Fast Forward to New JamsI am not an avid tweeter, something I probably shouldn’t admit to working at Gate6. On the other hand, Lad, cubemate and resident social media guru (so sick of that term right now), is constantly tweeting up a storm on behalf of our clients. It’s not that I can’t get into it; I’m actually fascinated with condensing information into 140 characters and leaving it at that. Good stuff. But I just don’t make the time for it. A good friend of mine uses Twitter as an aggregator of information, a concept I find to be on the brink of genius. She gets her news updates delivered to her every morning so she can catch up quickly as she gets ready in the morning or waits in line for her Starbucks iced tea (crazy girl doesn’t drink coffee).
My point is, in this information-overload of a world we live in, there are almost too many places to go to get information. A blessing and a curse. So when I stumbled upon this amazing music aggregating site, the world seemed to come together in one nice, neat little package, if only for a moment. Fast Forward is the perfect solution for those of us who love music but have little time to go searching for it. If you’re not familiar with the parent site, HypeMachine, as I wasn’t, it can be a bit confusing at first. When I went to the site, I didn’t know what to do, where to go or how to get there. And they didn’t do the greatest job explaining it. But what do I know about site organization? I’m just the content strategist. So here’s how it works. Click here and you’re taken to the first of many slides, where you listen to about 15 seconds of a song before it slides to the next one. Cool thing is, each slide has a personalized page and at any point during the slideshow, you can pause and listen to the entire song or read about the artist. One thing Fast Forward lacks is a Rewind or Back button.
Over all, I’d give it a healthy 2 pinkies up (I’m opposed to thumbs. Get it?). I am giving it some allowances because it’s still in beta testing (did I mention that?). After all, it does do the work of consolidating new music into one place, an unmistakably groovy functionality. Once the details are worked out, I’m pretty sure I’ll be an avid Fast Forwarder.  Leave a Reply |
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As it stands, if you like a song, there’s no way to move backward (which some might consider a positive). Eventually, the playlist comes full circle and life goes on but if you’re like me, impatient and busy, chances are you’ll just plug into your iPod and be done with it.
