Merry Christmas, here is your present

Merry Christmas to whoever is kind enough to read my little blog. And I hope you and your family and friends have a fantastic New Year.

And as a treat I have tracked down some lovely (and free) music for you to download at Hi Fi Holiday.

This person is kind enough to do this and it takes a fair bit of effort to make an old LP sound good.

He says…each of these LPs have been lovingly recorded, declicked, decrackled and dehissed using the following equipment:   Apple Powerbook G4,  Roxio CD Spin Doctor 2 (to record & clean),  ClickRepair (to clean),  and Bias Peak 5.2 (to cut).  Amplifier:  Pioneer SX 303. Turntable:  Pioneer PL-2.

Visit their site and say thanks,  it’s a great blog.

Foola the best iTunes replacement – updated

I have many posts about Foola (actually it is called Floola but I keep spelling it wrong 🙂 ) it’s the best FREE iTunes replacement out there.

There is a new update that covers the new model iPods now. The new models had a change in the firmware that stopped people using anything except itunes – this has been overcome. Version 2.1.1 of Floola is available and it now supports youtube and myspace videos!

Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod (or your Motorola mobile phone that supports iTunes). It’s a standalone application that can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows (Windows Vista is supported).

Get Foola HERE

Apple: being smug just makes you look a fool

I admit it, I don’t really like using OSx, not that I have used it for at least a year – I still have a Mac but just haven’t turned it on for ages. Anway, what peaves more than and awkward to use (for me) system is Apple itself.

I don’t like Apples full on idea that looks/design is everything over being functional – the silly one button mouse that they perservered with for years or even the silly two button one now – a cheap Logitech or Microsoft mouse works a million times easier (but of course doesn’t look as pretty). I don’t like Apples adverts, most are exaggerations and half truths but , I guess, it sells products. I don’t like the fact the Apple took ages (6 months after Vista was released) to make iTunes work on Vista and wrote on their site it was Microsofts fault.

I know I haven’t explained properly but here is a prime example of over the top Apple showing how smug (or stupid) they are. The new updated OSX that has just been released a few days ago – the icon they use for Windows computers (and for that matter, I have read, lots of Linux and other Unix machines show up as Samba file shares, meaning they’ll be presented as unstable blue-screening machines, despite the fact that they’re likely more stable than OS X) is an old CRT monitor showing a Blue Screen fault. It is like little kids fighting and teasing in a playground – really. (read Smug Ugly and and the icon fix here )

I must say, I do like my iPod Nano but some things about that erk me – the battery lost it’s ability to charge a week before the warranty ran out, a year later the replacement is the same – one year for the life of my Nano is a bit short and not being able to easily change the battery is a no-no.

Maybe what I really hate is the blind fans that think Apple is almost a religion and Steve Jobs is god. I remember talking to a blind Apple fan about that I need Windows because I need certain applications – he insisted that I could get all the application I ever need for the Mac – the apps I need are specially written for us at work they are not off the shelf things – why would we get these re-written for OSx or bother with running Windows on Apple hardware when a cheap PC does it anyway? He didn’t believe me!

And of course me saying all this now makes me a Microsoft lover, crazy, stupid and whatever else.

New 3rd gen iPod Nano

There has been a few pictures / photos flying around saying they are the new 3G iPod Nano – I have the real photos below – God I hope not ‘cos it looks awful. Short and dumpy looking makes not only poor looks but poor usability.

The colours look like muted shades that are anodised aluminium, nicer than the garish colours available now. A bigger screen, why? Maybe for video but I doubt that, I think it will be more for a new interface like the iPhone – you will scroll albums using coverflow.

Looking at them I think it could even be a full size iPod model but Apple has sent notices out to the original sites so I am guessing it is true.

Here are the pics below, you tell me if they are going to be the next model or not. Pics below (the real ones) are from 9to5mac.com and the great mockup is from Miguel

How to unlock your iPhone

iPhones are not available in my country and I am not sure if I would really want one – the touch screen for texting and dialling isn’t for me.

Anyway, for people that have or want one and want to use another service provider it seems that it has been fully unlocked by some clever little person (warning – very techy, not for the faint-hearted 🙂 ). At the moment the unlocker is hardware based but software unlocks are coming soon. Keep an eye on his progress.

iPod boombox for dogs

The poor dog! This designer (OnTheWei) has made a boombox style housing for your iPod Nano that has the speakers attached to your dog. Well the pic is a toy dog but I am guessing it is for real yapping dogs.

My dog would be running around freaking out over this and my guess, so would any other dog. Cruel.

Bitlet – download a torrent without a program

Bitlet looks to be a very interesting site that lets you download bit-torrent file with the need of a program like uTorrent or Azureus. All you need to do is copy and paste the torrent link into the Bitlet input box and click the Download Torrent button.

What is really good, though, is publishers can provide a direct link to download a torrent file using BitLet. Just put your link to the torrent metafile and press the generate code button and Bitlet will give you a direct download link for your readers. I haven’t tried it but it looks to be good stuff if it works as said.

Addition (31-10-2007) – What to use instead of Oink? Oink was a music site/tracker although I never tried it , it was meant to be the best for illegal downloads – http://oink.cd/

iPhone – not such a big hit?

Interesting news about the iPhone. Seems it was not as huge as fans have made out – but still 146,000 and almost half being new customers is still pretty impressive.

From TGdaily : In its Q2 earnings report released today, AT&T said that it has activated 146,000 iPhones during on June 29 and June 30. The number is significantly below analysts’ sales estimates, which were in the 500,000 range initially. Of those 146,000 iPhone subscribers, more than 40% were new customers, AT&T said. According to the company, sales of the iPhone continue to be strong in July with store traffic above historical levels.

Following the announcement, several analysts restated their sales expectations: For example, Piper Jaffray & Co. technology analyst Gene Munster told Bloomberg that Apple is likely to have sold only 200,000 iPhones. Investors reacted almost immediately and gave the recently high-flying share price a break: Apple shares were down more than 6%.

From TechNudge : …analysts for CIBC World Markets said they are picking up a significant decline in demand for Apple Inc.’s iPhone this month.

“…we believe that demand for the iPhone has seen a significant decline in the past 10 days,” analyst Ittai Kidron told clients. “We have noticed decent inventories at stores, and thin demand at best. In fact, most Apple store visitors were not looking at the device and only a very small subset bought it.”

 

As a late update … This HTC Touch Diamond  looks to be a great phone, can’t wait to see and use one.

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Thanks to Andy , Coach , Swollen Pickles , Nirmal , Andrea and DW , Scientaestubique , Adam and Rueldean , Homemom , Goldy , BlogOp for all the comments on previous posts.

mp3Sparks up, mp3Sparks down

Well, that didn’t last long. After telling you about AllOfMP3.com shutting it’s doors and it’s replacement mp3Sparks.com taking it’s place, it seems the Sparks is closed as well.

Now I don’t know if it is shut down by force or because it simply has too much traffic – it is running at around the top 1000 sites in the world – not bad for a site no-one heard of a couple of days ago! mp3NewsWire has some info about the traffic with an Alexa graph showing the huge traffic.

A look at Alexa shows that interest in MP3Sparks.com is very high, so high that the site’s traffic has exceeded AllofMP3.com’s normally high traffic. So high that yesterday MP3Sparks.com just missed the Internet top 1000 in traffic, ranking at 1,007 globally. It is quite possible that MP3Sparks’ servers were simply overwhelmed.

Edit – mp3sparks.com is up again so maybe just the huge surge in hits has died down a little to be able to keep the site up.

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Try this site for some Good Free RPG Games , it’s great and has the biggest list of free online games around !

AllOfMP3 down, MP3sparks up

The Russian music site Allofmp3.com looks like it has closed it’s doors – from pressure by the US govt, RIAA and the Russian govt as well.

Well that hasn’t slowed too many people down as it looks like MP3sparks.com has taken it’s place. The site even looks the same, just a different colour scheme. I do have a login for allofmp3 but never downloaded anything, reading about this it seems that even my login will work withMP3sparks (ifI could remember the user/pass I could try)

A little story is posted on crichardsons blog , it tells the story. He talked about this more than a week ago, strangely TechCrunch has only just picked this up now.