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If you have never heard of former NBA great Detlef Schrempf, he was the first German born player to reach the NBA Finals.

Band of Horses wrote a song about him that I found on thesixtyone. How frickin amazing.

Just found this iMix on iTunes. Gotta check out some of the songs later when I have time.

I recently saw the upcoming internet music site thesixtyone.com on Digg and decided to check the web start-up out.



If you havent checked it out yourself, thesixtyone.com is a self proclaimed "music adventure" where users have the chance to listen to a variety of music streaming over the internet in a flash browser. The main draw of thesixtyone is a points system where users can level up by listening to new music, inviting new users to the site, and by just logging in daily.

The site encourages you to then spend your points on "bumping" songs. If a song is new or not too popular, it costs more points to give it a bump. As songs work their way up the charts, it gets sent to the hot tab where users can find soon-to-be hits in a multitude of genres.

The site also offers random tracks at the section it calls "The Rack." Here, you are given a play button with some album art where you are encouraged just to hit play. After you play the song, you can learn how many bumps the song has and then download it in many situations. You can also add the song to your profile.



Personal profiles play an important role at thesixtyone.com. Here you can add a picture, choose a couple profile songs, or receive wall posts from your friends. The profile is set up really well, but really could use some more room for personal information so that my profile would feel a little more unique.



To listen to music on the site, a flash player is used on the top of the page. It is a simple player which shows album art, song title and artist, and volume, but this player works extraordinarily well. The music is really good quality for streaming music with no load time. The coolest feature of the little player is it's ability to keep playing songs when you surf around the website, which is a welcome addition for a site which is looking to revamp how you look at social networking.



Another little cool feature for Firefox users is the fact that if you have thesixtyone.com open in another tab, the song which is currently playing will show on the tab keeping you straight on which band and song are playing as you browse.



This all being said, thesixtyone.com still has a long way to go if it wants change the way people look at the attractive combo of free music and social networking. Here are the top five things I see the site needing to fix before it hits the big time.

1. Integration with Facebook/MySpace - The guys over at thesixtyone.com have a great website going on right now. The music player is simple and sounds amazing, which is really important for a music site but something that most other sites find ways to mess up. However, I don't see the site beating out these two networking giants in the near future. We need to see the site integrated into Facebook or MySpace apps and definitely into Google's Open Social to help spread the word about this community.

2. Music organization - The organization on the site isn't bad, but it definitely could see improvement. I see that I can choose genre or if music is hot or not, but where are my alphabetical listings? Can I see what is hot this week compared to this month? I want to be able to just sit and chart tons of different stats to see just what is being listened to. I would also like to see a longer list of genres or maybe some sub-genres. This will give me a way to find artists in my favorite genres, like skate punk or instrumental jazz.

3. Suggestions based off my musical tastes - Thesixtyone.com claims that it is a musical adventure, but it throws users onto the island without a map. Pandora is popular online because it takes bands you like and finds new music you will enjoy based on your tastes. I love my friend Cody Jones because he has similar musical tastes and knows what I like, giving me a long list of bands I would like without me having to do much searching. People don't want to listen to a hundred songs to find one they like. Wouldn't it be sweet if I could export my iTunes library, upload that file to thesixtyone, and then get recommended tracks based on the bands in my library and how many times I listen to certain tracks? Work to integrate that and I will be sold for life.

4. Integrate iTunes, the Zune Marketplace, and other music stores - I really like the ability to click a link and purchase tracks off of Amazon. It really makes it easy to legitimately purchase music I enjoy, but I don't want to use Amazon. From your site, it appears that you receive a small chunk of change for each song you sell. Do everyone a favor and put up links for other popular online music stores. You may see yourselves losing out on some purchases, but the increased traffic and user satisfaction will be well worth it.

5. Add podcasting - I know that thesixtyone is a music site, but the flash player and bump idea are really fresh. The site is really easy for artists to use and add content too, so why not podcasters? You could add tons of great spoken content for free and just add a huge wealth of audio content. Sure it isn't music, but I would love to have a podcast on the site and work for bumps. It would also draw a whole new crowd to the site and add a huge amount of visitors.

All in all, thesixtyone.com is a great music site and definitely worth a look if you are into music in the least bit. The social aspect works real well and with some minor adjustments, this site could really take off in the next couple of months. I will definitely be keeping my eyes on it for a while to come.

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Got a chance to make the trek up to Chicago yesterday, finally taking the train-ride to the city after I made promised myself to get there sometime over break.

The day started out pretty rough, waking up at 7AM after going to bed at 3AM. I really wonder sometimes why I subject myself to such horrid punishment. After some coffee, a donut, and a marginal amount of grumpy behavior, we were on the train and on our way to the Museum of Science and Industry.

Pretty much the coolest part of the day was the U-505 Submarine exhibit. When I worked at the bank a couple summers ago, I got to meet a guy named Zenon Lukosius. Zenon was an interesting guy who fought in World War II for the US Navy. To summarize his story, Zenon jumped on a sinking German submarine and replaced a sea strainer, saving the ship and helping the US learn German codes which ultimately helped lead to the end of WWII.

This was the first time I got to see the exhibit since I met Zenon, so I really enjoyed the chance to see the exhibit. It is a pretty cool piece of history and definitely worth checking out if you are in Chicago.

And if you do make the trip, be sure to check out the first floor bathroom by the escalator. Inside you can find the Dyson Airblade, which is definitely the greatest hand dryer of all-time.

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Nearly 14 hours in, 2008 is shaping up to be a pretty good year. While you should never judge a book by it's cover, I am going to jump on the 2008 bandwagon and hype this whole year up like I hope it is going to deserve.

I also didn't think that I would possible be having one of my best 2008 moments so early into the New Year. I wasn't planning an all-nighter for the New Year (hell, I wasn't planning one as late as 11pm last night), but it turned out to be a great idea and definitely worth it.

Now excuse me, I am going to pass out.