Macrumors.com is reporting that, due to legal issues, Apple’s zero-configuration network protocol is going to change names from Rendezvous to Bonjour. The name change has already taken place in the latest developer version of Tiger, the upcoming v10.4 of OSX. It’s really a shame, I had so much fun saying Rendezvous, and I just feel kinda cheesy saying Bonjour. Oh well, I’ll get over it.
Archive for February, 2005
While looking through some profiles on Flickr I came across Audioscrobbler. Audioscrobbler is a site that builds a database of your music listening habits. You sign up for an account (they don’t even require an e-mail to do so) and install a plug-in for your audio player of choice. They seem to have pretty much all bases covered in the plug-in department, boasting plug-ins for Winamp, iTunes (Mac and Windows), XMMS, Foobar2000, and more. When you play a song on your computer, the plug-in reports the song’s information to the Audioscrobbler server, where it is then added to your account’s database. Over time your database will very accurately represent your listening habits.
So far, this isn’t anything iTunes or Winamp doesn’t already do… so what’s the point? For starters, Audioscrobbler matches you with other members based on listening habits. As your database grows, you will find other user’s with listening habits that closely resemble yours. By digging through the databases of these members, you are able to discover new music that will fit your tastes. Audioscrobbler also provides a system of forums, private messaging, and groups that enable you to interact with your like-minded peers. Audioscrobbler will also recommend new artists and songs to you, much like Amazon’s “People who bought this also bought…” feature, basing the recommendations on up-to-date information from all of their members’ databases.
One feature that really raises my interest is the “Personal Radio” feature. For every user, you can listen to streaming radio of random tracks from their play database. These songs are not streamed off of the user’s computer, but rather from Last.fm’s streaming archive, which claims to have a lot of music. Of course this means that rare tracks or original content won’t come up, but more popular songs should be there. To me, this presents the ability to not just sample a band someone likes, but to actually sample the person’s taste in music as a whole. I also see it as a great way to listen to tracks from your own library when you’re away from your computer, just hop onto your Audioscrobbler page and stream your Personal Radio, and you’ll hear tracks that you also have stored in your own digital archive.
Head over to http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/OcellNuri/ to check out my own database, and possibly sign up for your own account.
I like to try and keep positive. I deviate occasionally, but overall I like to think that I’m more about helping than hurting. However, when this company decided to spam my school e-mail account with information on their “service”, I couldn’t resist the urge to mention something about them here.
Ignitecd.com subjects their e-mail with a question. “Have an iPod but not 35+ hours to rip your CDs?” First hint that you will not want to deal with this company; an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of another’s product.
So what does Ignite have to offer said iPod owner? “We burn. You save.” They want you to SHIP you’re ENTIRE CD collection to them. Then, they will rip all of your albums into a “MP3 digital archive” and then mail you back your original albums along with DVDs of the MP3s that were ripped from them. Not only does this service allow you to listen to your CDs on your iPod (something I thought iTunes did for FREE), but it also lets you “have an insurance policy for your sacred audio library.” If they really wanted to provide a digital archive, wouldn’t they rip to something lossless like FLAC?
Ignite wants to charge you $1 a CD for this service. It also appears that they have a minimum order of 100 discs if you aren’t local to where they do the dirty deed. I realize that there may be people out there with large CD collections, and it may be worth the money to them to not have to invest the time in ripping each CD. But seriously, how easy have Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, CDex, and many many other free programs made it? “Ignite” is a very appropriate name for this service, as only those with money to BURN would bother to make use of it. If you have that much money to burn, contact me, because I’ll do your collection for $0.50/disc, and I’ll even do lossless for $0.75/disc! Of course, like Ignite, I’m going to require you to pay your own shipping.
Again, I’m not usually this critical of a company, but they decided to spam my educational e-mail.
Michiel (acidzebra on Flickr) has a couple posts up at his blog Musings From The Void talking about his backpack setup for work and travel. He calls it his “Juicebox”. The system consists of a medium sized plastic container (like tupperwear) that houses all of the charging bricks for all of the gadgets he carries around. The wires are routed throughout the bag, and there is even a USB hub for connecting devices to his laptop with one cable. The Juicebox has one cord that plugs into an outlet to supply power to everything. It’s a VERY nice setup, and I may just have to mimic him.
His first blog post explaning the setup is here.
A second blog post, with pictures, is here.
Amazon.com has a new preview for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie on their front page. It actually looks quite good! You can see it by heading over to Amazon.com.
If for some reason it’s not on the front page anymore, here’s a direct link to the flash file: http://images.amazon.com/media/imdb/01/ads/hhgttg42/AmazonFilms.swf