Korean music format MT9 tries to replace MP3 - with a karaoke twist

Engineers in Korea created a new digital music format, dubbed "music 2.0" that leaves the mixing up to the listener. MT9 files contain multi-track unmixed music with separate channels for vocals, guitar, bass, drums, etc. This could be a killer format for karaoke fans, electronic musicians, and mashup mixers. Fortunately there's no built in DRM. The MPEG group has accepted MT9 as a candidate for becoming an officially sanctioned standard format for music.

Read more about MT9 in the Korean Times or other articles linked on Scott's buzz feed.

Speaking of firsts, Kayak.com is consistently one of the first sites to integrate cutting edge technologies like Ajax and mashups into their site. Their business model also reflects the customizable customer centric thinking behind Web 2.0. When he co-founded the company, Paul English established an exceptional customer service strategy -- and it did so without a dedicated customer service staff and relatively cheap technology. They were recently recognized in an article by CNN.COM for the achievement. The article explains English's CS philosophy:

he made an unusual rule: No dedicated customer-service staff would be hired. Every employee, including himself, would spend about 20 minutes of each workday responding to online queries and complaints.

There are very few companies I can think of that actually engage customers in conversations. Kayak has done something remarkable: They found a way to communicate effectively with their customers while soliciting direct customer input back to employees. I wonder if this CS strategy could be leveraged by larger firms that have real problems receiving unfiltered feedback. Could this also work for non-internet companies?

Webmonkey: the Web Developers Resource

They preceded man's ascent outside the Earth's atmosphere, yet we keep them locked up in zoo cages. Monkeys also have firsts when it comes to crazy web services. Does anyone else remember click monkeys? Turns out that we can learn a lot from monkeys, like how to design and build useful websites. The folks at Wired have just launched Webmonkey 2.0 beta, in wiki redesign. I'm by no means an expert web developer but I'm learning a lot very quickly from these apes. They have monkey cheat sheets for web development that come in handy. Also check out the the Webmonkey blog for some practical life hacks and technology news.