- Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo and then backed out (with an unclear future strategy about this).
- NIN and about 50 top artists decided to follow Radiohead’s initiative by giving away music over the web
- Pirate Bay got sued about a gazillion times
- Twitter went to the roof and most of the people I know are starting to use it (or at least talk about it)
- GTAIV sold 6 million copies in it’s first week
- The new album for Réplica is FINALLY on iTunes

…and a lot of great stuff I would have loved to share. Unfortunately I didn’t, so instead of complaining or apologizing, I will talk about what’s ahead.

We are working hard on a new web design for Dixo. No rush about it, since I’m taking all the time possible to do some necessary research, so expect big changes and great improves. This takes pretty much all my time during work days.

Also, my friend Oscar Yasser and I decided to make a podcast together. Some of you have asked about this, so we are expecting to release the first one a week from today. It’s going to be called “Nerdcore”, so I guess you can do the math about it, but expect great surprises too.

For those who don’t know Oscar, he is the one of the guys to thank for the healthy video game industry we live in Mexico today. More @ his website.

So, pointing the obvious it’s time to take care of this blog and work harder. Since I needed some inspiration for this, I decided to give the blog a new look. Don’t forget to check it out! if you are subscribed. See you soon.

Then I came across with an old friend, Eduardo Arcos, who pointed me to a new technology that was beginning to spawn new ways of communicating through the internet, and that it may help me with this issue. He was referring to podcasting.

Just a few months later we contacted Motorola and came out with the MOTOpodcast which had the same base idea, to create a space where Motorola could communicate with it’s end users directly by giving tips and musical recommendations to improve their experience as Motorola buyers.

Then we thought that it would be a great idea to use this technology to bring together different voices to one place, and since my partner, Fernando Benavides had been working for about 10 years on several radio stations he knew the right people for it. So we started Dixo which actually came out pretty quickly for a startup project. In about 2 months we already had the staff and the first round of investment with Dany Saadia (one of the early internet adopters in Mexico), and a month later we came out with the first public beta.

Today we are on our public version number three and we have a huge fan base which we love that visits us daily in a religious manner. Also, we have managed to be part of Prodigy MSN, the partnership between MSN and Mexico’s number one internet service provider, which has definitely affected us by its amazing reach (almost every internet user in Mexico uses in one way or another one of MSN’s products). This partnership is all about them selling the product for us and increasing the content offer for their portal so it really helped us into making Dixo, not just a success in traffic but also in the market as the first commercial podcast network in Mexico.

Last week I posted in Dixo that Apple had decided to give us a “room” (as they call it) on the iTunes Store. The room was already there, it was first created when iTunes Latino was launched, but with a new design (made by us). This room makes us one of the only four latin podcast developers on the iTunes Store, and the only ones who have this special room. So I was very happy for this and it pointed me to the obvious. We have been working on this non stop since 2005. We have published over 1500 podcasts, and over 1300 posts in the blogs section. We also have receive around 40, 000 comments and thousands of emails along with a number of companies that have started to use Dixo as an important space for exposure with a high credibility, along with other investors. All of this put together makes Dixo a successful online project within just a year and a half, and I’m very happy with the results. And I have to say, all of this was possible by having the right people on the team.

As for the next step, we believe that the best thing we can do is to keep posting new content, and bringing new voices to the project. The number of internet users in Mexico is growing every day and we always try to improve their experience on our site. I like to call this “the joy of good“.

Please take a second to visit the room, it’s pretty cool!

At the very beginning, one of my favorite music composers, Ryuichi Sakamoto, came out with this cool project which intended to create social awareness of the Rokkasho reprocessing nuclear plant in Japan which brings a great deal of danger to the environment. Since I’m clearly no nuclear expert you can find lots of interesting info on the official website.

What Sakamoto did was to make one song aside with Christian Fennesz and some other japanese artists to create the “Rokkasho Main Theme” and distributed it for free on the website along with single tracks of instruments and voice in order to invite everyone to make remixes of the song and send them. I’m not sure if they published them all in the podcast feed but there are over 30 different remixes available to download most of them from japanese artists. But that’s not it, now you can also find video and other music and audio pieces from artists such as Alva Noto, Filter and Kraftwerk making a great podcast worthy of collecting. Until today, there are 87 pieces available. You can act by sending your own remix, or simply by signing a petition with your name.

When I first saw this I got excited because this is maybe the first good example of activism through podcasting which I find really interesting and to have someone like Sakamoto and Thomas Dolby to start it using podcast as a way to speak to people was definitely a clue for me that by working with this technology was the right track to be in.

Also, Stop-Rokkasho now features in NetDiver in the “imaginative” category for it’s outstanding interface and design, so pointing the obvious I’d like to give a “shiny gold star” to this project for having a good initiative, using the right media to “shout it” and also making it look pretty darn cool!

Remember to subscribe to the Stop-Rokkasho podcast feed!

[audio:01_rokkasho-main theme.mp3]
[Stop-Rokkasho Main Theme]