Archive for January, 2008

  • 30 Jan

    Posted by
    mizidy


    Category

    Watina – Album of the Week

    0

    Due to the positive response the Pick of the Week has received, I have decided to also add an Album of the Week feature.  My plan is to do the pick on Friday/Saturdays and the albums on Wednesdays.  Also thanks to Shane for his recommendation to move the about text to the bottom of each post.

    This week I want to expose an album that I found out about through the NPR podcast All Songs Considered.  Watina is an album by Andy Palacio of Balize.  Actually Andy passed away recently which is one of the reasons this album was mentioned on the show.  It is an unfortunate thing because Watina shows an amazing amount of skill and beauty.  Admittedly, I don't understand the language being spoken but the meaning and feeling of each song comes through loud and clear through the use of the guitar and percussion.

    If the prospect of listening to a foreign language album, I would recommend checking out Gaganbadiba (Take Advice) or Amunegu (In Times To Come) as they will give you a good sense of what the rest of the album is like.   The album is available through iTunes, Amazon or eMusic.

    Album of the Week is my way of highlighting albums both new and old that I think are worth checking out.  You can find an archive of services and software at http://www.marktopia.net/tag/aotw/.

  • 26 Jan

    Posted by
    mizidy


    Category

    Last.fm – Pick of the Week

    0

    Last.fm is a service that I had used quite extensively in the past, and within the last 2 weeks came back to.  I was initially on the bandwagon before the merger of Last.fm and Audioscrobbler with the Audioscrobbler half.  This service basically tracked your listening habits in iTunes by means of a plugin and then allowed you to view statistics about your listening history.  It was/is a free service and by itself would lend itself to the pick of the week.  After Last.fm, a streaming music service, bought out Audioscrobbler, there were some issues with the scrobbling (tracking) part being left behind, and I let the service be.

    A couple weeks ago I went back to check on my account and found the scrobbling had been much improved as had the Last.fm part of the service.  First off the speed of the web site, while not stellar still, was much better than when the companies merged.  Second, the data was updated much faster on the site so weekly charts were actually useful now.  Third, the streaming of music through other people's playlists actually worked the way it was supposed to.  Finally, this last week they have made available the opportunity to stream many songs in their entirely up to three times for free.  All of this makes for an appealing service, and this is a good thing because it means that people you know might actually be on the service.

    Many of us have signed up for social networking sites of one form or another and found them lacking people they knew.  Last.fm has gained in popularity so there is a very good chance that some of the people you know will be on the service, making the social aspects of the site much more useful and fun.  In addition, if you have music fans as friends who are not on the service, it shouldn't be difficult to get them to join with the variety of services Last.fm provides.

    If you are on Last.fm, you can find my profile at http://www.last.fm/user/mizidymizark/. If you are not on the service, you can still check out my profile to get a sense of the service and what is available.  If you do sign up, feel free to add me as a friend as well, I enjoy seeing what other people are listening to.

    Pick of the Week is my way of highlighting cool/new services and software on the web or the Mac. A few Windows applications might sneak in from time to time, but it will be rare. You can find an archive of services and software at http://www.marktopia.net/tag/potw/.

  • 19 Jan

    Posted by
    mizidy


    Category

    VisualHub – Pick of the Week

    2

    Pick of the Week is my way of highlighting cool/new services and software on the web or the Mac. A few Windows applications might sneak in from time to time, but it will be rare. You can find an archive of services and software at http://www.marktopia.net/tag/potw/.

    This week I share a program that I have been using for awhile now to convert video from one format to another.  VisualHub is able to take a video in pretty much any format and send it to something else.  This includes taking AVI files and sending them to iPod and PSP format, DVDs to AVI or iPod, etc.  Just this evening I helped Rebekah convert some old ballet videos so she can watch them on the iPod. When converting to iPod format, it even is able to put it right into iTunes for you.

    The other thing it does is allow you to convert any of the video types to Tivo format.  It also comes with a plug-in for the TivoToGo program that allows you to move video back to the Tivo.  This makes it easy to watch downloaded videos on the Tivo instead of the computer.   It even allows you to burn a DVD of videos directly from VisualHub after it converts the files.

    While the program is not free (it costs $23.32), it was well worth the price as upgrades are free and they are adding new features fairly regularly.  If you ever have to convert video files on the Mac, this is the program to use.

  • 12 Jan

    Posted by
    mizidy


    Category

    NetNewsWire – Pick of the Week

    1

    Pick of the Week is my way of highlighting cool/new services and software on the web or the Mac. A few Windows applications might sneak in from time to time, but it will be rare. You can find an archive of services and software at http://www.marktopia.net/tag/potw/.

    Getting in just before the end of the week due to family issues, this week I recommend the newly free NetNewsWire.  I did comment about NetNewsWire back on the Blogging Techniques post and at that point decided against it because of the $30 price and because of some issues with enclosed content.  With version 3.1, that was released this last week, the enclosed content issue was resolved AND it was made free.  These reasons by itself would have probably been enough to make it my pick, however some other changes have made it worth while as well.

    First off, I have NEVER been one to like browsing web pages from RSS feeds from within my RSS reader.  NetNewsWire has changed that by doing a couple of things.  First off is a widescreen layout for browsing articles.  The second is the way the browser works from within the program.  When clicking on an article, NNW does not use tabs but instead provides the different windows down the right side of the reader.  It is a nice interface and works well.  Now I can take the same "workflow" for reading articles that I used with Google Reader and tabs in Firefox and do it all from within one program.

    Another nice feature is the Clippings section.  Basically this works like a bookmarks section of your browser, but it allows you to save a headline or actual web page with it.  This basically makes it work like the Starred items in Google Reader but also integrates my bookmarks.   And if that wasn't enough, I can post directly to del.icio.us from there, so you may see more (read any) posts on my account in the near future.

    There are also a number of other great features that I am not mentioning here, such as the Combined View, posting to Twitterific, Smart Folders, etc.  All of these together make for a great piece of software and now that it is free, you really can't go wrong.  Two last things I will mention are the NewsGatorOnline and FeedDemon for Windows. These are both products put out by NewsGator, the company that makes NetNewsWire, and both are also now free.  This makes one of the best Windows readers and the ability to read online and sync clients both free.  It is rather impressive to see a company put this software out for free and I can only imagine seeing the usage for all products increasing in the near future.

  • 03 Jan

    Posted by
    mizidy


    Category

    emusic.com – Pick of the Week

    0

    Pick of the Week is my way of highlighting cool/new services and software on the web or the Mac. A few Windows applications might sneak in from time to time, but it will be rare. You can find an archive of services and software at http://www.marktopia.net/tag/potw/.

    I have been seeing free trials of emusic.com for awhile now and about 6 months ago I browsed there selection and was not impressed. After seeing another promo in our Netflix, I decided to give it another look this week. I was surprised to see how much it has grown in the last 6 months. Featuring more than 2 million tracks now, emusic has matured and might be worth your money if you like some non-mainstream music.

    Service Info

    emusic.com works a little differently than an iTunes or Amazon MP3 store in that you are not paying per album. You have a monthly subscription with a set number of downloads for a given subscription per month. For example, for $9.99 you get 30 track downloads per month. This averages to about 3 albums per month for 10 dollars, which is a pretty good deal in my opinion. The issue could come up of you want to spend more than that, where you can either upgrade your service or get a booster pack which gives you additional track downloads.

    All of the tracks are MP3 and DRM free so you can put them on pretty much any device. They also offer an audiobook service for one book for $9.99 each month, but the selection is fairly limited for that. I should note for the music selection, it is mainly independent artists, but you may be surprised to find a number of groups that you have heard of. You can browse before signing up at http://www.emusic.com/browse/all.html.

    Some drawbacks are the somewhat limited selection and the browsing interface is not as nice as iTunes. Also there is also a social aspect to the site where you can add neighbors, ratings, reviews, etc, however it does not look like it is a thriving community so that probably is not a reason to sign up.

    My View

    I have signed up for the monthly account after getting the free tracks, so that should say something. I was surprised to find about half of my top 15 albums of 2007 on the service and I will link to each of them at the end of the article. Because of that, I would suggest testing the service simply if you want to listen to some of those albums. That being said, I think it has enough music to be worthwhile month in and month out. To be able to buy 3 albums per month for $9.99 legally is a great deal and I bet you can find music on there to get.

    2007 Albums on emusic