Fresh Air

Having played around with those portable apps over the last week or so, I now find myself making the web all about "me". My way of surfing it, my way of customising it.

For example, a web browser like Firefox is so customisable. If you use Firefox, why not plug in the Real Groovy search engine I just built and uploaded to mozdev.org. Click the 'plugin' button at the bottom of this site to install it :)

You'll also find lots of other NZ made plugins there such as Trade Me, NZMusic, NZ Herald, PriceSpy and more.

Makes me feel good to know that 'free' doesn't mean crap.

Speaking of feeling good, 2005 showed strong growth in NZ roots music.

Acts such as Fat Freddys Drop and the Black Seeds really hit the mainstream big time this year, Katchafire continued their ride alongside Breaks Co-Op and Rhombus. Che Fu and The Feelstyle morphed hip hop with roots as well this year.

Meanwhile Salmonella Dub have been off the radar, but at least you can see them in raglan at Soundsplash this coming February, alongside up-and-comers Cornerstone Roots.

Listen to these and imagine you're on a back country NZ road in the middle of summer, eating Trumpet ice cream.

[Black Seeds - So True] ogg/990kb buy
[Fat Freddys Drop - Wandering Eye] ogg/1.3Mb buy
[Rhombus - Mile High] ogg/868kb buy
*get em before Dec 21, 2005. These NZ tracks are encoded in mono, keeping original NZ music netsafe.