Archive for April 16th, 2008
Review: Madonna’s Hard Candy
Posted on: April 16, 2008
- In: actor | actress | artist | awards | baby | Britney Spears | Hard Candy | Madonna | pictures | Pregnant | premiere | Quotes | Red Carpet | review
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4 minutes video
On Madonna’s 11th album, Hard Candy, the queen of pop invites us to imagine her as a confectioner running a musical sweet shop.
But, after sitting through the 12 tracks on offer here, you’ll begin to wish she’d stocked more than two varieties of candy.
Those flavours come from two of America’s most bankable songwriting teams: The Neptunes and Timbaland, who between them have conjured up hits for the likes of Britney Spears, Jay-Z, Missy Elliot and Justin Timberlake.
Timberlake himself crops up on five of the tracks, posing a particularly pertinent question about who is running the show when he asks “Who is the master? Who is the slave?” as the album closes.
This sort of top flight production is an unusual step for Madonna, who has a reputation for seeking out relatively obscure dance producers like Mirwais, Shep Pettibone and Stuart Price to helm her albums.
This time round, however, the queen of reinvention is trying to win back the hearts of the US audience – who were largely unimpressed with her 2005 love letter to disco, Confessions On A Dancefloor.
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 The main themes are love, revenge, sex and music – subjects on which Madonna surely has little left to say  |
It all starts off well enough. Opening track Candy Shop is an agenda-setting call to arms, with Madonna promising a “special connection” and “plenty of heat”.
The minimal, skittering drums are punctured by colossal stabs of synth, while Madonna purrs weak sweet shop-related innuendos: “Don’t pretend you’re not hungry, there’s plenty to eat… I got Turkish Delights.”
You get the picture.
Things step up a gear with the Justin Timberlake collaboration 4 Minutes, which features the best use of cowbell in pop since Free’s All Right Now, but sounds so futuristic it could realistically have been beamed in from the end of the world.
‘Pop moments’
Lyrically, the album plays it safe. Madonna may have been inspired to make a documentary about the Aids epidemic in Africa when she adopted two-year-old Malawian orphan David Banda, but you would be hard pressed to find any social commentary in her music.
The main themes are love, revenge, sex and music – subjects on which Madonna surely has very little left to say at this stage in her career.
Hard Candy featurs five collaborations with Justin Timberlake
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She even repeats herself, echoing Into The Groove when she sings “Don’t you know, can’t you see? When I dance I feel free” on Heartbeat.
Then again, Madonna has always been at her best when extolling the virtues of music as a release, and it is on Hard Candy’s club-orientated tracks that she excels.
She’s Not Me, a Neptunes production, feels like a five-minute musical summary of her career to date.
It kicks off with Chic-esque guitars that are reminiscent of Holiday before morphing into a pulsing club groove that could have been lifted straight from her last album.
Track three, Give It To Me, is already pencilled in as the album’s second single. It is one of the record’s few out-and-out pop moments, featuring a cute, bouncy beat and a sense of humour that has been missing from Madonna’s music since her Dick Tracy days.
“If it’s against the law, arrest me, if you can handle it, undress me,” she chirps as the song builds to a blistering crescendo that will surely be the highlight of any future live set.
Ok. Now we’re in the top 10 and the sports world has never been more on fire. So who are the top 10 most beautiful women in sports? Read on and find out…
10. Romi Bean
Ah, cheerleaders! Romi is one of the 34 members of the Denver Broncos cheerleader team. Wait a minute, did I just say 34? Holy crap, imagine what it must be to visit their changing room after the game….
9. Amanda Beard
This is our fifth swimmer? Man, what a blessed sport. Apart from being hot as hell, Amanda is also a fantastic swimmer. She made her first Olympic appearance at the age of 14! She also got featured in several publications, including Sports Illustrated, FHM and Playboy.
8. Maria Kirilenko
Yet another Russian tennis player, I know. But it would be pure negligence to leave Maria Kirilenko out of this list right? A bit of trivia: she is a very good friend of Maria Sharapova. I found this info Wikipedia, and I guess it will keep my imagination busy for a while.
7. Jenny Adams
This track and field American athlete got famous after she appeared on the FHM magazine “Sexy Olympic” edition. She will probably participate in the next Olympic games too, so keep an eye for the lady.
6. Daniela Cicarelli
Not a sportswoman, but the ex-girlfriend of Ronaldo. He is one of the best soccer players of all time, but letting this girl go was definitely a dumb thing to do. The picture says it all, I am speechless.
5. Maria Sharapova
This is a woman not for the faint of heart. At 6 feet and 2 inches, the Russian beauty is a former number one tennis player in the world. And she only has 20 years. I just couldn’t find if she is engaged (personally I prefer to think she is still a virgin).
4. Haley Cope
Haley was born in Chico, California. Her best swimming performance was the gold medal on the world championship. We would be her fans even without these achievements though, especially after she appeared on Maxim and Playboy.
3. Alisson Stokke
Allison is a pole vaulter for the California high school. She doesn’t have any major sport achievements to date, but she became immensely popular on the Internet after a big website featured her pictures. Well, after I saw the images I became her biggest fan immediately.
2. Bia e Branca
No, you are not seeing double. They are actually twins. These two hot bombs come from Brazil, and they represented their country on the 2007 Pan American games on the synchronized swimming. I was able to read the local press during the event, and they received most of the coverage. No wonder why!
1. Ana Kournikova
We know that placing Ana Kournikova on top of a “hot” list is becoming a cliché. Trust us that we really tried to find someone else. After the strenuous task of analyzing ever curve of her body, on every picture that we could find on the web, we could not help but give her the first position. She is hot beyond what we thought was possible….
The 50 Hottest Women of Sports: 1-10
More Details On The Google-Salesforce “Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend” Alliance
Posted on: April 16, 2008
- In: Alliance | “Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend” | Calendar | Details | Docs | Gmail | Google Apps | Google-Salesforce | Gtalk
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On Monday, Google and Salesforce are officially announcing the complete integration of Google Apps (Docs, Calendar, Gmail, and Gtalk) and Salesforce’s online enterprise apps. TechCrunch broke the story last week. Now we have some more details. Google Apps will get exposure to Salesforce’s one million paying business subscribers, and Salesforce in turn will become more attractive to the “tens of millions” of business users on Google Apps.
Google is in effect becoming Salesforce’s productivity suite. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentation can be created from within Salesforce’s CRM application. GTalk works as the de facto instant messenger within Salesforce. With one click, sales people who use Gmail can send any email correspondence with potential or existing customers to Salesforce, where it becomes recorded as part of the sales cycle. Sales events and marketing campaigns can be overlayed onto a Google Calendar (see screen shot below), as well as colleague’s schedules for figuring out convenient meeting times.
The Google productivity apps are free unless a company wants to upgrade to the premier edition (which includes added security and management features) for $5/user/month. By summer, Salesforce will be reselling the premier edition itself for twice as much—$10/user/month—and will throw in telephone support and put everything on one bill.
Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff tells me that he is embracing Google as another way to undercut Microsoft:
You’ve seen what we have been doing is slowly integrating all of our services with theirs. Certainly the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which makes Google my best friend. I have spoken with a lot of customers who want to get off of Microsoft Word.
Of course, Microsoft’s desktop cp-Office apps are threatened long-term by Google Apps, and its own CRM software for small businesses is threatened by Salesforce. But why didn’t Salesforce simply build its own Web-based productivity apps as so many others are doing? Says Benioff:
I really didn’t want to compete against Google in an area they consider core.
Better to gang up against Microsoft together. Now he has the leading Web-based productivity suite baked into Salesforce. But that brings up another question. If Google and Salesforce are so well suited for each other, why doesn’t Google just buy Salesforce? It could accelerate the growth of Google’s enterprise business and make it a little bit less reliant on advertising dollars (since Salesforce charges monthly subscriptions). When I put this notion to Benioff, he punted it back to Google:
You should give them a call and ask them about that.
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