Category: Computers, Internet & Technology

Music! Music! Music!

NewMexiKen has been working at converting all of my CDs (600, more or less) to computer files. Many I’ve done during the past few years, but it’s taking forever to go back through and copy the discs and tracks I skipped. I keep stopping to listen.

The other problem with doing this, of course, if you are obsessive-compulsive about it (who, me?) is one discovers there are records I don’t have that I just “have to have,” usually just a track or two. Some are available from the iTunes store for 99¢, and I’ve bought a few, (a good new Buck Owens greatest hits CD released in August was a find), but there are a few that even iTunes doesn’t have.

Among the MIA: The infamous “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts is foremost. It’s the only track I’m missing from Rolling Stone‘s 500 top songs. A good cut of Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It through the Night” is also unavailable. (A collector can’t be buying the remakes; we need the original sound.) Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” is another — I need it to complete some list of the top rock guitar solos.

(This is not a scanvenger hunt. I don’t want anyone to copy these songs and send them to me. The fun is in the search, as any collector knows. And none of these tracks are impossible to find if one wants to buy whole CDs.)

Another thing is I can’t quite convince myself to buy just digital files if I want a whole album (Grateful Dead’s Live/Dead comes to mind or Sasha Dobson’s Modern Romance). I still think I’ll get the CD — so I can copy it to the computer, which is where I listen. Buying the album from iTunes is a few dollars cheaper than getting the CD from Amazon, and instant gratification, but having the physical CD seems, somehow, worthwhile. Anyone else still hung up on this?

By the way, every once in awhile I run across a track, or even a whole CD, that won’t copy. That just drives this me nuts. Anyone else have this happen?

RSS the Oprah Way

Back in skinny jeans simplifies RSS for the non-techie. Well done.

[In looking for something else, I came about this Understanding RSS from the Goochland County (Virginia) Public Schools that’s also good at explaining the basics.]

It comes down to this: surfing or subscribing.

If you surf, you have to go to all your favorite websites (like NewMexiKen) and see what’s new.

If you subscribe, all (or nearly all) of your favorite websites will send what’s new to you (to your RSS reader).

It’s relatively simple and free, though some of the better RSS readers charge for the software. There’s a free basic reader in Firefox and Safari and coming soon in Internet Explorer 7.

Multiple Libraries in iTunes 7; Multiple Libraries in iPhoto

Via Lifehacker, a very, very useful tip for Macs.

Hold down the Option key while launching iTunes or iPhoto and you can choose from among libraries. (Keep holding the Option key until the dialog box opens.)

This is great for dividing your music or photos into separate collections (I don’t for music, but do for photos).

The iTunes tip works in Windows, too: Hold the Shift key while launching iTunes.

Windows Vista Installed

NewMexiKen installed Windows Vista (Release Candidate 1) today on my Toshiba laptop. A release candidate means the software is out of beta testing and almost ready for prime time. Microsoft is reportedly giving away 5 million free copies — they will expire next June 1. I plan to replace the Toshiba with a new Apple laptop by then, so I figured what the hell.1 See Microsoft’s caveat below.

For reference, my laptop PC is a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM and a 60 GB hard drive. Vista would like 1 GB of RAM and likes a fancier graphics card than I have, but will run satisfactorily Microsoft says. We’ll see.

Downloading the 2.52 GB file took quite awhile (sorry, I didn’t time it) — maybe two hours. It then had to be burned to an install DVD.

The install program gave me a choice. I chose the upgrade installation, rather than a clean install because I did not want to reload other programs and files. The install was very straightforward and required very little action on my part (entering the 25-character code being about the most difficult). Copying the files from the DVD to the hard drive, however, took a few hours. That seemed strange and I do not know what might have caused it. Possibly there was something peculiar about the DVD I created (I doubt it) or my Toshiba laptop was just slow (possibly). Once the files were installed, “completing upgrade” also took some time — more than I would expect, or than the public will like (90 minutes ±).

First impressions: NewMexiKen will write more as I learn more, but so far, other than the slow install, so good. A cold boot takes just less than two minutes, which is a little faster than with XP. Programs seem to load faster and close faster. The interface is very pretty (I’ve always thought Microsoft made things look pretty.) Security needs seem more obvious to the user. My touch pad did not work [fixed with updated driver] (but a Microsoft USB mouse did). No files were lost.

As I said, more when I know more.

1 If I want to continue using the Toshiba laptop after next June I’ll need to buy and install Vista, or reinstall Windows XP from scratch.

Microsoft’s caveat:

Note: This is beta code and should not be used in a production environment or on a primary computer in the home. RC1 is intended for developers, IT professionals, and technology experts to continue or begin their testing of Windows Vista. Before you decide to use RC1, you should feel comfortable with installing operating systems, updating drivers, and general PC troubleshooting. Some risks of using beta operating systems include hardware and software incompatibility and system instability. If you have concerns about installing this beta software on your computer, we encourage you to obtain the final release version of Windows Vista when it is available in 2007.

iTunes

Cover Flow

As NewMexiKen already noted, the new iTunes 7 is a major upgrade. If you have an iPod or use iTunes to manage your music, don’t hesitate to upload the new version.

Seen above is one of two new browsing interfaces. This is Cover Flow. With it, you can browse your music as if you were thumbing through albums — and if you don’t have the art, iTunes will get it for you.

Much better interface for managing iPods, too.

Update: How To: Back up your music using iTunes 7 from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).

It’s Showtime

The iTunes Music Store is down this morning — big changes expected today.

It's Showtime

What will they be? What will they be? Steve Jobs speech later today.

Update: Here are some highlights:

60 million iPods sold through last quarter.

New earbuds. Look the same, sound better.

New iPods: 80GB, $349. More for less. Brighter screen.

New Nanos: Colors, or aluminum case. Battery lasts 24 hours. New 8GB model for $249, same price as 4MB was.

New iShuffle. 1GB $79. Smaller. Aluminum case.

iTunes 7. Separate sections for music, TV, movies. Album art for all your iTunes tracks (if you have an iTunes account). 3.5 million songs of album art. Will now let you move purchased music between authorized computers via iPod. iPod management now within iTunes (not just in Preferences).

CoverFlow is now built into iTunes. Search your music by album covers!

Video resolution increased 4-fold.

And movies now available. DVD-near quality. Surround sound.

And, as Ken has already added to the comments, the last item was iTV, to be released in early 2007. It will be a wireless networking box that will allow you to play your iTunes audio or video files on your home theater. $299.

Em dash

Do you know that it is easy to type an em dash when writing on a computer? It simply amazes me that I continue to see a hyphen, or hyphen hyphen, when a dash is intended. That’s how it was done on the typewriter.

Here’s how to type an em dash in the 21st century:

Mac — hold down the option key + shift key and type a hyphen.

Windows — hold down the ALT key and type 0 1 5 1 on the numeric keypad.

An em dash indicates a pause, or a change in thought, similar to a parenthesis.

An en dash is used for ranges, such as August 15–20. (Mac option + hyphen key; Windows ALT + 0 1 5 0).

A hyphen is used to divide or separate words.

Briefs

Nora Ephron, who is 65, has posted a number of one-liners of things she wishes she had known as she grew older — and wiser. There are a few gems among them.

Elsewhere, Josh Marshall, after two decades of PCs, and a bad experience with Gateway, likes his Mac.

The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) walked off their jobs with the Federal Aviation Administration 25 years ago today. President Reagan threatened to fire the controllers if they didn’t return within 48 hours. Other unions failed to support PATCO. And so began the end of the labor movement in the United States.

The Hive

Another take on Wikipedia, this from Marshall Poe in The Atlantic Monthly. Poe introduces us to the phenomenon:

Wikipedia has the potential to be the greatest effort in collaborative knowledge gathering the world has ever known, and it may well be the greatest effort in voluntary collaboration of any kind. The English-language version alone has more than a million entries. It is consistently ranked among the most visited Web sites in the world. A quarter century ago it was inconceivable that a legion of unpaid, unorganized amateurs scattered about the globe could create anything of value, let alone what may one day be the most comprehensive repository of knowledge in human history. Back then we knew that people do not work for free; or if they do work for free, they do a poor job; and if they work for free in large numbers, the result is a muddle. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger knew all this when they began an online encyclopedia in 1999. Now, just seven years later, everyone knows different.

Elsewhere, Stephen Colbert adapts Wikipedia to his needs.

Know It All

Stacy Schiff has written a great piece on Wikipedia for The New Yorker. Subtitled, “Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?,” it includes this:

Because there are no physical limits on its size, Wikipedia can aspire to be all-inclusive. It is also perfectly configured to be current: there are detailed entries for each of the twelve finalists on this season’s “American Idol,” and the article on the “2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict” has been edited more than four thousand times since it was created, on July 12th, six hours after Hezbollah militants ignited the hostilities by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. Wikipedia, which was launched in 2001, is now the seventeenth-most-popular site on the Internet, generating more traffic daily than MSNBC.com and the online versions of the Times and the Wall Street Journal combined. The number of visitors has been doubling every four months; the site receives as many as fourteen thousand hits per second.

As Schiff notes, Wikipedia now has more than one-million articles.

Wikipedia.org

What Gore actually said about the internet

In light of Ken Jennings’ comment (previous post), in jest one presumes, here is what Al Gore actually said, from the Transcript: Vice President Gore on CNN’s ‘Late Edition’ – March 9, 1999:

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

Without doubt, within the Congress, Gore was a leader, instrumental in legislation that helped establish what we now know as the internets. According to Bob Somerby, via Nexis, the first mention of the word “Internet” in The Washington Post was in November 1988. Gore had already introduced his legislation in the Senate. According to Newt Gingrich in 2000, “Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.”

It seems clear that “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet” is a truthful statement by Gore. He did not say he invented the internet. The media did.

Working out with a Nano

The Mossberg Solution tries out the new Nike + iPod Nano Sport Kit and likes it — a lot, though with a couple reservations.

Also, iLounge has updated its Free iPod Book to version 2.2 to include the Sport Kit. There appears to be a lot of good information (and lots of ads) in this .pdf file. The book is over 100 pages of all things iPod and iTunes.

Clippings

Andrew Tobias points out a great new Google service with a little history (to which I can add, been there done that).

In the old days, it worked like this. (Really, it did.) Your company — or, if you were an author or a movie star, your publisher or Paramount — would pay a monthly retainer to a clipping service that subscribed to virtually all the newspapers and magazines in the land. Those services employed little old ladies (one assumes) to read it all and snip any mention of you or your company or its products. To those snipped out clippings would be affixed a little label with the name of the newspaper in which it had appeared and the date . . . and each week a stack of clippings would appear in your mail and the mail of all their other clients. Now, you just click here and get it all free and instantly as it happens. (If you were on TV, a company would call you and offer to sell you an audio recording it had made. Today, you just TiVo it.)