Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Chamber Music Social Networking: Contacting CMT

DSM
Since I began the CMT blog a little over a year ago quite a few people have posted comments asking to contact me. Usually the commenter includes her/his email and phone so that I can respond to the request. If the commenter prefers not to provide phone coordinates, sometimes the commenter indicates what country/timezone she/he is in, to give me some context or background to the comment, which I then reply to via private email.

But sometimes the commenter uses the name ‘Anonymous’ and doesn’t include any email address or telephone number or other contact information in the comment text. Omitting email or phone coordinates prevents my answering.

For privacy reasons, I prefer not to post my own identity and contact information on the CMT blog itself. Many commenters (mostly performers, composers, authors, presenters, agents, and journalists) also have requested that I not publish their comments on CMT, because they too wish the content and fact of their commenting to remain private. As a courtesy, I always comply with this request.

Anyhow, if you want to reach me, you must give me some way to contact you. Please put the information in the body of your comment text. I will respect your privacy, just as I hope you will respect mine. Josh Gindele, Miró String Quartet’s cellist and founder of ClassicalLounge.com, has a similar policy of strict protection of privacy of ClassicalLounge members. I think this approach makes sense, especially for busy performers.

It’s a pleasure to know that you found this blog. It pleases me that what I write has some interest for you. Over the past year, I’ve been lucky to have the chance to meet and interact with quite a few of you, both online and in person. Were it not for the web, none of that would’ve happened. Day job, family, travel, myriad other things would’ve prevented it.

You may like to know that CMT is recently receiving more than 1,000 non-bounce hits per day worldwide. While this is pretty small volume compared to Alex Ross’s TheRestIsNoise and other classical music blogs, it’s amazing volume when you consider the exotic topics and content that you find here on CMT.

 ClustrMap of CMT daily readers
Curiously, about 10% of the daily volume at CMT during the last three months is from those of you who are reading CMT on Apple iPhones—on Safari browsers with 396x320 resolution. Other mobile devices represent increasing proportions of the visits each month, too. For this reason, I have recently converted CMT from a CSS-heavy design to XML with a much brighter, simpler look and feel that renders better and quicker on mobile devices. The previous CSS version was ugly and hard to use on a mobile. So far, I have only checked CMT on an iPhone and on a Blackberry Curve. I hope these changes make for better usability, and easier browsing for you. If you have criticisms or complaints, please post a comment!

Incidentally, I’m continuing the practice of including a dozen or more links at the bottom of each CMT post. The motivation for these is to provide a repository of interesting materials that are germane to the topics in each post. The CMT blog repository enables me to keep track of these books and videos and articles and websites for my own future reference. My intent is more like ‘scrapbooking’ than any serious or academic pursuit. Based on the many out-clicks from these links, though, I now know that a substantial subset of CMT readers finds these links useful for their own purposes as well.

Also, the fact that you can perform searches against the blog and the links at the bottom of the posts has been noticed by many of you—this is evident in the CMT activity I monitor each month on SiteMeter and GoogleAnalytics. As you may have suspected, I like reading almost as much as I enjoy listening and playing and composing and writing about chamber music. Maybe you are one of the ones who visits the links and enjoys discovering (or being reminded of – ) the books and articles as much as I do.

Thank you for your interest in CMT. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best Wishes!



I t is useful to think of chamber music as a narrow deep area between the novel and film.”
  —  Lewis Baltz.


O  ne annoyance in iPhone Safari is that the URL bar scrolls off the top of the screen along with the rest of the page when you scroll down a web page. As a result, in order to enter a new URL, you’re required to scroll all the way back up before being able to enter a new address. To get to the URL bar quickly, tap the top bar with the time and battery life indicator. That takes you straight to the URL entry field.”
  —  DSM





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