• CSS Frameworks that emerged in abundance
  Blueprint, Formy, Hartija, Tripoli, Uni-Form to name just but a few
• Rappers singing with the help of Auto-Tune
  Auto-Tune is a phase vocoder used to correct pitch - think T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Kanye West and even Akon…
• Lady Gaga
  In 2008, we learnt the difference between fame and "The Fame" and who could forget the disco stick. Can’t wait to see what Lady Gaga has in store for 2009. Maybe a duet with Madonna……..

Smashing Magazine, best known for their n of the best techniques collections eg 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without. This year, they have been branching out with n of the best album covers and 29 Brilliant Music Videos. I can’t get over the fact that not a single Madonna vid has made the list.

We are only a few minutes into the career of Lady Gaga and already we have so many memorable moments.

1. The video for Just Dance. So many mirror balls of all sizes. Was that a Mirror ball bra???

2. Best quote from a songwriter ever - “When I write music I think about the clothes I will have on when singing it”. Now that is multi-tasking to the extreme. Yeah - doing it for The Fame…

3. Lady Gaga will dance (as a shout out) so long as she has Hairspray - they type that was banned in school apparently.

4. Guess who was not a Miss Universe contestant but kinda won anyway…

5. Has anybody seen her “Disco Stick“? Apparently she makes devices and more are planned. Engineering skills toooooo.

I just bought “Just Dance (Remixes) - EP” from iTunes. Yes folks - REMIXES. Thats 4 remixes for me to listen to. I say yay to the return of the Remix - you may recall my post on the Death of the Remix or it may be a forgotten unread faded rss memory (hehe). Way to go Lady Gaga and Remixers!

I don’t do this often… Actually I have never done this before!!!! Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” is to 2008 what Madonna’s “Everybody” was to 1982 - the start of something big, perhaps!!!

In the mid to late 1990’s, multimedia was all the go. We had images, video, still images, photographs, animation, gratuitous transitions, audio, music and text. As at 2008, media is quite segmented. Put your images here, store your videos on that other popular site, download your music from ITunes! The only similarity is that you still get gratuitous transitions. What really upsets me is that all I get when I purchase music is a single encoded file? I can get just the audio or I can buy the music video. Why can’t I get a multimedia experience? Can’t something more creative be done? I still miss the remixes! Its even death to sleeve notes, dedications and thanks - all to be replaced by cold ratings and comments!

Makes me yearn for 1989 when Madonna released the ‘Like A Prayer’ LP and scented it with patchouli oil! You just can’t download smell these days sadly…

So I purchased the new Madonna single, "4 minutes" a week or so ago. Its great! Its awesome! I love listening to it, but can’t help but feel something is missing. It took me a week to figure it out. I always bought cd singles and they always had multiple remixes. I love remixes! I loved to play em over and over and over again. I miss remixes! My ipod has no remixes! What am I to do???

I heard that Madonna was going to open the show, but that did not eventuate.  Oh well - maybe next year! I did not like the format of the show and overall found it was quite disappointing. Britney did a good job of opening the show but needed to do something controversial.