Open Letter to the Editors of Richmond Magazine

Dear Editor,

richmond-magazine-august-2013-coverI am writing to express my disappointment in the August 2013, “Best and Worst ’13” issue of Richmond Magazine, particularly the “Culture” section.  Earlier this week, on August 14, Paste Magazine released it’s list of “12 Virginia Bands You Should Listen to Now,” part of The Paste 50 States Project.  11 of the 12  acts on that list are from Richmond, and yet the “Best Local Band” is a cover band that does hits from the 70s and 80s?  I do not mean to denigrate Three Sheets to the Wind at all.  I am sure they are fantastic, and I also recognize the issue reflects the results of a readers poll.  But should you not have guided that poll a bit more?  Most polls of this kind would ask readers to choose in categories, at the minimum between best cover band and best band that plays original material, but perhaps also best live band, best country act, best rock act, etc.

Focus on best buy for viagra your love-life- The best way for people who are unable to point their pistols during the love-war in the bed. Parents are just thinking that this is only a small amount of evidence that the treatment goes well and o problem is faced by you during the hartbuildersinc.com super viagra online whole procedure. I suggested that they stop wasting energy trying to ‘turn around’ Max, but that they should instead let Max do what he does best, and pair him with someone who excels at customer levitra 20mg australia service. Just so you don’t think my school is unusual, I read articles and stories from nurses all over the world. cialis generika 5mg Why is the Culture section so small, anyway?  Are there not enough performances or people who have seen them to have listed Best Concert, Theatrical Production, Movie Theater, Library, Movie About or Filmed in Richmond, Album by an artist originally from the Richmond area…   I could go on!  This issue is certainly not reflective of the diverse cultural life in Richmond.  In fact, a couple of the categories, “Best Enjoyable Night Out” and “Best Impressive Night Out” seem to deal only with food and beverages.  I do believe that these are important parts constituents of culture, but in the categorization schema of this issue, “Food & Drink” are a separate and much larger section.

Your magazine should play a role in advancing the cultural life of the city, and in making people from here proud of the role our citizens have played on the  national stage.  This issue fails miserably.  It seems clear the real goal is to promote potential advertisers.  That’s fine, but it shouldn’t be your only goal.

Music in the Clouds

Source: My Grafitis in Tehran (http://my.opera.com/nbt4u/blog/)

There was an interesting piece in PC World yesterday about an iPhone app called Cloud Music that allows you to store your music in Google Docs and stream it through your iPhone. Google Docs now allows users to store files of all types, so this app takes advantage of that fact. I’ve yet to play with it, but its an interesting response to the restrictions the Digital Rights Management puts on our music. Since users can share things in Google Docs, presumably they can also share the music in their digital collection, provided it is not protected by DRM measures they are not able to break.

A day before that the American Public Radio program Marketplace had an interesting segment on cloud computing and streaming music, but from a totally different angle. This time it is not the users that uploads and access their own files, but rather rather the users subscribe to a huge digital library of music and stream what they want. Most of these services also offer the opportunity for downloads for users who want to be able to take their music offline. The best known examples of this are Rhapsody.com and Lala.com, recently purchased and shut down by Apple. For a monthly fee you can listen to whatever you wan in the order you want. In essence it is a vast online digital library.

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