Martin Gordon's Blog

I'll spare you all the typical Happy New Year post only because we're already half way through January. A lot of things have happened since the last time I posted, in fact, more than I could completely list right now.

Without a doubt the most notable thing that happened has to be our trip to Italy. I met my parents and sister at O'Hare on the 21st of December, and from there we were off to Rome by way of Zurich. We stayed in Rome, Siena, Florence, and Venice over the course of 8 days while visiting several tiny medieval towns along the way. We spent a day and a half in London before flying back to Miami on the 31st.

Seeing as how I took over 1100 pictures over the course of the 10 days, I'll spare you all the details I don't really remember and instead invite you to visit my Flickr photostream where I am slowly uploading the photos I took during the trip. It's taken me a bit to get the pictures up only because converting from RAW and then tagging/naming the photos is such a time-intensive process.

Technorati Tags: vacation, holiday, photography, photos, italy, europe, london

Today's Daily Source Code marked the debut of Podsafe For Peace's Christmas song, "If Every Day Were Christmas." The song was produced by Slau in New York City and features close to 100 podsafe artists.

Adam Curry came up with the idea of a Band Aid-type holiday song about a month ago, with the proceeds going to UNICEF. Slau responded to Adam's call by sending him a reference version of this song and he coordinated with all the artists to get their parts recorded either in Slau's studio or remotely. A month later, Slau has mixed the tracks (something like 97 total) and the copy available below is the result.

If any song can drive podsafe music into the mainstream, it's this one. I, for one, am tired of listening to the same holiday music year after year. Perhaps the reason I'm excited about Christmas this year (despite being Jewish) is the ramifications this song could have for podsafe music and the recording industry in general.

There is no official way of buying this song as of yet, but podcasters are encouraged to play it on their podcasts with a note on how to donate to UNICEF. If you like this song, you can either donate to UNICEF directly (U.S. link, for others, visit the main UNICEF page) or send me some PayPal (martingordon@gmail.com) with a note saying it's for UNICEF and I'll forward the donations to them myself. If you do decide to go the direct route, let me know if you've donated (and how much, if you want) so I can keep track of how many/much people have donated.

If you're sharing the song on your own blog or podcast, don't forget to tag add
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/podsafeforpeace" rel="tag">podsafeforpeace</a>

to the page so it shows up on Technorati.

Here's the Podsafe Music Network page for the song.

Technorati Tags: podsafeforpeace, podsafe, music, Podsafe Music Network, podcasts, Adam Curry, Daily Source Code, UNICEF, charity, donate, Christmas, holidays