Army of Tiny Robots to the Rescue An Army of Tiny Robots to the Rescue As an undergraduate student, Spring Berman, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Arizona State University, did research in a lab working on control of multiple underwater gliders for collecting data about the environmental and biological processes of the ocean.She was fascinated by the idea of coordinating groups of robots to improve ordnungsprinzip performance as well as the fact that researchers found inspiration in nature in fish that school together for finding food and protection from predators, in flocks of birds, herds of sheep, colonies of bees, and ants. All exhibit collective animal behavior, which, she explained, is characterized by the lack of a leader in a group, or collective. Instead, the animals perform together but each uses its own local sensor information about its environment or about its neighbors to determine next steps to acc omplish a task rather than information from a leader.She continued focusing on robotics, earning M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, and now leads a team of more than a dozen students, including eight doctoral candidates, developing techniques for controlling groups of robots that offer potential where its not practical for humans to be on site.ASU Autonomous Collective Systems Laboratorys research focuses on the modeling and analysis of behaviors in both biological and engineered collectives. Image Jessica Hochreiter / Arizona State UniversityThe goal is for robot collectives, or swarms, to be used in search-and-rescue operations in unsafe or inaccessible areas in gathering enormous amounts of data from many points of view, such as tracking environmental factors that may help prevent detrimental changes over time, perhaps a species becoming endangered or monitoring forest fire and in biomedical applications on a microscale or even nanoscale level to deliver drugs targeted to tumors.Why a colle ctive? Berman responded, You might want to cover a large space in a short period of time or even accomplish a task over a longer period. If you use a single complicated, expensive robot and it breaks down, you dont have a system. If you have a few hundred or thousand relatively inexpensive robots and a few of them fail, the others can keep working and the system will still operate.Because the cost of each unit must be low, the robots have limited capabilities for things like communication, sensing, power and computation. To keep costs down, Berman and her team were working mainly in the virtual world until recently, simulating robots performing a desired task because variables can be changed at a lower cost than working with actual robots. But, she said, The real test is whether they work in practice. When you have a lot of robots, a lot of things can go wrong.Now, larger scale experiments can be conducted because the students have built 30 physical robots using a platform they desi gned. The objective is to figure out how to identify theoretical guarantees of their performance as a collective, given their limitations, such as no access to GPS, no prior information about their environment and lack of reliable communication with each other. The challenge is how to get them to do something useful under these constraints, Berman said.Various projects underway include getting a target distribution of robot activity over an environment (such as a collective of robotic bees to use for crop pollination) how to get them to cover a boundary instead of an entire space how to control a group of robots to transport a heavy or cumbersome payload as a team (in collaboration with an ASU biologist who studies ants that bring back food items to their nests in groups) and how to get robots to do mapping of any area underground or under water using very minimal data.We think about strategies that would not require explicit communication among robots but information just from thei r local sensor measurements to guarantee that they move in a specific direction, Berman said. That would have applications in things like disaster response, construction or manufacturing automated warehouses, other types of transport problems in hazardous areas.Some students are looking at whether there is a way the robots can not only measure their own states but estimate the states of the robots around them to make use of that feedback. Just by exploiting feedback about neighboring robots, this can expand the types of collective tasks they can do, Berman said. We want to have the swarm do things like detect when it has accomplished a specific task in a decentralized way and agree Ok, we finished this task and we have to go on to another task.One important capability is adaptation. Part of using feedback about other robots states is part of this overall goal to get the swarm to adapt to changing conditions and environments such as avoiding unexpected obstacles. We want them to pote ntially operate for a long duration so things are going to change during that time. We want them to be adaptable.Nancy S. Giges is an independent writer. For Further Discussion If you have a few hundred or thousand relatively inexpensive robots and a few of them fail, the others can keep working and the system will still operate. Prof. Spring Berman, Arizona State University

New Year, New Career Attitude

New Year, New Career AttitudeNew Year, New Career AttitudeEvery job includes some task or responsibility that isnt enjoyable. However, when you feel stuck in a job that is legitimately terrible for you, its hard to keep a positive attitude by focusing on the silver lining. Instead, you watch in horror as your attitude, your energy and possibly your work ethic crumbles under the pressure of working a job that is a poor fit for you. Fortunately, your mind can have power over your circumstances. If you choose to reframe your crummy job as a temporary stepping point as you look for a new job, you can salvage your time, your network and your attitude before you leave. Not only will this set you up for a smooth transition out of your current workplace, but it will help you develop the professional skills you need to navigate tough situations in the future. Of course, if youre in a truly toxic or dangerous workplace, you might decide that its not in your best interest to stick it out. Howev er, if youre unhappy but tolerably well treated, these tips can help you start the New Year off with a new attitude until you can transition outFind one thing to be grateful for every day. In a badeanstalt situation, it is easy to let the big problems take up the focus. However, bad things happening dont have to detract from good things happening. The two kinds of events can exist together and often go hand in hand with each other. The only thing that prevents us from seeing the partnership is when we choose to focus only on negative things. For example, you might find yourself at odds with your coworkers, clients and schedule for most of the week. However, the income you receive for putting up with these downsides has allowed you to get out of debt several years earlier than you would have working somewhere else. Instead of feeling taken advantage of, you can choose to appreciate the fact that now that youre out of debt you truly can work anywhere you want. This job as bad an expe rience as it might have been helped you earn your freedom. Take time every day to reframe your terrible experience with one positive thing. Showing gratitude every day wont change the facts about your job, but it will change your internal environment and allow you to feel more satisfied and peaceful about your situation.Force yourself to think of a way in which this experience might benefit you.Sometimes it might seem like a situation or behavior is absolutely 100% bad. However, thats rarely the truth of the matter. In fact, most negative situations in the workplace can work for your good by giving you valuable experience that makes you better off in the end, or that trains you to avoid even worse situations in the future. For example, for about two years, I commuted three days a week for ninety minutes each way in traffic. After the first year, the commute really began to bother me. Ultimately I let that negative factor overwhelm the rest of my job and became bitter when the compa ny wouldnt let me go full-time work from home.At the time I chose to be upset. However, now I can see that this was a valuable lesson that let me know I prefer a work-from-home environment and that privacy and quiet in the workplace are very important to me. This self-knowledge allows me to avoid job offers and situations that I know will make me uncomfortable on a day-to-day basis. If you have difficulty thinking of how an experience might benefit you, work with a close friend to reframe the situation for you. Describe the situation from your point of view, then ask, How do you think this experience might benefit me in the long run? You may be surprised by the insights your friend can offer.Screen your work friends for bad attitudes. Unfortunately, a bad attitude is catching. If you fall into the wrong crowd at work, you can easily get swept up into sarcasm, bitterness and general lack of excitement for the work you do. If you feel that your bad attitude is something youve acquired from someone else, you need to make some changes. Try to catch yourself from engaging with negative behavior and talk and re-direct the conversation in more positive ways. Then try to get an influx of new energy by making new friends. Say hello or interact with someone new in your office every day. Go out to lunch with a different crowd, or invite a new person to go to lunch with your regular friends. You dont have to abandon your current work friends, but diluting a bad attitude with positivity goes a long way toward fixing it. If youre unhappy where you work, youre likely already looking for a new job. However, theres a chance that poor attitude will seep out in your cover letter, resume and interview. Even worse, its going to have a negative effect on your day-to-day mood. Use these tips to improve your attitude and teach yourself that you can learn valuable things from any situation.