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Daydream Believer and More Literal Videos

One of my favorite online videos I’ve seen in quite awhile is the the literal video of the "Tears for Fears" song "Head Over Heels". The idea is that you take a music video and instead of singing the words to the song you sing about what’s really happening in the video. When they’re done well, as with the Tears for Fears video, you think it’s the original artist and recording sung perfectly.

literal-music-videos

A hat tip out to Tim Heuer who shared this link to a YouTube channel that has a collection of the literal music videos available. They’re all really entertaining to watch.

Here’s one of the Monkees singing "Daydream Believer".

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IE8, Firefox 3 and Chrome Processor Overhead

After speaking with a friend of mine and seeing him use Chrome, I decided to give it another try. The reason I stopped using it before is because I couldn’t believe it wouldn’t work with my Google toolbar and import all my favorites to be used.

browser-processor-usage

Combine the lack of Google Toolbar support, along with missing a number of my Firefox extensions I’ve become dependent on and I just couldn’t make the full switch.

My friend said he felt the same way, but forced himself to use it for awhile and see if he could be productive without the extensions. He decided the speed increases in the browser were worth the lack of extensions. He still has Firefox installed on his machine, but it’s not his default browser. He uses Firefox when he needs to use one of his extensions.

I’m not sure I notice a huge speed increase on most sites, but as to be expected, Google sites do load significantly faster in my opinion. What I started to become more curious about was which browser had less of a processor footprint on the machine while running.

I decided to open the same page in each browser and then take a look at the memory and CPU usage for each in Windows Task Manager. Here are the results:

  • Firefox 3.0: 04 CPU / 181,020 K Memory
  • Internet Explorer 8: 00 CPU / 85,080 K Memory
  • Google Chrome: 00 CPU / 27,300 K Memory

The results weren’t really shocking. I expected Firefox to be heavy because of all the extensions I’m using. Chrome would be light because there’s nothing running but the browser itself. IE8 sits in the middle.

I’ll keep playing with Chrome, but I still don’t see it replacing Firefox for me anytime soon.

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Jango Provides Streaming Music Online

Nope, we’re not talking Star Wars here, but Boba and Jango Fett were some of the coolest characters. Jango is another option to listen to and create your own custom online radio station. Just what you need when you’re jamming out with some headphones and trying to get work done.

jango

Pandora has always been getting the limelight and they provide a great service, but Jango is here to put a good fight and deliver some great music experience as well. Jango also has a bit more of a social network community appeal as well.

Just type in an artist – and your first station starts playing right away. You’ll get the music you want, along with similar favorites of Jango users who share your taste. Customizing your stations further is just as easy. Just add more artists and rate songs that you want to play more or less.

You can also tune in to other people’s stations – and they can tune in to yours! In your player, you’ll see who’s listening to the same music as you, who’s listening to your stations, and what your friends are playing.

The ads on Jango are more intrusive than Pandora’s, but you just need to remember you’re getting a free service and the way you get it free is because it’s sponsored by advertisers. I prefer the inline audio ads instead of pop-up windows that interrupt your songs.

Uncover more free, streaming music online with Jango!