Photo by: Sarahana Shrestha

Iceland is easily one of the top five places I’d like to visit. Although getting a glimpse of its mind-blowing landscape is very appealing, I’ll admit the songwriter side of me is curious to find out what’s in their water. I came of age as Icelandic artists like Björk and Sigur Rós rose to fame, and, just recently, I’ve had the great pleasure to work with the magnificent folk singer-songwriter Lay Low (nee Lovisa Elisabet Sigrunardottir). Lovisa is just a few weeks away from the release of her U.S. debut “Farewell Good Night’s Sleep” on her own Loo Records, so she packed her bags and crossed the Atlantic to play two pre-release shows in New York City.

Lovisa arrived over Presidents Day weekend with her troubadour partner Agnes and manager Kari Sturluson. As a fellow foreigner with a commonly mispronounced name on my birth certificate, I made sure to go over the correct pronunciations before they left. For curious readers, that’s:

Lovisa = Loh-visa (like the tourist’s permit)
Kari- Khaurie (Laurie starting with a “K” and with a muted “h”)
Agnes = AHg-nes (like starting with an “AH” of wonder)

Each day before her shows, Brendan and I played tour guide and took the group to the headquarters of some of New York’s finest media outlets. Below are some pics to document the rare occasion.

We started the frosty Tuesday with an interview/performance at NPR’s Bob Edwards Show, followed right after by an interview/performance at NPR’s ‘Here and Now.’ Here’s a pic of Agnes and Lovisa overlooking the Empire State Building from the NPR studios:

We then hailed a cab uptown to visit Last.fm. Their office is located in the same building as its parent headquarters CBS Radio. Lovisa, Agnes and Kari were thrilled to find out Last.fm’s studio was once Howard Stern’s. It was even funnier when we realized they were just at Stern’s current studio, XM Radio. Maybe it’s a sign? Who knows, Howard might dig Lay Low’s sweet, timeless songs… (if you’re reading this, you know where to reach us)

Here we are with our friends at CBS Radio / Last.fm:

Here’s a pic Brendan took at the Living Room on Tuesday night:

On Wednesday, we took Lay Low to record an interview with NPR’s “Weekend Edition: Saturday,” followed by an interview/performance at Out Magazine’s Chelsea headquarters. Out’s web editor Noah Michalson fell in love with Lay Low upon first listen. Be on the look out for an interview and a stripped down performance of three songs on Out.com soon.

Lay Low’s last night in town was well honored with a packed show at Rockwood Music Hall. Baeble Music.com was there to film a short documentary and Hooves on the Turf was there to take some really lovely photos (see the top photo of this post for proof!) and video.

Though I may not be able to get to Iceland for a few years, hanging out with Kary, Lovisa and Agnes definitely made me eager to start packing. In the meantime, we welcome back Lovisa, Kari and Agnes anytime to make our New York City a little more Iceland.

Here we are saying our goodbyes (but not for long!) at Shore Fire’s HQ:

In honor of Presidents’ Day (the important holiday this weekend), you must check out the official Whitehouse Flickr page. Some amazingly intimate moments captured on camera.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/

(Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

this is one of the funniest SNL skits I’ve seen in a long long time. I can still picture that punk rock girl on the Ocean City boardwalk with the Corrosion of Conformity logo stitched to the back of her jean jacket. I might just dig up my 7 Seconds and Dead Kennedy’s records this weekend.

http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/4b756a79e98731ed/4741e3c5156499a7/bbea293a/-cpid/f6f3e0267028fe9d

If there’s one maxim in the world of tech media you can count on it’s that when Google sneezes, it’s news. So when Google makes a bold move to create a next-generation social media platform, it’s really big news. This week’s announcement and debut of Google Buzz was met with the expected level of breathless hype and cataclysmic predictions. Longtime commentator and internet celeb Jason Calacanis was among the first to weigh in with an unequivocal first impression:

BREAKING: Google Buzz is brilliant, Facebook just lost half its value.

My 30 second review of Google Buzz:

1. Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years.

2. Facebook’s history is one filled with stealing other people’s innovations and doing them better (i.e. Zuckerberg has stolen every idea Evan Williams and the Twitter team have released). How ironic now that Google has out “Facebooked” Facebook.

3. Google has excellent privacy record and Facebook is a disaster. Most folks do not trust Zuckerberg and Facebook any more because of their privacy record (filled with lawsuits) and because they steal every good idea they see (i.e. Twitter’s innovations and FourSquare’s checking in).

4. Google Buzz auto generates your network–this is MUCH better process than Facebook’s.

5. Google Buzz is way faster than the sluggish Facebook–this is a HUGE advantage.

6. Google Buzz puts relies and updates into your GMAIL as threads–this is BRILLIANT and a HUGE advantage.

Facebook is going to see their traffic get cut in half by Google Buzz.

This really is game over for Facebook because you know Microsoft and Aol are going to copy Google Buzz as quick as they can. In fact, Aol would have a HUGE renaissance if they simply knocked off Google Buzz’s exact feature set. You would than have a reason to keep your @aol email address.

This could actually derail the Facebook IPO. It’s that serious. Facebook usage is going to plummet in the next year or two because of this. There really is no reason for non-game playing people who use GMAIL to log into Facebook.

If Google Ads social gaming to Google Buzz Facebook is 2012’s Pointcast.

Wow…. this is just stunning.

The “Facebook-killer” meme spread quickly (check Google News for proof) but is this revolution, or evolution? Let’s take a look at some of the key features, straight from Google themselves:

• Auto-following: You don’t have to build or rebuild your friend network, it happens organically as you send and receive email.
• Rich, fast, sharing experience: It pulls together a stream of information from your friends, media, photos, comments, in a dynamic way that feels more like a conversation.
• Public and private sharing: Self-explanatory, though it’s hard to see how this is a huge differentiatiator. Twitter is of course public, Facebook is mixed (and a bit opaque on this point), but nonetheless.
• Inbox integration: This is the “killer” that threatens to make this a killer app. Let’s face it, how much patience do people have to join yet another social network, especially a very generalist/aggregating one like this. It’s a tough hurdle to jump — but boy does it help to have 176 million unique users a month and a war chest of about $32 Billion in cash. Or so I would have to imagine.
• “Just The Good Stuff”: This sounds like marketing hype, and is to some extent, but they’re aiming for at least some substance with this point. The social media feed is prioritized, at least according to their claims it shows you the posts and updates you’re most likely to read, and buries the stuff you least likely to be interested in. An innovation, but interestingly also something that Facebook ramped up hard as well, just this month.

So then — what’s it like? Well here’s a quick overview primer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi50KlsCBio]

And their five marketing points above leave quite a bit out. Integration clearly is core to the philosphy, leveraging Google’s basket of heavyweight online properties such as YouTube, Picasa, and Blogger. The mobile integration looks to be one of the most formidable aspects to Buzz, when coupled with a GPS enabled mobile phone it enables functions ranging from finding people near you (perhaps a little creepy) to your own private Google Map that’s like a bookmarks bar for the real world, geotagging your camera phone shot so you can remember where that little out of the way dumpling place was next time you’re in the neighborhood.

OK, so back to Facebook’s 400 million users and near total dominance of the core social network space? Is this a threat, a complement, an eventual also-ran? Here’s a little more of what the experts are saying:

Techcrunch sums it up well:

The Battle

Without having had a chance to play with it yet, it would seem that the core idea behind Buzz is to take on Twitter and Facebook as the easiest way to share content online. Google is offering a number of compelling features such as smart curation (it gets better as you tell it what you like and what you don’t), and a rich mobile experience including location.

Because of the features it adds on to what Twitter does, and its overall look, it’s hard not to compare Buzz to FriendFeed. That service was arguably the better product than Twitter, but never took off in the same way for whatever reason (though I would argue that simplicity was a big factor). You could say the same thing for Twitter rivals Pownce and Jaiku (which Google actually bought) in the past. But by adding it to Gmail, Google is giving Buzz a great weapon to succeed where all of those others could not.

The big question is: will Gmail users buy into this quick sharing? Google thinks so because it’s a part of the evolution from email, to IM, to status updates. It

Wanna know a secret? I don’t like football. Not since I was 11 years old and Tony Dorsett was the best player in the league, anyway. What can I say, it’s just not my thing. My wife and daughters are eternally grateful for this.

But I do like New Orleans. A lot! I went to college there and try to make it back a couple times a year.

Still, I fully admit I’m the worst possible fair-weather Saints fan. A month ago, I couldn’t have told you the name of a single player on the team. But I did have a general awareness that they were having an historic season, and once they made the Super Bowl I decided I would watch it all the way through for the first time in my adult life.

Great game!

I had a pretty good time, but not as good as these folks. They’re hanging at one of my favorite places on earth, The Saturn Bar in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood. In fact, see those strands of hair in the lower right-hand corner of the photo? They belong to a friend of mine. This pic ran huge – half a page – in the NY Times today, and you can read the full story here

I have been informed that if I am going to break the seal and post links to preposterous UK novelty hits then I have no choice but to inflict this upon you. Sorry.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCPSh47gHz8]

I had the pleasure of talking baseball and hanging out with Boston trio State Radio last week in NYC before heading to Montclair, NJ, to see their smokin set at the gorgeous Wellmont Theater.

I met the band at CBS Radio, where the Chad, Mike and Chuck played “Knights Of Bostonia” and “Calling All Crows” from their latest effort ‘Let It Go.’ From there we headed down to Relix to hang out for a bit.

Here’s a shot at CBS Radio (in Howard Stern’s old studio):

Here’s the band with Peter Shapiro and Mike Greenhaus at Relix:

And their new video for the punk anthem “Knights Of Bostonia” is absolutely a must-see:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xWltmskEAM]