There are very few new releases this week. But that’s okay, I’m still listening to all the good music that came out last week.

New and Notable This Week

• The Chemical Brothers: We Are the Night
  Always worthwhile in my opinion. Electronica that knows how to switch it up and keep it from being repetitive.
• Josh Rouse: Country Mouse, City House
  Rouse reminds me of Wilco, if you also toss in some 70’s soul and Nashville influences. It’s early still, but this may be his best album so far.
• Colbie Caillat: Coco
  Chill California beach-folk music. A female Jack Johnson. The single “Bubbly” is free this week on iTunes.

Wow! Lots of new music this week. Apparently, the week after the 4th of July is considered a good time for releasing.

New and Notable This Week

• Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
  I’m a big fan. At first glance, this album seems to be a little more complex than the previous ones. It’s hard to compare them: Wilco and the Shins aren’t too far off but Spoon has some straight ahead rock/pop tendencies too.
• Smashing Pumpkins: Zeitgeist
  A reunion album that doesn’t suck! It’s too early to say if they’ve captured the current zeitgeist, but after many years apart they’ve definitely recaptured their old sound without repeating themselves.
• Crowded House: Time on Earth
  Another reunion album that doesn’t suck. It has “caught my ear” yet though.
• Gogol Bordello: Super Taranta!
  The unique and incomparable Gogol Bordello. Gypsy-punk. I can appreciate that what they are doing is interesting, but I won’t be laying down money for the album. (My wife likes them more than me… Maybe she’ll buy it.)
• Mark Ronson: Version
  A horn-heavy set of covers and remixes from the producer of hits by Christina Aguilera, Lily Allen, and Amy Winehouse. As nutty as it sounds, I’d describe the album as motown meets hip-hop on covers of alternative music. There are some really interesting song choices that make it worth a look.
• Stars: In Our Bedroom After the War
  I liked the last album and I liked them in concert. Some tunes are catchy and stick with you; others seem a little to ethereal and just float past you. The jury’s still out on the new album though.
• Nick Drake: Family Tree
  An album from before his records (early demos, home recordings, etc.)
• Jesse Harris: Feel
  The guitarist and songerwriter behind Nora Jones’ “Come Away With Me” album. He’s talented on his own too.
• Fion Regan: The End of History
  If you like Nick Drake and the whole singer/songwriter thing, you’ll want to check out this talented folk musician.
• Interpol: Our Love to Admire

New and Notable This Week

• Velvet Revolver: Libertad
  I was disappointed. Doesn’t really cover any new ground and sounds overproduced.
• Sara Bareilles: Little Voice
  A more mainstream Fiona Apple.
• Tom Langford: The Rock Garden
  Wilco meets the Postal Service?
• 24-7 Spyz: Face the Day
  I saw 24-7 Spyz once, I think they were opening up for The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I liked them a lot more then, back when I was listening to Living Colour and Faith No More. My tastes have moved on, but I still think they are better than the teenage fake-pop-punk that is everywhere lately.
• Bad Brains: Build a Nation
  They can only be described as punk-reggae, Bob Marley + Sex Pistols. They formed in 1979, split up in 1995, and got back together to put out this new album.
• Andre 3000: Class of 3000: Music Volume One
  Brilliant. Andre 3000 from Outkast does original songs for kids. They are for the Cartoon Network show Class of 3000 (Think Fat Albert for 2007). The songs are whimsical, but actually very good.

I was on a plane for most of today so I’ll keep it short…

New and Notable This Week

• Beastie Boys: The Mix-Up
  Instrumental and funky. I think this will be great to listen to while coding.
• Bryan Ferry: Dylanesque
  Bryan Ferry sings Bob Dylan songs. The songs sound more like Brian than Bob.
• Nick Lowe: At My Age
  The album should be titled “Still Under-Appreciated At My Age”.
• Paul Simon: The Essential Paul Simon
  I caught the last half of the PBS special last Wednesday where The Library of Congress awarded Paul Simon the first Gershwin Prize. Listen to this greatest hits to remember why he deserves it.
• Kelly Willis: Translated from Love
  I’m picky about what country music I like. The more it sounds like Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Sr., or George Strait, the more I like it. And I’ve always had a soft spot for Kelly Willis.

Free Downloads (Thanks to Salon’s Audiofile for the links.)

• Spoon: “The Underdog”
  This is a preview track, they have a new album coming out July 10.
• Stars: “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead (Final Fantasy Mix)”
  IMO, not the best introduction to Stars. (This is.)
• Immaculate Machine: “Dear Confessor”
  Note that this is the second free track by these guys.

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last six months—the iPhone comes out this Friday and people are already lining up to buy one. Whether you get one or not, as a developer, you are probably wondering how your existing applications will perform and are eager to discover any iPhone details worth remembering during future development.

O’Reilly’s blog has the details on iPhoneDevCamp. Like BarCamp it will be a free, non-commercial event, organized by volunteers. There will be collaborative development projects as well as opportunities to optimize and test existing web applications on the iPhone. You won’t need an iPhone to attend, but if you are already in line, you’ll definitely want to come show off yours.

Today, June 26, the SaveNetRadio coalition will be holding a National Day of Silence to draw attention to the impending royalty rate increase that could lead to the shutdown of most internet radio sites in the United States. Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15, 2007. That’s the bad news and it only gets worse. The rate increase will be retroactive to January 1, 2006!

Most large online radio providers are participating including Yahoo, Pandora, Live365, Rhapsody, Accuradio, MTV, KCRW, and Radio Paradise. A full list is here.

The goal of the National Day of Silence is to raise awareness and to encourage listeners to take action and contact their Congressional representatives.

The best album this week is definitely the White Stripes’ Icky Thump. I’m one of those people who thinks everything Jack White does is genius, so I’ve been anxiously awaiting this one. Would it sound like the old White Stripes albums? Or more like The Raconteurs (who I love even more)? The answer is: more of the former and less of the later, but the White Stripes’ sound has evolved. The songs are generally more bluesy and the production values are cleaner, as if they were recorded in a proper production studio instead of a garage. And like their previous album Get Behind Me Satan, there’s a country and folk influence woven in to the punk, rock, blues tapestry. “You Don’t Know What Love Is” sounds like it could have been written for Loretta Lynn. (Jack White produced and arranged her last album.)

• White Stripes: Icky Thump

Other New and Notable This Week

• Maps: We Can Create
  Mellow electro-pop: think Postal Service, Pet Shop Boys, Spiritualized, Sigur Ros, My Bloody Valentine (on Valium), Low, Travis or maybe even a down-tempo Charlatans or Happy Mondays
• The Polyphonic Spree: The Fragile Army
  I grew up in Dallas, so to me they sound like a matured Tripping Daisy plus a symphony. But if you don’t know them from their previous albums, the best comparisons would be Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. Section 22: Running Away is the best track to give you a taste.
• Stateless: Stateless
  Sounds like DJ Shadow, Tricky, Radiohead, or Faithless
• Frank Black: 93-03 (Greatest Hits)
  He’s talented, but nothing he did after The Pixies measured up.

Whether it’s Agile Software Development or Test Driven Development, every year new systems of code and project management spring up like tullips. Each one comes with loyal devotees who swear by it and denounce all the other heathen religions.

Scott Berkun feels that none of the current models accurately describe the way software development actually happens. Sure, you may be aspiring to adhere to the tenants of the Rational Unified Process (RUP), but isn’t Asshole Driven Development (ADD) a more accurate description? Or maybe Cover Your Ass Engineering (CYAE)?

Check out Scott’s full list and be sure to read the user submitted additions.

The dearth of women in math and science has been discussed frequently. Computer science and programming is part of that same picture. It is obvious to everyone that the ratio is seriously lop-sided. But determining exactly why and what, if anything, we can do about it is not as obvious.

A few months ago, I followed with interest a thread started by Jason Kottke about the poor ratio of female to male speakers at web conferences. Later posts on this thread are here, here, here, here and here. (There were many others…)

I have helped to plan many conferences over the last ten years, and the editorial teams I’ve been on have always taken into account gender when considering the session line-up. And we have always asked “Where are all the women? How can we get more women speakers?” Jeffrey Zeldman sums up my conclusion well when he writes “The problem is visible at the top because it exists at the bottom.”

One of my other conclusions is that women have to be very involved in any discussion of the problems and solutions. No, scratch that—women need to lead the discussion about this topic. They know better than any man what the barriers are for women. If we want answers and solutions, I think we have to start there. (Plus men don’t always do a good job of it on their own.) Exactly this kind of discussion took place between a group of women developers at RailsConf 2007 and it’s now a podcast so we can all listen in.

Ruby on Rails Podcast — Roundtable: Women in Development

• Part I (MP3, 26 minutes)
• Part II (MP3, 20 minutes)

The podcast is a round-table discussion on the state of women in open source programming. It features Jen May Wu, Dr. Ana Nelson, Liz Summerfield, Sandy Metz, Carmelyne Thompson, Cynthia Kaiser, and Desi McAdam, and it is moderated by Geoffrey Grosenbach. To share just one insightful tidbit from their discussion: they mention how many technology companies only give out men’s t-shirts and how much they appreciate companies that bother to stock both men and women’s t-shirts. A great point.

And if you are planning a conference, event or featuring people who work in technology, be sure to check out the “List of Women Speakers for Your Conference” compiled by Jen Bekman.

Two heavy-weight releases this week.

• Instant Karma - The Campaign to Save Darfur
• The Traveling Wilburys: The Traveling Wilburys Collection (Remastered)

The first is an album to raise money to help end the human rights crisis in Darfur. Amnesty International and Yoko Ono enlisted 34 top artists to record John Lennon tracks. U2, R.E.M., Lenny Kravitz, Corinne Baily Rae, Green Day… it’s a long list. It is an interesting and worthy project and I’m sure several of the super-group songs will be hits, but from a purely musical perspective, even the most well-crafted of the covers can’t compete with the originals (it’s not their fault, most covers can’t). There are, however, a few stand out covers. I pick: Jackson Browne’s Oh, My Love, Black Eyed Peas’ Power to the People, Jack Johnson’s Imagine, and Rocky Dawuni’s Well Well Well.

I’m surprised that The Traveling Wilburys re-issue is selling more than Instant Karma on iTunes and Amazon right now. I guess there was a lot of pent up Wilburys demand… To me, these guys are great, but I was always disappointed that they never lived up to the sum of their parts. Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison. It just felt like they should have shaken the earth, but instead they put out two very good albums. And this re-issue includes both albums in one package.

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