I took some time yes­ter­day to read reviews of Beck­’s Mod­ern Guilt yes­ter­day and was dis­pleased with what I saw. Do I think it’s his great­est album? Nope. Do I think it holds up pret­ty well against his most recent mate­r­i­al? Absolute­ly. In fact, I think it’s the most under­rat­ed album of the year. Could it be 2008’s Sky Blue Sky, which no one admit­ted they liked until the year-end polls were announced? Maybe.

You can read my thoughts over at Blind­ed by the Hype. As you read it, ask your­self who’s tried to do what Beck­’s done at that lev­el for more than a decade. Here’s a hint: Chris Cor­nell isn’t an accept­able answer.

I’m going to be on a Music 2.0 pan­el on Sat­ur­day at Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty. You can get the details here. You may wit­ness some unin­ten­tion­al hilar­i­ty as I talk about the Web 2.0 worm­hole and how it’s not rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the music indus­try, just frag­ment­ing it some more. Can you believe it’s been ten years since Nap­ster hit the scene? I think some of my col­lege class­mates still mourn the loss of Audiogalaxy.

As an added bonus, my smart Web 2.0 bud­dy Mark will be sit­ting on the pan­el with me as well. He’ll be talk­ing about his YVYNYL project, which is pret­ty neat.

I know you’re prob­a­bly com­plete­ly under­whelmed by Twit­ter and its tech­ni­cal glitch­es, so maybe it’s time to con­sid­er using Friend­Feed. At first it’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle too much Web 2.0 to process, but if you give it a chance you’ll find your­self spend­ing way less time pok­ing around the web to see what your friends are up to, whether they’re post­ing pho­tos to Flickr, updat­ing their blog, or tweet­ing. It’s one of the most con­ve­nient ways to stay con­nect­ed with friends on the web and with a few tweaks could be an out­stand­ing social media plat­form. It’s a great way to con­dense all the social media you keep get­ting invit­ed to join into one help­ful location.

If you’re afraid you won’t know any­one on Friend­Feed, you should sign up and add me!

How can Net­flix pos­si­bly squan­der its rich oppor­tu­ni­ties to exploit its inher­ent­ly social fea­tures? When I got notice that user pro­files would be abol­ished effec­tive Sep­tem­ber 1st, I was aghast. Why would any site elim­i­nate such a use­ful tool for its users as they try to avail them­selves of the vast con­tent offer­ing in an orga­nized man­ner? As some­one who was on the front­lines of the video rental bat­tle, this news came as noth­ing but a shock.

So while I’m still scratch­ing my head over this asi­nine deci­sion, so you can only imag­ine how delight­ed I was to read yes­ter­day that even not­ed tech colum­nist David Pogue could­n’t squeeze an answer out of them. I hold out hope that Net­flix will see the error of its ways and seek to cor­rect their decision.

I had a great con­ver­sa­tion with Chris from Click­Pop­Me­dia Sat­ur­day about the future of this blog. Let’s say it’s very bright. What’s in store, you ask? Think gal­lons of data flow­ing through the strip: I’m not going to go nuts and try to dri­ve every­thing I cram into Friend­Feed in here, but there’ll be plen­ty of con­tent com­ing in from all over.

Is there a hint of data fetishism rac­ing around the web right now? Absolute­ly. Can it be a lot of fun? Total­ly. In fact, that’s the basis for pulling my Twit­ter, Tum­blr, Flickr, Mux­tape and more into Black­mail Is My Life. Addi­tion­al­ly, I’ll have tabs, prob­a­bly in the top nav­i­ga­tion, to my Google Shared Read­er Items and my cal­en­dar as well.

Sound good? I hope so.