grooveshark is probably the best kept music delivery secret the internet has to offer. it has it all (except for an non-jailbroken iphone app). what do you want out of an online streaming music service? what do the current industry standards give you?

listen to grooveshark’s features and you’ll soon be kissing your last.fm, rhapsody, xm, itunes, and dare i say it *ghasp* pandora to the curb.

• streaming music in your web browser (duh – i know)
• self controlled music queue
• heads up display of music played and what is coming up
  
• pause, next, play, like, dislike, share, heart, etc.
• playlists!
  
• song, artist, album search
• library! (you can add songs to your library and you essentially have a cloud based library of music you don’t “own” but can listen to anytime you have an internet connection)
  
• radio (similar to pandora as it picks the next song based on your music interests)
• pre-set radio (pre-configured, genre based radio stations)
• social connections
• your personal music feed
• themes (free, promotional, and vip only)
  
• music upload! (upload your music to listen to your own music anywhere)
• sweet web app like music client (here is mine with a help the gulf theme applied)
  
• widgets! (like your playlist and want to share…just click the export button and you pick your widget and utilize however you’d like)
• and more!  check it out and let me know what you think of grooveshark

i am officially about to be a dad! tuesday is the day if grayson doesn’t decide to come before then.

i am using windows live writer to write this blog post…figured out would test out the windows live essentials pack (beta) and see if it was any good or not.  i have to say that i am quite impressed so far.  the mail client looks a lot like outlook, this writer is pretty cool.  messenger is pretty sweet and integrates with facebook (no gchat ) and i haven’t dug into movie maker of the photo gallery yet.  i plan on checking out the sync function to.  looks like you can sync folders and applications as well as do a remote sessions all for free with microsoft sync.  could this be a turning point for microsoft?  could they actually start making some decent stuff?  anyways…I recommend checking it out for yourself…enjoy!

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

if hate cable tv. i pay for cable tv . i don’t want to pay for cable tv anymore. i am frustrated with the amount of money i pay for a bazillion channels i don’t watch. i am frustrated that with all the forward thinking technology companies and products i deal with every day i can’t get simple 21st century technology from my cable provider. i love it when i try to rent a movie and it just doesn’t work. more than 75% of the content i watch on my cable tv i can access on the internet through a second service (the internet) that i am provided by the same company. its as if i am paying for duplicated services, except the internet is waaaaay better. the internet is awesome, i love the internet. its open allows for much more flexibility and choice than cable tv. so i am currently formulating my plan to cancel cable and use a combination of my digital antennae, laptop, xbox media center, and potentially boxee.

we purchased a new video camera in preparation for the little guy’s arrival.  we purchased a canon hd m30 with image stabilization (our favorite feature).  we ran it through the paces today and practiced our uploading skills to the internets.  we tried uploading to both youtube and vimeo.  flickr was immediately out of the race due to their 90 second restriction.  both services offered comparable upload speeds.  i personally like the vimeo interface better, but i am liking youtube’s cleaned up interface as of recent.  the software that came with the camera also had a snazy quick “web” upload feature that allowed for quick upload to your youtube account with one click.  so i think youtube might be the winner on our video sharing platform of choice.  let me know what you think of the 2 different videos below (excuse the poop!)…

vimeo

First Video with the Puppies from Derek Davenport on Vimeo.

youtube

i may have posted a few things as of late, but for the most part i have been slackin’ on keeping this blog up to date with what is going on with derok design so i thought i would enlighten ya.  derok design has been working primarily with our friends (and family) over at whitten grey who recently were featured on people.com in the celebrities baby section as well as a friend of whitten grey, jaye & liam.

the whitten grey store is fully operational…you should really go check out the cute things they have in store and keep in mind that for every dress they sell they give a dress to a young deserving girl in a lesser privileged country.  then head over and check out the recently finished jaye & liam site.  besides finishing the initial site design i am still working with jaye & liam to flesh out a complete content management system so that content can be updated on the fly without intervention.  we’re using derok design’s own, custom-built, jcms to do the heavy lifting.  you’ll hear more about jcms in the coming months as i prepare it for the big times!

besides getting these two sites up and running, i’ve been finishing up my 3rd semester of grad school and preparing for the little one the jenerek factory will be spittin’ out soon…so look forward to hearing more about that in the months to come!  i’ve had several inquiries about new sites recently and i really hated turning them away, but frankly time has been non-existent.  i really look forward to picking up some new projects soon, so if you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger feel free to hit me up and we can discuss whatever your needs may be!

just got done watching the premier of abc’s new thriller happy town.  pretty confusing.  pretty interesting.  will be interesting to see where it goes and whether it can keep my interest.  with classes almost over for the semester i guess its about time to pick up another show so happy town just may be one of the many shows i keep up with.  go check it out…what do you think?

a while back i bit the bullet and signed up for mint.  it was kinda scary, your giving some new site all your financial information.  but it has been well worth it.  mint keeps me on track and shows me when i spend money stupidly.  they have sweet charts and awesome trending capabilities.  they track just about every purchase you make and keep it forever…in one place.  mint recently was purchased by intuit which is a little scary.  i immediately thought that my awesome free tool was about to start costing me money, but mint assured me that they would stay free and that with a partner like intuit that they would be able to continue providing awesome services.  so far they have held true.  one thing that is also awesome about mint is there cool financial tips and analysis with cool things like the previous posts pot chart or the cool video linked below that puts something they are about to start educating the mint following about into a movie trailer format.  they make managing money fun and cut the boring out.  maybe our generation will actually start paying attention to important things like personal finance.  all you have to do is make it cool and interesting and i am in!

the next big thing from mint!