Thoughts Abound

Use a Flickr Search as your Apple TV Screen Saver

2011-11-08T21:58:00.005-06:00

Many people know that an Apple TV can display Flickr photos, but did you know that Flickr can be your Apple TV screensaver as well?

You can set it up to display photos of a particular Flickr user, but I find it even more powerful to use a search.

Start by accessing the Flickr item from the Internet menu.

Perform a search for your subject.

If you are happy with the results, choose to Save Search

Exit back out to the main menu and choose Screen Saver from the Settings menu.

Choose the Photos menu item, then Flickr, and then select one of your saved searches.

Select a theme for your screen saver and you are done.

I'm sure you can think of all sorts of searches that would be fun to have displayed. Maybe you are having a themed party but you don't have time to curate a slideshow. Perhaps you'd like to enjoy the colors of the season. Maybe you just like a good photo set, like Bike Bridges, National Parks, Cities at Night, or Tebowing!

Have fun

My Music Buying Evolution

2011-08-15T12:54:00.003-05:00

Sorry Target, Musicland has replaced you due to better selection.

Sorry Musicland, I always hated you. The local indy record shop has replaced you due to better selection, better prices, and being within walking distance of where I live.

Sorry local indy, Music Boulevard has replaced you due to way better selection, better prices, convenience, and it doesn't smell like incense.

Sorry Music Boulevard, I love you, but CDnow has bought you.

Sorry CDnow, the Amazon freight train has hit you. This is a good thing.

Sorry Amazon, Apple iTunes has replaced you because they don't sell shiny discs which leads to convenience, previews, and music snacking.

Sorry Apple, between (legal) free stuff, Amazon MP3, Beatport, and my existing collection, I don't buy much from you anymore.

Sorry everyone, Rdio has pretty much replaced you all. I haven't spent this little for music since I was mowing lawns as a kid. I get more music than ever before. The experience isn't superb, but it's pretty good.

Who's next?

Books of 2010

2010-12-30T10:53:00.003-06:00

One of my goals for 2010 was to read more. As a kid, I'd be in the library all the time, taking home armloads of books. This faded as I got older. I missed the books and made an effort to get back to them.

Here's what I read this year. Clearly I enjoy non-fiction. See if you can spot the lonely fiction book. You might also notice a few themes that are important to me right now. Have you read any of these books? Do you have recommendations on ones I might like?

Back to the Classroom

2010-10-18T13:45:00.008-05:00

Apple and schools have always gone together. Everyone in my generation has stories about a computer lab full of Macs when they were growing up. In recent history, Apple offered the eMac, but that died in 2006 and never got a satisfactory replacement. Is the time right to get back in the classroom?

While I don't consider Macs overpriced, the low end iMac is $1199 and the cheapest Mac mini runs $699 before adding a display. Add in the cable clutter, and I'm not sure Mac minis are the best options for a lab. I found myself looking at what Apple has done with their A4 platform and iOS and wondering how it could fit.

Apple is killing it with their platforming. The iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV are sharing most of their components, and even boards. Given that these are selling in quantities measured in hundreds of millions, their margins are great and give them some pricing freedom (Apple TV for $99). iOS is solid and only getting better. What if Apple built a new eMac based on the iPad?

Stands result in compromises, so all we need is a proper desktop case and a keyboard. The keyboard is easy. We already have it. For the case, let's look back to the sunflower iMac. That's the one with the articulating arm that was designed to easily move the screen and then have it stay put. Why do we need this? This is the answer to Gorilla Arm. Apps such as word processing, reading, video lessons, and anything with a light use of UI can be used in the vertical mode. If you are painting, drawing, or playing a touch based game, grab the edge of the display and pull it down. It will look just as Apple has patented it. When you are done, toss back to vertical. Can't you see Jony Ive holding back a joyous giggle as he shows you how this works?

Unibody aluminum will hold up well to kids knocking them around. The high degree of recyclability sets a good example as well. The minimal power draw of the A4 will lower utility bills.

Speaking of bills, I'll price this at 5 of them. $499 buys you the eMac + keyboard + iWork suite. Pages becomes the AppleWorks of today's generation. After unboxing, go crazy in the App Store. Apps like The Elements, Brushes, Google Earth -- the store is popping with great apps that kids will love. No need to be a switcher later in life. Kids will grow up with it.

I also think there is value in the inherit limitations of iOS. When I wrote papers on a IIc, I didn't have distractions. The computer and app were the same thing. The iPad brings this focus back. Sure, multi-tasking is on its way, but the OS is still designed with a singular app as the focus. This lowers the computer literacy bar, encouraging kids to get on with the creation, rather than get bogged down in the process. It can also aid in administration. For example, Grade 1 gets their own screen of apps. No unnecessary windows. No launchers present when apps are running. It just keeps things simple.

Will Apple actually build something like I envision? I feel like their are bigger fish to fry for them, but I think it would be amazing to see them take it back a little and return to the classroom in a big way.

Favorite Hauls

2010-09-27T20:44:00.008-05:00

Here are some of my favorite hauls with our Xtracycle Radish.

Bikes in bikes. Always fun.

The grandparents don't have cargo bikes, so I needed to take them a car seat :)

The library is always a good destination.

Take back bottles and come home with some fresh groceries.

One of many loads going to Goodwill as we declutter. I love how the FreeLoader bags just take everything. I thread their straps through bag handles and it works great.

Taking all 3 kids solo to daycare.

Entertainment for the kids that are in the other bike.

If we're going to a ski show or fireworks display, we can still fit a stroller for the little one. It is amazing to just roll right into the main crowd and lock up instead of parking a mile and a half away and hiking it along roads.

Selling my extra smart home wiring to a friend at work. I was told I just needed a trench and could have dropped cable at speed!

Parks are the most common destination. Why load up in the van to go 1 or 2 miles?

5 of The Now

2010-08-16T08:27:00.002-05:00

I've had this playlist labeled July 5otn for some time now, so I guess it is time to post it. I love that Amazon has albums that include these tracks for $5. Can't beat that.

LCD Soundsystem - Home

This is definitely the album of the summer for me. The home theme throughout the record is heartwarming.

Robyn - Fembot

Why isn't this blowing up the radio? Catchy track, good lyrics.

Chemical Brothers - Escape Velocity

I have been lucky enough to see the Chemical Brothers live. The moment I heard this track, I felt like I was back at their live show. I dig the vibe.

LCD Soundsystem - All I Want

Delightful and emotional.

Baje One - Computer Rock

DefJux baby. Go download this for free. I love the freestyle at the end too.

5 of The Now

2010-05-03T21:02:00.003-05:00

Deadmau5 - Ghost N Stuff

I'd go to any haunted house playing this :) Deadmau5 and Evil Nine should put on the disco-graveyard-ball.

Booka Shade - Teenage Spaceman
Dance music for when you're tired. I picture musical notes slipping under my outstretched body and carrying me away like cartoon ants at a picnic.

Broken Bells - The High Road
The Start. Boys and girls, Broken Bells have made an album. An album! Picking it apart track by track should not be done, but I did. Album - go listen.

Broken Bells - The Mall & Misery
The Finish. Album.

Gorillaz - Stylo
Groovy and chill. I overheard a kid at the mall calling this a "Staying Alive" rip-off. Thoughts?

5 of the Now

2010-03-14T20:30:00.003-05:00

Sinner DC - Digital Dust
Sinner DC made my short list of albums of the year for 2009. I've been playing this so much, my kids now ask for it by name when they want to listen to music. I think this track is ripe for a slick commercial about external harddrives or cloud services. Ooooo, how sexy.

Jurrasic 5 - The Game
It's basketball season, so this is appropriate. Found on their Quality Control album, but my favorite is the live performance in DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist's Product Placement mix.

Massive Attack - Pray for Rain
I'm settling in to the new album. This is a standout. Plus there is a Tim Goldsworthy mix!

Massive Attack - Paradise Circus

So chill. Love this. Gui Boratto mix doesn't disappoint either.

Evil Nine - Burn it to the Ground
These boys are fun to follow on Twitter, and they'll dish out some good stuff every now and then. This is the old school Evil Nine that I still prefer.

2009 Albums of the Year

2010-02-18T19:53:00.004-06:00

I figure I better get my albums of the year for 2009 in before February is over, sheesh.

There weren't many big albums for me in 2009, but the ones that made the list this year feel a little different than previous years.

Porno Galactica - Romance In The New World

Have to support these guys. I loved their live show and I dig the album. Nice work.

Sinner DC - Crystallized

Owl City - Ocean Eyes

This is a fun album, you can't deny that.

Past albums of the year: [2008] [2007] [2006]

Building a Better Mobile Sports Site

2009-12-30T20:08:00.006-06:00

One of the greatest effects to emerge from the iPhone influence is that web designers care a little more about alternate browsers. We've had technology to present alternate presentations of content for years, but other than working around browser quirks, few did anything with the knowledge that a user might have something other than a full screen 1024x768 browser running.

Today, many major sites have a mobile version, and quite a few have mobile versions specific for the iPhone. This is great for users. They get the content they want, in a package suitable to their device. Well, mostly.

There is still work to be done. Even the mega-brands, like pro sports leagues, seem to trip up a bit when building their mobile sites. As a sports fan, and a mobile Internet user, here is my take on two of these sites. The NFL and the NBA.

This image shows both the homescreen you get, along with a full page of scroll to give you a better idea of the experience you'd have if you were actually holding an iPhone in your hand.

What strikes me immediately is how little of the first screen actually contains content. Both sites include their logos and a Menu button. I don't know why I'd need a Menu button, but I get why the logo is important.

The NFL site hits me with some ads. I guess I can understand that. The NBA site does as well, but for its own products. I especially like how the NBA ads say "Click Here". For starters, no one clicks on mobile devices. They tap. Second, I really hope we get to a point where we don't have to tell people to "Click Here". It's like painting "Drive Here" in the middle of a highway lane. Are there still people waking from their Rip Van Winkle and whipping out an iPhone?

Both sites contain worthless headers like "GAME CENTER" and "SCORES". How many helmet to helmet contacts does it take before you are unable to recognize a score? Do we really need to waste the space to tell me something I already know?

Overall, I really like the NFL site. Once you scroll down a bit, you get a perfect mobile view. You see teams, scores, and the network they are playing on. That is perfect. That is exactly what I want and expect. Move the "Week x" links to the bottom and we're really talking.

Then there's the NBA. Here you see 3 views of the site, about a month apart. The most you can ever see without scrolling is the scores of two games. Even then, they don't seem to bubble the in-progress games to the top, so you have to scroll past info you've already been alerted to, possibly for a few hours while you follow the games of the day. The rest of the screens are filled with even more worthless stuff like a "Mibox" (what the hell is that and why should I care) and links to the D-league.

Hey NBA, NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE D-league. Why would you waste this precious space on routes out of the site that your user specifically just came to? The funny thing is if you go to nba.com, the D-league link isn't prominent at all. What made you decide that mobile nba.com users were the ones that needed to see giant links to the D-league and the WNBA?

I guess what I'm asking for is a simple experience.

Don't treat me like an idiot with labels for things that don't need labels. You don't label the free-throw or 3-point line on the court do you?

Today's games are more important than tomorrow's or next week's. Move that navigation to the bottom.

Don't give me personalization features unless I opt to have them. Welcoming me as "Guest" is annoying, not helpful.

Tell me where I can experience your product. That means, tell me what TV network is showing the game. Gold star to the NFL for already doing this. I absolutely LOVE this feature and it keeps me coming back every week.

5 of the Now: Mix version

2009-11-19T13:51:00.003-06:00

I'll try something fresh this time around. Rather than individual tracks, I'm going to give you 5 dj mixes I'm feeling right now. I listen to a ton of continuous mixes. I have 149 of them sitting in iTunes right now.

Cameron Adams - The 139 Mix Tape
The rockinest thing to hit me in some time. Well done man, well done. Were you born in the 70s or early 80s? Have you listened to music in your life? Yes and yes? You'll love this mix.

Aeroplane - June Mix
Yes, this is a mix from June and yes I'm still feeling it in November.

Nick Warren - August 2009 Ambient Mix
Throw this on for those late night coding sessions.

Felix Da Housecat & Diddy Present: Lectro Black - Last Train to Paris Mixtape
I remember back, years ago, when Diddy was screaming "Let's get up and let's get ill". I'm not even sure his dance album ever got released. I guess he's giving it another shot. I even enjoyed the Diddy talking over the music - odd.

Sultan - Nu Breed
Groove.

7 Sources of Clutter

2009-11-09T21:04:00.000-06:00

Perhaps it is just the folks I surround myself with, but it seems like clutter is getting a lot of buzz these days. My decluttering journey kicked up a few notches a few years ago when I became a father and my family moved to a larger house. Along the way, I've come across some things I wouldn't have considered clutter years ago. Here are 7 of those things. Maybe they'll spark you to look in different directions while you simplify your life.

Wine - My wife and I drink wine, but not often, and that was the problem. I'm no wine expert. I'm not even a wine enthusiast. So why did we have 25 bottles of wine in the house? None of it was anything worth letting age. The more wine you get, the more racks you need, and then you need places for those racks. We've turned that around now. For us, we don't need more than 5 bottles. The best part is, I'm excited when guests bring a bottle rather than thinking "great, another bottle of wine we won't drink for months".

Food - Having a large pantry can be bad. You feel like you need to fill it, but why? If you haven't eaten the food in a year, why do you think you ever will? The same for sauces and leftovers. It's a game for us now to see how many things we can finish off. It sparks new flavor experiments. Some good, some bad. Have fun with it, but also make it part of the game to have as few leftovers as possible. Don't be wasteful.

Magazines - I blame my father for this one. He had a wall of car magazines in the basement. Stacked shelf after shelf. He enjoyed the magazines so much, he felt he had to keep them because surely he'd want to read them again some day. Even with this pre-warning, I found myself subscribed to more magazines than I could read. I couldn't just throw them away. I had to read them. I also found myself saving magazines like my father had. I now get 4 magazines, more than I want, but I look forward to them arriving and very much still enjoy reading a physical magazine, so I'm happy. Protip: If your magazine has a binding spine, you can tear out the pages you've read and recycle them right away. I started this when I'd take magazines on business trips to save weight in my carry-on bag, but now I use it all the time. I don't waste time figuring out what I have and haven't read and it feels good to be making progress in the magazine.

Clothes and Shoes - Plenty of people have clothes clutter. My take away from this was I reached a critical mass of clothing. I've been the same size for over 15 years and had enough clothes such that hardly anything ever wore out. Is it worth keeping in your closet if you only get to wear it twice a year? I don't think it is. Try the hanger hack to figure out what to ditch. Now I focus on having fewer, but higher quality, items. Anyone have recommendations on how many shirts a male adult should own?

Movies - I used to feel the need to own a movie that I wanted to watch more than once. With Netflix's turn around times these days and online streaming, I haven't bought a physical disc all year. Whatever I want is at most a day or two away. It isn't worth the cost and space of owning most movies.

Dishes - Collectible cups that aren't even a full set anymore...why? Like the food, just because you have the cupboard space, it doesn't mean you have to fill it. An empty kitchen cupboard can be a great substitute for otherwise having to buy another endtable or shelf to store whatever needs storing.

Gift cards - Fake money as I like to call them. They fill our wallets and purses. They fall in value from ridiculous fees. I especially hate them because they drain me mentally. I know the value of a dollar. I can't not spend them. We have a new focus to try and spend (or regift) these as soon as we can, but at the same time, I don't want to buy things we don't need, so it is a challenge. Any ideas on getting rid of gift cards?

5 of the Now

2009-09-15T13:21:00.006-05:00

Tommy Sparks - I'm a Rope (Yuksek Remix)
Has a great call and response feel to it. If you dig this, check out Yuksek's mixes on his podcast. Tommy Sparks is a hell of a lot of fun too.

Massive Attack - Euro Zero Zero
Here's what's great about an iTunes library. You don't see that the song you are listening to is a B-side and not supposed to be any good. Clearly that's a generality, but you get my point. This is off the Tear Drop single. So chill.

Kim - B.T.T.T.R.Y (Bag Raiders Remix)
Epic energy.

Petter - These Days & Unkle - What Are You To Me?
Take two previous appearances from the 5otn and let one of the best DJs (and his production team) on the planet mash them up. Pure bliss. I've always loved these tracks together, but they hit me with a special bit of emotion a few days ago. The sample really doesn't give you the feel, but that's the quickest (legal) link I could find.

Del the Funky Homosapien - Phoney Phranchise (Domino Remix)
Del is timeless.

5 of the Now

2009-08-12T11:21:00.003-05:00

Luomo & Apparat - Love You All (Club Version)
Apparat's been a sleeper for me. Once I finally gave him some focus, I realized I was already a fan and have a handful of his stuff that I absolutely love. Expect some more iTunes payouts Apparat, I'll warm up the credit card.

LMFAO - Yes
Party. This is getting constant play from me since I picked it up. I'll listen to it 2 or 3 times in a row even. "Every day I see my dream" can be quite profound, even if that was not the intention.

CLASSIX - I'll Get You
This is just fun. Crank it up and sit on your back patio in the summer air. I want to make my own edit of this. Highlight the Jeppe vocals and let them play a bit more.

Fever Ray - Triangle Walks (Rex The Dog Radio Edit)
Haunting, groovy, driving. I'm strangely attracted to the voice. Had to dig out the Knife albums and give them some more plays too :) The link is to a free download.

The MFA - The Difference It Makes
This has always been a favorite and I was shocked to see I hadn't fit it into a previous 5otn. I was huge into Border Community back when this came out.

5 of the Now

2009-07-03T20:36:00.003-05:00

Honestly, this is 5 of the month and a half ago, but I was feeling them at the time and I want to burn that in to the Internet memory forever.

Freeland - Under Control (Evil Nine Graveyard Smash)
That's some large sound. "No time to talk about it, just got to feel it alright."

Deekline & Wizard - Handz Up (Stanton Warriors Remix)
Absofreakinlutely bangin. It's available a few places, but this is the best sample on the iTunes store.

Sinner DC - Glass Alley
I imagine this sounds tremendous while watching the sun rise.

Glenn Hansard & Marketa Irglova - Falling Slowly
I had an instant crush on the movie Once. Check out the music and the movie. So passionate. I recommend using the movie to introduce you to the music.

Porno Galactica - Superwhore
Still enjoying these guys. I want to go see them live again.

5 of the Now

2009-04-18T10:09:00.003-05:00

Evil Nine - Icicles
Evil Nine's latest continues to grow on me. I have woken up many mornings with this song in my head. Oddly enough I was really digging Icicles just when it was released as a single. Must have been all of that radio airplay I was catching in Iowa - yeah right. Seraphim, you rule. I want more. It was particularly fun to get lost in this track during an absolutely ridiculous travel experience at an airport recently. People yelling, nearly ready to throw punches. "All around...you...is fire!". Brought a smile to my face.

The Prodigy - Omen
So great to have all of the boys back together. This album has lots of the feel of "Music for the Jilted Generation" and that is a wonderful thing.

Lyrics Born - I Like It, I Love It (Live @ The Picador)
Thank you for stopping in Iowa City LB. The crowd wasn't huge, but you rocked it like the entire town was there.

Lyrics Born - Do That There (Live @ The Picador)
Joyo Velarde rocked it too.

Porno Galactica - Sail Away (Live @ The Picador)
These guys were so infectious. They owned. Spider-man crawl on the ceiling was the best. Check out their mixtape on MySpace.

Safari 4 UI Confusion

2009-03-09T21:37:00.004-05:00

I'm pretty meh on Safari 4 so far. The top sites thing isn't something I'll use. Coverflow previews are neat, but haven't used them. Tabs on top are ok, but I'm finding myself confused. Here's how.

If you have a window open, with tabs, and then click a link that opens a new window, Safari creates that window in such a way that the tabs from the old window appear attached to the new window!

Yes, there's a line here that is smooth in the regular window, but this interface is new. My brain doesn't know that yet. Second, it seems there is a slight color variation with the active and inactive windows. I'm sure that's great if you aren't colorblind. Doesn't do jack for me.

This is bad because I try to click the tab that I think belongs to my window, but it doesn't. It seems Apple could fix this by simply creating the new window 5 pixels lower, or higher.

5 of the Now

2009-02-28T19:36:00.003-06:00

The Chemical Brothers - Out of Control
I could list the entire Chem Bros catalog as 5otn, and it appears I am, bit by bit. Honestly it seems I always have Chem Bros in my 5otn list. More often than not, they get pushed to a later list, so be glad you don't see them here any more than you already do :)

Telfon Tel Aviv - The Birds
Spacey, driven, soothing.

Justice - DVNO
Look out, the Justice 5otn seal is broken. These guys were everywhere last year. I'm a big Ed Banger records fan, and I can't say they are even in my top 3 on that label, but I dig them. Energy and class.

Closer Musik - One, Two, Three (Ewan Pearson Remix)
The perfect music to drink martinis and cook to!

Vector - Rise
Probably, more properly known as Vector 13. In any case, groovy stuff.

Hulu Had It

2009-02-18T20:09:00.003-06:00

I've recently gotten into Boxee. I've been aware of it for quite some time, but I always thought it required far more mucking to install than it actually does. Boxee is only useful to me on Apple TV. It's interface is decent, but not great. I see no reason to use it while I'm sitting at my computers. While sitting in bed in from of my TV, that's another story.

Hooking your MacBook up to the TV to watch Hulu is doable, but it really isn't a good solution. It requires a bunch of temporary cables. Requires you adjust your power management (or wiggle the mouse every few minutes). Worst of all, it owns your notebook while you are watching TV. You can't DO ANYTHING on your computer while it is attached to the TV.

Boxee on Apple TV is great because it brings you Hulu, CBS, and others in a usable format. Nothing new to hook up. It just works. Control it with a remote instead of a keyboard and mouse. The full Hulu experience is there. You see all of the commercials, you see the branding. It's all there.

So then Hulu's partners go and gets stupid. It isn't Hulu, but rather the content providers. You'd think Hulu, who has built the number one destination video site for legal, full, television episodes wouldn't be dumb enough to slap its users in the face, even when the content providers tell them to. As @peterrojas says, Boxee is no different than a web browser. I say Boxee is actually *better* than a web browser for the content provider. Boxee, especially on Apple TV, is running full screen. Users are likely focused on the TV experience, and aren't jumping into a spreadsheet during the commercials. They're watching them.

Hulu also has the unique ability to know who I am. I'm logged into Boxee. They could work with Boxee to make me logged into Hulu. They'd know who I am. They'd know what I watched. They'd know what commercials they've shown me. This has to have value. This has to be better than forcing me to either not watch their content at all, or go get it from a gray/black market source.

Shutting down Hulu on Boxee will NOT send me back to cable. The sooner Hulu and the content providers learn that, the better.

iPhone Coverart Fail

2009-01-24T15:16:00.003-06:00

Ok, this was really just a reason for me to play with my camera, iMovie, and YouTube uploading, but an annoying bug none the less.

The coverart that is displayed does not match the track that is playing. Switch to coverflow and the coverart is correct. Switch back and it is still wrong. Flip to the details and the mini coverart is correct. Odd. I think this has been there for quite a few spins of the firmware.

And note to self, small text overlays don't encode well at YouTube quality :) That fail is all on me.

5 of the Now

2009-01-15T22:54:00.009-06:00

Bag Raiders - Fun Punch (Bag Raiders Remix)
I love how Audiosurf can make such a great video for this track. Banging and uplifting.

Deadmau5 - Hi Friend (Original Mix)
Deadmau5 continues to own it. Lots of energy.

Robyn - Cobrastyle
I wish I could play the drums with a bear head on. Actually, I just wish I could play the drums. I'm guessing that's a nod to the Teddybears?

Muscles - Ice Cream
I'm repulsed by the words muscles and ice cream in the same sentence, but I dig the music.

Fischerspooner - A Kick in the Teeth
I don't know what it is about Fischerspooner. I like their music and own a few handfuls of their tracks, but I seem to ignore their releases. I always end up hearing it somehow anyway and then think "wow that sounds great, who is that?".

Where's the Love?

2009-01-09T23:37:00.006-06:00

I like to rate stuff. Movies from Netflix, songs in iTunes, photos in iPhoto - they all allow ratings of 1 to 5 stars. I make use of these ratings in all of these apps. I started to wonder if I have similar distributions of love-like-hate across different types of media. So, of course I made a really geeky bar graph!

First off, I don't have time in my life for hate. Music and photos that I hate get removed from my library. A movie has to be really bad for me to hate it. I only had 9 hated movies in Netflix out of over 500 ratings.

I have nearly 6000 things rated between the 3 groups. Apple must love me for their genius database.

Movies and music tend to collect in the Really Like. I think that makes sense.

I take bad photos. Most of my library is stuff I took and I rate most of it at 3 stars. Photos have the lowest love percentage.

I seem to love more movies as a percentage vs. music and photos.

Less than 10% of my library is music that will gurantee that I dance, sing along, and nod my head when it comes on. That's unfortunate and probably why I spend so much money on music. Always on the hunt for a 5 star :)

2008 Albums of the Year

2008-12-30T09:09:00.005-06:00

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals [Amazon]

Sasha - Invol2ver

Sia - Some People Have Real Problems

FM Belfast - How to Make Friends

I was especially struck with the fact that I didn't buy the physical disc of any of these. 3 of them came from the iTunes store and one came direct from the artist.

Also of note are the albums that didn't make my list. Evil Nine, Bloc Party, and Milosh all had new albums that I bought in 2008. I enjoy all of them, but none of them managed to crack my yearly favorites. Robyn's album is also great, but I have a hard time calling it a 2008 album. Much of the album has been available for years.

Past albums of the year:
[2007]
[2006]

MagSafe on a Desktop?

2008-12-22T15:21:00.003-06:00

When the Apple LED Cinema Display was launched, I was immediately drawn to the multi-headed cord that supplied video, USB, and power. This was no iMac, but it was again attacking the number of cables you need to snake around your desk. A single power drop to the floor is fantastic...but only if you're using a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

I won't admit that the Mac mini is dead, and the number of rumors surrounding it suggest it is ready for an update (but we've heard that many times before). I'm wondering if Apple would release a new Mac mini with a MagSafe connector. Certainly the desktop computer is a different beast than a notebook. People shout "I wouldn't want my computer to shut off when I trip over the cable!". To those folks I say, why in the world are you tripping over your computer's power cable? Do you trip often? Do you drink a fair amount? Do you like to host double dutch tournaments with your power cords in the living room?

Personally, I'd me more than happy with a MagSafe connector on my desktop. I can't say I've ever tripped over the cord of my desktop, so I'll take the risk that it'll get yanked out at an inopportune time in exchange for fewer cables.

That leaves the cost argument. Folks in the market for a Mac mini aren't the target market of an LED Cinema Display. However, since that's the only display Apple makes, that would be a nice little carrot to get them to spend the cash.

Here's hoping for a new Mac mini in '09. Let's see what it brings. My mockup including the Mac nano is included here. If Apple really does this, I'd expect the cables out the back.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

2008-12-21T12:35:00.003-06:00

Just a fun idea for your kids or those with a kid's heart. Cookie cutter for the shape. Peanut butter works as glue for the ornaments.

Make one and post a link to the picture. You know you want to!

You Already Have That Information

2008-12-19T14:24:00.003-06:00

Let's start the rant.

Earlier this week, we had the misfortune of a dead battery in our Toyota van. How it got that way is a whole other rant. For whatever reason, we were unable to jump it (I still don't know what I did wrong). Roadside assistance to the rescue! We had such a service as part of purchasing the vehicle. Here's where the mess started.

Getting someone on the phone was no problem. It was the conversation topics that were the problem. 95% of the conversation was spent gathering information they already have. They wanted our name and address. Sure, no problem, you need to identify me. I can handle that. We then spent over 5 minutes convincing them that our address really does exist, and has for nearly 4 years. You can blame the map companies for this one, but we'll get to that.

Here are some other things they needed to know:

What kind of vehicle we had

The type of drivetrain the vehicle has

The color of the vehicle

This irritates me, because this is all information they already have, and by asking me, and re-entering it, they can only make mistakes. They can't get any better data than they already should have. We bought the vehicle from Toyota. They know the make, model, drivetrain, and color of the vehicle they sold us. It was on the paperwork we signed. They know where we live, it was on the paperwork we signed, generated from data we gave them at the time of purchase. The service plan was purchased from Toyota and applied to the vehicle that we purchased so the plan is linked to the vehicle that is linked to us and our address.

I don't care if you farm out the service contract to another company. Give them the information you already have. I don't care if map services don't think our street exists. How about you trigger an "are you sure" to their databases when you process a customer that seems to live on a street that doesn't exist. Perhaps the map guys would even pay you for the heads up!

All I want to hear is "Sir, we show you have a '33 Foobar AWD with purple poka-dots". I'll, say yes, and let them know that I added lime green racing stripes which they'll add to their information store.

Computers are good at this stuff folks. It isn't hard. Companies can save themselves money and time getting their ducks in a row, and the side effect is they wow me with their great service.

Maybe GM and Chrysler can apply some of my tax dollars towards service. One way of making a desirable car is making one with exceptional service behind it and you don't have to be a luxury brand to accomplish that.

CRbus Update

2008-12-13T13:22:00.006-06:00

Public transit in Cedar Rapids had a bit of a shakeup this year. With all-time record flooding in the city, our Ground Transportation center was damaged, as well as many of the neighborhoods that the buses blaze through (and some of the buses themselves).

The city has made the best of what they have. This includes a new hub at Parking Lot 44, south of the regular GTC. It also includes some new stops, less frequent buses, but also later running buses.

My iPhone optimized Cedar Rapids bus schedule, CRbus, is now up to date with the schedules posted on August 22nd. Sorry for the delay. I wasn't riding the bus much in the last few months, so it wasn't a priority for me. [CRbus was launched here]

Let me know if you find any errors in the data. The city doesn't provide the data in an easily consumable format, so there's a lot of hand editing involved.

Simple Lists

2008-12-07T12:24:00.004-06:00

Keeping a list of things to do is something most everyone does. I certainly do. Crossing something off those lists is one of the most satisfying things I encounter in a day. Traditionally, I keep these lists on scraps of paper and consolidate to a larger, heavy (to signify importance), piece of paper every so often. This works, but it certainly has disadvantages.

Tough to share it with others or between home and work

Tough to save large archives, unless you want a box of scrap paper

Can't search it

Easy to lose

I've tried to take my todo list digital many, many times. Microsoft Outlook tasks, Microsoft Project, Google Notebook, _todo.txt in the root. These are all as capable as paper, but they all had drawbacks that never let them stick. I always went back to paper and pen.

Over Thanksgiving, I took some vacation. I've found that I enjoy my vacation far more when I have a nice list of things to do, (and get them done). Otherwise I find myself watching the Today show until mid-morning, doing nothing of real value all day, and next thing I know, the family is walking in the front door.

So one of my todos for my last vacation was to check out the software that I got in the last MacHeist bundle (listing here) that I never got around to trying. One of those apps happened to be TaskPaper.

I went in pessimistic, expecting to be deleting the app after a day or so. After a few minutes of checking it out, I decided to give it a go for the week with my vacation todo list. By day 2 I was hooked. The digital todo list was finally a reality for me.

I love the simplicity of the app. I love the tagging and tag based filtering. I love that it still feels satisfying to cross off a task. I love the amazingly simple data format rules that let the app style the data appropriately.

TaskPaper seems to have a good buddy in TodoPaper. TodoPaper has essentially the same design, but for Windows systems. I'm now using TodoPaper at work and TaskPaper at home. I'd love to see them add a way to sync them.

TaskPaper recently bumped to 2.0 and got even better. The interface got even cleaner and they added a great query language (not @done is a favorite).

The only real holdback on these apps is the price. $30 for each seems a touch much to me but I'd still buy it at that price. I'm very happy to have gotten my TaskPaper license in MacHeist and work bought the TodoPaper license. Free trials are available, as well as discount codes every now and then. Be sure to check the site blogs and the TaskPaper screencast for a discount.

Jacks-o-2008

2008-11-25T16:36:00.004-06:00

A bit late on the post, but since I've posted them in previous years, I thought I'd get that going again.

Mine was the ghost, and no, I did not intend for it to look like Pac-man or the logo for Ghostly International.

:set tings

2008-11-25T08:51:00.003-06:00

This post is half googlecache, half hoping someone will find it useful.

I'm a die hard vi user. So hardcore that years ago, I started a project to replace Windows explorer with something that could be controlled with vi keys. Imagine blazing through your filesystem with j and k and then renaming a file with vi commands. I'm starting to drool again. I mothballed that project long ago.

Anyway, I have some settings for vi that I'm used to and I like to take them with me to whatever machine I touch. Here is what you'll find in my .exrc, .vimrc, or lemmy.rc (depending on the platform).

set shiftwidth=4 set autoindent set ruler set showmode set wrapscan set warn set showmatch set tabstop=4 ab teh the ab fo of map ,, o^[k map g ^i/* ^[ ^[A */^[j map f ^i^[j map ,da :r!date

If I'm on OS X, warn, showmode, and wrapscan are on by default. Remember that Leopard uses Vim, so put your settings in ~/.vimrc.

To me, a tab is 4 wide, not 8. Feel free to start a religious war with me if you'd like to.

Some of my favorites are the mappings I have near the end. Hitting to add a blank line is a must have. The auto-comment-this-line shortcuts are nice too.

I know some of the readers of this blog are vi users. What do your settings look like?

Forced Receipt

2008-11-24T15:08:00.004-06:00

Uhh, you're doing it wrong.

Baby Toy on a Pole

2008-11-23T14:36:00.006-06:00

I can't believe I haven't run across this sooner, what with all of the complaining (err, suggesting) I do on the color blind topic. It seems that some traffic signals in Canada do use shapes, in addition to color. I love it.

Photo credit of user Sprocket from Wikipedia

The Cheapest Thing at Amazon

2008-11-22T19:06:00.003-06:00

I don't pay for shipping at Amazon. Ever since they started offering Super Saver Shipping, I make sure that I never spend less than $25. This used to be very easy for me. I kept a wish list 5 pages long. Most of it was full of music, movies, and books that I wanted. When an order went in, I'd go pluck something from the wish list to get me over $25.

This worked great until recently. Most of my music now comes from iTunes, Beatport, and the Amazon MP3 store. I'm not buying many physical CDs. I've all but stopped buying DVDs. Between my existing collection and Netflix, I have way more movies than time. Books are similar. I have no less than 10 I need to finish and I've promised myself no new books until I do.

I recently put in an order for some rechargeable batteries (Sanyo Eneloop
if you care). The total was $24.99. Nice. Now I have to spend a penny to get free shipping. Nothing on the wish list was suitable. I went on a short search to find the cheapest thing on Amazon that I could buy and still have a use for. I ended up getting a set of Cat Crinkle Balls for one dollar and 62 cents.

So, I'm curious. How do you get your cart over $25 to get free shipping? Do you have any low cost items you toss in? What's the lowest price item you've seen at Amazon?

One warning about the Crinkle Balls link. It seems a pet supply store rather than Amazon currently has the lowest sale price, so make sure you are selecting Amazon if you try to buy this. Otherwise you will spend $7.99 to ship your dollar cat balls!

5 of the Now

2008-11-20T20:27:00.005-06:00

Evil Nine - All the Cash [Amazon]

I wasn't full bore into "They Live" when it came out. That's changing recently. El-P absolutely smashes it on this one.

Kid Cudi - Day 'n' Nite [Amazon]

I don't tend to rank my 5otns. It isn't a contest for the best track. It's what I'm feeling and listening to at the moment. That said, this is #1 for me right now. It has infiltrated my brain. I have dreams about playing the beat on Bloom. I'm sick.

FM Belfast - Underwear [Amazon]
They say that all of this great music comes out of Iceland because there's nothing better to do (I don't buy it, seems like a wonderful place to live and I'd like to visit some day). Well now we get the great music that celebrates the fact that there's nothing to do there! Rock on.

Alex Metric - In Your Machine (Treasure Fingers Remix) [Amazon]

Get Shakes - Sister Self Doubt [Amazon]

iTunes and Amazon links included for your convenience and my music addiction!

Multiple Formats, Watched Once

2008-10-30T21:07:00.003-05:00

I have a new feature to add to my wish list for iTunes Pro. Podcasts have overtaken TV for me. I watch them at home on my Mac and my Apple TV, and on the go on my iPhone. For those podcasts that support it, I like to watch the HD versions on my Apple TV. The iPhone doesn't care for that high of resolution, so I need to either not watch certain shows on it, or catch a duplicate feed, in a lower resolution.

Catching dual feeds burns more disk than necessary, but that's not why I hate it. I hate it because iTunes isn't smart enough to know that when I've watched the HD version, it should mark the other version as watched as well. iPhones aren't that big and it really hurts to have it sync'd full of stuff I've already watched.

Apple could hide all of this mess. I could just have a single entry for Diggnation and it could figure out the best version to show for the platform I'm using.

One day the iPhone will support HD, but unless flash capacity jumps dramatically in the near term, it will still be more cost efficient to sync a lower res version.

Simple Time

2008-10-29T20:07:00.005-05:00

My wife bought me this alarm clock from Target earlier this year. It's designed by Michael Graves. She said she got it for me because it looked simple. She was right and I love it.

I love the large numbers that are easy to read. I love the backlit display that only comes on when you need it, which is nice since the unit runs on batteries. I love that there is no power cord. I love that the backlight stays on for 10 seconds or so from a single push. This allows it to be a quick night light too to help you rearrange your bedding.

I love that there are only 6 buttons and they don't require a bunch of weird hold sequences. Alarm, clock, plus, minus, snooze, and on/off. Hold the alarm button to change the alarm. Hold the time button to...wait for it...change the time. Turn it on and you get clear indication the alarm is set. It's also small enough to take with you when you travel. I really love not having to worry that I didn't get the hotel alarm set right.

Best of all, it looks nice and it didn't cost much. A truly great product. I wish I could find more of them to buy for friends and family as gifts.

Goat Moon

2008-10-18T22:44:00.002-05:00

5 of the Now

2008-10-18T13:57:00.005-05:00

DJ Zeph - Frogs
Nod your head

LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
Eventually I'll work my way through their whole catalog as 5otn entries. I think this is the 5th time LCD Soundsystem has made the 5otn. In a parallel universe, I listen to this while drinking coffee outside my last bike messenger drop-off in New York city.

Freeez - I.O.U.
What's old is new again. It's so damn catchy. Garish elegance. Sometimes Y!

Babe Ruth - The Mexican
Let's take it back...

MGMT - Kids (Soulwax Remix)
Focused chaos. Amazing. Hundreds of shady places to download this one. Can't seem to find an official one.

Bonus - Dexy's Midnight Runner - Come on Eileen. I blame Girl Talk for this one. Believe it or not, I have this on vinyl from years and years ago. Girl Talk has planted it in my head, never to be heard the same again.

I'm Leaving iGoogle...wait not yet

2008-10-17T20:27:00.004-05:00

The new iGoogle launched and I hate it. iGoogle is my homepage. I keep weather, stocks, mail, and feeds on there...mostly feeds. The new iGoogle destroyed it for me. The old one showed me post titles with a plus box to open up and read the item. This worked well. If I wanted, I could click-thru to the main site, but I rarely did. The new iGoogle chose to do away with the plus boxes and just give me the first two lines of the RSS items. This was terrible. It wasn't enough to read and it made the page an absolute mess of text that was impossible to read. Combine that with the worthless side bar links and I was ready to look for a replacement.

Well, I guess Google is feeling the heat. As of tonight, the plus boxes are back. I can collapse the side bar links and I'm mostly back to normal. I'll stay...for now.

As a temporary workaround, you can change your language preference to UK english and get the old design back. Who knows how long until they roll the new site to the UK version.

The software industry is excited about web apps because they can spin versions whenever they want. New features can launch when ready, not as part of a larger bundle. The problem with this is that it's usually a forced upgrade. With boxed software, I can choose to not have the Office ribbons, for example. With online software, beloved features are killed as the users scream in pain. Will web apps face a sustaining nightmare? Will customers demand old versions stick around forever?

iTunes 8 Helps You Clean

2008-09-17T22:22:00.004-05:00

I would have thought otherwise, but I love genre tiles. How nice of iTunes 8 to ram those badly tagged tracks in my face. Are you like me, can you not stand 4 ways to say the exact same thing? Well iTunes helps you find those ID3 abominations so you can clean them right up.

BTW, the correct one of the 4 is "Hip Hop". I know this because Shadow says so.

Strictly Enforced

2008-09-06T12:38:00.001-05:00

One of favorite signs to see along the road is the "strictly enforced"
sign. It usually contains some trumped up promise meant to make you
believe law enforcement personnel are strapped to every other tree,
two fisting radar guns that are pointed squarely at you. What makes it a
puzzler is that the signs rarely list the speed limit they are
strictly enforcing. 20 square feet of signage and they can't find
room for a measley "35"!

5 of the Now

2008-07-23T20:47:00.004-05:00

Evil Nine - They Live!
Can't wait for the new album. Obviously, I'm a big fan.

UNKLE - Restless (Fake Blood Remix)
Part of another tremendous value package from Global Underground. 3.5 hours of music, plus continuous mixes of those tracks, all for $11.99. Deal! Too bad some of the music isn't all that great. The 30 second preview is terrible. This one is much better.

Skylark - Interlater (Pete Tong and Paul Rogers Remix)
Pete Tong has been playing this as the opener for his podcast for months, but I never knew what it was. He finally identified it in an episode, so here it is. Hear it in this Beatport Burners podcast and even download a free copy at Amazon right now.

Fred Everything - Friday (Trentemoller Remix)
This one came up in the random play the other day and I can't believe I've never used it as a 5otn. Rockin. The funk oozes from this one.

S.T.I.X. - The Dude (Uncle Buck Remix)
Here's a quarter, why don't you go downtown...ohh, not that Uncle Buck? Quality anyway.

iPhone Remote Review

2008-07-12T13:49:00.006-05:00

iPhone 2.0 software is out and that means your iPhone can now be a remote. Yes, with Apple's Remote application, you can use the iPhone to control iTunes on your computer, and better yet, your Apple TV.

I'm loving this app so far. Setup is very easy. You use the same PIN entry that you use to create a relationship between your Apple TV and the computers in your network. Once you are setup, you get a familiar iPod-like set of menus on the iPhone. The only difference is that when you pick something to play, sound and video start on the Apple TV, rather than the iPhone.

It is interesting that the playlist interface is a bit different from the one you get with the traditional iPod controls.

Other things to note

No, you can't stream from your library to your phone using this app.

You can view ratings of your library content, but you can't set new ratings with the Remote app.

Coverart and track info is displayed so this is the perfect party controller. You never have to leave the poker table to figure out which song is playing or start something else on request. If you are progressing through a playlist, the coverart will just update for you. Turn off power savings and hang your phone on the wall next to the stereo so your guests know what is playing.

Elapsed track time does display. Very nice.

It has search!

Regular remotes still work. Get in a remote battle with your family members.

Coverflow does not work in Remote

You can spend as long as you like selecting something new from the Remote interface without stopping what is playing on the Apple TV. This is especially valuable when viewing movies because normally the Apple TV will stop playing the movie completely when you jump into the menu system.

Sadly, you can crash the Apple TV using the Remote program. It doesn't happen often, but I have done it.

Best of all, it is free

Hooray for Trism

2008-07-11T21:44:00.004-05:00

iPhone 2.0 software is out and somehow I managed to get upgraded this morning amongst the melting Apple servers. I'm a little underwhelmed with the selection of apps in the app store so far. I figured there would be dozens I would want to try and buy. There aren't, yet.

I was looking for a good puzzle game though. I came across Trism. Looked like something I'd enjoy. Match up tiles. Things slide around. Bonuses for large matches. Hold on, what's this. Color blind mode!. I was already leaning towards buying this game and color blind mode, with letters along with the color, put me right over the top.

Huge thanks to the developer, Demiforce, for including a color blind mode. It is much appreciated and resulted in a sale of your game.

One final thanks to Apple for building in a screenshot function in the 2.0 software. Hold home and hit sleep/wake. I love it.

BTW, the game is lots of fun too.

5 of the Now

2008-06-27T23:43:00.003-05:00

Back to back 5 of the Nows without any other posts? Hmm, either I have nothing to say, or I'm too busy listening to music.

TEPR - Minuit jacuzzi (DatA Remix) Party. That's all that needs said. Listen on MySpace and YouTube as well.

Danny Byrd - Gold Rush The Hospital Records podcast does it again. I don't really like D'n'B, but I love that podcast and it continues to get me to buy their music. Nothing over the top here, just quality.

Girl Talk - No Pause Big thanks to my brother for turning me on to Girl Talk. He's selling his current album as a pay-what-you-like download. I paid $6 for it. Fair? The mashups that Girl Talk does are even better than the ones I hear in my head. I wish I could have as much fun with my record collection as this album suggests I could. It's a sample spotters delight. Try and not grin when the Yael Naim track (yes, the MacBook air one) is on, I dare you.

Girl Talk - What It's All About Keep it kickin'. Listening to this makes me feel like I should be spending more of my life in a club dancing.

Terre's Neu Wuss Fusion - Love On a Real Train (Risky Business) Slowing it down a bit. Great opening track for a mix. Builds and builds.

Let's review for the record companies in case they are listening. 4/5ths of the music in this list is available for free in one form or another. I paid for a copy of all of them because I enjoy them, and I was able to buy them in a format that provides me value. The only one that I couldn't find free anywhere is put out by Ghostly International. Ghostly isn't avoiding the free though. You'll find them dishing out tracks at Rcrd Lbl, as well as being the latest label to team up with Adult Swim. Go download Ghostly Swim now!

5 of the Now

2008-06-04T20:40:00.006-05:00

Paul Kalkbrenner - Gebrünn Gebrünn iTunes must hate Mr. Kalkbrenner. I reported a bad encoding of his track, "The Palisades", years ago. It's still messed up (you can hear it in the preview). My download of "Deep" also has dropouts in it. Is BPitch providing the crappy encodings or is Apple out to get him? Luckily my copy of "Gebrünn Gebrünn" is clean and sounds wonderful. This track has such a big, yet lush, sound.

Radiohead - All I Need Perfect for an afterparty. Since we're talking Radiohead, I need to link this masterpiece.

LCD Soundsystem - Big Ideas Rock! I want an extended version of this track. I find myself in possession of a head full of big ideas after I have a beer or two. My wife calls a beer a "bottle of words" for me. Much like the lyrics in this song, most of those ideas are gone the next morning or condemned to live life on a hastily scribbled piece of paper, of which there are dozens in my dresser. It's no lie, this writeup is coming from one of those scraps of paper :) Thanks to Jason for pointing me to this soundtrack that slipped my radar.

Zombie Nation - Black Toys No doubt you are familiar with Zombie Nation's "Kernkraft 400" track. I believe it is required to be played at all major sporting events worldwide. Anyway, Zombie Nation is more than that track. I really enjoy the harshness that starts about 1:23 into this one. Sounds even better pitched up a touch.

Gnarls Barkley - Run (I'm a Natural Disaster) I'm not digging the new album as much as I thought I would, but I can't sit still listening to this one.

Sigh, Another Box

2008-05-28T20:01:00.007-05:00

I'm happy and sad. The recently announced Netflix Player, by Roku, seems like something I would have ordered the second I saw it. I've been a Netflix customer nearly as long as they've been around. I talk up their service to anyone who will listen. I eagerly joined in on the Watch Now beta testing, and put up with the new client downloads seemingly every time I watched something. I even keep a Windows partition around on my MacBook, just so I can have IE and watch now capability (no Parallels on the MacBook).

Then there's my good buddy Roku. Well, it's more like a friend of a friend. The founder of Roku, Anthony Wood, is the man that gave us the ReplayTV, and it is well documented how much I love that thing.

So we have Netflix and Roku...together. They give us a fairly priced, one time cost, little box that will let me watch Netflix movies on my TV with no computer involved. This should be awesome...but it's not.

It's another box. I don't want another box. The days of a towering electronics stack being cool are long gone. I was there. I wanted to buy a separate CD player from my DVD player because it would be better and it would look sophisticated and privileged. I don't care about that sort of thing anymore. I want my hardware to blend in with the furniture. I want it elegant, but minimal. I want fewer things to dust. Fewer cords to plug-in. Fewer remotes to handle. Fewer interfaces to tolerate (most of them suck).

So what happened Netflix? We saw reports that you were bringing your service directly to the TV. Is that still coming? That's where it's at for the end game. No extra boxes. Just a service in the box. TVs are frickin finally getting smarter. Samsung's InfoLink looks pretty interesting for a start. RSS feeds for stocks and weather. Sounds familiar.

I think Apple has Netflix beat on everything but the price with their Apple TV. The Apple TV isn't just a movie box. It's a content box, with movies being one of the content types. Apple is pushing hard for you to buy stuff through the Apple TV, but is quite capable without spending a penny. I love its ability to subscribe to video podcasts. Where's that feature Roku? I love that it can play YouTube and view Flickr. Can't Netflix make these partnerships too?

Did I mention the Roku box is fugly? I'm eager to see what the other hardware vendors that have deals with Netflix will bring. The Roku box looks like a Radio Shack composite video switcher from the 90s.

The thing that kills me is that even though this thing is ugly and another box, I still want to buy one because that crappy experience will be amazingly pleasant compared to the crappy experience of booting a whole other OS just to access Netflix content and then sit at my computer desk for 2 hours.

Factory Reset Your Rental Car

2008-05-20T21:01:00.003-05:00

On a recent business trip, we drove a Ford Edge with the Microsoft Sync system that I'm sure you've seen on TV lately. We played around with the system quite a bit and in the process turned off some of the beginner options and put the system into the advanced mode. This got me thinking. Will the next person be screwed? Will the rental company bother to set the Sync back to the settings that are appropriate for new users? I highly doubt it.

This is an interesting problem because not only are cars getting more and more gadgets, but we might be seeing opportunities for your private data to stick around.

5 years ago, the only traces you'd leave behind in a rental were how tall you were based on the seat position, the radio station you liked, and maybe some trash from your favorite fast food place. Now, you might have a navigation system with the customers you were visiting stored as waypoints, or your phone's contacts loaded into the Bluetooth handsfree system.

So will car manufacturers build a way to reset or wipe all of the car's systems with a simple keypress sequence? Are they even thinking about this sort of thing? Does anyone know of solutions available in the marketplace today?

iTunes Housekeeper

2008-04-24T20:40:00.004-05:00

I think I read somewhere that once you have a house over 3500 sq ft, you require a professional to keep it clean. This got me wondering. How big of an iTunes library can you handle before you need professional help? Mine is getting quite large.

I tell you what, I sure could use someone that comes in once a month to correct album art, rename incorrect CDDB tags, and fix the playlists that I screw up when dragging stuff around.

But would an iTunes housekeeper be more hassle than they are worth? Would they drop your favorite playlist, shattering it into the dozen original pieces? Would they dust that new punk album you bought, ruining the sound that you paid good money to sound bad? Would they steal the 50 Cent you left sitting on the counter?

Maybe they'd make your music sound better than you ever thought possible. Perhaps they'd rearrange some tracks and make your library feel spacious and airy. But maybe, just maybe, they'd invite over their boyfriend, Zune, and make a mockery of your whole existence.

5 of the Now

2008-03-26T20:36:00.006-05:00

Fujiya & Miyagi - Ankle Injuries
I've recently gotten into these guys. I have no idea why I hadn't found them sooner.

El-P - Stepfather Factory
This track is so unconventional. It owns me.

Jori Hulkkonen - Customs Person
Catch Jori on the Sid Loves Turbo podcast.

Asle - Hifi is Dead (Dumb Dan Remix)
I really love the lyric...Hifi is dead, hifi is soooo dead. Take your digital shit and get rid of it...It really makes me smile. The 30sec sample is really boring. The song is more fun than this. Go have a listen at Beatport if you want to hear the whole thing.

Nathan Fake - You Are Here (Four Tet Remix)
This one is best consumed in a mix or perhaps as an edit. Like other Four Tet work, the music is great, but it tends to wander a bit. Still diggin' it.

Apple Dogfooding

2008-03-18T20:44:00.005-05:00

Apple has been seeing great success with Safari on the iPhone, but there's always room for improvement. On a recent trip to Chicago, I wanted to visit a local Apple retail store. The problem is that there are 7 of them in Illinois and I couldn't really tell you right off which one was close to me.

I was easily able to hit the retail site in Safari and figure out the store I wanted to visit, but then the gotchas started. The iPhone doesn't have copy/paste. Google Maps on the iPhone is superb, but you have to get the address in there. To transfer addresses from the web to Google Maps you have to play a game to have the people around you each remember a portion of the address and feed it back to you once you are on the maps screen.

I'd expect Apple to integrate this a little tighter. Perhaps they embed some geocode or microformats that Safari would know to pass to Google Maps. This is the kind of delight feature that Apple fans have come to expect ;)

Update
I found a workaround. It still isn't ideal, but better than nothing. With the address onscreen in Safari, select the search icon. You can now type in the address that you can see through the shaded screen. When you search, Google will give you the Google Maps link at the top of your search results. If you select that link in Safari, the iPhone will launch Google Maps within the iPhone, not Safari. This is what I want, but with the extra step of reentering the address. As Josh mentioned in the comments, a context menu like you get in the desktop Safari with the option to "Search in Google" would be an even better answer. The end game is still a one click map-to-this.

Censorship and the DVD

2008-03-17T22:38:00.003-05:00

The DVD release is an interesting chapter in a movie's life. For some, it is a wash of years old clothes that makes it look sparkly and new. For others, it is additional scenes to tell the story like it should have been told, at least as far as the director thinks. For others still, it is an opportunity to adjust the film to fit today's taboos and culture.

Wikipedia will tell you all about the scene in E.T. when guns were changed to walkie-talkies. We also have George Lucas altering the behavior of his reluctant hero Han Solo in Star Wars, Episode IV.

Modifying gun scenes is obviously not new. Imagine my surprise when I read that the newly released on DVD, Horton Hears a Who has a scene where a fish caricature of Peter Lorre shoots himself in the head. Surely they wouldn't ship that in today's world, right? Well, they did. I had my finger on the remote and skillfully skipped this 3 seconds of the Horton Hatches the Egg cartoon, and when I did I found myself thinking quite a bit about what I would and wouldn't let my kids see. This was over the line for me, especially for the age that these cartoons are aimed at. How about you? I'd love to get some reactions from folks that were parents when this cartoon first came out in the 1940s.

iTunes Pro

2008-03-13T21:22:00.003-05:00

iTunes has grown quite a bit over the years. That growth has slowed a bit recently as Apple has focused on the other revenue streams that iTunes enables. That's probably a good thing. iTunes is getting dangerously close to doing too much. And what do you do when an app does too much? You make a pro version :)

I would pay for iTunes Pro if it had even a few of the following features

Real library sharing - Yes, I can listen to my library from my other computers, but that's about it. I can't change ratings. Play counts don't increment, and I can't edit metadata. I hate having to make notes to myself on things to change when I get back to my main library. Leopard's Screen Sharing feature makes it a ton easier to just jump in and do it right away, but I still have to share the screen and deal with the resolution differences.

Auto iPod convert - I'm sure you've seen the messages. "Blah blah wasn't copied to your iPod because it can not be played on this device." Fine, don't copy that one, but convert me one that will and put it on there. Let iTunes Pro come with a license for Quicktime Pro to make the transcoding possible.

Better handling of multiple libraries - You can use multiple libraries with iTunes today, but it feels like something that got slid in so no one would notice. Make this a prominent feature.

Stats - Plays per day, average rating, purchasing trends, most listened artists. I can think of tons, but then I like silly numbers like this :)

VIDEO_TS support - This would allow streaming a DVD rip to the Apple TV and perhaps even tie to the convert for iPod feature I mentioned. Apple's DVD player supports this, why not iTunes?

Codec plug-in support - Spread some love to the FLACers and Divxers. The iPod probably still won't play these. Hmm, maybe if there was a feature to auto-convert for iPod? Who cares if it looks like crap because of the transcode. If you don't want it to look like crap, turn off the feature and don't watch it at all.

Cross library consolidate - Rip a CD to the MacBook, have it sync back to the main library on the iMac.

Thru-sync - Plug my iPod into the MacBook, have it sync content from the main library on the iMac.

Library sync to other computers - I already talked about this one in another post.

Stat sync via .mac - As playcounts grow and ratings get added to an iPhone or iPod touch, let that data sync back to my main library via .mac. These are Internet connected computers. Let them use it and keep some .mac subscribers as a bonus. I want this so bad for keeping up to date on podcasts. I watch podcasts on at least 3 devices, but end up starting to watch ones I've already seen because I haven't yet sync'd the device that would tell my library I've already watched it.

Sell through iTunes - We know software sales are coming. How about a similar model to sell your own music through iTunes. We know the tool already exists for the labels to use. Spin that into iTunes Pro and make the iTunes store *the* indie store to beat.

Those are my wishes. What features would you like to see?

Apple TV Take 2 Review

2008-03-07T21:52:00.006-06:00

Likes

Non-sync'd content from the sync source shows up integrated with the sync'd content. Thank you!

Buying content from the Apple TV is fantastic. It is so much nicer to pick something from your couch and watch it instantly instead of going to the computer, picking something, then waiting for it to download, and then maybe waiting for it to sync to the Apple TV before watching.

Purchased items sync-back - Buy a TV show, watch it, Apple TV syncs it back to your main library. This is very nice.

HD movies look great. I saw no compression artifacts and no skips the entire playback. It was awesome.

You can play rented movies multiple times. Ignore the lies in the other blogs that say you can only watch the movie once. After it got done playing, I simply selected to watch it again and it started right up. You can also forward and rewind just fine.

Dislikes

Menus are slower for me and they seem to get slower over time

I hate the top menu. Just as Apple's menu bar is great because it has infinite height, the old Apple TV menu was great because the top level menu also had infinite height. Well, sort of. No matter how deep in the menu structure you were, you could just hammer the menu button a bunch of times to get to the top. Any extra presses just resulted in some clunk clunk "you can't do that" sounds. With the new menu, you better hope you pressed the button in extra multiples of 2 because an extra press will dismiss the menu as the top menu expects you to arrow around rather than hit the menu button. I also really liked that you only used 3 buttons for navigating before. Menu, up, and down. Now you have to add left and right and it just feels slower.

Further hate for the top menu comes with them pushing iTunes store content a little too hard. For instance, items like Search show up, but that's to search the store, not my content - boo. Music videos shows up as a top layer music menu, but that's to buy music videos from the store, not to watch my music videos - boo. I have to go an extra layer deeper to get to my music videos, most of which I bought from the store! At least give us an option to disable some of the pointers to the iTunes store, or even put them lower on the menu. Yes, the menu does remember where you were in it, usually. Sometimes this resets for no apparent reason too.

Responsiveness - I know this isn't the most powerful box in the world, but I want it to respond to all of my remote button presses when I press them. The old Apple TV would queue up button pushes, which was sometimes annoying, but if you remembered how many times you pushed it, you'd get where you wanted to go. Take 2 seems to toss out button pushes that occur when it is busy doing another task. This is especially annoying as the old Apple TV trained me to wait a few seconds to let it catch up to my button pushes. Now I don't know if it is catching up or ignoring me. This is very frustrating.

Long menus still "reboot" while browsing them. I don't know why, but sometimes as you go down a long menu, it will jump back up to the last thing that was playing and you have to re-scroll down the list. This is not new, but still a dislike.

24 hour rental - This is terrible for people on schedules, like families. If my wife and I start watching a movie at 9pm and she falls asleep an hour into it, she will not see the end of that movie, period. There's no opportunity to watch the rest of that movie before 24 hours will roll by, so she'll just miss it. If the period were simply extended to 36 hours, it would give her the opportunity to watch it as the "free time for movies" would be available the following night before the rental expired.

In theory, surfing podcasts without requiring a subscription is cool. In practice, the servers the podcasts sit on aren't fast enough to feed it to you as you want to watch it so you spend a ton of time looking at still frames of the podcast you are trying to watch. Not fun, but not really Apple's fault.

Overall, I like what they've done in Take 2, but they also made the product harder to use and slower to perform. If it weren't for integration of non-sync'd content, I think I'd find a way to downgrade.

5 of the Now

2008-03-05T21:24:00.003-06:00

It has been awhile, but I finally made it to another concert. It was Sia, with Har Mar Superstar opening. The concert was at Park West in Chicago which is a great venue. The place was clean, good sound, nice balcony seating, and they let you just walk in with whatever you are carrying. Most concerts I go to result in a pat down, so this was refreshing. I'll definitely go back.

Huge thanks to Shadowsarah for posting videos of Sia's performances. You obviously can't capture the truth of a concert with a compact digicam, but it is better than nothing. Sia's Breathe Me was absolutely amazing and goosebump generating. I was also excited to hear her perform Destiny and Somersault from her Zero 7 days.

Sia - Breathe Me (Live at Park West, Chicago)
As is yelled as she starts, "best song ever". Maybe not, but it ranks up there.

Sia - Day Too Soon (Live at Park West, Chicago)

Sia - Buttons (Live at Park West, Chicago)
This is the Jimmy Kimmel performance, but it is pretty much the exact same thing.

Sia - The Girl You Lost to Cocaine (Live at Park West, Chicago)

Har Mar Superstar - EZ Pass (Live at Park West, Chicago)
I picked one track, but these guys just rocked the house. The whole thing was great. Har Mar is entirely too talented at dancing sexy. I highly recommend you do a Google image search and get an idea of the performance. Better yet, check Shadowsarah's flickr page.

Shapes and Colors

2008-03-03T22:13:00.004-06:00

Yes, this is another color blind post.

When the iPhone came out, I complained that their availability chart was poorly designed because it only used color to convey meaning. Even worse, they picked colors that are commonly known as colors that color blind people can't tell apart!

I was delighted to see today that they've made things better. The current availability chart for the MacBook Air uses colors and symbols to convey the meaning. Yay! The world is now a more accessible place.

Thanks to Engadget and TUAW for the source images for the above image.

CRbus

2008-02-25T21:03:00.005-06:00

In my previous post, I mentioned I was working on an app for the iPhone. It's done and here it is. It's called CRbus and is an iPhone optimized view of the Cedar Rapids public transit schedule.

The app took about an hour from start to finish thanks to the great iUI framework. The data in the app took much, much longer. At the start I wrote a quick Perl script to take pasted data from the official PDFs and package it for inclusion in the app. That worked fine, other than there were a bunch of special cases in the data that I didn't want to spend the time handling in my code. I didn't think this would be a big deal, and it wasn't, until I got to those special cases and found I need a lot of hand tweaking of my data (boo). That's all done and the app is ready for use.

If you want to give this a try, you don't have to have an iPhone. Firefox and Safari will run it fine. Just hit the CRbus URL and then drag your window into the shape of an iPhone (hint: tall rectangle) to get the experience. You start with a list of routes. Follow a route to get a list of stops. Follow a stop to get the times. You can follow the bread crumb arrows at the top back up the tree.

This is just a bare bones version of what the app could be. Obvious features would include Google Maps and Transit integration, syncing with the clock in the iPhone, and even (currently disabled) next/previous stop jumps that you'll see at the bottom of the pages. We'll see if I ever get motivated to add any of those :)

Hello World - iPhone Style

2008-02-20T19:41:00.002-06:00

I'm excited about mobile development again. I'm eagerly awaiting the iPhone SDK and while I wait, I figured I'd at least try some iPhone development in its current, web development, form.

I'll post about what I made in a future post. For now, I just wanted to link to some of the things that got me going.

Apple has some great developer resources, including the iPhone Dev Center. I'm not sure why they hide them all behind a login curtain, but they do. Once you create (or buy) an ADC login, you can access 2 hours worth of videos about iPhone development. The videos range from UI elements to how to simplify your app for smaller form factors. Even if you have no interest in Apple and the iPhone, you might enjoy the usability aspects of the talks. Most of the concepts apply to Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and other mobile development. If you watch and it all seems like common sense to you, good, you are better off than most developers that build UIs.

If you're ready to start building right away, look no further than iUI. iUI is a great framework to build web based apps that look native to the iPhone. Within an hour, I was able to build a great looking, highly functional, app using iUI. I tweaked the included CSS a bit to include some further button samples I found at the iPhone Dev Center. Thanks go to Joe Hewitt for his work on iUI.

Finally, if you want to follow some discussion and get some links to other apps people have built for the iPhone, head over to the iPhoneWebDev Google Group.

Tick tock on the SDK clock.

Snob Check

2008-02-18T20:14:00.003-06:00

It was filler there, and it will be filler here, but I figured it would be fun to comment on the recent TUAW post that tackles the thought that Mac users are snobs.

I'll list the characterization and how it applies to me.

to be perfectionists --- I have an eye for detail but I wouldn't say I'm a perfectionist (close)

to use notebooks --- Yes, I'm typing this post on one now

to use teeth whitening products --- nope, never, but I could probably use it

to drive station wagons --- my parents had a family truckster when I was a kid, but I drive an SUV

to pay for downloaded music --- yes, hundreds of dollars a year

to go to Starbucks --- I'm not a coffee drinker, but I'll have a hot chocolate or something if my wife wants to go. I've probably been to Starbucks 5 times in my life.

care about "green" products and the environment --- absolutely, in fact, I participate in a green blog

to own a hybrid car --- not yet, but I would

and last but not least ... to buy 5 pairs of sneakers in a year --- I'm probably close these days. I used to buy more than 5 a year, as I was a bit of an adidas freak

Am I a snob? Eh, I like to think of myself more as a self-deprecating elitist.

Learn a bit about how to give and take

2008-02-15T21:53:00.004-06:00

This is the MacBook Air post. This won't be as funny or as provocative as Wil Shipley's MacBook Air post, but you might like it anyway,

If you've seen the commercial for the MacBook Air (who hasn't?), you might recognize the title for this post. Apple takes such care in their marketing that they even managed to find a cool song with lyrics that fit perfectly with what the MacBook Air is trying to achieve. You know, "new soul", "strange world", "give and take", "felt the joy and the fear". Some would say that the only relevant lyric in the song is "making every possible mistake". So let's take a look at those mistakes.

Sealed Battery - Yes, some folks carry around spare batteries and swap them during the day. I'm not one of those folks, and I don't know anyone who is. The only time I need to swap a battery is when it starts to hold less juice than a Florida orange. I buy a new one, swap it, and the old one pretty much sits around hoping the new battery will die and it can live life again. The battery costs $129 (same as the MacBook battery I just bought) and can be replaced with nothing more than a screwdriver. Sounds like this is more accessible than headlights on modern cars. Save weight and space on a battery latch daily, but require a screwdriver once every 1 or 2 years. Sounds like perfect give and take to me.

Too thin - Have the people that toss this complaint out ever been on an airplane? Are they the ones with dual rolling carry-ons? I like to travel light. A messenger bag is all that goes with me on the plane unless it is a really short trip and I don't want to check a bag. A nice thin laptop would be fantastic for me.
Thin means less material. Apple used aluminum rather than plastic for durability. I think aluminum weighs more than plastic, right? (my material engineer friends will certainly tear me up in the comments if not). So Apple kept the screen and keyboard full size, used heavy construction materials, and still kept the weight at 3 pounds. My MacBook weighs 5 pounds. My work Dell weighs over 7. You can absolutely feel 2 pounds when you're travelling all day.

1 USB Port - Who would use an Air? I'm guessing students, travelers, sales people, anyone on the go. How many USB ports do you use on the go? I use none. 1 USB still lets you plug in a thumb drive or a mouse. Any more than that and you can have a mini hub in your bag that you must be carrying to hold all of those USB devices you want to plug-in. I'm also wondering if the 1 USB port is a hardware limitation. We know that the external optical drive requires additional power from the USB port to run it. If they put more than 1 USB port on, they wouldn't know which port you'd plug the drive into, which might drive larger power supply requirements, which drives the whole product larger and heavier. The MacBook has 2 USB ports. I can't recall a time when I've ever used them both at once.

No optical drive - I already covered this one in another post. If you want an optical drive and removable battery, buy a MacBook.

Slow harddrive - This one gave me pause, but the Air is intended to be a secondary machine. Do the heavy lifting on your main box. The slower harddrive drove smaller size and weight, but it might have also been a cost saving issue. If the Air uses the same drive as iPods, they're saving a buck or more per drive, which translates to 10 bucks or more for you buying it at a price that people already think is too expensive.

Price - If $1800 is too much, how much should it cost? For a real rough comparison, let's start with an $1100 MacBook and make it into an Air. Start by doubling the RAM as the Air comes with 2GB. Let's say $50 for that. Lighted keyboard, another $50. LED backlight, another $50. Tight design, $100. Weight savings, $100. No optical -$50. Even smaller power supply $50. Multi-touch trackpad - $50. Aluminum construction - $50. Slower processor - $50. First gen - $100. I gave it $100 for the first gen because today's MacBooks give you a hell of a lot more than the first gen for the same price, so we're comparing a new product vs. an established one. Do the math and that comes to about $1600. Would anyone that wouldn't buy one at $1800 buy one at $1600?

It's obvious I'm a fan of the Air. I think it has a place. It won't be a huge seller, but that doesn't make it a bad product, or a bad investment for Apple.

It's not all good. I do think they made some mistakes. Firewire for one. Give it one FW port. Battery life needs to be better too. Could it be that the battery was limited to meet the aggressive size and weight goals? For as much as they seem to want this thing to be used on the go, it should beat the battery life of the MacBook. Finally, the video out options. Another connector Apple? Really? I've got a drawer full of adapters for the iBook and MacBook that already aren't compatible. If I ever did buy an Air, I wouldn't be happy having even more dongles.

Receipt for a Donut

2008-02-11T21:45:00.000-06:00

As Mitch Hedberg used to say, "I don't need a receipt for a donut. I give you money and you give me the donut, end of transaction." This is so true, until you're traveling on business. Then you need a receipt for every last donut, steak, copy expense, and shuttle ride.

If you're anything like me, you get credit card offers in your mailbox daily. I have no need or want for another credit card. I'd change my tune in a heartbeat if a credit card company could solve my receipt problem. I don't want receipts, ever. I want a record of my purchase, sure, but I don't want that record to be a 2x6" piece of weak paper with survey offers printed on the bottom. What I want is Visa or Mastercard to build a transaction culture that allows merchants to email me PDFs or XML of my purchase information.

Do you realize how easy this would make filling out your expense report for business travel? Everyone hates expense reports. We only fill them out because if we don't, we don't get our money back. I can't stand tracking 4 days worth of crumpled paper so I can manually transfer the data to an Excel spreadsheet. I always lose one, they're hard to read, and they're just wasteful.

The Life Takes Visa commercials love to show people flowing through a shop, swiping cards and getting on with things. But you never see a receipt in those commercials. Maybe they've already built this magical receipt email system and forgot to tell us. The technicals have to be simple. They have an account number that is tied to my name, physical address, and many times, my email address. Get some nice business to business web services going and the data can flow to me. This won't be free to build, but you can build it with the money you save on receipt paper and wasted sales while the minimum wage cashier pounds on the jammed printer.

BTW, this isn't my first set of thoughts on receipts. I've complained about them before.

Edit: I forgot to mention that some retailers are already jumping on this. Apple retail stores have "line busting" handheld computers that allow you to buy equipment right on the store floor. They'll then email your receipt to the account in your Apple ID. This is slick, but I'd still like something that applies across all merchants.

The Private Button

2008-02-07T20:38:00.000-06:00

The revolution is being televised, well, at least uploaded. Between the Eye-Fi card and its ability to auto-upload to Flickr and Facebook, and cameras from Casio and others with built-in YouTube modes, it has become easy, too easy to float your life on the web.

We've already seen that just about anything you put on the web can and will be made public. It doesn't really matter if you've tagged it private. The only real way to keep things private is to not put them on the web in the first place. So...how long before every new camera you buy has a big private button that you push when you just captured something that you don't want the world to see?

Check-in Challenges

2008-02-06T21:09:00.000-06:00

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to Florida. As usual, we flew United Airlines. Our checkin process was a little interesting. It sounds like something you'd read on The Daily WTF. For starters United could use a UI overhaul on their automated kiosks. First off, you're given the option of employee/companion travel. I think that's for employees and companions of employees, but it isn't really clear. Second, you're given 4 options to identify yourself, the most common being a credit card swipe. Unfortunately the picture really doesn't convey that message and you have to read pretty close to know which option to pick. Other airlines just have you swipe your card (or passport) from the start.

It was also pretty funny to hear the guy next to me arguing with the United employee about how he didn't need to swipe his card because he'd already paid for the flight. It took them a few minutes to convince him the credit card was for identification only. Call me crazy, but couldn't they use the drivers license that they require as identification to start the identification process? It must be easier to read a credit card than 50 states worth of different data formats.

So, I swipe my credit card and it pops up my wife's name. No problem, we'll just check her in first. We're told that the FAA may delay our flight and we should look for alternates if possible. Ok, look for alternates then. It tells us none are available almost immediately. Why even bother to tell us to try alternates if it knows there are none?

We finish checking in my wife and I slide the card again expecting my info to pop-up. No, it's her again. Please note that the card I've swiped both times is the one with my name on it. Obviously the number is the same, but I'm pretty sure my name is encoded on the card as well because it shows up on the receipt at restaurants. Is this a common problem? Do related people not check-in to the same flight often? Being skilled in tricking crappy software (I write plenty of it myself), I pull out a different credit card which thankfully produces my name for check-in.

So now we are both checked in and waiting for the tags to print for the checked baggage. Why don't these print from the same kiosk? The helpful lady behind the counter asks us if we checked bags. We reply yes. She asks if we pushed the button saying we were checking bags. We reply yes. She tells us nothing is printing so we must not have. Well we did and we were sure we did and we went back and forth a couple of times. Eventually she decides the printer isn't working, but why did she have to even argue with us? If we had screwed up and forgot to tell the computer about our bag, there's nothing we can do at this point anyway, so she should just go about doing what needs done to make things right. That's what I hate about the automated kiosks. We've traded 5 knowledgeable ticket agents for 4 kiosks, 2 goofball agents that appear to be skilled in little more than sticker folding, and a knowledgeable agent that comes and cleans up when the goofballs don't know what to do. Questions like can you change our seats so my wife and I can sit together? stump the goofballs and require the roving expert. Before the kiosks, the ticket agent would just sit you next to the people you were checking in with. Hmm, progress.

Don't get me wrong. I love the kiosks when they work. If you aren't checking a bag and you aren't traveling with anyone, the kiosks are a breeze. When you need to change anything the kiosks just aren't up to the task yet.

Hey United, simplify please.

Nits List - iTunes Edition

2008-01-27T20:44:00.000-06:00

I love iTunes, usually. It's a great app and one that is always open in my dock. It does have its issues. Most of them are minor. Here's my nit list:

iPod syncing isn't as good as it could be. It needs the same interface you get when building smart playlists. For example, I might want to sync the 3 newest unwatched episodes of some shows, but the 3 oldest unwatched shows of others if I'm catching up on a season. I could do this by generating the playlists first and then syncing those, but why should I clutter my library with playlists only meant for the mobile device? Update: Ehh, maybe I just talked myself out of this one. I could just make an iPod sync lists folder to hide all of the playlist mucking.

You should be able to drag a TV Show directly into the TV Shows library source. As it is, you have to add it to movies and then go set the type to TV Show. Yuck.

Music videos are a video type, but they aren't a type in the library. Movies and TV Shows are, why not Music Videos?

The iTunes store needs a wishlist in the store so it can follow me across the computers I log into.

iTunes needs a "look again goofball" function for when it forgets where half of you library lives, even though the place it thinks the files live is the very place that they are. If anyone has a script to auto-fix (not auto-delete) the !'d tracks, let me know.

The albums list on iPods needs to have a threshold applied. 1 track off of an album is not an album! I have a couple hundred actual albums loaded in my library. Unfortunately, I'll have many times that amount in the Albums list when browsing the iPod. This forces me to flood my playlists with playlists that are the real albums in my library.

Building on the last one, they finally added folders to the library list. This makes it nicer to organize the albums in my playlists, but my iPod doesn't respect the folders, so it is of little use to me as most of my listening is on the iPod.

I want to remove an item from my library within a playlist. At the least, give me a "Show in Library" right next to the "Show in Finder".

Don't stop background syncs because a dialog has been popped up. I don't know if this is still an issue, but many times I've cursed at the not-updating podcasts on the Apple TV only to go find some message box in iTunes that had halted all downloads and syncing. I shouldn't have to check-in with iTunes every day to keep the related systems running.

Edit: Jason reminded me of the one that irks me the most (message boxes stop syncing). I have added it.

Spread the Sync

2008-01-22T20:08:00.000-06:00

This is not a MacBook Air post. Trust me, you'd know if it was. That said, one of the complaints I've read about the MacBook Air is that the 80GB harddrive is too small. One reason folks think it is too small is that today's iTunes libraries would suck up at least half of that. You know what? They're right...if that's your main machine and keeper of your iTunes library.

Me, I wouldn't consider a MacBook Air a primary machine, but this isn't a MacBook Air post :) The meat of this is that the MacBook Air and every other secondary machine could make due with an 80GB drive just fine if iTunes had a new feature. Well, not a new feature, a feature that's been around since 2001. The feature I'm talking about is the ability to sync a subset of your iTunes library to a device, usually an iPod. I want my MacBook to act like an iPod to my main iTunes library. I want to use Smart Playlists to keep it popping with fresh content. I want my ratings, last played times, and playcounts to sync back to my main library. I want new content that shows up in iTunes on the MacBook to sync back to my main library.

With this feature, I can take 20GB of content on the go, and still have full access to all of my content using shared libraries when I'm back on my home network. The MacBook can wireless sync and I don't even have to know it happened. It would be great!

.Moonlit Snowflakes

2008-01-17T20:42:00.000-06:00

I have posted a new iMix called .Moonlit Snowflakes.

I'd describe the music as quiet, pingy, elegant, and emotional. iTunes is stupid and can't manage to make a complete iMix using songs that you didn't buy from the iTunes Store, even though those songs are available on the iTunes Store. Therefore, the link to the iMix won't give you all of the songs. Here is the playlist as I intended it.

Lemongrass - Polar Nights

Boards of Canada - A Moment of Clarity

UNKLE - Twilight

Milosh - Push

Booka Shade - Lost High

Circlesquare - Fight Sounds Pt. 2d

BT - Good Morning Kaia

Underworld - To Heal

Lemongrass - Eclipse of the Sun

Trentemoller - Miss You

Underworld - Good Morning Cockerel

Chicane - Arizona, Pt. 1

Let me know if you like it or let me know if you hate it.

Previous iMixes
.Sunrise Skyline, .Dust and Rain, and .Slushy Streets.

Netflix Stats and iTunes Rentals

2008-01-12T14:55:00.000-06:00

For years I've wanted to know some basic stats about my Netflix usage. How many movies am I churning through each month? How many movies have I watched total? How many movies have I watched in the best month? How many in the worst month? Netflix doesn't give you these stats directly, but you can get your full rental history and figure it out yourself. Shove the data through a Perl script and let Numbers draw some pretty pictures.

If you can't tell from the graphics, min month is 3. Max month is 16 (wow). Average is nearly 10 movies a month. In the 7 years I have been a Netflix customer, I have watched 831 movies (again wow). I guess my DVD player has earned its keep. I always figured we were going through 6-7 movies a month. That appears to have been true early on, but certainly not overall.

Other interesting items:

We watched a lot of movies in 2005 and 2006.

May seems to be a bad month for movies. I'm hoping this means that sprint was in the air and I was out on my bicycle, rather than watching movies.

November looks like a great movie month. I guess that makes sense. The weather is cold and there are holidays and late year vacations for movie watching. Most of the summer blockbusters are out by then too, so there's lots to choose from.

We rarely have two slow months back to back. This could be a product of shipping windows, or just catching up.

I was finally motivated to do this based on the rumored iTunes rentals coming at next week's MacWorld. From my prediction post, I stated $2.99 for 48 hours. If the rumored $3.99 for 24 hours comes true, Apple isn't going to see much of my movie rental money. With tax, Netflix is getting ~$17 a month. If I'm watching ~10 movies per month, I'm at $1.70 a movie and that's me watching when I want and returning it when I want. I'll have movies that are out of the mailbox and back in within 2 hours. Others will sit around for a week before they get watched. I really enjoy that. Assuming the movies from Apple won't be streaming, it will take an hour or hours to download the movie before you can watch it. If it then expires 24 hours after downloading, that would suck. It would be like those impotence commercials on TV. Once you pop that pill, the clock starts ticking.

Worse yet is the cost. $4 is pretty steep. That's as much as the local brick and mortars charge, at least I think so. I haven't been in a rental shop in over 7 years. You wouldn't have to spend time and money to drive to the store, but if the quality is sub-DVD Apple won't hear the end of the complaining. For me, the $4 doesn't match up well with the $1.70 I'm paying Netflix. I can see paying to watch something I just have to see now, or something that is stuck on Very Long Wait with Netflix, but overall, I can find something to watch while I wait a couple of days for a movie to arrive. Obviously the economics change if Netflix raises their price or my monthly totals go down. Luckily I know have the tools to help me track that! :)

I'm very interested in iTunes movie rentals. I have an Apple TV and love it. I watch a lot of movies, and I have a broadband connection. If iTunes and Apple TV are the vehicles for the content, Apple is well on their way to a winning product. Cost and quality will be the kickers for me. There are so many pricing options that I don't want to state a flat dollar amount, but to me $4 for 24 hours would be disappointing. Quality must also be near-DVD.

I think I'll go watch a movie now.

Cue It

2008-01-10T22:25:00.001-06:00

A big thanks to Matt for leaving a comment on my old Chaptify post. To answer Matt's question, yes I did spend some time working on some code to convert .cue files to ChapterTool input. However, it isn't anything I'm all that proud of, at least not yet. This might make me dust it off and work some more.

Until then, check out Matt's online utility to do the .cue->XML conversion. I threw some .cue files at it and it seems to work well.

5 of the Now

2008-01-09T22:00:00.000-06:00

Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye
I keep a "next 5otn" list going at all times and post when I get up to 5. Sometimes I have more than 5 and hold one over for the next post. Lazy Eye was waiting patiently for awhile and funny enough, I heard it play while out shopping on Saturday. Apparently these guys are more popular than I thought. I can't decide if I like the original or the Jason Bentley Remix better. You can also check the iTunes Live Session version.

Gui Boratto - Terminal
Gui Boratto has really been tearing it up for me lately. He's only made it into one previous 5otn, but I've been digging plenty of his other stuff. You can buy this from Beatport, but I can't seem to make a link at the moment.

Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin' (Jori Hulkkonen Remix)
The original is so cheesy and so awesome. Jori really flips the vibe in the remix. It's a little darker and for that reason I hated the "ohh ohh ohh o"s in the mix. I've since listened to the track over a dozen times and I'm fine with it :) [Myspace] [Video on YouTube]

Gui Boratto - Beautiful Life
Just some more Gui Boratto that hooked me

Sia - The Girl You Lost to Cocaine
You're probably used to tracks in my 5otn being being 6 minutes or longer. Well this one isn't even 3 minutes long, so be sure to listen to it three times in a row. You may know Sia from Zero 7's Destiny. This one is a lot more fun and you gotta dig that voice. You should also go read her myspace profile. The YouTube embed is a live performance of the track.

Bonus - Hustler from Simian Mobile Disco was in a previous 5otn. You can get the Skatebard Remix for free from RCRD LBL.

Did I put enough links in this post?

I made good use of the recent iTunes gift card deal at Best Buy and I'm feeling generous so I'm again gifting one of these tracks to the person that leaves the comment I like best. A buck is up for grabs. Fight it out!

No, I Don't See

2008-01-06T20:51:00.000-06:00

The bad pun title is the kick-off for the we don't need no stinkin' optical drives post.

I considered putting this in my original Macworld Predictions post, but since Thaddeus asked, I'm going to answer.

Do you think we're to the point where people don't care at all about physical discs? What about reinstalls?

No, I don't think we're to that point, at least not generally. However, an ultraportable laptop is not the machine that the average user buys. Usually ultraportable laptops are sold at a premium. Joe User would rather have more memory and a bigger screen to go along with a cheaper price. They're more likely to buy the machine in the Best Buy ad, than seek out a Japanese import. So, I don't think optical drives are necessary in ultraportable machines.

I think optical drives are still essential for any computer other than an ultraportable, but even that is fading. People still want to rip music from their CDs. People still want to install software they buy off the shelf. People want to feel safe that they can pop in any CDROM someone gives them.
Ultraportables on the other hand are for folks that are using them as second machines. These are power portables. Size must be a minimum. Weight is not allowed. Durability keeps you working when you're travelling. Heck, even a $50 savings for not including the optical drive is welcome on machines that hover around $2000.

Further blows against optical drives come with most software being available for purchase, download, and installation over the web. CD drives were replacements for the old floppy drives. These were needed to boot the machine. Many OSes support booting from flash drives and certainly from externally connected drives. OS loading is a concern, but not a deal killer. For the folks that assume they'll be stranded with a computer that won't connect to the projector and would need to burn their presentation to CD, I say spend $10 for a flash drive that fits on your keychain. That will be faster and cheaper than carrying around blank CDRs for doomsday. For me personally, I've only used my optical drive in my MacBook to install Leopard and to watch DVDs while travelling.

If and when Apple releases an ultraportable notebook without an optical drive, I think they'll ship an external drive with it. At worst, they'll offer one for purchase for $79.

My final advice, mainly for the folks that say Apple would be stupid to not include an optical drive, is that if you think you need an optical drive, buy a computer that includes one. You won't see Apple dropping them from MacBooks and MacBook Pros anytime soon, at least not at 13, 15, and 17" sizes.

Kindle and O'Reilly

2008-01-04T22:18:00.000-06:00

The Amazon Kindle is very interesting to me. I'm probably not a big enough reader to have one for home, but I would like one for work. Having technical documentation on a nice eBook reader is attractive to me for many reasons.

Portable, flowing screen. In other words, I can stick it on my desk wherever I need it to be, just like I do with a reference book, but without needing a stapler to hold the pages down. Sure, I could have another monitor just for reference text, but I don't always need reference text at a quick glance and there are just interactions with book-like info that you can't do easily with a monitor. You can't easily hold your finger on an API reference that you want to refer back to. You can't lay handwritten notes right up next to things on a page. You can't take that screen with you to the couch, on the bus, or the bathroom for that matter.

Space - I don't know about you, but my cube is small and packed. 20 linear feet of books doesn't help things.

Searching - How's that go? You can't grep dead trees. Exactly.

Available offline - Accessing documentation online is great until your connection goes down or their connection goes down.

I'm a big O'Reilly fan. The picture to the right is the portion of my personal collection that isn't currently at work. The problem is that O'Reilly content isn't directly available on the Kindle. I was delighted to find that Tim O'Reilly himself posted some comments about why...

We aren't currently planning to offer books for sale directly on the kindle, but that could change if the device really takes off.
We really aren't interested in producing books in more and more formats. There's a real maintenance nightmare, as you have to update across the set every time you make a change.
Even supporting HTML and PDF/print is a hassle. So we'll add kindle when we know there's a significant market for it.

and...

Why no O'Reilly books on the kindle? Well, Amazon has chosen to use a proprietary format, with a conversion cost of a couple of hundred dollars per title to that format. Multiply that by 500+ O'Reilly books, and it would cost us $100,000 to have a strong presence on that new, unproven platform.

I guess I can buy that. There are further comments in the thread where it seems Tim (and O'Reilly readers) would be happy with PDF support that wasn't experimental as Amazon currently classifies it.

PDF support is important because O'Reilly currently offers many of their titles as PDF downloads for purchase, even by chapter. I found a sample chapter in PDF and it looks good, but then again, I don't have a Kindle either :)

The problem with good PDF support is that it bypasses Amazon's revenue model. They could help that with store relationships with sites like ORA's Safari. Tim mentions that too...

We'd also love to experiment with models in which people who are Safari subscribers could access that content on the kindle. We'd be very eager to have a reseller relationship with Amazon, such that they resell safari subscriptions on the kindle.

I guess I'll wait to see how things develop over the next few months. Books won't die, but I wouldn't mind burying a few reference titles in an eBook.

Macworld 2008 Predictions

2007-12-31T22:54:00.000-06:00

What's an Apple fan to do while waiting for Macworld Expo to arrive? Post their predictions of course, just like I did for WWDC.

No tablet - I still don't see this happening.

The heavily rumored ultraportable is just the return of the 12" PowerBook as a MacBook Pro. The 12" PowerBook is/was loved by those that have/had them. I'm really surprised we haven't seen it return already. I imagine they were waiting for a case redesign, which I do expect for the MacBook Pro. The existing MacBooks won't change much at all. I think a Blu-ray drive will be an option for them.

The 12" MacBook Pro will not have an optical drive (but the other ones still will). This isn't the machine that you use to rip CDs and you'll just have to deal with not watching DVDs, unless you rip them or use the external drive. Treat yourself and buy a fresh movie over Wi-Fi while you wait for your plane to board.

iTunes movie rentals. I'll guess $2.99 for 48 hours, but I would like to see a model similar to Netflix, without waiting for the post office. Pay $19 a month and have 3 movies out at any time. Return one and you get to download and watch something else. How cool would it be if Apple built in BitTorrent tech to save their bandwidth bill?

New Cinema displays, hopefully at more competitive prices.

We'll get iPhone SDK details and see demos of some apps in progress from some big names, although I can't really think of who.

16 GB iPhone at $499 pricepoint. No change in price on existing models

Apple TV software update - I love my Apple TV but folks don't seem like they'll be happy until it dies a painful death. Apple is certainly going to give it one more wave of software at least. I doubt the hardware will change, even though I would like to see my Mac nano dream come true.

Steve will tell us all about Leopard being the best OS X ever. Vista is flopping and folks are switching.

Those are my predictions. Feel free to mock me when I'm wrong.

Albums of the Year: 2007

2007-12-27T15:41:00.000-06:00

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City

Aesop Rock - All Day: Nike+ Original Run

Underworld - Oblivion With Bells

The Chemical Brothers - We Are the Night

UNKLE - War Stories

Not much to say other than these albums were the ones that got repeated, consistent play throughout the year. Some discs spent months in the truck CD changer before ever making it inside the house for an iPod rip. iTunes, Beatport, and Amazon now let me buy plenty of individual tracks, but I still have massive respect for the album. To create an inspired and varied, yet cohesive, body of work will always be an amazing feat. Long live the album.

What were your favorite albums of the year?

Sexy Sub

2007-12-26T20:34:00.000-06:00

Leave it to my mother. I tend to think she over-decorates. Here's a good example. It's the holiday season, so we have to make the subwoofer look festive, right?

It looks like a garter. We have women's clothing decorating the home theater. What's next, a flat screen mini-skirt?

How about a loudspeaker bra?

Do you find this as ridiculous as I do?

I'm Jimmy From the Blog Next Door

2007-12-21T14:37:00.000-06:00

Just a quick pointer for those of you with Blogger blogs that you can turn on OpenID commenting.

I wasn't aware of OpenID [wikipedia] when I wrote my earlier comment post, but it sure seems like it provides the follow you identity that I want.

The Big Book

2007-12-21T13:43:00.000-06:00

I know some readers of this blog are actively seeking better and bigger storage solutions. After a long search, I decided to go with the Western Digital My Book 1TB Studio Edition. This is the mini-review.

Design - This is a great looking drive. It was even smaller than I expected it to be. To give you some perspective, I photographed it next to an iPod.

I've also found that you can stick this between the iMac foot and screen. You don't lose any desk space this way, but it looks a little silly and puts the light in a place that is distracting. I still have it there, but I plan to move it to a shelf up behind the computer soon.

The Studio edition is formatted for Macs, and they did a decent job matching the silver of Macs. It isn't exactly the color of the latest iMacs, but it is really close and you really can't tell unless you shine some direct light. I'm also happy that the power supply is a small wall wart. Some folks don't like wall warts, but I hate the inline bricks even more. It's really hard to hide wires when there's a box of animal crackers in the middle of the wire.

Noise - The drive is fairly quiet. You can hear the tick tick of the drive head searches, but only when it is quiet. I have not heard a fan spin up loudly like some other external drives.

Software - If you're like me, you don't want software to run a hard drive. The drive came with a "button controller" for OS X that is supposed to control the fuel gauge light on the front of the drive. I installed it, or at least I think I did. It gave me no indication that it worked or not. I never saw the drive light behave any different in a week of use, so I uninstalled the driver.

Drive light - You'll love this or hate it. The light slowly pulses when the drive is asleep. It marquees Knight Rider style when the drive is being accessed. I wish I could turn the light off completely.

Interfaces - I'm using FW800 (remember kids, USB drives burn processor, FW doesn't). It seems fast, but I didn't benchmark it. It cranked across nearly 500GB in the first Time Machine backup.

Power - The drive has a feature where it will turn off completely when the computer is off. Folks tell me this is pretty common, but I've not had this on previous external drives. My Kill A Watt says the drive has used less than a KWH in 8 days of use and that includes a few days of Time Machine activity.

Worthless Double Covers

2007-12-18T22:09:00.000-06:00

Allow me to pick on the Simpsons, again.

What is the deal with the cover over the DVD cover? Why do so many DVD releases add this extra packaging that is nearly identical to what is under it? It is such a waste. It's an extra step between me and DVD and what good does it do?

Ohh, they put some puffed up graphics on the cover. Do they think this makes me buy it? It doesn't. It hides the plastic wrap and makes it more attractive to buy. Again, I'm not buying DVDs because of cool covers. Never have, never will.

The only good use I have for these superfluous covers is placeholders when I loan the real DVD out! When I find the empty box in my shelf I remember "ohh yeah, Jimmy has my Simpsons DVD. Jerk!"

XPS One vs. iMac

2007-12-07T21:05:00.001-06:00

I've been trying to get my parents to switch to an iMac. While thinking about it, I wondered how the iMac stacks against the recently released Dell XPS One. I picked a common price point that my parents would probably buy at. Here's the raw facts.

Before today, I didn't know that Dell was bundling Adobe Elements studio. That is a decent bundle to lay against iLife '08 even though they aren't exactly made of the same types of applications.
It is only fair to point out that the XPS One also has a built-in TV tuner (nice). So what else did I miss? Leave a comment.

Which do you think is the better deal?

5 of the Now

2007-11-30T21:52:00.000-06:00

Underworld - Beautiful Burnout [I'm loving life. A new Underworld album is in hand and it's far better than I expected. This album is quality. Underworld has wound the clock back a bit. I'm guessing it is no accident that the Oblivion With Bells coverart resembles dubnobasswithmyheadman. They have a similar feel and that is a very good thing. Beautiful Burnout has taken up residence in my head. This track has patience and a deep energy. I want this track to come on at mile 35 of a 50 mile bike race when I realize I haven't trained enough. I think I'd cry with pain and joy.]

The Mighty Underdogs - Bring Me Back [Just a great, fun track. Big thanks to Jason for digging up the direct order EP. The Mighty Underdogs are The Gift of Gab, Lateef The Truth Speaker, and Headnodic. Act like you know. Hear more at their MySpace.]

The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes [I picked up this video from iTunes and just really dig the whole thing. Odd subject, even weirder video. The video makes the song. Bah bah bah bahhhhh. Do doo do doo do doo.]

Wahoo - Make 'Em Shake It (Stanton Warriors Remix) [I hope your system can hit the low stuff. "Are you here to stand around or do a little dancin'?" ]

Placebo - Running Up That Hill [It's a Kate Bush cover and a great one at that. You may have heard this on a recent CSI episode.]

Inconsistent Time Sliders

2007-11-24T14:02:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite features for the new DVD player in Leopard is the time slider that hides in the bottom frame of the window. I like that it gets out of my way when I don't need it, but it is still right there when I do.
If you read yesterday's post, you'd know that I'd notice that this time slider is different than other time sliders that Apple uses in a default install. I wanted to explore this further, so I grabbed some screen shots from time sliders in various apps.

Wow, that's a lot of differences for such a simple user interface component.

Diamonds vs. triangles vs. dots for time line indicators

Time text at the end of bars vs. under the bar vs. none at all

Play indicators vs. none

Hours placeholder vs. none

Controls with the same icon, but different treatments (volume, full screen, play, pause, skip)

Different colors, different transparencies

Even silly things like rounded vs. squared

Of course not all of these differences are bad. It makes sense for the transparencies in some apps vs. not in others. QuickTime is also showing its age. The thing I want to know, is what's the optimal placement of these controls? Should Quick Look and QuickTime share the iTunes time slider? Should DVD and Front Row be more similar? I didn't even show the iTunes Cover Flow controls which, while not a time slider, still has many of these same controls and presents them differently yet again.

There has to be a better way to do these sliders, if for no other reason than to make them familiar to users across applications. Do you agree? Please discuss.

New, Different, Better?

2007-11-23T20:55:00.000-06:00

I ran across a nice article about Sam Lucente, HP's vice president of design. Most interesting to me was this visual gathering of navigation controls in use on HP's products.

Most people couldn't care less about this sort of thing. Me, I can't help but notice. It amazes me to see product attributes that appear over and over, especially within the same company, end up being different. Is it because the engineering teams don't talk to each other? Is it because the teams suffer a bad case of not-invented-here syndrome? Is it because it gets designed by someone that isn't thinking about this sort of thing? Uhhh, yes.

The article also details how common design can save a company money. It makes sense to me. You can have a dozen engineers spend time designing a navigation control, supporting circuitry and software, or you can do it once and reuse. I'm not saying things shouldn't ever change, but I'd prefer the change be because the new iteration is better, not because someone felt like doing it their same and different way.

I'm with you HP and Mr. Lucente. I like your Q Control and hope to see it everywhere (because it isn't showing up on the iPaqs yet :)

Leopard Loves Content Only

2007-11-19T20:53:00.000-06:00

Web clips weren't even a feature I was excited about in Leopard. I gave it a try and it is now a must have feature. Too many web sites, especially sports websites, drown the content in ads and other junk on their pages. One example of this is the nba.com TV schedule.

First of all, I'm thankful to the NBA for even having such a page. I haven't found a page that makes it easy to see what NFL games are on TV. I still don't like all of the junk on that page. I just want a quick look to see who's playing in the next few days and on what network.

I now have a clipped version of this schedule in my dashboard. It auto-updates and gives me just the content I want. Thanks Apple.

*BTW, I'm aware that I didn't need leopard to do this, but I rather like not having to seek out the functionality and remember to install it on all of my computers.

My New Hybrid

2007-11-18T19:52:00.000-06:00

No, I didn't buy a new car. This hybrid is an analog/digital TV receiver for my Mac.

I've had my eye on Elgato forever. They always seemed to have great products, but I never really had a need for any of them. For many years, I relied on my trusty ReplayTV. My ReplayTV is in my top 3 of best purchases of all time, so Elgato had their work cut out for them. I had to put the ReplayTV in early retirement when I got rid of cable. The ReplayTV can't record HD and I can't get an analog OTA signal worth recording, so it is temporarily useless.

I do get decent signal quality on a handful of ATSC HD stations. I really missed having a DVR, so I decided to give the eyetv hybrid a try. I especially like that the hardware is a dongle that I can use on the go with my MacBook if I like. It's a nice small size and has a coax connector built-in. You can hook up other analog sources with the included break-out cable.

Bottom line is that I'm loving the product so far, but it isn't perfect.

The Good
* It records the full HD stream! Hope you have lots of disk. A 1 hour show will gobble more than 6 GB.

* It can automatically encode for iPod, and more importantly for me, Apple TV. When you setup a recording, you can choose to have it export in h.264 for Apple TV. This is great. eyetv will even throw it in iTunes for you with the correct show type (TV) and descriptions that it copied from the TitanTV guide data.

The only problem with this functionality is not Elgato's fault. Even a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM is taking nearly double the length of the show to encode. If you want to use the hybrid like a DVR and pick up a show while it is recording, you'll have to do that at the computer. Perhaps you are lucky enough to have a Mac hooked to your TV rather than an Apple TV. If you record a night's worth of primetime television, the last show won't get done encoding until after midnight.

* The TitanTV guide is nice. I find it to be just as good as the ReplayTV guide and there's even a full screen mode that the software can run in which is very ReplayTV like.
* You can configure the keyboard to skip how ever many seconds you like forward and backward. The default 7 seconds back and 30 seconds forward is just how I like it. 7 is enough for the "what did they say?" moments and 30 forward let's you jump commercials with ease.

The Bad
* At first, I had my antenna positioned poorly. Hiccuping HD is one thing, but the software would actually get stuck if I fed it poor signal quality. It would tell me there was no signal, but if I changed the channel to something else and then back, it would start working again. This is annoying when watching live TV. It is death when you setup a record. I came home to find the Bears game didn't record a lick. I wasn't a happy person. I think I shouted something like "The Replay would never do this s**t."
* I'm still trying to pin this down, but when watching live TV and changing channels, the viewing window was creeping on me. The window will auto-size between widescreen and 4:3 content. When you stay on one channel, it will shrink and grow in a fixed location. When I was surfing, it would shrink from one channel, and then grow when I changed the channel, but to a different location than before. I need to watch this closer to figure out exactly what's happening.

I bought my eyetv hybrid from Amazon. They've since dropped the price.

Leopard Loves A2DP

2007-11-04T13:35:00.000-06:00

It took a week, but Amazon finally got me my preordered copy of OS X 10.5 Leopard. It's running on my MacBook at the moment and I'm loving it so far.

Almost immediately, I had to go check out the new Bluetooth items. More than anything I wanted to see if A2DP was included because my Moto S805s could really use the work. I'd seen mention that it was in the beta versions, but it seems like a feature as big as stereo Bluetooth support would be listed in the 300 features, right? Nope.

I'm delighted to report that A2DP is included and working great. A2DP's buddy, AVRCP is included as well so you can control your music from the controls on your headphones or stereo.

A2DP really opens up the audio from your Mac. Many new stereo receivers are supporting A2DP, both as a source and as a sink. That means that if your Mac is within range of your stereo, you get free AirTunes-like functionality.

This is a great first step, but I won't be truly happy until the iPod/iPhone can do A2DP natively as well.

5 of the Now

2007-10-31T19:51:00.000-05:00

LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge I would have thought I'd tire of these lyrics, but I absolutely have not. Class stuff. Happy, slappy video on youtube.

UNKLE - Restless The new UNKLE album is great. This has house party written all over it.

UNKLE - Broken Gavin Clark is smooth. Try this one when you're out for a run or hitting the bike in the gym this winter.

Rob Sonic - Brand New Vandals A great track off the Definitive Swim album. Download this track and the rest for free.

The Chemical Brothers - The Test I finally got around to ripping the videos from my Chem Bros DVD for playback on the Apple TV. I really like this track and the video is nice as well. My favorite part is when the earth shakes when she steps out of the blowhole pipe. Now you have to watch the video to figure out what that sentence means. "If it weren't for my horse..."

Day Job OS

2007-10-26T23:08:00.000-05:00

My employer is a Microsoft, and thus Windows, house through and through. I'm not a Windows hater, but I do find features in OS X that I'd love to use at work. I often wonder if I could talk my manger into letting me have an iMac with Parallels as my main computer. It's the best of both worlds and I do think I would be more productive. It will never happen though. Letting employees pick the computer they want to use is a slippery slope.

So if I could, what would I use?

Notes in mail - I send myself email all the time to get data in a spot that is remotely accessible without much effort. Leopard's notes in mail is the effect, but a much slicker method.

Spotlight - I waste so much time searching for files. I use Google Desktop search, but it won't let me specify searches as specifically as I need to. I get too many results for a search. Microsoft's Desktop search was terrible. I uninstalled it and went back to the original search functions built into XP. I'd really like to let Spotlight give it a go at work.

Create a search in Finder - Spotlight technology in quickly accessible and frequently used searches. This would be fantastic. I don't think I'll need these much at home. I can see myself using these daily at work.

Time machine - Our backup procedures are less than ideal. This would save thousands of dollars around the company. Buy everyone a TB drive and just let it run.

iChat Theater - Netmeeting works, but it feels old and rusty. I think I could really get behind video chats at work. You get so much more out of the conversation when you can read body language, see gestures, and the rest of the non-verbal cues that occur in conversation.

Watch for my name in iChat - If you haven't been following Leopard closely, you probably missed this one. If you are in a group chat, you can have iChat notify you if your name appears. This would let you ignore some conversations that aren't relevant to you until you were needed.

Data detectors in mail - Hey, we're having a picnic on Friday - put it in your calendar! How about you just send it as a calendar entry? No, fine, I'll let my software be smart enough to detect that event data and let me click it to add it to my calendar.

Resizable text fields - We have one particular web app that wants you to enter paragraphs of information in a text edit that is 15 characters wide, and it isn't a Firefox problem. It happens in IE too. I'd love to just drag these bigger.

Spaces - I said I wouldn't use them at home, but I think I would at work. Communication (email, IM) in one space. Browsing in another space. Source code in another space.

What features from an alternate OS would you like to have at work?

Evangelizing OS X

2007-10-24T19:49:00.000-05:00

I tend to evangelize things that I enjoy. ReplayTV and adidas are good examples of that. Obviously Apple products are things that I enjoy, and I evangelize them as well.

I've been working on my parents to switch for awhile. Thus far it has been casual pressure. It pains me to watch my father toss good money after bad software as he is on his 3rd round of Norton Systemworks. It pains me more when I have to sysadmin their computer. Even with all of that protection, they've still managed to pick up some nasty viruses. One afternoon troubleshooting a computer these days is too much. I've spent more than one working on that Sony beast.

Beast is a good word to describe it. It was a nice machine at the time, and my father got a good Black Friday deal at Best Buy, but it is old, slow, and worst of all, loud. Their office is attached to their bedroom and there's no way I could sleep in the same room as that pile of whine.

In my opinion, an iMac is perfect for them. Very few wires, no extra tower, quiet, and more than powerful enough for them. The sticking point has been OS X. I don't blame them. Switching your OS is not an easy thing. Lucky for them, you can now drift from Windows to OS X. Between Parallels and Boot Camp, you have a great Windows crutch.

My latest tactic has been to sell them Leopard, not so much because they'd like Leopard better than Tiger, but because Apple is selling Leopard with their great guided tours. I decided to burn the Leopard and iLife '08 tours to DVD for them to watch. They don't have broadband, so it would be a tough sell to have them download the tours themselves. I fired up iDVD (for the first time) and was delighted to see how easy it was to get the videos in the DVD. I was even able to pull the iMac commercial from apple.com and drop it in the animated drop zone. It turned out slick and I hope they actually take the time to watch it. In any case, it was fun to make.

Looking Forward to Leopard

2007-10-21T23:41:00.000-05:00

At first I was underwhelmed by Mac OS X Leopard. Then, just like some of my favorite albums, it began to grow on me. The more I looked, the more I thought yes, I will use that!. I preordered a family pack this morning and am eager for it to arrive. Here's the features I'm most looking forward to.

Stacks - These look brilliant. I like to keep things on the desktop, but I like things clean too. This is the answer. I also love that stacks make use of so many of the principles from The Laws of Simplicity. Hide and Reduce for starters.

Coverflow in Finder - An interface for previews that looks like it will actually work.

Updated sidebar in Finder - Hide and show categories. iTunes like - nice

Easier file sharing on the network - This isn't as easy in Tiger as it should be. I have lots of problems getting my machines to talk to each other. Half the time I use .mac as a shared drive or I send the files over Bluetooth.

Spotlight across shared computers - Nice, this will help find that document that I thought I made on the MacBook, but it was really on the iMac.

Create your own search to put in the sidebar - I'd kill for this at work

Path bar - I try to not care about directories, but I still do

Back to my mac - There are all sorts of remote access tools available today. I hope this works better than all of them and requires no additional mucking on my part.

Time machine - Specifically Spotlight in Time machine. Backup that I don't have to think about. The only problem is that my clean desktop will get another external drive. The funny part is that Time machine has an icon in the dock. Dear me I hope I don't need quick access to this feature.

iChat theater

New Automator actions

Front row looks like Apple TV

Tabbed terminal - Tabs are nice, but I want them to blow the tabs out in Expose so it is easier to find the terminal I want.

There are some things I'm not looking forward to...

Transparency in menu bar - I throw up a little bit everytime I see a Vista screenshot with those annoying titlebars.

Spaces - In my dumb terminal days, I'd use screen all the time. At home I just really don't work that way anymore. Expose meets my needs. If it didn't, I'd love spaces.

iChat backgrounds - I doubt I'll ever use these. Kids and teens might love them.

* The fun Leopard image is from Elmer's Friends by David McKee

Wasted Taskbar Space

2007-10-11T09:57:00.001-05:00

A UI discussion broke out at work and I couldn't resist documenting these complaints.

In XP, I put my taskbar on the side because that's the only way I can read any of the descriptive text for running tasks. Without a decent task switcher in XP, I rely on what little text I can see. The problem is that the Start button doesn't change size, even though it has plenty of room to expand with the width I give to the Taskbar. I have a blank area, nearly as big as the Start button, that is worthless, wasted space. Seems to me that Microsoft should just extrude the Start button to fill the space. This saves me time as I don't have to go as deep into the corner to hit the button. It's also easier to hit because it is bigger which allows quick, sloppy mousing.

A similar issue exists in the notification area. I like having the date available on a quick look, but I don't need the day of the week, and I don't need huge empty areas around the information because the column is wider than the info. Compress that down and give me space for one more task entry to show before it switches to a two column display (which again makes the descriptive text worthless).

Mac nano Thoughts

2007-10-08T21:38:00.000-05:00

First, I didn't originate the name of Mac nano. I think it started here, way back in March. Rumors of a Mac nano have started back up. Let's see if I can wrap together some rumors with some circumstantial evidence and come up with some halfway believable speculation. Ready, go.

Apple TV is rumored to get an update

Apple TV is rumored to get an optical drive

Mac mini has been rumored to die off for months, but it hasn't happened yet.

Mac mini has been rumored to be selling poorly, but it is still an important product in Apple's lineup as it is the switcher Mac. I'm one of those switchers that started with a first gen Mac mini.

The "mini" brand has died with the iPod. The "nano" brand is strong and Apple might want to apply that to their Macs.

Apple TV runs a stripped down OS X

Front Row in Leopard has been reworked to look like the Apple TV UI. You'll also notice a DVD menu option, so the Apple TV code appears to be DVD ready.

The Mac mini is similar, but not the same 7.7" form factor found on the latest Airport Extreme and Apple TV.

Could it be that Apple plans to make the Apple TV a software product that can run on any Leopard Mac? For those wanting Apple TV hardware, there would be a minimally spec'd Mac nano. This would allow Apple to improve margins as they consolidate on hardware. Apple could standardize on the 7.7" form factor and hopefully get the power supply from the Mac mini internal. The Apple TV power supply is already internal. The only hitch here is that folks would want to run that minimally spec'd Mac nano as a computer as well. Could Apple put out a $299 computer? Would they want to? That's a price point $300 lower than the current low end Mac mini. I think they'd want to maintain their current pricepoint spread. That low end Mac nano could be a hacker's paradise though.

Could the Mac nano be the first flash based Mac? A 16GB fanless computer would be plenty good for lots of folks, especially as secondary or kids computers. Ditching the fan would help chop the height a bit too. I 'shopped up what a Mac nano might look like over on the left. I'm sure you can piece it together, but I started with an Apple TV, cleaned the top and put on the black apple from the new iMacs. I then raised the top a bit and added in the optical drive and IR sensor from a Mac mini.

I personally don't think the $299 price point would be possible for what I'm suggesting here. $399, maybe. $499 definitely.
In any case, it seems the Apple TV and Mac mini are too close to not merge in some form.

Ahh, That's Better

2007-10-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

I couldn't stand that old theme. It was the best one at the time I picked one, but I never liked the images, and I never liked the column spacing.

If you happened to hit here in the past hour or so, you saw the old theme hacked up as I tried to expand the columns (for probably the 3rd time). It looked ok, but not great. I like the new theme a ton better. I swapped in my own color ideas, and I'm colorblind, so that's my excuse. Actually my blog looks alot like the walls in my office now. I reduced the title font. My goodness they wanted that big. I also chopped margins and padding here and there to tighten things up a bit, again, mostly in the title. You come here for the content, not for 20% of your screen saying "Thoughts Abound".

I also made use of Jason's trick to hide the blogger nav bar. I liked the "search this blog" function and found this new search box to replace it.

10 Things About Amazon MP3

2007-10-01T20:57:00.001-05:00

1. You get a free track when you install the downloader app. Did they pick an artist with Apple in it on purpose?

2. There's no Wish List in the MP3 section. WTF guys? iTunes doesn't have this either. Why do I have to keep a Google Notebook entry with the stuff I want to buy? Why do you make it hard to give you money?

3. Things aren't priced the same as iTunes. Ok, you already knew that you could get some stuff for 89 cents, but did you know that some stuff that is album only on iTunes can be had for $1.94 on Amazon? Lots of iTunes album only tracks are over 10 minutes, but not all of them. Check out this EP with some remixes demanding double cost.

4. The selection pales to iTunes, except when it doesn't. I've found stuff on Amazon that I would have expected on iTunes, but it isn't there. Definitive Jux Presents III is one example. iTunes has II, but not III. Yes, I bought it. That's a great price and great music.

5. The interface sucks. The iTunes walled garden is pretty. Amazon's alley shop is ugly. Scroll down and see what I mean. Customer reviews about unrelated crap. Scroll, scroll. Flip video camera? Scroll, scroll. Instant rebate on Laffy Taffy. Tremendous. Scroll, scroll. Budget rent-a-car ad. Scroll, scroll. Feedback, where's my stuff, recent purchases. Why is this on every page? Scroll, scroll. Bunch of links I'll never use to sites that don't apply to me.

At least the track listings respect browser width. Too bad you have to hunt for the playing track. Will it work? Of course it will, but it still bugs me.

6. Album art and album details come nicely loaded in the purchased music. Music (all?) is encoded with VBR.

7. An amazon download ID also comes loaded in the purchased music. This doesn't bother me. I can actually use this to build a smart playlist of Amazon purchased music. This will be necessary for backup purposes because this music won't just drop in my automatically backed up Purchased Music.

8. The Amazon downloader will stick stuff in iTunes, but it doesn't give you a link to play the stuff you just bought! You'll make good use of that Recently Added smart playlist. They'll let me reveal in finder, but not play the silly thing? I don't need to know where it lives, I just want to hear it. If you'd take me to iTunes, it will show me where it lives too.

9. Amazon's old free MP3s links now redirect to the pay site. You didn't know that Amazon used to have hundreds of free MP3 downloads? Ahh, you missed out.

10. You can browse by genre, but the links are hidden down in the product details of a release. You can't browse by label, but you can't on iTunes either. Beatport knows what's up.

Sync or Stream

2007-10-01T14:38:00.000-05:00

The Apple TV has a problem. You can hardly blame the little guy. I'm sure the decision was made in his best interest. He had to be introduced to the world and given a chance to grow.

The problem is that the Apple TV thinks its an iPod...at least as far as the iTunes management goes. Apple TVs sync like iPods. You pick what things you want to sync and iTunes will make that happen. This is a problem because the Apple TV is a far more capable product than the iPod. It spits out HD content, and lets you stream from a number of sources. But HD burns disk, and streaming presents a different use model than iPods. It wouldn't be so bad if the Apple TV support sync and stay. In other words, you could drop content on it and remove it from your local drive so you wouldn't be burning 2x the space. Unfortunately, you can't. You can go through some sync'ing gymnastics to let stuff live a little while, but that's mucking, and mucking is not allowed.

The 40GB drive in my Apple TV is hardly big enough once you start tackling movies and TV shows. If you just want to sync music, that's alot of songs, but I don't want to just sync songs. This is not an iPod. This is a remote enabled interface to my entire iTunes library. The 160GB drive option really wouldn't be much help. I'd still have more content than would fit on it, so I might as well have no hard drive and just stream everything.

The streaming functionality is technically great. I rarely see skips or glitches. Content is quick to play, and browsing remote libraries is just as fast as the sync'd library, once you get connected to it :) What sucks is that the computer that I have designated to by my sync source is also considered to be a remote library. If I want to look at a podcast that isn't synced or I want to watch a feature length movie that was too big to fit on the Apple TV, I have to menu back out to the top and pick a whole new source to browse. That's unacceptable and needs to change. Apple should build a way to view the synced content and at least the other content of my sync source within a single set of content. If the sync source is unavailable (asleep, off, network down), they can gray those selections in the content and it won't be a problem. They could provide an option to disable this feature for those that use the Apple TV in a mostly offline mode.

I have to believe the Apple TV engineers have thought of this and want to do it. I think they haven't because they wanted to reuse the iPod sync model as a first step to get the product out the door. Here's hoping for this in the next release.

So, if they made it easier to access multiple stream sources, how about we ditch the hard drive altogether? Could they knock another $50 off the price if they had no disk in there? If that 40GB drive and hard drive controller cost them $25 in parts (which might be high), then it isn't unreasonable for that to translate to a retail price of $50 less. They could skip a price drop and switch to flash. Maybe just a few gigs of flash to hold the OS. It would be nice if the device ran a bit cooler.

One last stream wish. Let me stream DVD playback from my Macs to the Apple TV. I don't want a DVD drive in there. I have a perfectly fine one already available on my network in a Mac. This would allow me to watch Netflix on TVs that have nothing hooked to them but an Apple TV. You're probably thinking "damn, how many TVs does this guy have?". You'll be surprised at the answer. I have 1 TV, and it is only a 26" :) I do like to keep my options open though.

Saved by Broadband

2007-09-29T20:34:00.001-05:00

Good luck to those that have dial-up and want to keep their computers up to date these days.

That's nearly 300 meg of updates for this round.

The Dream iTunes Disk?

2007-09-26T20:03:00.000-05:00

The dream part will make a little more sense once I finish up a post in progress.

LaCie just announced a new hard drive with iTunes Server support! We've been talking about this at work. We want an iTunes data store that isn't chained to a computer. I don't want to have to run a 200W computer just to access some podcasts on my Apple TV. This looks perfect. From their manual...

Apple has its own protocol known as iTunes. All HipServ’s include iTunes Server support. Computers and DMPs with iTunes support can enjoy their media that is stored on the HipServ. Selected protected content using Apple’s FairPlay DRM will need to adhere to the rules that the content creator has specified. HipServ complies to these requirements and will allow playback if those requirements are met. When UPnP sharing for a folder on your Ethernet Disk mini Home Edition is turned on, the device will appear in iTunes under Shared.

I read that as supporting protected content, as long as the playback device is authorized. Hopefully that includes Apple TVs, and not just authorized computers. This drive isn't nearly as good looking as the new Western Digital My Books or Iomega drives, but it isn't bad, and I should be able to hide it away. Half of me wants to preorder right now. The other half says wait for a review about Apple TV support.

5 of the Now

2007-09-25T20:48:00.000-05:00

The Chemical Brothers - The Salmon Dance This was an instant favorite from the new album. It's wacky but a good tune. The video is great, and kids love it, which makes it nice that they edited the track for the video. Here's the YouTube copy. If you like it, I suggest you pick it up from the iTunes store.

Scissor Sisters - Take Your Mama I was jamming to this the other day and realized I haven't had any Scissor Sisters in the 5otn. This 30 second preview doesn't really capture the fun and energy of the track. This is a great album.

The Crystal Method - Cherry Twist I had the good fortune of seeing the Method live, twice, back in '97 and '98. They've just released a deluxe edition of their album Vegas to celebrate its 10th anniversary. It really is one of the great electronic dance music albums. Cherry Twist didn't see as much success as some of the other tracks on the album, but I especially enjoyed it live.

Moby - South Side (Hybrid's Dishing Pump Remix) Chem Bros, Crystal Method, Moby, and Hybrid. Is it the late 90s? Gwen Stefani helps Moby take it up a notch and then Hybrid knocks it out of the park. I'm a sucker for strings in electronic music.

Adam Freeland - Silverlake Pills Rockin

Lock it Down

2007-09-18T20:02:00.000-05:00

Electronics have lots of buttons. Sometimes you don't want to press those buttons. You just want to leave things the way they are. iPods have Hold switches. Phones allow you to lock the keys and unlock with a key sequence. Windows Mobile PDAs allow you to lock and unlock using the touch screen. Modern cars let you lock the window controls. The thing is, these are all mobile devices. Are they the only ones that can use a lock feature?

How about locks for all types of electronics? I want to be able to lock my TV, DVD, and receiver controls. If you have kids, annoying friends, or even drunk uncles, you know that there are plenty of people that want to push your buttons when you don't want them pushed.

Give me a software lock. Put it on the remote next to mute. Put up a small, translucent, lock icon when operations are attempted while locked. Remove the lock when power to the device is interrupted, just in case you lock it and lose that remote :)

The Other iPod Dock

2007-09-06T21:43:00.001-05:00

It's not the thing that goes on your desk. It's the thing that now looks more like your desk, with icons on it.

The new iPod touch dock doesn't match the iPhone. Instead, it matches the new dock coming in Leopard.

Isn't it funny how Apple can make basically identical products look different? The do the same thing with apps. Aqua, brushed metal, dark gray. Ugg, it annoys me.

The New Apple Keyboard and VI Pain

2007-09-05T21:00:00.000-05:00

So far, I've been pleased with the new Apple keyboard...except for VI. I'm a heavy VI user, and if you're familiar with the text editor, you know that you use the Escape key, a ton. That's bad news for the new Apple keyboard. The esc key is now a half-height key, up with the F keys.

This is terrible for my VI usage. I miss the key all the time. Sometimes when I miss, I hit F1 and dim my monitor because that's the brightness down key! Grrrrrr. The esc key on the old Apple keyboard was not only full size, but double wide. I had no problems hitting that one. I'm going to give it a little longer, but I can't suffer when using VI.

Quick is Key(words)

2007-09-04T20:46:00.000-05:00

Tagging your photos is a grueling process, but the end result is magical. You feel so great when you type your friend's name into the search box and up pops all the pictures of them.

As an iPhoto user, I previously used KeywordAssistant because the tagging tools in iPhoto were just too slow. iPhoto '08 has fixed that. The new keyword tools are amazing. You can now easily enable keywords and tab between photos to fill in the keywords. I suggest using the View menu to enable keywords and disable everything else so you can quickly tab and type.

Even better, you can promote your most used keywords to your Quick Group. This will assign one letter quick keys to your keywords. Hit the letter to add the keyword, hit it again to remove it. You can tag hundreds of photos in minutes, all from the keyboard. I will use this a ton.