That's Hooj

Hooj Choons is back! This is exciting news. I have a modest Hooj Choons collection. Jark Prongo's, Movin' Thru Your System is one of my favorites. Not only are the mixes top notch, but the stick man art is as good as it gets.

The stick man is everything that's right about album art. It gives the music character. It makes it easy to find in a pile of records in their sleeves. I love it.

Speaking of the stick man. It's only fitting that he's climbing out of a casket on the comeback release, Medway - Resurrection. Hear it at Beatport. Long live Hooj!

5 of The Now

• DJ Shadow - You Made It Chris James is very pleasant. I enjoy listening to him. Honestly, this sounds like a Coldplay track. More on the new DJ Shadow album in a future post.


• The White Strips - The Hardest Button to Button This was featured in a recent Simpsons episode and got stuck in my head. Bang that drum.


• UNKLE - Unreal I think I could put an UNKLE track in every 5otn, but I try to keep them spread out a little bit. A dark beauty.


• RJD2 - I Really Like Your Def Jux Baby Tee Interesting track title, that's for sure. Can you tell I like tracks with drums? Definitive Jux is the real deal.
  


• DJ Shadow - Enuff Great guesting on this one. Q-Tip, and Lateef, nice. This could get wide radio play.

A Smaller Target

Dear car/SUV manufacturers,
I like bikes. I like cars and trucks less, but usually end up using them more. Sometimes I take bikes places. That means I need a bike rack. If you'd like to gurantee I consider your vehicle as my next purchase, please build one of these bad boys in to your vehicle.



This is tremendous design. I hate having a rack hang off the back, but I hate taking it off and storing it in the garage even more. This might also save my precious bike rack. I had a silly lady try to rip mine off the back of my truck this summer. She used her front bumper. It wasn't pretty. I'd be pretty darn giddy if Nissan teamed up with Saris and put this in the next Xterra.

Video Mute

Today's WTF struck me while sitting in a presentation. The presenter mashed some buttons on a remote and a fine line of text was projected on a black screen. This text told how to undo the Video Mute.

I'd never really thought much about it, but why in the world do we call it video mute. If a mute button turns off the sound, then shouldn't a blind button turn off the video?

Is it somehow more politically correct to be mute than blind?

Vista UI Guidelines

Microsoft has posted their UI guidelines for Vista. I like what I see. The guidelines make sense, mostly. Hopefully developers will pay attention. Here are a few that I liked from the two sites.

• Don't spend time rebuilding standard UI components; use that time instead to innovate in meaningful ways based on your core competencies and understanding of your customer needs. I hope this is aimed at the Media Player team. What is up with them moving the entire menu structure over to the right and having window frames that can pop up when you hover in the area. The whole thing makes my head hurt.



• Use positive commit buttons that are specific responses to the main instruction instead of generic labels (such as "OK"). This seems new. I thought they always wanted us to use a standard "ok". I like the new recommendation.



• Consider cleaning up your dialog by using a More Options "expando" button, so advanced or rarely used options remain hidden by default. I'm conflicted on this one. I like the hiding of options. Hiding complexity allows the owner to manage the expectations themselves. However, the self-slimming menus in XP bug me sometimes. Too often I find myself searching for items in the menus and I have to keep hammering that expand icon. It works great most of the time though. It will be interesting to see this in settings UI. It will be a lot like "More options" or "Advanced options", but quicker to access, and possibly less confusing because you won't leave the current options, you'll just be shown more.



• Don't use Congratulations pages at the end of the wizard that serve no purpose to users. I'm all for this. Should I count the number of current Microsoft wizards that do use congratulations pages? I own a few wizards at work. They do have congratulations pages, but they have valuable info about the process you just completed as well, so I feel a little better about it.



• Use Explorer-hosted, navigation-based user interfaces, provide a Back button This is interesting. Take a look at configuring account settings in Outlook. You can pop 3 windows by the time you get to a setting you want. This gets a little confusing. I think folks understand the back button now after years of use in web navigation. I agree that the back concept could work in application configuration. It's almost like a wizard, with previous and next, but more Web 2.0 (yes, that's a joke).



• Support "Instant search" wherever possible to show instant results while the user is typing. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, please do this. Do you know how often I pray to the UI gods that Windows File Explorer magically sprout an instant search box in the top right so I can do live filters like I can in iTunes and iPhoto? I usually know something about the file I'm trying to find in a folder. Help me help myself and put in instant search!



• Use the Windows Vista "tone" to inspire confidence by communicating to users on a personal level by being accurate, encouraging, insightful, objective, and user focused. Don't use a distracting, condescending (for example, "Just do this..."), or arrogant tone. This one is just funny. File not found, jerk.



• Avoid repetition! Review each window and eliminate duplicate words and statements. No comment, just a link.



• Perception is reality, and if your customers don't experience quality in your product throughout, they may conclude there is lack of quality everywhere. The geeks don't like to hear this one. They like to pretend the rest of the world is a bunch of geeks too. They think it shouldn't matter that you shower, or wear clean clothes. It's the quality of the work that counts. Well, it is the quality of the work, but if you look like crap, maybe they've already made some assumptions about quality. I'm not saying it's good to make assumptions. I'm saying that people do. Just like you don't have to wear designer clothes to look good, you don't have to hire a designer to make your app look good. Line up your text. Use some consistent spacing. Use clean graphics.



• Don't restart progress. A progress bar loses its value if it restarts (perhaps because a step in the operation completes) because users have no way of knowing when the entire operation will complete. Here's hoping the Vista installer works different than past Windows installers. I seem to remember a non-stop restarting of menu bars during those file copies.



• Present choices and settings in terms of user goals, not technology. I preach this one at work and get the "you're a moron" look more often than not. I believe in it strongly though and have converted a few folks. I wish more developers would consider their apps all the way to how the user will use it, not just to the point where they've exposed everything to the user to use if they can.



• Wizards aren't "dumbed-down" UI. Many of them are, but they don't have to be.



• Don't use "wizard" in wizard names. Good recommendation. I think I'm guilty of this.

While we're on the topic of UI, I'd like to offer up observations on a couple of brain dead ones.

Office now opens separate task bar entries for each open file. This allows for nice alt-tab switching. Too bad you can't have more than one up at once so I can look at things side by side with my dual-monitor setup. Too bad the apps won't remember screen position per document. Dual-monitors aren't all that new, but you can tell that most app designers don't keep them in mind during their design.

Another problem with dual-monitors is dialog boxes that are centered in the window, not popped near the action that popped them. In other words, when click File>New, apps will pop a "Are you sure" dialog half way across my screen, usually
in the middle of the bezel gap of the two monitors. Centering dialogs in the app window used to work when screens were small and we only used one. There needs to be an option to pop dialogs in the upper left portion of an app window. That's near the menu items that usually trigger dialogs.

Many of the Slashdot comments on this subject revolved around Apple already using these recommendations. I'd have to agree in many cases, but they don't come clean all the time. I only need to mention one example, Finder.

What UI atrocities have you seen?

Bit, Meet Brick

Buying content digitally is great...sometimes. As I've said before, I have some rules for buying content digitally vs. physically.

1. If I can't buy it physically


2. If I'm massively impatient and need it NOW


3. If I'm exploring and don't know if it's worth $10 or $20 for the full album or film

I definitely won't buy albums digitially if I can get them physically. This applies even when I have to wait for Amazon to ship it, or burn gas to hit Best Buy across town.

Recent developments make me want to break my rules. Many albums are now available in the iTunes store before they are released. Sometimes they haven't released in the US. Sometimes, they haven't released physically, period. Examples of this include Hybrid's latest album, and DJ Shadow's album, which just came out this week physically, but has been available digitally for a while.

The thing is, why do I have to choose? I like holding a CD in my hands. I like looking at the album art. I like to smell the printing chemicals. No, really, I do.

The bits and bricks need to get together. I should be able to buy an album, at a premium, in the iTunes store. I'd get the immediate downloads and I'd get a physical copy, complete with the art and smells, shipped to my house. The bits guys get a cut, the bricks guys get a cut.



But Apple doesn't make any money with the iTunes store, you cry. Well, maybe they don't make much, but I'm sure they'd like even a tiny cut of a fraction of the physical albums sold. I think they should partner up with someone like Amazon (did he just call Amazon a brick?) and sell digital and physical. Everything will continue to function like it does today. Your iPod still gets loaded instantly, but then the CD will show up a few days later for use in the car, archival, your collection, or even just as an uncompressed version of the content.

Even better, this would allow me to buy the albums I want as soon as they are available digitally, but not feel guilty that I don't have the physical copy as well. It would just ship when it did get released.

If you want another reason why Apple should do this, we'll return to the new DJ Shadow album. Shadow is quite possibly my favorite artist, but I stayed away from buying it early on the iTunes store because I wanted the album experience and I wasn't going to pay for the album twice. I'll save that cash for the import singles :) What's worse is that buying the album at Best Buy gave me two free digital downloads, yay! Too bad the digital downloads are PC only and use Windows Media with DRM. I'm not 100% Mac, so I was able to download them, burn them to CD and then rip them back in to iTunes, but that just sucks, and what about those folks that don't know you can do such a thing. If they are iPod users, they are robbed of those tracks. Even worse, I think those tracks are 2 of the best of the whole album, but that's another post.

Now it goes the other way. If you bought the album from the iTunes store, you are stuck with iTunes or an iPod, but you probably don't care if you are buying the album from the iTunes store. The only format choice I made in Best Buy was CD. The .wma shackles were tossed in with the bonus that Best Buy gives its customers. Way to treat your customers Best Buy. Thanks for buying that CD here. Let me give you a gift you can't use!

Best Buy could do this too. Join up with Napster or Rhapsody. Do your thing. Add value rather than compete with each other. It's all choice. If you don't want the physical disc, you can still buy for $9.99. If you want the CD too, maybe it costs $14.99.

The same concept holds with DVD, TV shows, and books. Paying again for a digital copy is old and tired. The company that gives the consumer value in the formats they want to use will win.

Laws of Simplicity

Simplicity is complexity well explained.
That's a statement I came up with back in 2000. I believe that was the start of my simplicity kick. I had recently graduated from college and found that I had way too much crap. Something needed to be done. I had to make a change or I'd be a pack rat forever.

I still have a lot of stuff, but now I have less :) The thing about stuff is that it isn't just physical stuff. You can end up with too much emotional stuff. Too much virtual stuff. Too much stuff.


Recently I heard about a book called The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It backed up many of the ideas I have formed around simplicity and offered up some fresh ones.

The book is worth a read for both professional and personal reasons. From programmers to politicians, I think any profession can learn a thing or two from this book.

I won't spoil the book for you, but I did pull a few keepers that I'd like to share with you. When you are done reading these, head over to the accompanying website [lawsofsimplicity.com] for more good stuff.

• Reduce - The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction



• Failure - Some things can never be made simple



• Away - More appears like less by simply moving it far, far away



• Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful



• Simplicity is about the unexpected pleasure derived from what is likely to be insignificant and would otherwise go unnoticed



• Anything that can make the medicine of complexity go down easier is a form of simplicity, even when it is an act of deceit



• Hiding complexity allows the owner to manage the expectations himself



• Consumers will only be drawn to the smaller, less functional product if they perceive it to be more valuable than a bigger version of the product with more features



• Savings in time feel like simplicity



• Giving up the option of choice, and letting a machine choose for you, is a radical approach to shrinking the time we might spend otherwise...



• ..because technology will only continue to grow in complexity, there is a clear economic benefit to adopting a strategy of simplicity that will help set your product apart.



• Complexity implies the feeling of being lost; simplicity implies the feeling of being found



• There's always a return on failure when you try to simplify - which is to learn from your mistakes

Closing the Gap

I thought the day would never come. Gapless playback on iPods has arrived. Please give me a minute to compose myself. There, I've dried my tears of joy. The world is a better place. No longer will my groove be harshed by a momentary slap of silence. My number one gripe has been erased. Thank you Apple.


BTW, you may have to prod iTunes a bit to get it to update your iPod. I'm running 7 and plugged in/out my 5G a few times, but was never prompted to upgrade from 1.1.2 to 1.2. I then selected Check for Updates... and it immediately popped up telling me that I it could upgrade my iPod. I did not need to reload my music. It just works.

I fully expect the haters to now shift their attention to the iPods lack of Ogg Vorbis support.

Blogger Beta Migration

If you are like me, you had some trouble finding the magic link that leads you to the Blogger Beta migration. I love that I can consolidate my Blogger account in to my Google account, but you already knew that.


So, here's the magic Blogger Beta migration link. I'm liking the beta so far, but I wish they'd give me an easy way to increase the content area of the posts. Fixed width columns are evil!

Praise for Keynote

Recently, I had a need to present some slides at a conference. I immediately began coming up with reasons why I couldn't take my Dell from work, and had to take my MacBook.

I certainly didn't want to take two computers, but my work assigned Dell is a steaming pile. The battery falls out if you hold it at the wrong angle. It has no integrated Wi-Fi and the PC Card adapter rarely works. The power supply is gigantic, heavy, and about 10 feet beyond what I typically need. It has no Bluetooth. The whole experience of using it is crap. Can you tell I didn't want to take it?

While working on my presentations, I worked a bit from home. I found that Keynote has fantastic support for PowerPoint files. Everything just worked. The bullets were right. The transistions were right. Saving back out to PowerPoint was perfect. It was a joy. The problem was, my 30 day trial was running out at a pace that would leave me without Keynote on the day I needed to present, or so I thought. iWork is not software that I have a frequent need for. I use Office daily at work, but I don't use Macs at work (usually), so I have little need for iWork.

Knowing that Keynote was set to expire, I tried OpenOffice and the NeoOffice variant. You know, I love what they are doing, and I really want it to continue, but Impress, the presentation tool, didn't work that well with the PowerPoint presentation. First, it runs sloooooww. You can see it in the slide transitions (which I hate, but were highly suggested by the folks running the conference). Second, it randomly changed bullets to different shapes throughout my presentation and I couldn't for the life of me get them to change. I was not happy. I was going to have to leave my MacBook at home.

A few days before the trip, Keynote expired. Wait, what's this. Rather than the mess that an Office trial leaves behind, I find that Keynote is telling me it will still work, it just won't save or print.

Yeah, right! I think. Surely it will disable presentation mode, or stick trial in the output, or just quit after 20 minutes or something. I decided to practice my presentation in Keynote and see where it would shut off, but it never did. It just worked. Everything worked, except for saving and printing, just like it told me. Even the magnificent presenter mode still worked.

Life was good. I could take my MacBook. My presentations were ready to rock, so I wasn't real worried about the no-save limitation. I figured if worse came to worse, I could edit in NeoOffice, screwed up bullets and all, and still present with Keynote.

Luckily I didn't need to do that. The presentations went great, and part of the success goes to Keynote. The presenter mode is amazing. I love having a ticking clock of my time. I love seeing the next slide. It makes for slick segues. It makes you a better presenter.

So why didn't I just buy iWork? Well, spending $79 on software that I'd probably only use for work gives me pause. Getting work to pay for software that would only be used on my personal equipment is also a tough sell. That said, I think Keynote, and Apple, treated me pretty well here. They could have just shut down after the iWork trial was up, but they didn't. They allowed me to get value from their software. They allowed reasonable evaluation terms. I think that deserves some payback. I will buy iWork, but I'm going to wait until the '07 release, just to get a little more for my buck.

Keynote, thank you.

Finally, a related story. During my presentation, one of the folks from the audience commented that he noticed I was using "an Apple" and wanted to be sure that I'd provide the slides "in a format the rest of us can use". I politely informed him that I was, in fact, showing a PowerPoint presentation, so there would be no worries about reading the presentation. Apple's marketing department has some work to do. These were highly skilled techinical professionals, and many of them didn't know that the days of Mac<->PC compatibility wars began fading long ago. I imagine I would have blown the guy's mind had I been presenting from an XP partition thanks to Boot Camp.

Toronto Too

The photocast should be updated, but I'll add some color commentary for a few here.


Coca-cola is Coca-cola everywhere. Pepsi is Pepsi everywhere. Mountain Dew is... well, it's Dew. I was in Vancouver Canada last year and the dew was an energy drink and had some other name than this. Dew Fuel? Ok, I guess that works as a name. It boggles the mind the money spent on the Mountain Dew brand in the US. Then, you just go north a short bit and they throw that all away for some similar brand? I know at least 2 Dew drinkers that read this blog, so I had to include this.


Huge record shop. Chambers and rooms everywhere. Cash registers? You had to have a map to find them. I did pick up a CD. Sasha's Instant Live CD. I'd planned to let this one go buy, but when presented with a somewhat rare CD, I had to buy it.


I love finding all the little holes that you can see the CN Tower through.


An interesting building on the University of Toronto campus.


There were a few of these in the sidewalk. I didn't find any that said goose.


I looked, but I couldn't find the point of this sign.

Showtime

Big Apple announcements coming today. The only thing I'll say for sure we'll see is movies. Even the iTMS is telling me that it is showtime.
I left the Blackalicious in the screen cap to make Jason smile.

Toronto

I'm currently enjoying a business trip in Toronto, Canada. I just arrived, but it is quite nice thus far. I have my computer along, so I absolutely must post pictures. It's some sort of blogger's law.






If you like any of that, you can follow along more closely with the photocast.

As an aside, it is hilarious to see over a dozen iTunes libraries shared on the hotel network at the moment. I haven't tried any to see if they are passworded or not, but still. Jane, Lee, Chad, your libraries are leaking.

DVD 2 Desktop

I finally got a chance to watch the DVD portion of BT's This Binary Universe. First of all, stunningly beautiful. The music, the visual art, the emotion. Amazing stuff. As I'm watching, I'm counting the dozens of frames that I'd love to be my desktop wallpaper. I think to myself, I need to capture some of those. thisbinaryuniverse.com does offer a few frames for download, but I wanted to get some ones beyond those.

Now, I've played this game before and I know that Apple won't let you do a screen capture when the DVD player is running, sort of. I first played around with Automator. You can set the desktop picture in there, and I figured a one click dvd 2 desktop would be slick. Well, I collected 3 strikes and quit. You can't cap with the DVD player running - strike 1. You can cap a different way (more on that in a sec) and then set the background, but the desktop display won't change unless the file name changes - strike 2. I tried automating it to something else and then back to the original file name, which is now a different file than the one being shown, but it appears to ignore that as it thinks it already knows what that file is - strike 3. I considered a unique name on the cap file, but I'll need to learn Applescript to help me there. I don't have that tool in my toolbox just yet.

I'm all out of motivation for this problem for now, so you are going to get the more manual, but working solution. This assumes you are running 10.4.x because you want PNG screenshots.

1. Find the DVD frame you want and pause playback. Hit option-command c to hide the mini-controller if it is up.


2. Switch to a terminal window and type sleep 10; screencapture ~/Pictures/dvd2desktop.png. This will give you
   10 seconds to do the next step before capturing the screen to a file in your Pictures folder. I love how the screencapture program ignores the fact that the DVD player is running. I'm hoping the developer just forgot to add that feature.


3. Switch back to the DVD player and hit command-0 to enter full screen mode. Listen for the screen shot noise. Snap! Yay.


4. Now go in to the Desktop and Screen Saver prefrence panel and choose your DVD frame. Done!

This is the part where you go recreate this with your favorite DVD material.

5 of The Now

Less boom tss boom tss this time around. I guess I'm feeling laid back.

• Trentemoller - Miss You Trentemoller has put the banging on hold to craft some more delicate items for his upcoming album. This is great, minimal stuff.


• Asobi Seksu - Thursday Dare I say that this has a touch of 80s to it? Still fresh.


• Minus the Bear - The Pig War


• Guster - Backyard Include this on the Soundtrack for mowing your lawn! Just kidding. This is very pleasant and can fit a wide range of tastes.


• Quantic - An Announcement to Answer Quantic is a lot of fun. Check out the related Quantic Soul Orchestra as well.

I'm again gifting one of these tracks to the best comment convincing me to do so. Want free music? Post a comment and earn it!

This Binary Universe

I'm a big BT fan. I'm really looking forward to Tuesday.

A2DP Roundup

I'm in the market for a Bluetooth A2DP dongle. Specifically, one for my iPod. I finally took the plunge and bought a set of Bluetooth headphones. I'm very pleased with them, but more on that in another post. The thing is, now that I have the headphones, I need something to listen to. For the time being, I'm using an A2DP dongle from work, but I really need to buy my own.

So, what is on the market? Well, there are a lot of offerings, but not a lot of good solutions. Most vendors want you to buy a dongle and headphones together. Others are only offering multipurpose dongles that connect to the analog headphone out of your audio device. These connections don't allow you to control your iPod the way ones connected to the dock connector would. I did some searching, and these are the devices I found. If you know of others, please post them in the comments. Please note, other then the Plantroics dongle, I haven't actually used any of these. I'm only commenting on their design and connect methods I have observed online. This isn't a review, just a gathering of info.

• Plantronics Pulsar 590a - This is the dongle I'm currently using. I really don't care for the on/off switch. You can't really operate it one handed. The charging solutions are nice. Wall charger or USB! The battery life is a pain because it doesn't last as long as the iPod or my headphones. Overall, works well, but again, you have to buy headphones to get the adapter and it is an analog adapter.


• Ten Technology Naviplay - This looks reasonable, but I'm really not digging the sled styling. You can see more photos over at mobilemag. Plus, it is way too expensive. Part of that is because you can't just buy the sender dongle. They make you buy it along with headphones, or a pendant to plug headphones in to. If I didn't get the headphones I did, these look like they have potential. Overall, I'm thinking no on these.


• Bluetake - Yay, an ugly, bloated, coaster of a dongle. Plus, it is only analog connected, so forget about using the AVRCP features such as play, pause, and track skip. No thanks.


• Macally Bluewave - Paired with fragile headphones. Analog connection. No, no, no. On a side note, my father ordered the MTUNE headphones, so it will be interesting to try those out.


• icombi AP11 - Old iPod style, analog only, clunky. Not feeling this one either.


• D.Muse iblue - No A2DP? Who are they kidding? Have you heard music over the headset profile? Ugg. Next!


• Anycom adapter - Appears to be for the nano only. The plastic looks like preproduction proto plastic. Goofy channel for the nano to sit in. I'll keep looking.


• ORA A2DP transmitter - One of the best candidates I found. The price is right. You don't have to buy headphones with it. Too bad the design is bad and it is analog only. Still, I might end up with this.


• Jabra A125s - Now we're talking. Dock connector. Simply design. Can I buy one? Well, it is tough to find on Jabra's site, and none of the big online sellers seem to have it. I guess if you don't mind shopping at Jimmy's Parent's Basement Electronics Hut, you can get one for $50 linked off of Froogle. Still, a candidate if I can find a seller I trust.


• IOGEAR Wireless Audio Transmitter - Again, designed for the old iPod, but at least they shaved the nub off. Still, quite pricey compared to others on the market, especially for an analog dongle.


• Griffin BlueTrip - Their site says this only works with their base/transmitter pair. Are they serious? Good job guys. Take a universal wireless protocol and then make it proprietary so you can't sell any of them. Griffin, I like you, but this is just plain stupid.


• i.Tech BlueCON G5 - Looks nice, but I can't find it for sale anywhere in the states. That's all too common when trying to purchase Bluetooth enabled equipment.

The worst part is that everytime I get ready to buy one of these less than ideal solutions, I see another rumor that Apple is going to release a Bluetooth enabled iPod, or at least a dongle. Internal Bluetooth is the only proper solution. These dongles are just temporary hacks in my opinion. I'm sure the only way to get Apple to actually release a Bluetooth iPod is to buy a dongle. That's usually the way it works, right :)

Spin it djay

I saw a post about a new DJ app for Macs over at TUAW. It looked interesting, and I downloaded it immediately, but I wasn't expecting a whole lot. I've used plenty of DJ apps and I've even started coding some crappy ones of my own. I had low expectations.

Boy, was I wrong. Djay is well done. It has a lot of potential. I kept looking for reasons to dismiss it, but it usually came out the winner.


At first, I figured, ehh, it won't pitch shift, even though the announcement says it does. It does, and it works pretty well. The sliders are set way too high. I'd prefer a more traditional +/-10%, not +/-100%.

Next, I was ready to throw it away forever because I didn't know how to cue anything in my headphones, while still outputing the main sound. A trip to the help file told me I needed at least a 4 channel external sound card. Well, I ain't getting one of those, but wait...you can aggregate channels with an iMic? I have an iMic (runs to studio to grab it). Follow instructions, bam, cueing in the headphones, main sound out the internal speakers. Nice!

The effects are crap, right? No, those are good too.

The iTunes integration is fantastic. I love when apps tightly integrate! It just multiplies the benefit you get from the hardwork you put in to organizing and tagging your data.

I do have some complaints. The "magnetic" tempo sliders are nice, but it's nothing like feeling a spinning platter. The beat counter does the best it can, but I learned early on to never trust beat counters. You just have to hear the mix. I was also a little upset that you can't play any iTMS purchased tracks. FairPlay my ass. FairPlay is fine when you stick to Apple's garden. Once you try and leave, you get smacked in the face with low hanging branches.

So, while I sell my turntables and switch to software? Never. However, I can see myself doing some prep work for a mix with this, and this is great software for those that want to try djing without investing a lot (any) money. It would also work well for preparing mixes that might not need precise beat matching, especially with the built-in recording. Overall, I'm liking this and plan to spend more time playing with it.

Use it or lose it

iTunes got snooty with me. I was curious why my ABC Nightly News podcast wasn't updating. I had episodes from July, but who wants to watch old news? I clicked the ! in iTunes and it tells me this...


I guess it will automatically stop downloading episodes from podcasts you stop listening/watching. Who knew? I didn't.

5 of The Now

• Thomas Schumacher - Kickschool 79 There's plenty more where that came from. If you want a longer listen that iTunes allows, be sure to check out thomasschumacher.com.



• Uffie - Pop the Glock (Sebastian Remix) Mind blowing. Edbanger records is going off. The direct link to the track doesn't paint the full picture, so how about I give you links to Sebastian's MySpace, Uffie's MySpace, and a video of the original Pop the Glock.



• Tiefschwarz - Issst



• Ursula Rocker and Will Saul - Where is it? (Evil Nine Remix) The evils are at it again.



• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion (Diplo Remix) I'd like to thank my brother for guiding me back to Diplo again.

Let Captchas Be Your Guide

Have you always wanted to be a rapper or a DJ? Have you been held back from your dreams because you couldn't come up with a decent name? Well, you are held back no longer.



All you have to do is visit your favorite site that requires a captchaized login and reload a few times. You'll get a great assortment of possible names. Pick the one you like and you're golden. You don't even have to bother to hire a graphic artist. The captcha gods will stylize your name for you! They'll make it wavy and distorted just enough to be cool.

Rymro. I don't know if that sounds like "Busta Rhymes feat. Rymro" or just something that Scooby Doo might say.

Rymro Shaggy!

Track Flags

Podcasts are continuing to evolve as a marketing tool. Puma is using music to spead the word about their frangrances. Beatport regularly puts out a wicked mix made from new releases. Even Apple releases a podcast once a week with new tracks that they'd love for you to buy.

For the most part, these marketing vehicles are doing their job. I've been moved to buy many tracks that I heard for the first time on a podcast. The problem is, they are too hard to buy.

Podcasts are certainly a step up from the old way. Downloading a DJ mix and then searching for a tracklist is a pain. Some will have a .cue sheet, but even then, you have to have software capable of handling that .cue sheet and doing something reasonable with it. For those keeping score, iPods don't know what a .cue is.

When I'm grooving away to Beatport Burners, I frequently think to myself "I need to buy this." If I'm at my computer, I can make use of the brilliant links that you can build in to podcasts, but I'm never at my computer when I'm listening to podcasts. I'm always listening on my iPod, usually at work. That means I get to play the game of writing notes to myself on scraps of paper, or dropping entries in my Google Notebook. Surely there is a better way.

We need a solution for flagging tracks on our iPods. Microsoft's Zune is already rumored to support bookmarking of shared tracks. If Apple wants to justify the development time, they can mark this in the increased iTMS sales category, but certainly we'd have reason to flag tracks other than as a future purchase reminder. I can see flagging tracks to use in iPhoto slideshows, for use in a DJ set of mix tape you are working on, or even as one you'd like to email Jimmy about because you think he'd like it.


My suggested implementation borrows on UI that most users are already familiar with. First of all, I borrowed the flag icon from Mail.app. Most users are familiar with flagging important emails for further future action. I also needed a UI gesture that could be performed on the iPod. Apple already lets you click and hold on a track to add it to an On-The-Go playlist. All they need to do is support that same gesture while on the track ID screen in a podcast.

1. From the default podcast screen...button click to enter track ID mode.


2. Click and hold. Flag icon is added to verify this track is flagged.

Later, back in iTunes, you can create a smart playlist with flagged tracks. If they had a link associated with them, you'd get the typical cirlcle-arrow icon to go to that link. If a link was not assigned, you'd at least have the information about the track that you'd normally scratch down on paper.

Here's hoping for this in iTunes 7!

One Chill Cat

Today's dose of free music comes courtesy of Puma Fragrances. Apparently they have cologne that makes you smell like electronic music.

It's a pretty chill set. Relaxed, edgy, hip. Just like what comes in the bottle!

Subscribe through iTunes or head straight to the site.

Tracklist:
1) Jeff Bennett feat. MC Leroy - I can see [Kung Fu Dub Recordings]
2) Tigerskin - Sams return [Morris Audio]
3) Edvard Kofner - Dirty Bass [Exun Records]
4) Beanfield feat. Bajika - Tides (C's Movement #1 - Carl Craig Remix) [Compost Records]
5) Unai - I like your style (Martinez Remix) [Disco Inc. Ldt.]
6) phonique feat. die Elfen - The Red Dress (Tiefschwarz Remix) [Dessous Recordings]
7) Air Liquide - So much Love (Radio Edit) [Multicolor Recordings / Good Groove Music]

You'll recognize the Beanfield track from my previous 5 of the now. If you didn't get to listen to the whole thing before, now is your chance.

WWDC Eve and a Family of Apple

The wait for another installment of WWDC is nearly over. I'm less frothy about this year because I'm really not in the market for any Apple hardware. I do however have an interest in the software announcements.

Leopard will be huge. I can't wait to see what must haves will come with it. Not, an Apple product, but I'm hoping for Delicious Library 2.0. I picked up a copy during their recent gambler's sale for $20. I scanned in all my DVDs with my iSight and I'm loving it. I'm hoping for much improved integration with iTunes before tackling my CD collection.

Speaking of, the area that I'm really hoping for improvements is iLife. I've drank the iLife kool-aid. Apple has pulled me in. I live on iPods and iTunes. I manage all of my photos through iPhoto. I've ordered multiple prints and made spectacular books using the tools in iPhoto. I dabble in GarageBand and iWeb, and hope to make use of iMovie and iDVD at some point.

My problem with iLife is the lack of support for an Apple family. I'm a good little Apple consumer. I have both a Mac mini and a MacBook. I use an Airport Express for my wireless network. Funny enough, I'd rather let the Airport Express be an extender for iTunes, but my Netgear AP died, and my Linksys one takes a dump any time Apple products are near. Back to my point. The problem is that I've bought in to iLife, but these machines are not capable of holding my iLife. Between all of my photos and music, I can easily suck down the entire drive, leaving no room for apps, email, and, uh, the OS.

iLife apps have the ability to have their libraries span volumes, but I really don't want to do that. The power of iTunes is letting go and letting it manage the library. I can't do that if I let it span volumes. You either let it manage, or you leave stuff wherever it may be. There is no hybrid mode. There needs to be!

Even worse, iLife supports sharing libraries among devices on your network. Sounds great, and works pretty well. I can play music from my Mac mini. I can see the photos. But edit a track rating, nope, can't do that. They are read-only on the sharing machine. I'm not given the choice to let my sharing machine modify meta data on the source. Why not? The permissions framework is there, no?

Going back to spanning volumes, I need to span machines. I want my library to make use of the hard drives in all of my computers. The point in having a Mac mini is desktop simplicity. If I have to go buy external hard drives to hang off of it, I might as well go back to my massive tower Dell.

I'm forever importing new photos in to iPhoto. Wouldn't it be nice if I could sort those in to albums from the living room on the MacBook. Nope, can't do that either. I can make new albums using the shared photos, but there's no easy way to keep those sync'ed back to the source.

You'd think that .Mac and iSync would offer some help here, but it is minimal. I can sync my bookmarks and their order in Safari just fine, but it won't sync the RSS counts on the smart bookmarks. Details, please pay attention to the details.

So, have I grown beyond iLife? Do I need some sort of prosumer version of iTunes and iPhoto or does Apple just need to buckle down and reward its customers that have purchased multiple computers? This seems like a problem that plenty of people experience, or will.

So maybe I do want to see some hardware at WWDC. I want to see the iVault come true. It is a mockup from an Apple imagination contest and it could be the main library for all of my data. Add in the approved changers features that I'm begging for in iLife and I'm all set.

I'm sure Mr. Jobs is ironing his turtleneck for tomorrow. I can't wait.

5 of The Now

Stay away from these tracks if you don't like naughty words :) A few of them have buckets of them.

• Bassbin Twins - Whoa It would be pretty tough to track down a press of this. Not to set expectations too high, but this track has
  Crooked energy. Luckily, you can hear it in the latest Stone Lions podcast. I'm loving this mix. Grab it free! Setlist is available on the Marine Parade site. If you play this out, I hope you have insurance. Rip down the walls.


• Stone Lions - Immigrant Heel, Claw and Toe Lovers - Whoah! Bootleg, mashup, wicked DJ mix. Whatever you want to call it, this thing is the real deal. Led Zeppelin, Evil Nine, the drums from Bell Biv DeVoe's Poison! Yes, you have to hear it to believe it. Again, check the Stone Lions podcast, or hear it alone at the Stone Lions Myspace.


• Elisa - Time I love the voice. I love the understated emptiness that allows this to be layered with other music for terrific effect.


• Etienne de Crecy - F**k Love the flow. If you haven't slept throught the history of file sharing, you'll also want to check out the tracknames on their other release.


• Brooklyn Funk Essentials - I Got Cash Class lyrics. Great delivery. Funk. "Go drown in a lake of Diet Coke, fu**a".