• My take on Spotify

    July 16, 2011 / No Comments

    spotifyI’ve been playing around with Spotify for the last couple days, and it seems pretty good for what it is. For some people I see how it can be totally cool. You can listen to almost any song you want whenever you want. It’s great for the casual music fan that doesn’t care whether they own their music or not. With the free version you are stuck to listening on a computer, which for people that work it an office, might be all they need. Currently you need an invitation to get the free version, so I’m not sure if it’s temporary, but it is ad supported. For $5 a month you can get rid of the ads, but really, if you are going to pay for it you should pay $10 a month and get the mobile features.

    I don’t think Spotify is really for me though. I like to own and collect my music. I have well over 1300 cds, and I want to be able to listen to them in the future. I have my entire music library on a 160 GB iPod Classic, so I can already listen to almost anything I want whenever I want. That being said, just because I pay for Spotify doesn’t mean I have to stop buying music. It might be tougher to buy music when I know I can listen to it for free, but I will to keep my music library growing.

    I think I am going to pay for it for at least a few months to get the full experience, and see how well the streaming works. Often times what I want to listen to isn’t on my iPhone because of limited space. With Spotify I will have a much greater selection of music on my iPhone. I was surprised with Spotify’s selection. For most people they will probably find everything they want, except for The Beatles. There were quite a few bands I couldn’t find, but then I tend to listen to more obscure stuff. I was mostly shocked that they only had one Punchline album. WTF? I will just have to make sure the bands they don’t have are on my iPhone. I’m sure over time their selection will be better. I remember when I couldn’t find any of my bands on iTunes, and now everybody is there.

    Read More

  • Social network overload

    July 11, 2011 / No Comments

    I feel like I’m getting a little social networked out. I love the new Google Plus. I have been on it since day one, and it seems to be getting better day by day. I just don’t know exactly what to use it for. I use Facebook for my family, and people I know in person. It’s mostly non-technical people and I only check it once or twice a day. Twitter is more my throw away comments. My Twitter stream goes by pretty fast. I dip in every so often and catch what I can catch, but I probably miss 80% of the tweets that go by. Google plus on the other hand, people seem to be posting longer posts, and it’s easier for more conversation to occur there. It may threaten Twitter, and Facebook, but I think it could kill blogging. Kevin Rose has already forwarded his kevinrose.com blog over to his G+ account. I think that’s crazy, but I totally get it. People are hanging out on G+ and not kevinrose.com. Nobody really comments on blogs much anymore, but there on tons of comments on G+. People aren’t using RSS as much anymore either, so you they aren’t seeing blog updates, whereas they are seeing G+ updates.

    I was thinking about putting this post on G+, but I still want control of my content. I still want my thoughts, and however lame my writing is, to be on my site. I want to be able to look back at it 20 years from now and know it’s still here. In the past I wasn’t good at preserving my archives, but now I want to more.

    So what should I use G+ for? I’m not a fan of cross-posting, so I’m not interested in sending my tweets to G+. That’s one great thing about G+ now is nobody is cross posting things yet. I think it would wreck G+ if Twitter streams started showing up. If anything, I might start cross posting my blog posts to G+. Nobody really reads my blog, so it wouldn’t be that spammy.

    So Facebook=real friends and family, Twitter=short throw away comments, Blog=longer thoughts I want to get off my chest, G+=somewhere between Twitter and my blog? Will I be able to keep up with three social networks and my blog? Only time will tell.

    BTW this was written in the cool new “Full-Screen” feature in WordPress. Great job WordPress dudes, I love it.

    Read More

  • Newest ebook: Paranormality

    July 6, 2011 / No Comments

    Over the weekend I downloaded a new book that I can’t wait to read — Paranormality: Why we see what isn’t there. I’ve been a Richard Wiseman fan for some time. He is actually self publishing his latest book in the US because he hasn’t been able to find a publisher in the US despite the book selling well in the UK and a few other countries. Some publishers even suggested that he re-write it to suggest that ghosts and psychics were real. Imagine that, in a country where probably 75% of the people believe in the paranormal, a book that disproves it can’t be published.

    Thanks to the internet, and ebooks it is easy to self publish these days. I love it when authors self publish their books. It was a no-brainer for $8.99. I bet the book is going to do well in the US. It’s gotten some pretty good reviews. I can’t wait to read it.

    Read More

  • Casey Anthony? Who cares?

    July 5, 2011 / No Comments

    So Casey Anthony was found not guilty. Who the hell cares? Apparently everybody. I honestly first heard of her just this past weekend. Frankly I avoid all exploitive news like this.

    Personally I feel happy for Casey Anthony. Now I know nothing about her, or the trial, but obviously there must have been some doubt. I would rather see our judicial system fail this way, rather than filling prisons with innocent people that couldn’t prove they were innocent. She was found guilty of four counts of lying to the police, which was probably much easier to prove, and will do time for that.

    Maybe Casey Anthony is guilty and got off, but realistically she isn’t a threat to society. She will have to live with whatever she did for the rest of her life. It may haunt her, it may not, but chances are she isn’t going to end up killing anybody else. My personal belief is that prisons should be used more to protect society from crazy people and less of a punishment. Obviously most people don’t have this opinion and our prisons are overflowing with inmates costing out country millions of dollars, but that’s another issue.

    What really makes me sick is everybody making money off of this. Because of the coverage this case has gotten, chances are that Casey Anthony herself is going to be able to cash in also. With out the coverage she wouldn’t be able to. Now I don’t really blame the media companies because they are just broadcasting what people want to see and watch. We just live in a sick society that just wants to see revenge. People want to see people punished and put to death. I don’t get it. Maybe that’s why I don’t pay attention to this kind of news. I find it sad when people are found guilty. I was even sad when Timothy McVeigh was put to death, even though he deserved it. I would never celebrate somebody being incarcerated or put to death. I’m just not that kind of person.

    Read More

  • Happy aphelion

    July 4, 2011 / No Comments

    From time to time I ask people when they think Earth is closest to the Sun. They almost always say in the summer. That isn’t true. We are furthest from the Sun in the summer (in the northern hemisphere), and closest in January. I never really knew when we were the furthest, but thanks to Phil Plait, I know that day is today, and it’s called aphelion. Perihelion is when the Earth is closest to the Sun, and it’s in early January with aphelion happening six months later.

    Many people don’t realize that our seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth, not by the distance from the sun. That is why the southern hemisphere has just the opposite seasons. It’s a pretty basic fact that if a person just stops and thinks about it for a bit, make perfect sense, yet people often miss it. And now you shouldn’t.

    Read More