Tag Archives: iPod

Brandi Carlile – Turpentine – Music Video

Posted on September 19, 2007 | 1 comment

Brandi Carlile’s new video for Turpentine is out.

If you can’t see it embedded above click here to play Turpentine or to see the lyrics. This song always makes me a little sad, I’m not sure if it’s the music, the words or both…

Less than a month to see her at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit, MI (Oct. 14, 2007). Opening is A Fine Frenzy and I’ve been playing One Cell In the Sea over & over so I’m more than ready. If you’re going to be at the concert (and tickets are available) let me know…

Is it proper to say “their CD” when I just purchased the tracks from the iTunes store and listen on my iPod or Treo?

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New iPods!!!!

Posted on September 6, 2007 | Leave a comment

So Apple redid the iPod line-up yesterday:

  • iPod touch – Basically an iPhone without the phone. It’s got the WiFi browser and you’ll now be able to buy directly from the iTunes store from the phone.
  • iPod Nano – Totally new shape to accommodate a new larger screen so you can watch movies and video! Available in 4 or 8 GB sizes.
  • Classic iPod – The same but up to 160 GB of music a video (also in 80 GB).
  • iPhone – Price dropped $200 and only the 8 GB model is available now. And you can buy ringtones and songs via WiFi. I’d expect at 16 GB model soon…

    You can use the WiFi free at Starbucks, but I’m not sure if that’s for surfing or just buying music. You can also see a “now Playing” list at Starbucks and easily purchase any of the last ten songs. If it’d update my podcasts via WiFi or if the had a 160 GB iTouch I’d really be tempted…

    Please note – Some of the features and items aren’t ready yet, but I think all are supposed to be by the end of the month.

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    The Future of Television is selling me individual custom episodes

    Posted on July 23, 2007 | 2 comments

    So the future of television is certainly changing. The networks haven’t completely caught on yet, but they will. In a day when users can download higher quality video than they currently receive, get shows from parts of the world that aren’t available and have the advantage of having no ads and are free (please note this means stolen). We can also buy many of these videos from the iTunes store or Amazon UnBox for $1.99 an episode (iTunes has some at 99 cents for an episode and sometimes get that cheap if you subscribe for season). I know “legal” is not what people think when they hear the word BitTorrent, but BitTorrent.com even sells shows legally these days.

    If I could subscribe to a lot of the shows I enjoy for 99 cents an episode and have them automatically download to my AppleTV, TiVo, iPod or other device I’d never have anything more than basic cable. I’m sure this goes for a lot of people. Everything needed (except the mentality) to do this currently exists. The networks and producers of these shows need to somehow start embracing this model before it gets even easier for people to get (steal) these shows for free.

    Or charge me significantly less and let me trade the produces some statistical information about myself and let them insert in advertising relevant to me. Give me geeky ads, movie and TV show previews that I like, music that I like. Advertise events and concerts that are taking place where I live. I don’t need diaper ads, tampons, bad credit information, refinancing, ads for cars that cost $50,000+, ways to give up smoking. With the right information instead of advertising a new bed which I may have just purchased, they can advertise new pillows or new sheets (and mark in their files to start giving me new bed advertisements in another 5 years) that I might actually purchase.

    Even better, let me give “them” lots of information about me, which I’ll update a few times a month with information about what I’ve purchased or I’m shopping for (who in my life has a birthday coming up) or where I’m traveling to. And they can actually pay me to watch television! I’m not looking for a lot of money but just something to make it worth giving them info (besides, think of how much you’d save on cable if it was free!). Maybe some hotel discount coupons when I mention a vacation, or a coupon for Best Buy when they know I’m looking for a new video camera.

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    AppleTV is Awesome!!!

    Posted on July 22, 2007 | 2 comments

    My AppleTV is awesome! An “iPod for your TV” is a accurate description. I ran the software update (painless!) and it gave me YouTube videos and fixed “enhanced podcasts”.

    It mirrors one of your computer’s iTunes just like an iPod does (and allows you exceptions) and will stream from any other computers running iTunes (platform independent) and I don’t think there is a limit. I can’t believe how fast it pulls hi-res movie previews from Apple down to the unit, it’s very very fast. It’s actually much faster than pulling down YouTube videos (many which are low-res).

    It really streams full-scren video from other computers really efficiently. Very rarely does it need a moment to catch up. It has no problem with steaming audio. It almost makes no sense to download podcasts, I bet you could stream them live if you had a way to just get the RSS feeds onto the AppleTV.

    With “enhanced podcasts” it now properly advances the embedded images to follow along with the audio. The problem is that it just shows them to the side like the album artwork, some images are much larger so it really cheats you by scaling them down. Since you don’t use the up/down keys on the remote during this process “up” would be a great way to enlarge the images.

    I have the same image size concern when viewing slideshows with the “Ken Burns effect”, sometimes I want to view the whole image. Once again this would be another great use for the up button. The down button could be used for viewing filenames, date, time and other info about the images. Actually, this would be a good use for the down button while viewing videos or audio.

    A few more features (like on the TiVo) like weather, movie listings and maybe Flickr photo viewing and it’d be even better… Continue reading →

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    Third Time’s the Charm!

    Posted on May 19, 2007 | Leave a comment

    So I’m at McDonald’s and I want my regular order, a number 3 combo (Quarter Ponder, Fries, Soda); so I order a “number 3, no pickle, no mustard” slow and articulated but as usual they have to ask me again what it is that I want. I don’t understand how they don’t get it the first time, it’s a limited selection of items that I can order even if I slur my voice someone should be able to figure it out, it’s not like I ordered an iPod with a side of onion rings. But that’s actually not my complaint today, she did get it correct and processed that part of the order quickly and accurately.

    So they hand me my order, while the QP box has the “no pickle, No mustard” tag on it there is an excessive amount of mustard on the box which lets me know to check before I bite. Sure enough there’s mustard on it (maybe pickle too). So I sent it back. Minutes later I get another one, with pickle and mustard. So I send it back, it’s easily 5 minutes more until I get a correct sandwich. They did give me fresh fries (the first order was better than delicious) and offer me a pie (but they didn’t have apple so I passed). They handed the final order to me in a togo bag, was that a hint?

    How much money (food and staff time) did they waste trying to make this sandwich correctly? We’re not even factoring in my time wasted and the fact that this is the most expensive McDonald’s around here.

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    Posted in food + drink, reviews

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    50 Best Tech Products of All Time

    Posted on April 6, 2007 | Leave a comment

    So PC World has a story on the Best 50 Tech products. Considering a few of the items in the list, I think few things are missing: Skype, one of the early pieces of ZIP/StuffIt software, maybe a Palm (or even Windows) cell phone, a TRS-80, the Sony WalkMan set standards for portable (choose your own) music players and I’m sure I’ll think of a few more later. Half of the software “tools” seem to be things to fix parts/utilities missing from the Windows OS. And there isn’t any software for creating web pages / FTPing files (from the era of Netscape and Eudora) or blocking spam. Should flickr or Google be considered a product? Amazon or eBay? Okay, so I’m getting ahead of myself, lets show the list.

    Of the 50 I’ve bolded items owned/used (some were free or work owned for my use) and added comments to many items (even ones I don’t use): Continue reading →

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    Senator proposes law to ban crossing the street while listening to iPod

    Posted on February 9, 2007 | Leave a comment

    This is insane!

    State senator’s bill would make it illegal to cross the street tuned into portable electronic devices such as MP3 players and BlackBerrys.

    For one, you can have these devices with headsets off (and not actually outputting audio) and not distracting you. And the other is that Deaf people cross the street all the time without hearing traffic. While they do have more practice if they’re talking to someone (signing and watching the other person) they’re definitely distracted and this bill. (Have you ever ridden in a car with deaf people signing to each other? How about while they’re signing to the people in the next car over?!?) And I’m not sure if this covers if you’re texting or just using audio? What if you’re reading the paper or a book? Or reading a billboard ad on the side of a bus?

    Either way, I just want the gov’t to start supplying someone to hold my hand while I cross the street. That’s what we really need, right? It’s certainly what they’re leading up to…

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    iLike Music (especially FREE music)

    Posted on February 4, 2007 | Leave a comment

    So I keep forgetting to mentioned that I found iLike, it’s kind of a music social networking site.


    The big difference is it recommends music to you and allows you to download it for free. It appears to work best with iTunes, if you download the iLike sidebar it’ll upload lists of what you listen to most and make recommendations in the sidebar where it’ll let you preview music and download it directly to iTunes. Now the free songs are mostly artists that you haven’t heard of, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t any good, I’m really enjoying some of my new found music. It seems like most (all?) of the new music comes from GarageBand.com

    My iLike page is at http://ilike.com/user/garylapointe

    They just keep adding new features that they’re pretty god a keeping you up-to-date on the iLike Blog. And they’ve got a widget for your web page (which I’m hoping is showing up on your screen as you read this) and it’ll even let you play my recently played songs as you read this post! Continue reading →

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