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Upon reading this article on the predictability of year-end top 10 lists, I decided to make my own. Because someone called-out Pitchfork (and me) for being as predictable as the year-end top 10 lists referred to in that article.

10. Any self-respecting egoist music critic is going to pick his/her personal favorite as #1. Also, Mumford & Suns is a hipster Dave Matthews Band, and fuck them.

9. If the author didn’t understand Four Tet’s latest record, there is little hope for him as a music critic, because it’s not dense. He’s dense.

8. This is America, and it’s OK to hate other countries (ironically (unironically), of course). So, fuck all foreign records. Exception: British bands. Because they speak our language, wierdly.

7. Any self-respecting hipster music critic will not include any breakout successes. Rather, they must deride the band’s rise to the top and declare them to be uncool sell-outs. Especially if they have penned many positive articles about that band in the past. Arcade Fire? Yeah, they used to be cool, back when they were unknown and in that one Apple commercial. Now, they’re in many commercials and movies, so they sound like shit, retroactively.

6. Obama is President of the USA. Whites don’t have to go on pretending to like hip-hop anymore. It’s a post-racial world. Let’s all eat spaghetti and Braunschweiger, folks.

5. The old-timer records belong further down the list because they’re only even on the list for irony’s sake. Everybody knows a good hipster has no sense of history, and everybody knows that music only got really good since you started writing top 10 lists. Oh, and in the 80s.

4. Yes, Kanye West does deserve his own spot, despite hip-hop having no place on a modern hipster music critic’s top 10 list. Because Kanye transcends hip-hop. His beautiful dark twisted fantasy is our beautiful dark twisted fantasy.

3. This is the slot for the obvious sub-mainstream hit, actually, the one that almost made it, but didn’t. Because bands who almost sell-out but have to lick their wounds and come crawling back to college radio are the best. MGMT, it’s nice to have you back, you shitty disco hacks.

2. This is the spot for whichever album everyone else chose as #1, obviously. Let’s call this spot “Your Favorite Record is Only my #2 Pick”.

1. And finally, a good hipster music critic is going to put his/her personal favorite here. This is for the album that he/she either a) lost his/her virginity to, b) imagined losing his/her virginity to, c) listened to the most while high, d) listened to while sitting on the hood of a car looking at the night sky pretending to be in some John Hughes movie or something, hoping that someone would pass by and see it, and think “that dude’s pretty cool. It’s like he’s in a John Hughes movie, or something.” For example: 2008–M83, 2009–Animal Collective, and 2010–Beach House.

Dashwire logoIf you have a Windows Mobile phone and an unlimited data plan, you have to get Dashwire like, yesterday. If you’re using anything else and/or don’t have an unlimited data plan, then I’m sorry.

Dashwire, recently out of private beta, lives as an app on your WinMo 5 or 6 phone (Symbian and BlackBerry support on the way) and dutifully sends out almost everything to the other half of this equation, a web app that lets you manage your phone from your computer. The data gets synced over the air automatically, so you know that nearly everything on your phone is also available on the web.

Backup to the Dashwire Cloud

Dashwire will pick up and sync your photos, your text messages, your contacts, your ringtones, even your call history and voicemail (via Callwave). And it syncs almost frighteningly fast: I had the web app open, and received a phone call; by the time I hung up perhaps a minute later, the call was already displayed in my call history on the Dashwire web app.

Dashwire screenshot

Web2.0 for your Phone

Dashwire doesn’t stop there, even though as an online backup for your phone alone, it would already kick ass. No, Dashwire gives you the whole web2.0 social networking aspect, like any good web app would. When you set your status on your phone through the Dashwire app, it sends the status update to your Facebook and Twitter status (and I’m sure more services are in the pipeline). Your phone gets its own little profile page, with a stream of all the photos and video you’ve shot posted up as a tumblelog. And you can view your text messages like an instant messaging conversation, a la iChat/iPhone. You can also send text messages or Skype any of your contacts from the Dashwire web app, as well as share anything with your contacts.

Verdict: Awesome Squared

So far, I’m in love. Dashwire has that feeling of something that does everything just right. The last time I was so smitten with a service was Google’s GrandCentral, which I still use constantly. Hell, it’s replaced my phone number. Did I forget to mention that Dashwire, like GrandCentral is completely free? It basically does 90% of Apple’s MobileMe service, except it costs nothing. Read: Killer app.

One final note: Apparently, Microsoft is already on the list of investors. And the start-up behind Dashwire just happens to be in Seattle. With Danger (the folks behind the Sidekick) in their company, I immediately thought that adding Dashwire to the Sidekick would be nothing short of perfect. If Dashwire can get their “cloud” to sync back to Outlook over the air, then, I’ll be in mobile heaven.

If you’ve ever found yourself in an unfamiliar locale wandering around looking for a gas station, a good place to eat, or something to do, then the notion of location-based services is great. Unfortunately, it’s an idea whose time hasn’t quite come. Or has it? (more…)