Let me preface it by saying this is only my opinion, as a designer.

It seems as though Prince's vision of the web is stuck in a bygone era of full-browser flash animations but isn't consistent in this web 2.0 (going on web 3.0) world of blogs, social bookmarking, comments, etc. The major problem of the old npgmc site was the interface for listening to music. It was so archaic (even at that time) that to do simple tasks like moving the slider/fader was difficult and cumbersome. Even going through the rooms was less an adventure and more an annoyance of just a fairly decent illustrator/artist showcasing his view of Prince's world (far more fantasy than reality).

Onto the lotusflow3r site, looking at it from different systems, sometimes changing between cassettes would load a song and sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes the cassettes would stay and sometimes disappear; the perils of flash, or just bad programming. Again, depending on different systems, the animations move smoothly and sometimes jerky.

Instead of doing something unique, he hasn't moved from the Crystal Ball site, but instead of javascripting, it's flash. For someone who was a pioneer in the online music world, he hasn't progressed in this digital age (much like his music from '96 to now, save for one or two nuggets).

When it comes to the availability of the new music on the site, I expect nothing as forward thinking as other music sites that allow for download (hated the old npgmc site for the way they handled downloaded files).

Anyway, that's my one cent.

p.s. did I read that to get access to exclusive material, you'd have to pay a fee? I thought the old npgmc fee was a lifetime fee. I guess this is a different life. (but I could be wrong)

Last week I went to the site and re-signed in reaching the "U R in the system." This week I get the "Loading site blue atmospheric gaseous circle," and that's it. Maybe March is the time to wait for final comments on the site's opening.

He invited all kinds of people to review the site at the party and no one said anything bad.

I like it. I really like the music playing in the background.