Twitter: is now an Infrastructure Architect. 1 week agoUpgraded the photo gallery to the latest version of Gallery, G2 beta 4, code named Flippin’ Sweet. Seems to be a tad faster, although I ran the maintenance tasks which rebuilt all the photo thumbnails boosting the loading speed. That took about 3 hours though… yikes.
I’m slowing adding more photos but lack of time is the main limiting factor right now. And no, it’s not because of me playing World of WarCrack. I quit that game. Seriously.
July 25th, 2005
Most shareware/freeware is crapware and no one seems to give a damn. Couldn’t have said it better myself. I do pay for a lot of shareware but only the really good shit. Support the good ones.
2 comments July 21st, 2005
Some analysts believe so. Personally, I enjoy listening to a very small subset of podcasts because they contain information I want to hear. A lot of the other very niche podcasts don’t appeal to me because I don’t really care about someone’s movie reviews or whether or not they like so and so the famous person. Obviously I’m not suppose to listen to all of them nor does anyone, but I sort of do see a lot of the indie casts going away once the original “magic” for them is lost. This is part of the reason I haven’t started doing my own podcast yet, I don’t have much in the way to say. I’d much rather produce something worthwhile than just speaking drivel.
2 comments July 18th, 2005
As registered user of NetNewsWire, I’d like to respond to comments made by the developers related to Apple’s new iTunes podcasting features. There are two things that iTunes offers up that are so good and useful, I’m currently using iTunes as my podcasting downloader of choice.
iTunes stores podcasts away from your regular music files thus allowing you to shuffle and browse your music without seeing or hearing all the podcasts. I had become very annoyed while traveling recently because while I love to use the shuffle feature when I’m driving, it’s very annoying to have to skip through podcasts, especially one’s that I’ve already listened to. Yeah, why don’t you just deleted them off you dummy? I’m a pack rat. I keep em for future reference, just like I keep my video game boxes. Don’t ask. I could have also added a new smart playlist that removed podcasts based on the category, meh, I want it to do it for me 
I love, LOVE having bookmarks of unfinished podcats. Being able to come back to a podcast and have it save my place is critical as I listen to many different things during my day and hate having to seek for the last spot I was on in a particular podcast. This feature right here was the deal breaker. All podcasts downloaded through iTunes have the ability to be bookmarked. I’m assuming this is because of a conversion process done on the client side which is automatic to me and the way it should be.
I hope that Ranchero will at minimum develop the AAC conversion process into NetNewsWire as I believe it would add the most value. Not sure if they could use the new “Podcasts” menu item to sort them away from music but if they can, again, would be very useful. I’ll be using iTunes for now as it has the two features I’ve been looking for since I started listening to podcasts long ago, hopefully the other tools will fall in and I can start using them again for podcasts.
July 14th, 2005
Microsoft released their “lame excuse for a music store”:http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BD5657B75-0B35-461F-9526-AEFAC1924F61%7D yesterday, dubbed the “MSN Music Store”:http://music.msn.com/.
bq. “ITunes has done a great job of helping to elevate the [digital music] market,” said Christine Andrews, lead product manager of MSN. “We’re different because Apple is a closed system. If you want Apple, you have to use the iPod. A lot of people want choice and we offer that.”
That quote there is a classic. Apple is closed and some how MSN isn’t? I attempted to buy a song using my Mac and Firefox as the browser. Sorry, you can’t do that. You must “use Windows and Internet Explorer”:http://music.msn.com/help/requirements.aspx. We’ll call this exhibit closed door number 1.
Even if I could download music from MSN on my computing platform of choice I still wouldn’t be able to play the music on my MP3 player of choice, an iPod. So, some how this is an open system music store that doesn’t support the leading MP3 player on the market? Exhibit closed door number 2.
All the music from the MSN Music Store comes in Windows Media format. WMA is a closed, proprietary format developed by Microsoft. Hmm. Exhibit closed door number 3.
I’m not saying that the iTunes Music Store is this big open ocean, it’s as closed as MSN is. What am I saying is that Microsoft is a liar. MSN lied when they stated they’re an “open” system. They are not.
Now, go download your tunes from “iTMS”:http://www.apple.com/itunes/ into your iPod or even just a simple CD and be happy.
2 comments October 13th, 2004
Nokia is trying it’s hand again at the world of handheld gaming with the N-Gage 2. “Leaked photos show”:http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/first_ngage_2_pictures_014911.php that the newest N-Gage still won’t support a built-in camera making the device completely worthless for me. If Nokia really wanted to sell me one of these things they’d at least include the top three features of 1) a non-side talking phone 2) bluetooth support and 3) a damn 640×480 camera.
At least they got the multimedia and game cart ports right this time. No more removing the battery to play another game. Still, Nokia isn’t going to sell enough of these things to make a dent in Nintendo’s strangehold of portable gaming.
1 comment April 9th, 2004
Out of all the vendors and monthly services I pay, AT&T and Sony are the first to finally cough up some free swag. In a few weeks I’ll be receiving two free “Sony Ericsson T226 phones”:http://www.sonyericsson.com/T226 from Sony to replace my current line of T68i phones.
I was a little miffed to learn about this via SMS messages to my phone this afternoon, quite frankly I thought it was a spam message and called the AT&T Wireless customer service line to find out why in the hell they were spamming me. Turns out they are spamming me… with free phones.
AT&T upgraded their GSM network to the 850 band and the T68i phones don’t support this band. Apparently these phones are being sent to a select group of T68i owners to improve their call quality.
The “Sony Ericsson T226 upgrade web site”:http://www.sonyericssont226upgrade.com/ gives little reason to why they’re sending out free phones.
bq. Nothing says youíre valued like a gift. Thatís why weíre giving you a free upgrade to a Sony Ericsson T226 mobile phone with access to our improved AT&T Wireless network.
I’m valued? Odd. When did this happen? Could this have anything to do with their recent “Cingular merger”:http://www.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/02/17/att.wireless/index.html? Maybe they’re afraid I’ll leave because not only does AT&T GSM have some spotty coverage but Cingular is plain terrible.
bq. Your new Sony Ericsson T226 offers new polyphonic ringtones and improved picture quality. And itís compliments of Sony Ericsson and AT&T Wireless. Thanks again for being a great customer
Ah, yes… pimp the “cool” features of the phone. Where is the “bluetooth support”:http://www.sonyericssont226upgrade.com/compare.html? See, I told you… it’s a ploy for being a “great customer”. Translated as “Please, don’t leave! We’re losing customers left and right, take this crappy phone because we need you!”
If they were offering the T616 then I may have had a different outlook. I’m happy with my T68i and since the T226 doesn’t support bluetooth I can’t see myself using it after the novelty wears off.
5 comments March 11th, 2004
In what seems to me like another attempt at the French trying something new for the sake of world attention, a “French group is going to sue Apple Computer”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&ncid=1292&e=1&u=/ap/20040310/ap_on_hi_te/france_apple over their sales of iPods in France.
bq. The argument centers on a fee levied in France on sales of blank CDs, tapes, hard disks and other hardware that can be used to copy music. The proceeds go to musicians and other rights holders who lose money to piracy.
So let me get this straight. The French tax blank CDRs, cassette tapes, and MP3 players because they feel that everyone who purchases such devices are going to steal music? What a bunch of morons.
March 11th, 2004
Napster CEO “Chris Gorog is crying”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1164179,00.html over the fact that Apple uses the AAC encoding format for it’s music downloads from the iTunes Music Store instead of the “bully” format of WMA, Windows Media Audio.
bq. Gorog believes pressure from iPod owners will force Apple to reconsider its stance: “The iPod is great if you’re happy to only shop at one record store. It’s like buying a car and finding you can only drive down one road. I think consumers, when they understand that, will be kind of pissed off,” he says.
What pressure? You mean the pressure you and “Robert Scoble”:http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/01/26.html#a6361 keep inventing in order to protect your own interests in the WMA platform. And the driving the car down one road comment… it’s such a stupid analogy I’ll just leave it at that.
I’m not interested in browsing more than one “record store” at a time. If I wanted to browse a record store I’ll go to the damn brick and mortar store. I use iTMS to buy songs that I know I want right now. Even if I wanted to buy songs off Napster to use on my iPod, I can. You know I can. Robert knows I can. However, you’d rather bitch and moan that Apple is kicking your ass at selling songs to the world’s leading digital music player, the iPod.
I do have a choice and my choice is the iPod and iTMS. Stop crying and get in line. Yeah, that’s right… join the Apple revolution and drop Microsoft like the bad habit it is.
March 9th, 2004
Although the Clint Eastwood “movie of the same name”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/ did in fact rule when I was 8 years old, I’m talking about the new version of the web browser formally named Phoenix and Firebird.
“Firefox”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ is the new name of the Mozilla based web browser that is a lean, mean, browsing machine. Are you still using Internet Explorer on Windows or god forbid on Mac? Do yourself a favor by “downloading”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/#download Firefox and start to experience features like built-in pop up blocking and tabbed browsing. You can thank me later.
6 comments February 16th, 2004
