I recently stumbled across Matt Darey’s podcast (iTunes link) which is basically a rebroadcast of his show on the XM satellite radio station BPM.
It’s completely free and from what I’ve heard so far, it is fantastic. The first half is his own stuff/mixes followed by an exclusive set by a guest ’superstar’ dj. If you’re a fan of electronic music, I encourage you to check out his podcast and the rest of his site which has a media player.
Did I mention it’s free, high quality electronic music? Hours and hours of it (over 200 hours worth)!
Even if you don’t like Matt’s style, chances are you’ll like one of his guests.
There is a new app on Installer is called Band from Moo Cow Music that lets you annoy everyone around you by playing instruments and samples on the iPhone’s touchscreen (also works on the Touch). It’s pretty slick with a number of different instruments, samples and settings to play with.
Here’s just a couple of the instrument screens:
You can record, mix and edit your notes/samples as well as save/load them. It’s a pretty slick little app. I just wish I could play something decent myself. I can only imagine what someone like Derek or Paul could do with this.
I made a quick and dirty little video of it in action… apologies for the poor quality but I think it gets the idea across:
There is a longer, better video of someone playing it on the MooCowMusic page.
It’s a pretty polished application for a beta although I did have a couple of issues with multi-touch not always responding as expected and a couple of crashes. This can only get better so check it out if you like to mess around with these kinds of things.
I’ve been looking for a better way to use my HDTV lately. The Xbox360 (and XBox 1 running XBMC) I currently have works fine but the biggest issue I have with it, when watching any kind of media is how loud it is. Specifically the fan(s) inside it and the (now obsolete) HDDVD drive. It’s fine when you’re playing Halo 3 or Team Fortress because the games are usually loud and I have the stereo cranked. But when you’re trying to watch a movie or tv show, the fans are just annoying.
So after hearing from Tod about his experience with the recent ‘Take Two’ software upgrade, I decided to take the plunge and pick one up - the 40gb model since that’s all the store had in stock. I figured I could always return it if it wasn’t quite was I was looking for (and/or upgrade to the 160gb version if I decided I need more storage).
Setup was quick and simple. The package consists of the Apple TV unit itself, a remote (just like you get with most Macs) and a power cable. That’s it. No other cables are included. It has a number of connection options on the back as you can see above. I connected to my TV via a HDMI cable. My TV’s audio is connected to my stereo separately so I was done with the setup. I powered it on and was treated to a cool, but brief, intro movie and then a menu similar (but different) to Front Row on a Mac. I figured I would need to download the software update since it had just come out and that process took about 10 minutes.
Once I was back up and running again (after 3 restarts while the firmware upgraded) I started connecting things up. If you launch iTunes on another local machine on your network, you’ll be given the option to add the Apple TV to your iTunes. The Apple TV will provide a pairing code that you need to enter on your computer in order to allow them to talk to each other. Once that was done, it started syncing my iTunes library from my iMac to the Apple TV (which you can turn off if you just want to stream content).
I was most interested in the Flickr integration and so far, it almost makes the purchase worthwhile for me on it’s own, let alone the other things which I’ll talk about in a minute. There is a Flickr option in the Photos menu. While you can easily access any photos you have on your other computers (PC or Mac), having the ability to pull in Flickr directly is amazing. You add Flickr accounts to the menu screen and by simply putting in your username, it goes and grabs all your public photos (well, links to them at least). You can browse all your sets and photos from here. You can also browse your contacts as well and add them to the accounts list. There is a ‘recent photos’ option at the top of your list so you can view the last 500 (!) photos on the account. I wish there was a ‘your contacts latest’ option like there is on the Flickr homepage. Once you start viewing the photos, you can set the transitions, music, speed, etc of the slideshows. There is a much cooler screensaver option built into the Apple TV that I wish was a transition option which is simply a random bunch of images (from a set you choose or the recents) that just float up the screen in various sizes. Then after a minute or two, the images rotate around in 3D and keep floating up. It’s really pretty cool. I made a quick video of it:
Another compelling thing was that I had seen online was the podcast functions were vastly improved and that there is quite a lot of cool HD content available. To me, this is where the future of online media is going. Despite my HD DVD purchase, I had pretty much given up on physical media as a way to get video content and the Apple TV seems to be one of the better ways to access that online repository. Sure the Xbox has movie rentals but it doesn’t have access to Podcasts or easy access to the rest of my ‘digital life’ like my music or my photos. There is something to be said for seamless integration across my network.
There is also the ability to rent movies directly off the device, with many available in HD. Unfortunately, you need a US iTunes account to access all the really good stuff but Canada is supposed to get more later this year. Fortunately I have a US account although someone managed to spend the last of the store credit so I won’t be able to try out the HD movie rentals until I get a refill card next time I’m across the line. There is a fair bit of free content available and you can preview everything which is great.
I’ll let you know if a few weeks if it was worthwhile but so far I don’t see this thing going back to the store.
One of the cool side benefits of going to the Interactive portion of SXSW is that you get exposed to the Film and Music festivals. Unless you purchase a gold passport, your Interactive badge won’t get you into those events, panels and parties…well, maybe the parties but they have armed guards preventing the film geeks from mingling with the web geeks (and vice versa) inside the convention center.
In previous years that I’ve attended, and hopefully this time around, there has been downloads of music from all the bands playing during SXSW and a huge torrent of trailers for all the movies showing during the film portion. This amounts to exposure to a ton of new music and cool new films you might not otherwise be exposed to. So even if you’re not going to Austin, you can still benefit since the downloads are free and open to anyone. Looks like this year, they have a trailer site with a videoplayer to browse through all the films. They still haven’t posted (or at least I couldn’t find) the music downloads but they do have a list of all the bands performing. I’m going to have to see about getting into the Moby session.
This year, the first trailer that I’ve come across, for a documentary about online gaming/virtual worlds called Second Skin, looks very interesting and just happens to be free for Interactive attendees:
Speaking of games, another nice benefit of going to Interactive is the Screenburn Festival which happens at the same time. They also have their own arcade tradeshow with game companies showing their wares with demos and giveaways. It’s free and open for the public as well.
Take your iPhone and hold it up to a speaker/radio/etc playing nearly any song and run Erica Sudun’s insane new app, Listen. It will ’sample’ whatever is near the iPhone’s microphone and after a couple of seconds will display the song, artist and album of whatever it heard. I’ve had about 75% success with it so far.
This isn’t necessarily new technology as I recall hearing about services that could do this before, but this is a new free app for your iPhone (sorry Touch users - no microphone on you!).
It’s not on installer yet so you’ll have to ftp it to your iPhone for now
It’s available on Installer - thx Conner!
The new ‘iDevices’ are pretty impressive….and the implications are pretty far reaching.
The biggest thing for me was the price cut of the iPhone from $599 to $399 (USD) for the 8gb iPhone. This has to be one of the fastest price cuts in Apple history for a new product that’s only been on the market for just over 2 months. Does that mean it’s overpriced and nobody was buying them except early adopters like me? Or are they realizing cost savings due to the volume of sales and production? As usual, John Gruber has some interesting thoughts on the reasoning behind the price drop.
I ‘accepted’ the price point of $599 for the iPhone when I bought mine back in July and I still do but Apple is certainly going to hear from a huge bunch of whiners. It’ll be interesting to see how Apple responds to the outcry and inevitable class action lawsuits from people wanting their $200 back.
If I recall when Apple released it’s high end photo management program, Aperture, it was sold for $499 and then later reduced to $299 with a refund or credit going to all the original purchasers. Of course, it probably wasn’t sold in the same volume as the iPhone has either so I’m doubtful that will happen without litigation but would gladly take an iTunes/Apple store credit to soothe the early adopter pain.
The iPod touch just seems to be missing something - the homescreen just looks too barren especially when compared to the iPhone. You’d think they’d make the buttons bigger or change the layout somewhat unless they have big plans instore for it (and the iPhone). I can see games being sold very soon on the iTunes store that work on either device (probably coming from companies like EA).
Once the iPod Touch hits the stores, it won’t take long (like minutes) before the hacking scene goes to town on it like they have with the iPhone.
UPDATE: Looks like Apple will give a store $100 credit to the early adopters next week! The bad press was certainly taking it’s toll and this is a fair resolution to quiet the complainers:
Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.
Erica over at TUAW.com has done it again with the “Song Sender” app which allows you to navigate your iTunes music library on your iPhone and either set a song to be a ringtone or you can even send a song to a friend via email!
You have to install the app via the secure FTP method I previously described. Once installed and ran, Song Sender presents you with a scrolling list of all the music on your iPhone. If you click on a song, the menu options (shown at left) are given. You can start or playing a song, Send to Email (which I found took awhile on wifi) or Send to Ringtones which pretty much replaces my need to ever have to run iFuntastic again (at least for ringtones). That is pretty cool!
It literally seems to get better on an hourly basis in the third party app world for the the iPhone. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Apple does to either stop or encourage this kind of development on a supposedly closed system considering hackers and programmers have been adding the functionality that everyone has been saying is lacking. So far, Apple’s only response has been patches with primarily bug fixes which are always welcome, but not much else.
While I was in California, my friend Paul gave me a preview of some videos he was making. I thought they were pretty fun so check out my favorite, called “Take off your clothes” performed by Breakfast (not Paul):
I recently stumbled across Matt Darey’s podcast (iTunes link) which is basically a rebroadcast of his show on the XM satellite radio station BPM. 
