Well... this was an interesting experiment.

But after messing around quite a bit with this Ning network thing, I have to say, I find it's just not very well put together, after all. In ways small and large, the interface is both tantalizing in its features -- and frustrating in the fact that many of them are inflexible or don't work or don't work as indicated.

For instance, the site administrator can set the front page player (above) to play the highest rated songs -- but where is there any way of rating them? Bizarre. Also, there's no way of editing the front page playlist at all.

So, enjoy this site and its groovy post-modern patriotism theme while it lasts because next on my agenda is the creation -- by me, this time, so it will get done right, or at least the way I want -- of a proper music site for one blue nine and my other musical endeavors.

Stay tuned.
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Hey, kids... By now most of you have probably tired of trying to keep track of my/one blue nine's hologrammatic fragmentation across the web. You can be forgiven. Heck, it's hard for me to remember all the places I've stashed music on the web.

Of course, there's www.AYearOfSongs.org, where, back in 2005, I decided I should finally document all my songs — and how better than through recording a series of slipshod, impromptu, acoustic recordings?

But what about our beloved one blue nine?

There's a fair amount of one blue nine at places like Soundclick — but the sound quality at Soundclick (for nonpremium accounts) is pretty low, 90s-era quality 128 kbps streams and files. (Right now, here, we have a mix of bandwidth formats — but we'll be moving to all hi fi soon.) And there are a handful of tracks each at places like ReverbNation, Last.fm, iLike, and so on. But in each of those cases there was a great deal of inflexibility and a number of downside trade offs that made me feel increasingly reluctant to invest myself deeply in those cyber-venues.

When I discovered the Ning networks I was impressed by the relative flexibility and by the mostly slick implementation of the socialnet features we're increasingly coming to expect. And it has a decent integrated mp3 player — which we've loaded up with a bunch of old favorites.

Long time fans of one blue nine will probably have noticed that I've split some of the rootsier, old OBN favorites out under my own name. As I've increasingly drifted into a deeper roots orientation, the mix of electronica, downtempo, house and bluegrass/Americana was getting a little too schizological, even for me. That split has been reflected on other download/distro sites where I've split myself into OBN and TK. But, here, I decided to bring it all together.

But am I not a web developer? Yes I am. However, rolling your own full featured database-driven socialnet site (even with CMS design tools like Drupal, my favored platform) is a big job. I'm currently working on a customer service/customer relations management system for my own web dev business. And that, unlike my toehold in the music biz, actually occasionally makes some money.

But, yes, in the months ahead I will be moving one blue nine to its own Web 2.0 style site.

In the meantime, welcome to the free side of Web 2.0...

PS... And, yes... you probably did see this same page theme on your congressman's website. It is a template. When in Rome...:'D