2009 was definitely the year of Gaga but we threw in a pretty chill remix of telephone featuring Beyonce. 2010 is probably going to be the year of Drake, and a nice send off for weezy. Most of this playlist was inspired by the Yacht Week 2010 video, which we’ll throw in at the end of the post incase you haven’t seen it already.

We also had to throw in more from Atypicals, which are back by popular demand. We should also mention our good buddy VC (@GoVince) is going to help out sourcing new music!

In the spirit of the groups headed out to Vegas, Ultra in Miami and back to Cabo for an extra round of work, here’s a dedicated playlist to rock out. We got a bunch of great recommendations from The house of Cmar, VC, Ms Seegal and my good old bud V.Ravi

Spring Break 2010 Playlist

Yacht Week 2010 Video

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This week we’re mixing a bunch of old favorites and user recommendations from our friends at Michigan and Duke.
Check out the Atypicals, most of you have probably heard of Mike Posner by now.

In the spirit of the olympics we had to throw in the track from the XX and Sia.

Thanks to VCrumrine, AStern and MPembs for the other recommendations this week.

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• 24 Hour Champagne Diet, Spring Break 2010 Playlist
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We skipped writing recaps for the previous two episodes The Substitute and What Kate Does, but recaps are also available on lostpedia.

This week, the story has progressed to the point where we are going to go out on a limb to dig into a concept we mentioned in our recap of the premiere of season 6 “LA X”. In our previous post, we discussed the theory that the “Flash Sideways” are actually the resolution of our characters’ story. The producers want to give us the actual backstory of the characters outside of life on the island.

This is a redemption story

lost producers: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse

If you’ve watched the Lost recaps before each season, or you’ve listened to the official Lost podcast by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the producers have been hinting at certain themes throughout the series which are becoming more pronounced.

Official Lost Podcast – Dec 06, 2006 (mp3)

The producers remind us that redemption has been an overriding theme of the series since Day 1. “Kate blew up a house with a man inside,” Lindelof says. “Sayid is a torturer. Sawyer has done all sorts of nasty things. That’s the space the show lives in. Michael was one of the few characters who was a victim before he came to the Island. He was a good guy, and his wife took his son away from him. He didn’t have anything to be redeemed for until now.” – lostpedia

We want to go out on a limb here and throw out the idea that the Flash sideways are, in fact, the redemption that the producers have been hinting at the entire time.

Flash “sideways” are glimpses of the end of the show

If you don’t know what we mean by “flash sideways,” read our previous recap, where we explain the concept in detail at the end of the article.

Here’s what we think happened:

1. In the very first episode, we see our Losties on Oceanic flight 815, we watch the turbulence and then there’s a break in the time-line where, in another scenario, the plane would have crashed
2. We watch the events of the island and what our characters have to go through to “redeem” themselves on and off the island
3. At some point during this season, our Losties will make a decision that will end the split in the time-line. At this point, we flash back to the opening of season 6 where Jack is looking out of the window and we see the island at the bottom of the ocean.
4. All of the flash sideways we are watching this season are a way for the producers to show us the resolved storyline of our characters without having to spend the entire last episode telling this story.

Open ended questions

Here are some open ended questions we’d love to get feedback on in the comment section.

• How does the theme of destiny vs free will come into play during this season?
• Why are these specific people so important?
• What does Jacob vs. Smoke Monster have to do with the story of these specific individuals?
• How many times has this happened in the past?

Last Thoughts

We think it’s important to remind people that the initial name of the show was called “The Circle.” Clearly, these chain of events have happened in the past.

We think the real big question is: “What makes this iteration of The Circle or The Loop result in the character’s redemption story?”

Let us know what you think in the comment section!

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The East Coast and West Coast wings of Silverlake to Soho have been hard at work crafting the perfect playlist for the gala and threw together this mix for your enjoyment!

There’s some classic stuff from Brazilian Girls, Sam Sparro, K-Os as well as up-and-coming L.A. hip hop artist dudeROYAL!

If you’re in the D.C. area and would like more info about Project H, email info@pluurl.com!

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In this week’s playlist we’re going around the world again with Canadian Michael Buble in the spirit of the Olympics and his big band / jazz sound. Continuing on our international binge, Nneka (Half Nigerian, Half German) is making her US debut this year with a couple of tracks from Concrete Jungle.

We wouldn’t be plugged into the twitterverse if we didn’t shout out Justin Bieber and then rounded out the list with some favorites: Phoenix, Lil Wayne, Drake, Kevin Rudolf, and Fujiya & Miyagi.

Enjoy the tunes for tuesday and check the site for updates!

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We’ve scrummaged the internet for a mix of old classics and new artists. Some of which include our two good friends at 2AMclub and Kinetics & One Love. For you country lover’s, we tried to mix it up with a new comer Sara Haze and you all already know Lady Antebellum.

I have a soft spot for French Music, hence the addition of La Roux, and we added more music from our friends across the pond with Stylah and Philadelphia’s Chiddy Bang.

Share this around and let us know what you think of these tracks in the comment section.

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Before delving into specific missed opportunities, we’d like to throw it out there that we love the redesign. The overall look and feel of the platform is dramatically improved, but there are five key design elements that Facebook could work on that would greatly simplify the internet juggernaut.

General Navigation

• Repeated Functionality
  • Guess how many places you can click on from the home page to view your profile? At least two, and why? We’re not sure but regardless, it clutters up the elegant redesign.
  • Why have two buttons labeled “home” and “profile” on the right, when the big “facebook” logo takes you to the home page? Perhaps the design team wanted to make the navigation more explicit. We’re certain there are some really smart people at Facebook who can figure out a much easier and cleaner way to direct users to these pages..
  • On many of the internal facebook applications, there are two search bars, which seems a bit redundant … more on Facebook search later.
• Notification icons & design
  • We’re personally a big fan of icon buttons instead of text, so kudos to facebook for implementing this on the top navigation. However, is it just us, or are the buttons unclear?
  • Icons are REALLY hard to see (we know they are meant to be notification buttons that highlight when an interaction has occurred, but for new users this can be confusing).
  • They also switched the icons for notifications and messages (notifications used to be a chat window icon and now they are globe?) Why not standardize the iconography across all platforms? For example, Facebook could’ve used the inbox icon in the iPhone Application for messages.
• Existing functionality removed
  • Remember how sweet it was to be able to view your recently added friends right from the top bar drop down? We obviously don’t have the usage statistics on facebook functionality, so maybe they removed items that weren’t frequently used. That doesn’t change the fact that we still miss this feature dearly!
  • On the events application, users can no longer just view pending requests!

Lackluster Search Capabilities

• Advanced Search / Profile Search
  • Do you guys remember back in… 2004 …. when you could search for people based on their interest… or even more basic stuff like gender… contact information… Maybe we’re missing something, but one of the biggest draws to facebook is the fact that everyone is on it.
  • Why not make it easier to find someone you know (especially if you’re friends with them)? If you get a call from an unknown number but you know it’s your friend, guess what, you can no longer search phone numbers.
• Searching for Media (Photos, Video, Links, Notes)
  • This is the KILLER right here. Remember that really chill picture from last summer that you titled “summer with friends”? Well guess what, you can’t search for it anymore.
  • Maybe we’re missing something, but facebook is sitting on the data that you care about the most, and the majority of it is unavailable for search

Friend Organization

• Browsing friends
  • “Ohh what’s the name of my friend that went to Cornell and graduated in 2003?” The only way to find out who you are looking for is by navigating to YOUR OWN PROFILE and clicking on “View Friends.” You can no longer browse for people using the two other places your friends are displayed.
• Friend lists
  • We get it, you’re trying to push friend ‘lists’ for privacy and chat options. Why not make it easier to just drag and drop friends into groups. This would make them 10x more useful + easier to manage.

Groups & Fan Pages

• Converting Groups to Fans
  • Ok we admit, this is more of a pet-peeve but before there were facebook pages, there were groups. Just take “Snapple” for example. There are multiple groups that were created before you could create a branded page.
  • Why not salvage that community you built on your facebook group and with one click, change the group into a page?

Branding & Direction (facebook lite?)

• Facebook lite
  • Disclosure: We LOVE facebook Lite. It’s SUPER FAST, no applications, just what you need and right there. You can see the design has made some headway into the facebook’s new look but the larger questions remains, what does facebook light do for the average user right now?
• Posts / Updates?
  • Maybe it’s just us, but have you noticed sometimes if you post an update on the homepage, it doesn’t update your profile status, and vis versa?
  • It’s possible that we may be doing this incorrectly, but the way facebook manages your profile status seems wonky
  • Also the experience isn’t very consistent, sometimes it’s a status update, in other places it’s a post. Pick one!
  • We get that posting and status updates are different, but maybe it’s time to combine them (a la twitter). Perhaps the most recent thing you post should be your status? Just a thought.
• Purpose & privacy
  • The more facebook changes, the harder it is to define facebook’s objective.
  • If “privacy is dead,” then why is it so hard to search for profiles? Why is it so hard to search for PUBLIC photos or videos you upload?
  • To us, there are a lot of inconsistent implementations of applications across the board.

Well, that’s just our opinion, what do you guys think? Leave us feedback in the comment section, thanks!

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I love this ad – it’s smart, catchy, fast, great music, and all signs of a winner. The commercial itself is brilliant, it shows off exactly how we progress through traditional search engines.

Now after watching that ad, watch any of the Microsoft ads for Bing.

Obviously the commercials for Bing are exaggerations of a multiple search query experience. But Bing does a really good job of aggregating data on a single search to help you find relevant information. For example, compare one search of “Paris” in Bing vs Google.

Google search results for “Paris”

• Paris on google maps
• Wikipedia
• Links to travel
• Links to google news about “Paris”
• Related searches

Bing search results for “Paris”

• Aggregate information view of Paris including: official site, weather, attractions, neighborhoods (this is all before it even shows you the search results – which are almost identical to Google’s
• Wikipedia (and then all the same links as google)  and every search result comes with an aggregated information view of what’s on the actual page.
• After the search results, it gives you sectioned results
• Weather
• Maps
• Hotels
• Attractions
• Flights
• Paris Nightlife
• Learn More about Paris
• Related searches

Final Thoughts

Obviously, this is only one example, but it’s relevant because of the content  in Google’s advertisement about search. Personally, I still use google because of the asthetic. I tried to look for the option to turn off the background images on Bing (I think the gradients and image backgrounds look very 2004) and I couldn’t find them.

Based on results alone, Bing does a better job than Google if you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for. However, Google really shines if you know exactly what yo want out of your query but you cannot remember the URL of the page.

What do you think? Bing or Google? Let us know by leaving a comment.

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I know I know, commercial music is lame, but I gotta give to lincoln, they picked a really good cover of an already amazing song. Enjoy for the weekend.

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We could sit here and bore you with a long-winded recap of what happened in the Season 6 premiere entitled LA X, but fortunately, a ton of people (via @vossek from darkufo) and lostpedia have already done that!

Instead, we’re going to discuss some main points and themes from the two episodes that we think you should pay attention to.

You may want to keep this in the back of your mind going into the rest of the season (listed in order from least to most important).

1) Richard Albert is from “The Black Rock”

Do you remember the finale from season 1 finale Exodus, Part 1, when our beloved Losties were searching for dynamite to break open the hatch door? Well, our main man Locke made an astute comment about the original contents of the ship:

Inside the ship, skeletons were found shackled together, likely remains of slaves. Old mining equipment was also found, including the dynamite. At least two cases of highly-volatile sticks were present inside the ship’s hold. According to Locke, the ship “must have been en-route to a mining colony; probably set off from the eastern coast of Africa—Mozambique.” – Lostpedia

Why is this important?

Fake Locke / Black Smoke / Man in Black / Man in Locke/ Whatever you want to call him makes a comment addressed to Richard after coming out of the four-toed statue:

Richard confronts The Man in Black, who responds to Richard that it is good to see “you without your chains.” Richard is stunned and replies “You?!” indicating he has some familiarity with The Man in Black. The Man in Black responds “Me,” and knocks Richard out, hoisting him onto his shoulder. – source

The fact that Richard was on the ship in the grand scheme of the show probably isn’t that important, but at least it answers some basic questions viewers have been dying to know:

• Where the hell did he come from?
• Why does Richard appear ageless?
  • By “ageless” we are referring to the fact that he has appeared in multiple time periods (1950’s, 1970’s, and 2000’s) without signs of aging
  • This is probably a similar situation to what just happened to Sayid in the temple, as Richard said in the Season 5 Finale The Incident, “Jacob made me this way”.

2) The numbers are our main characters – hypothesis

This revelation is more of a stretch than the Richard Albert’s reveal, but we think the producers on the show have been hinting at this ever since the first time the numbers appeared in Season 1 Episode 18 aptly named Numbers.

We’ll let you do the leg work on researching what the apparent significance of the numbers are, but you can check out The Valenzetti Equation for starters.

Personally, we don’t think they are that important but it may have to deal with what we ultimately think the end game of the show is about:  why these specific people were chosen to be on the island.

We think previous episodes have hinted at the same over-arching message of “free will” vs “destiny” and “they have a choice” etc.

It may also be worth looking at previous Daniel Faraday episodes, especially The Variable. Whatever big decision is made at the end of the series, these specific people (Our Losties) were chosen because they have the ability to make the “right choice.”

3) There’s some correlation between the “flash backs” last year’s “flash forwards” and this years “flash sideways”

For starters, this is probably the biggest source of confusion for people just jumping back into Lost, so we are going to quickly break it down for you.

• Flash Backs (Season’s 1-3)
  • This is what made the show famous back when Lost first aired in 2004. These are the character memories that happen in the middle of the episode, that show events from previous points in a characters lifetime
• Flash Forwards (End of Season 3, Season 4)
  • At the end of Season 3, we were shown that 6 of our Losties (The Oceanic Six) made it off the island, these flashes are perceived to be in the future.
  • By “in the future” we are referring to the time period after some of our Losties left the island.
• Time Traveling (Season 5)
  • As a result of Ben moving the island to hide it’s location from Charles Widmore when six of our Losties left the island, the island (or our Losties) began to travel in time.
    
  • There was a period of time where the island would “skip” between various time periods which eventually stopped when John Locke turned the frozen donkey wheel again and the island stopped in 1977.
• Flash Sideways (Season 6, Alternate Timeline)
  • This season we are watching the Losties back in present time after Jack detonated an atom bomb at a magnetic hot spot in the island that sent them back to correct time period and we are also watching an “Alternate” timeline.

I think it’s safe to say, we all know the producers of the show are waiting to have their “Sixth Sense” moment, the big revelation that’s going to make us go “ohhhhh they did know what they were doing from season 1″. On this week’s official lost podcast Carlton Cuse said,

Those two timelines are related and the way in which they are related are one of the big mysteries” – Carlton Cuse, The Official Lost Podcast

Carlton is probably dramatically downplaying the significance of the relationships between the different “flashes” that we’ve seen. I can think of a couple reasons why he might be doing this:

1. The “flash sideways” are actually part of the same story line as the “flash backs” we’ve been seeing all along.
   • So in reality, we actually don’t know much about the background of our characters and what happens to them off the island…
   • Therefore the producers are setting up a scenario where they can explain the real background of the main characters of the show and what makes our main characters so special – why are they specifically on the island.
2. The “flash sideways” are actually glimpses from the end of the show.
   • If you think about it, they’ve done this before. Season 5 opened with a scene with Daniel Faraday from almost the end of the season, we could be seeing the actual results of the big decision / conflict that this season is building up to.
3. All of the “flashes” are possible outcomes of whatever decision the characters are going to make – (probably not true)

Either way, the biggest thing to watch out for going forward in Season 6, are clues pertaining to who’s on the “dark” side and who is on the “light” side a reference that John Locke made in the season opener, way back in 2004.

We’ll follow up with more recaps after next week’s episode, let us know what you think in the comment section.

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