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".

You will know it is time to turn the page...

Want to figure out how old someone is? Ask them what medium their read-along storybooks came with. Vinyl? Cassette? CD? MP3?

I came across some of my old read-alongs and thought it was time to do a little preservation. Even though I have a nice turntable, and use it often, I figured having the read-along audio as a digital file might prove useful in the future. So, I dropped the 33 and a thirds on the platter and hit record. In no time, I had a copy of the audio that will live long after the books do.



So what read-alongs did I find? Well, there is the gripping The Ewoks Join the Fight.


I also found the 5 book tranformation of a mild Mogwai in to those raucous Gremlins! I think these originally came from Hardees. Remember when you could get good stuff in the drive-thru? Smurfs glasses, California Raisins, Gremlin records!

I bet you never thought you'd see Star Wars on vinyl (again?).

Snuck in a Day of RAGBRAI

It's hard to believe that I last rode RAGBRAI 3 years ago. I miss it and hope to get to do the full week many more times. On Friday, RAGBRAI passed close to home, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to sneak in a day.

The day started in Marengo and ended for most in Coralville. The day was a mild 48 miles. Even though I rode easy and stopped quite a few times along the way for pictures and food, I still made it to Coralville long before my ride was to arrive. I decided to extend the route and continued on in to North Liberty.

It was great being back on the road during RAGBRAI. Even if you aren't in to cycling, it is an experience you should try at least once. Pick a short day. Take your time. The view, the people, the bike. What a day.


Beer and bikes. Sounds like RAGBRAI. Rolling out of Marengo about 7am.

We love to see the state troopers out helping to keep the cars from attacking the bikes. Plus, you get to play chicken with the inflatable trooper bear!

A little early in the morning for the streets to be lined with welcomers, but they were still out waving hello.

If the corn field bathrooms aren't your thing, you have to wait for town.

Yes, it was hot. Yes, this felt great.

No, it's Iowa.

I swear I saw Grant Wood up on a hill with an easel.

Poorrrrkkk Chhhaaaaooooppp! I've yet to try the wares of Mr. Pork Chop, but he is a crowd favorite.

Fire pasta from Pastafari. They start their signs 15 miles before you get there. Sure makes you ride a little faster.

The reward. Tastes great. More filling.

Who's riding with me next year?

There is No iPod, Only Zune

So now Microsoft is in the iPod killing business. Details are starting to come out about their upcoming line of digital audio players called Zune. I'll let you catch up on the details if needed over at Engadget. I want to get right to why I'd care.



Getting me to switch away from iPods is no easy task. My iPods are part of my daily life now. I have one near me pretty much wherever I am. It's not just the hardware. It's iTunes. It's the iTunes Music Store. It's the availability of accessories. It's the experience.

So what would it take for me to ditch the 'pod and get with the Zune? I'll give you a list.

1. Gapless Playback - I'll keep saying it until they give it to me. Don't try and tell me about Rockbox or 0 second crossfades. I want true gapless playback, just as if I were playing the CD and I don't want to hack anything to do it.


2. Battery Life - No, I'm not unhappy with the iPod battery life. I find it to be quite adequate for most uses, but I always want more, MORE! Oh, and you can't make the device any bigger than an iPod. Smaller, smaller, please.


3. Player to computer sync - Read that closely. I want to be able to use the player as the source to sync. This means I could transfer music on to another one of my computers without some middleman harddrive. The music player is the middleman harddrive. It's completely possible to do it today. There are plenty of 3rd party apps to allow it. The only reason Apple itself doesn't allow it is the copyright argument.
   My friends and I were discussing this the other day. If anything, the DRM'd music should absolutely be allowed to be pulled from the music player to another computer. You can't play the DRM'd music without a proper registration right? Right! So, what's the harm in allowing it. Only authorized users can listen anyway.
   I doubt Microsoft will leave DRM out. That just won't happen. However, they do have the opportunity to make it even less intrusive than Apple's already reasonable uses.


4. More selection in their music store - Don't get me wrong, the selection in the iTMS is great and getting better everyday, but it still doesn't have everything that I can find in some other online music stores, like Beatport. The other biggie would be unsigned music. I want to upload my latest creation and sell it in their store. I can sort of do this today in the iTMS through places like CD Baby, but why do I need that service taking their cut? If Microsoft can find a way to ink deals to cover all of that music too, they gain some points in my book.


5. Uncompressed downloads - Let me burn my disk space, please. I don't want stuff that sounds like the CD. I want stuff that is the CD.


6. Pitch control - This is a selfish one. I want to be able to use my music player as a DJing source. The only way that can happen is if I can adjust the playback speed to allow beatmatching. Things like key lock and original pitch snap back would be appreciated as well. Heck, just give me a DJ mode where the scroll wheel becomes a scrub wheel by default.


7. Increased meta-data viewing and editing - I want to add notes to files. Example, a setlist from a live DJ recording. I want to add meta data on the fly, like marking files I want to delete, or maybe blog about later. Right now, I have to do silly star ratings hacks to accomplish this. I know the interface is not ideal, but figure something out.


8. Wireless - The WiFi rumors are interesting. Hopefully Microsoft enables some peer to peer streaming. Ideally, I want Bluetooth. A2DP, sync, I've covered all of that before.


9. Run code on the device - I saved the best for last. Here is where Microsoft can step things up. They have years of experience in their CE and Windows Mobile operating systems. I sure hope they use that experience here. I'm not saying I want Pocket Word on my music player, but having the ability to run my own apps that also run on a PDA is killer. The development environments already exist. From day 1, I could develop apps to leverage the wireless in the device. I could write a Bluetooth phone dialer. I could make my own album art display system or visualizations. I could add in those things they leave out, like DJ pitch control :) Microsoft has a huge advantage over Apple here.

For what it's worth, I like the Zune design show above. It's clean. It's simple. It doesn't have words all over the front! Ahhh, refreshing. Sort of like the iPod :)

Backup Gone Bad

I'm going to complain about Apple software in this post. Those that are faint of heart should quite reading now.

A backup isn't a backup until it's proven, right? Right, so I proved my backup, but got some unexpected behavior along with it. I make use of Apple's Backup program. It seems pretty slick. It comes preloaded with plans that people, like me, might want to make use of. One of those plans is to backup purchased iTunes Music Store music. I buy from there, and I don't want to lose that music, well heck yes I'll backup. Thank you very much.



This has been going fine for months. I backup, not only to DVD, but also more frequently to my external hard drive. I went to do a restore from DVD the other day. This was a dead end because I couldn't find the original DVD. Doh, my bad. You see, Backup will only make incremental backups, which in a way, is good, as long as you keep all of the incrementals. Seems as though I should insert a full, fresh, backup every now and again.

With the DVDs in hiding somewhere in my house, I decide I'll just use the external HD backup. First off, the restore went great. It was easy, fast, and did restore my entire collection of purchased music. Too bad it brought the full iTunes library file, but not the library, with it. Yes, that's right. Glorious Apple, rulers of tight integration, gave me a seeming simple and unborkable plan to restore my purchased music, but when it came time to yank those bits back from the edge of the ether cliff, it invited a few more to the party.

This is a big problem for a couple of reasons.

1. I was doing this restore on my MacBook. I don't have room for my full iTunes library on there, but I did want to have my purchased music. I have that now, but I also have over a hundred playlists that point to nothing because my full library is not loaded.


2. Even worse, the things I had added to my library on the MacBook are now floating in no man's land because the iTunes library has been blown away and replaced with the one accompanying the purchased music backup. So much for not caring where or how iTunes stores files at the system level. I now have to go data spelunking to bring the file from the previous library back from the depths. That's just not cool.

How could Apple get this wrong? Sure, I wasn't doing a real restore, but what if I was? What if I had made tons of changes to my library and then did a restore from just a week back. It seems like I'd lose all of those changes. No, I'm not going to go try it.
Everything involved here is from Apple and I think you can see where I thought a restore of purchased music would only restore the purchased music, not pull a Weekend at Bernie's and prop some dead library up next to the bought tunes!

If you know of a better way to accomplish what I want to do (Import function?), without copying individual files in the finder (duh), I'd love to hear it. Ohh, and Apple, shame on you. Hold a lunch meeting and get the Backup team talking to the iTunes team. And while I'm yelling about Backup, can we get a default plan to backup our home directories excluding Music, Pictures, and Movies? I already back those up with the other plans. Either that, or send me a few terrabyte drives. Thanks.

5 of The Now

• Sissy - So Long Yay! An odd and interesting video to go with an interesting and not odd song. If you like the Gorillaz, give this a shot.


• Milosh - The City It was hard to pick a Milosh track. I want you all to give him a listen. A couple of albums to choose from. I find the recent one to have a more diverse sound.


• Aim - Loop Dreams Only on the Internet can you see comments from idiots that think this band named them self after AOL's IM client. No, I'm not joking. Do the band a favor and give them a listen. Try a few tracks. Aim is hip-hop+jazz+dance+mellow+cool.


• Massive Attack - Teardrop I think this is the song I'd like to listen to as I reached the top of a mountain...during a long bike ride...at sunrise.


• Lostep - Because We Can You say noise? I say joy! The album is amazing.

Music for Motivation

If you exercise and like music, you're already well aware, but the right music bumping in your ears can be the key to getting the most out of a workout or race.

With the rise of small, spacious, digital audio players, we're seeing even more athletes utilizing music for training and even competition. Burton keeps snowboarders amping, Oakley keeps it thumping on the bike, even the human hot dog shredders at this year's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog eating contest could be seen syncing their jaws to basslines.

Small sites like Jogtunes have sprung up to match music to miles, but the real momentum is just getting rolling with the recent partnership between Apple and Nike.



The best thing to come out of Nike + iPod is purpose driven music. One of my favorites, The Crystal Method, have released a new album specially crafted for Nike + iPod. The 45 minute continuous mix is aimed at a nice run, but I plan to buy it and give it a try during my cycling training rides. The sample on iTunes is too short. Go to to hear drops throughout the mix.

I've been using DJ mixes for years to pass the hours on the bike. Sander Kleinenberg's 2001 Essential Mix of the Year is especially good for packing on the miles. It is really amazing how my cadence will rise and fall with the energy of the music. Maybe if Phil Liggett were around he'd proclaim that I'm dancing on the pedals.

Check back in a month or so and I'll let you know how the training is going.

Stylesheets for TV

Let's dig deep in the bag of tech dreams and pull out a good one. Stylesheets for TV!

Hopefully you know what I mean when I say stylesheet. I'm talking about things like CSS, DSSSL, and XSLT. Stylesheets are key when seperating content from presentation. So why in the world would you need that on a TV? A lot of reasons. All of these ideas revolve around the concept that there is content on the TV and then many stations layer on that with news tickers, score reports, weather warnings, and the like.

• Bad production - If you've been watching the Tour de France on OLN this week, you've surely noticed that the distance to go is shown in the bottom left corner of the screen...at least most of it. Until today, the larger digits have been chopped off. Dangling in no-see-um land deep within the bezel of my screen. Where did the info go? Was it chopped at transmit by OLN? Did my local cable company cut it off? Who knows, who cares. If I had a stylesheet, I could position it over a few pixels (inches?) and solve the problem.



• Bad eyesight - When your eyesight goes bad, you could apply font increasers to graphics and text. Maybe you care more about the stocks than the talking heads on Bloomberg TV. Maybe you have a disability with your eyes. Adjust your stylesheet accordingly.



• Time-shifted content - DVRs are here to stay. Not only do I have LIVE! indicators on week old World Cup games, but I also get to see programming notes for stuff that has already happened. I'm not adverse to letting the networks in on the styling fun. I'd be ok with them inserting fresh content over top of stale during playback of recorded shows, as long as I had the option to turn it off. There is also the hugely annoying problem of telling me results of sporting events that I have yet to watch. While enjoying the day's World Cup match, ESPN was nice enough to ruin the Tour stage I was saving for later in the night by showing the result on the stat line. They robbed me of the joy and excitement of watching the peloton reel in the breakaway just before the finish...or will they? Let me specify a blackout period for scores and results to let me catch up with other events I may have recorded.



• Personalized content - I don't need to see MLB scores, ever. Go ahead and apply a display:none to those, thank you. You might also have a reason to not want static content, like news ticker rectangles on your display. With TVSS, you can whisk them away!



• Variable screen geometries - 4x3, 16x9, 25x16? Screens will evolve and you'll always have folks watching on older form factors. With styling opportunities, you could drop the NBA scoreline, or severe weather report where you want on the screen. They let you adjust the PIP window on your TV, why can't I move the county map showing where the flooding is?

TV is far from dead, but it does need to get smarter. Rumors of Apple plasmas don't sound that far-fetched when you consider the sorts of things you could do when once you have a full computing platform bolted to your TV.

What sorts of styling would you like to apply to the things you watch?

5 of the Now

Do you ears need something fresh? Here are 5 I picked out from the local farmer's market of music.

• Kaiser Souzai - Girl (Oliver Koletzki's zu viel Respekt Mix) No, not the limping mastermind, the band. All 3 mixes are nice. You'll need to check the Dub mix for the familiar sample.



• Evil Concussion - Change is Gonna Come (Silvio Marquardt Remix) This sounds like something you'd get from James Holden and that means yummy!



• Milk & Sugar - Has Your Man Got Soul (Jamie Lewis Darkroom Dub) - I'm a sucker for this sound.



• Princess Superstar - Do It Like a Robot Do da da doo, inspect my gadget. The Princess is a lot of fun.



• Kelis - Bossy (Switch Remix) As near as I can tell, this is the Switch Remix but I haven't been able to locate it anywhere with an official tracklist, so it might be another mix. This thing pounds and is lightyears beyond the original if you ask me. Go grab the fantastic, free, Scumfrog summer mix to hear this. It's in the main site and you better grab it before he takes it down.

Bonus Track
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Eric Prydz vs. Pink Floyd - Proper Education This might fade quickly once I've heard the whole thing, but from the sample, I'm feeling it. I'm really curious to see what a certain friend will say about the inclusion of Pink Floyd.

Unified Communication Highlights

Bill Gates. Some hate him, some love him. I find him to be a sharp guy and consistent in his grasp of where the tech industry is heading.

On Monday, Bill sent out an email detailing his thoughts on Unified Communications. It's a good read and I highly recommend you check it out. You'll find overlap with previous posts here on Thoughts Abound, but Bill has a lot of good survey detail to strengthen his position. Here are the keepers I pulled.

"A decade’s worth of software innovation has transformed the workplace and empowered information workers to do their jobs with greater speed, effectiveness and intelligence. But communicating with colleagues and sharing information is still far too complicated."

Along with systems that don't talk to each other, part of the problem is lack of adoption of the various communication methods company wide. Instant Messaging is quite valuable but loses value as the people you need to talk with end up on other networks and clients. Solutions, like Jabber, exist to help, but in general, people aren't yet familiar with them.

"The irony is that rather than making it easier to reach people, the proliferation of disconnected communications devices often makes it more difficult and more time consuming."

You IM client can tell you when someone is away, but how many times do you send messages like "Are you there", even when you see they are Available? The Available indicator needs to be smarter. Is the person on the phone? Is someone in their cube? Do they appear to be deep within an email reply?

"Our goal is to integrate all of the ways we contact each other in a single environment, using a single identity that spans phones, PCs and other devices."

I know I'm wearing this post out, but I can't help but point to my post on communication identity when that's exactly what we are talking about. Sadly, I'm not sure Microsoft can convince people that they should be the single communication identity. Do you remeber Passport? That was about logging in. This goes a step further. They definitely have a challenge ahead of them.

"To get an idea of what the unified communications world will look like, watch the young people in your organization—particularly the ones who are fresh out of college."

Work extends to the home and personal life extends in to the work day. I fear that many companies look down on IM because "it's for chatting with friends and wasting time". That may be true and should certainly be curbed, but we can't let it be absent from our communication identity.