I can see this site being really useful to young Millennials who care a great deal about the softer aspects of job satisfaction and are in a process of self-discovery. However, this sort of thing (“eHarmony for jobs” as one user put it) might be a bit touchy-feely for boomers. But hey, if you’re unemployed you probably have time to slog through the 100+ questions and spend some pleasant self-actualization time finding out you should have been working for Tim Hortons this whole time.

The song is called “New Soul” and was handpicked by Steve Jobs for the MacBook campaign. As a result, Naïm, a previously unknown French-Israeli singer, became the first Israeli solo artist ever to have a top ten hit in the United States.

The power of the tech industry to elevate an artist to stardom is a relatively new phenomenon, but one that a flagging music industry desperately needs.

Because of that catchy song, I listened to the rest of Naïm’s album and thought it was fantastic – her songs are kind of Norah Jonesy, except in Hebrew.

Another artist is getting lots of exposure from un unlikely source is Ingrid Michaelson, who also landed gigs in an Old Navy commercial and on TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill. Google has chosen her website to be a pioneer in their new service Friend Connect, an OpenSocial networking app that can run on any website (unlike the gated communities of Facebook and Myspace).

According to a press release appearing today on Google’s Press Center,

“…starting tonight, fans who visit Ingrid’s site can connect with their friends without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see comments by friends from their social networks, add music to their profiles, see who is attending concerts, and enjoy other features of the iLike application, all at Ingrid’s website.”

Hanging out with Ingrid on her website doesn’t mean you have to leave your preffered social networking haunt. Friends from sites like Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more can all interact via Friend Connect.

This kind of cross-pollination of web 2.0 technologies with the music industry can only be a huge boon for starving artists who need new ways to market their music. Companies like Apple and Google are setting great examples that I hope the rest of the tech industry will follow. 

It’s a neat idea, but with so much content out there, it would be impossible for an editorial team to cover it all. Brijit came up with the genius idea of asking anybody to submit these 100-word summaries in exchange for $5.

Now, let’s get this straight. Five buck for a hundred words works out to a paltry five cents a word. Top freelance rates in Canada hover at around a buck a word, and even that is pathetic. Most writers settle for around 50 cents a word, which is still ten times as much as Brijit is offering. I would assume that no serious writer would even consider working for pea…oh wait, I think even peanuts are worth more than that.

The sad thing is that the writing on Brijit is actually quite good. Are there people desperate enough to spend an hour or two reading an article and then capturing the essence of it in a 100 words? It may sound simple, but it takes far longer than you’d think to do it right.

Brijit ups the ante by submitting each requisition to competition – you actually have to compete with three other writers in the hopes that your piece gets chosen. So most times you just end up writing your beautifully crafted cribs note for free. Competition, however, is a great motivator for some people apparently.

Is Brijit turning freelance writing into a cheap mockery? Is it dragging down freelance rates by calling anybody a writer? Can you even stomach reading summaries that you know were written by word slaves?