New Fountains of Wayne

Tuesday brought the release of the long-awaited new Fountains of Wayne album, "Sky Full of Holes." "Soundcheck" captures them live on release day, in a low-fi performance. 

As I write this, Amazon is selling the MP3 version of "Sky Full of Holes" for only $3.99. After one listen of the album and feeling like they mailed in the "Soundcheck" performance, I'm feeling a bit underwhelmed. But I've learned never to underestimate FOW, so hope it grows on me soon enough. 

Update on Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 10:42 AM by Logan Molen

FOW playing live on "Jimmy Fallon," with spot-on harmonies and energy that seemed lacking on "Soundcheck."

Make the big 'Switch'

Here's a quick video review of the book "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard," by Chip and Dan Heath. Highly recommended reading for anyone who is a manager of a business or people. 

Delivereads: Curating content for the Kindle

I've been  enjoying a new Kindle-only service called Delivereads that delivers four to five good reads to my e-reader once a week. 

The mix usually includes a few long stories plus several shorter takes. Delivereads curator Dave Pell pulls the content from a variety of sources, like New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine and Deadspin. Subscribers are able to suggest stories for inclusion in each week's mix. 

Delivereads is free, for now. I'm not sure what the business model is, other than owner Dave Pell wants to build a list of like-minded people and somehow help to promote his blog at TweetageW@steland. 

There are similar services, such as Byliner, that tap stories new and old. But Byliner is a desktop-only source and the curation is pretty loose, with a half-dozen top-level topic categories and lots of stories for you to pick, rather than the other way around with Delivereads. 

Getting long stories delivered to a device made for long-form reading is a big differentiator. Meshing a sense of surprise and delight with the perfect platform is a tough combination to beat.