I read an interesting article recently about Rick Rubin and how he is going to save Columbia Records. Two observations on the article…One, record companies and even Rick Rubin still don’t get it. And two, how I find new music and how I listen to music has drastically changed in the last year.

For music I already know, I either listen to my iPod/iTunes or to satellite radio. For new music…I listen to:

Pandora.com - in my opinion the best source for music you won’t hear anywhere else. Here’s the station I created, happiness & harmony

Live365.com - you have to search a little but there are some great independent broadcasters there, including my favorite Into the Mystic

And then there’s Musicovery where listening is also visual:
Musicovery : interactive webRadio

Ok, so the National Security rumor was not true…

Blogger has locked PostSecret

It was really Blogger taking the site down they thought it was a spam blog. Which, Blogger says, is a site with…

irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Which is weird because I’m pretty sure at PostSecret.com, each post was just an image of the postcard.

I actually did a blog search on another topic today, and I got a bunch of these listings which I assume are spam blogs:

Annoying to say the least.

Hopefully Frank Warren will get Blogger to put the site back up. Here is a small gallery of some of the postcards:
Frank Warren PostSecret

I often run across sites that I think may fit the Soul of the Web. PostSecret.com was one of them that I had thought about but never got around to adding.

From Wikipedia:

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

Here is a CNN article from Jan 2007:
The secrets people reveal

Unfortunately, as of today, the site seems to be gone.

And the rumors are running rampant as to why:

PostSecret Site Shut Down Over National Security
Post Secret considered spam blog, mistakenly shut down?
Is PostSecret Dead?

In the meantime, here is a recent video on YouTube about Post Secret:

There are many web sites that have archived what happened on September 11, 2001 - what people experienced, what they saw, what they heard and how they felt.

Here are a few (some from the Soul Directory, some not), that in their unique way, help us remember…

September 11 Digital Archive (911digitalarchive.org)

Here Is New York (www.hereisnewyork.org)

New York Architecture (www.nyc-architecture.com)

The Sonic Memorial Project (www.sonicmemorial.org)

Mark Tucker’s web site (www.marktucker.com) has been in the SotW directory for a while now. Every now and then I visit to see his latest photos.

It seems recently the site was redesigned and he is using AutoViewer, a flash-based photo gallery, to display some of his work. On a widescreen monitor, the effect is really lovely.

My favorites…Dream and bongo java coffeehouse

Googling Jose Gonzalez led me to this wonderful site/project called The Takeaway Shows.

You meet a band. You take them outside, in the streets, and ask them to play there, shoot the movie in one unique shot, whatever happens. Those are the Take-Away Shows…

All the Takeaway Shows

Jose Gonzalez:

this is slightly addicting…

flickrvision

and this…

twittervision

What’s the number one rule of blogging? Write often.

What’s my excuse for not writing? (because there’s always some excuse) I started a blog in support of Barack Obama and got completely sucked in to the craziness that is the ‘08 campaign.

Anyways, a few changes at the SotW…I’ve moved the poll for voting on new sites to the sidebar. I’m going to try to post more often about sites that are interesting, that may not fit the SotW criteria but are worth exploring.

The new site to vote on is Dooce.com, a personal blog that has been around for a while, is wickedly funny and well-written, and I was really surprised it wasn’t in the directory already. So take a moment to visit it and vote.

Voting closed, site added to the directory.

name: Extreme Instability
url: http://www.extremeinstability.com/

I started out as a storm chaser, with no plans or desire to shoot still images.

Taking a moment out from Soul of the Web stuff…

The people over at The Darfur Wall are raising money for organizations that directly help the people in Darfur. It is a unique approach…every dollar you donate lights a number. Every number represents one life that has been lost due to the crisis in Darfur.

When I first found the site, there were 3,000 numbers lit. Today there are over 53,000 lit.

If so moved, please light a number (or 2, 10, 20…) at The Darfur Wall. It would be amazing to see a whole panel of the wall lit soon!