just an asterisk

Image via CrunchBase

Writing code has been my focus over the past few months, both with personal projects and work, and I’ve given my headphones a good workout. As much as I love to toute my musical savvy, variety is all that I require – I love music, but enjoy hearing a mix of genres and artists. On this front, Pandora is great. If you just want someone to pick the music for you, Pandora will do that task very, very well.

However, sometimes I want to listen to someone specific rather than a style and for this, I’ve turned to Spotify. Spotify has an enormous library of songs and you can chose exactly what you want. My brother in law, a jazz guitarist from Toronto named Andrew Scott (look him up) is in their library. That is awesome. Did I mention that the service is free? If you sign up you get 10 hours free music listening per day – about the length of an average work day plus commute (coincidence? Ha!)

That’s not even the best part – the mobile app is fantastic. You need a premium account, which goes for 10 dollars a month, but it’s worth it. You can download your music to your iPhone/Android and listen offline. Perfect for those who want a large selection but don’t want to waste their data plan on Pandora.

A surprising bonus: you can discover new music using sharemyplaylists.com, a collaborative spotify playlist sharing service. Here you can find new music, check out oldie playlists and share your creations. I needed an option like this when I logged into spotify for the first time – there is so much choice that it’s difficult to know where to start.

Ultimately, I use both accounts. My Pandora stations are a great way to discover new music and Spotify fills the gap when I want something but don’t want to shell out for the album.

Give both services a try and let me know what you think. You won’t be disappointed either way…

~ab

This isn’t news, but I’ve been having fun with it (and I’m a bit strapped for time these days).  My new TV came with streaming Netflix built in (as I mentioned in my last post).  But what does this really mean???  Well I’ll tell you – I can watch Netflix from my television, streaming it over the web on my home network.  The network setup was a pain in the butt, but once I got it working, I couldn’t believe that I’d lived without for so long.  To think of all the times I ordered pay-per-view when I could have just watched something for free!

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This is an error message I received today when trying to copy a game from one drive to another.  At first, it seems quite normal.  I just don’t have enough space on my drive.  Or do I?  Check a little closer at the highlighted text:

What?  Almost 6PB?  I have that much data on my external hard-drive? Read more »

I recently came across this project from Bonnier.  It’s a rather intense magazine prototype (that doesn’t exist yet), realized in response to a thought experiment on the future – What about magazines is so great that we’d want to preserve it when we go digital?  Well one answer is embedded below.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

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I was listening to skullcrusher island (a song) today and thought I’d share.  Here is the second verse, just to give you a taste…

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

Something about this video just appeals to my mood right now and the description of a monkey-pony makes me think of the Iphone.  I heard about it first on Mental Floss, a blog that makes a nice change for the normal techie gibberish.  Anyway, here is the video.

Enjoy!
~ab