The Whole Story

iTunes has a really great feature which allows you to ’smartly’ list your songs by genre, artist, rating (favor), etc into a seperate ’smart playlist’ which can then be syncronized with your iPod. This makes going through thousands of songs a breeze and makes sure you’re always listening to your most favorite songs, and not “We wish you a merry christmas” in July.

I came across a really great article which discusses just this topic, How to make your iTunes playlist ’smarter’ - Five Tips for Smarter Playlists by David Gagne. Its a great article and helped me get my music sorted out. I already had my music organized in some kind of fashion (I am kinda a control freak with my music collection) but this article made me realize the myriad of features in iTunes which I had totally forgotten about and were underutilized in my playlists.

Check out the article above or find it here, its a great read for any iTunes user.

Blogmusik is a free online music player or virtual ‘iPod’ as they like to call it. I have seen tons of websites out there offering free online streaming of music but none can compare to the elegance, simplicity and ease-of-use that Blogmusik provides. Best of all, you don’t have to become a registered member to use the service.

Essentially what Blogmusik allows you to do is listen to a huge collection of music FREE streamed online to your web browser. Its as simple as searching for an artist you would like to listen to, and choosing a song to play from the wide selection they have avaliable.

I tested out this service and ran a search on ‘Radiohead’ and their song collection for this artist was very expansive.

As I mentioned, there are heaps of similar websites out there which promote social networking and sharing of different musical tastes, playlists, ideas and opinions of millions of music lovers all over the internet such as Last.fm and Pandora which I have both used.

So, next time you’re at school or at the office and don’t have your iPod with you, be sure to check out Blogmusik. I’m sure they’ll have the music you’re in dire need to listen to! I highly recommend this service to anyone.

Microsoft in the next month or two will be entering a new market in which they have never been in before, the highly competitive MP3 player market. With the huge dominance Apple have in this market with their very popular iPod line of products, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft fair with their entry called the ‘Zune’.

The Zune to retail at USD$299 (to be confirmed) will directly compete with the iPod for market share dominance this christmas holiday. Currently Apple hold an overwhelming 85% share (last time I checked) and no other company in the mp3 market so far has been able to crack Apple and their iPod music player.

Here are just some of the Zune’s features:

• Price: USD$299 USD$249
• Storage: 30GB
• Manufacturer: Toshiba
• Vendor: Microsoft
• Video Capabilities: landscape playback, portrait playback, WMV, MPEG-4, H264
• Audio Capabilities: MP3, AAC, WMA
• Picture (photo): JPEG, BMP
• Connectivity: WiFi (802.11b)
• Power Technology: li-ion (lithium ion)
• Comes in black, white and brown (at launch, possibly other colors in the future)

The Zune can be charged with the USB cable provided and just like the iPod, the Zune will not include a power adapter to plug into an outlet to charge the device.

With the Zune’s wireless functionality, it will be possible to view and share your song collection with other Zune users, but cannot be connected to the Internet, but more information may be release at a later date regarding online connectivity.

The Microsoft Zune Media Player looks to be a very promising contender to battle the iPod and first impressions of the device look impressive scoring great enthusiasm by many in the industry already, time will tell if it has what it takes to overtake Apple in the MP3 market.

Look out for the Zune this christmas holiday, it will be all over the place I just know it.

How many of you guys use applications such as Limewire, BearShare, etc to download music share legitimate files between anyone who wants it your friends and family online? Well, there is apparently an easier way to find stuff you like, all from the comfort of our favourite search engine Google.

In the search box, simply type:

“band” last modified mp3 “index of” -html -htm -php -asp

Where you replace the “band” with the band or artist you are looking for. Now ladies and gentlemen, I in no way promote or endorse illegal downloading of music or anything for that matter, just thought this was really interesting and can be used for other purposes also.

Instead of looking for files of type mp3, you could do a search for .avi files, or .mid’s or .zip files too. Here are some sample search strings looking for different file types:

“searchTerm” last modified avi “index of” -html -htm -php -asp

“searchTerm” last modified mid “index of” -html -htm -php -asp

“searchTerm” last modified zip “index of” -html -htm -php -asp

Simple as that, cool huh.

Funk legend Rick James’ new tombstone was erected at his grave site a few days ago marking the 2nd aniversary of his death.

The jet-black tombstone with Rick in a leather jacket and tight pants etched into the marble symbolizes everything Rick James was, the same image was used in his 1981 album “Street Songs” which was definately one of his biggest albums and propelled him to the huge star he came to be.

The final markings on the stone read:

“I’VE HAD IT ALL
I’VE DONE IT ALL
I’VE SEEN IT ALL
IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE . . .
GOD IS LOVE.”

James Ambrose Johnson Jr headstone

A fitting monument to a funk icon.