Baggas' Blog

Just read on Rodney’s blog that the Amazon Kindle book reader is finally being released in Australia, which is good news.  We tend to lag behind the US in so many bits of cool technology so it’s always nice when we finally catch up.

It seems Amazon have reached an agreement with one of our mobile networks here to provide 3G coverage without needing a contract – more details in this story from CNET.

While this is good news I won’t be rushing to buy one – partly because I can’t afford it at the moment, partly because I’m not convinced the eBook reader idea has reached maturity, and mostly because I still love reading and accumulating proper physical books! Also if I am going to read a book in electronic format I’d rather do it on a multi-purpose device like my iPhone or the possibly upcoming Mac tablet. See my previous post on these matters.

Now what I’d really like to see is for amazon to finally open an Australian version of their store – although an amazon.com.au site would not be healthy for my finances. I’m currently doing my best to avoid going near amazon and eBay so as to control my book and gear buying habit. It’s been several weeks since my last purchase so not doing too bad

For anyone who, like me, didn’t catch the Apple event last week with Steve Jobs et al, here’s an incredible, really nice, abbreviated version where they discuss their fantastic, great products…

Interesting piece on Slate here about ebooks and the Amazon kindle, a devide we are yet to see here in Australia but which has started to take the US reading market by storm. For the first time, after several unsuccussful forays by companies like Sony, ebooks are starting to get some mass traction.

I can see the advantages of eBooks, especially from the point of view of not having to carry books around, copying and pasting notes, purchasing books instantaneously etc. Especially for students the benefits are potentially huge.

However I’m still sold on the idea of “one-device-to-rule-them-all” – phone, book reader, media player, computer, camera, video recorder etc If only we had such a device so we don’t have to carry all these other things around… the iPhone is the closest we have (although it’s camera/video functions remain grossly inadequate) and there are some good ebook readers available for it. The best I have tried is Stanza, which links to a lot of free and commercial online catalogs to download books. You can also sync with your computer for books you’ve downloaded elsewhere. I’ve found it to be quite usable for novels – quite easy to read and navigate. At present I have the Stainless Steel Rat on there which I am slowly reading when I get a spare moment, plus I’ve downloaded a load of classic literature as well. The biggest downfall of the iPhone for book reading is that it’s small screen makes it unusable for textbooks…

Perhaps the rumoured upcoming Apple Tablet computer will be the ideal device for book reading – smaller and easier to carry around than a laptop, but with full computer functionality (in contrast to the Kindle and other ebook readers) and with a touch screen please! I digress but imagine if they make it so you can use your nifty iPhone apps on the Mac tablet as well, thus bringing the coolness, utility,  and diversity of the App store from the smartphone world to the computer world! Now that would be cool. And I’m only guessing but it probably wouldn’t be too tough on the programmers as the iPhone and OSX are built on the same basic core anyway (or so I’ve been led to believe…) If you haven’t already thought of that Steve Jobs and crew, you can thank me for the idea… (I’m sure Steve’s a big reader of this blog so he’s sure to take notice…)

[take a look at this concept picture.. how awesome does that look. I want that!]

Anyway back to eBooks… there’s still a big big reason why I’m not sold on the whole idea – I love books. And not just the content of books. I love the physical cardboard and paper things which sit in my library and cause me the constant challenge of shuffling them around to make room for new books. I love just sitting in that room surrounded by them looking at all the cool ones I’ve read and have yet to read. I love having a book on my lap, with a led pencil handy to underline useful or witty insights or quotes (still haven’t come up with an effective solution to remember my underlinings though…) I like collecting and hoarding books that I think one day I might find interesting, or fancy well bound ones from the Folio Society. I love big books with hard covers. I love all my leather bound bibles. If I had more time and money (mostly time) I’d be one of those people who likes looking in secondhand bookshops trying to finding classic antique books. If I had more money I’d be buying classic guitars, but that’s another story.

SO the gist – ebooks are a good idea; still need the right device to be released (c’mon Steve!); but will never replace the charm of actual, physical books for me..

Ever wished there was an easy way to save YouTube clips on your iPhone or iPod, or even to have them download automatically?

Here’s a great website I’ve discovered : http://www.rsshandler.com This site allows you to enter the details of a YouTube Feed or Playlist, and then creates a URL which you can use to subscribe to a “podcast” of the clips in that feed. That might sound a bit complicated but the instructions on the site are very easy to follow. Once you’ve generated a feed URL on the website, open iTunes – go to the ‘Advanced’ menu, then ‘Subscribe to Podcast’.. copy the URL into the box that comes up and Bob’s your uncle.

It works great. You can susbcribe to YouTube’s feeds (eg Featured, Most Popular etc) or create your own playlists (for example I’ve created a Humour, Music, and Family playlist. The only drawback is it seems not all clips can be successfully converted into iTunes format, but most can.

Give it a try! If you need any advice about it send me an email and I’ll try to help.

Cheers

It’s a week now since I got my iPhone 3GS so a good time to post some of my thoughts about it. I’ll post more on some of the apps I’m using in the coming days/weeks.

Firstly let me say that the iPhone is a revolution. I’m been a long time PDA/Smart phone user (moving form Palm PDAs to the brilliant Treo which my wife still loves through to a couple of fairly good Windows Mobile HTC phones) but I’m a fairly late adopter to the iPhone. Part of the reason for this was being locked into my old contract and the other part was feeling that the iPhone was far from being mature, lacking in basic phone functionality like MMS, Video, Cut and Paste etc. The recent release of the iPhone 3 software and the new 3GS hardware dealt with most of those reservations.

I’ll discuss various aspects of the iPhone separately but at the outset let me say that two of the biggest reasons why this is such a joy to use are speed and integration. By speed I mean the speed at which programs load and run – there is virtually no lag or delay – almost everything loads in less than a second. Obviously there can be delays relating to the speed of your internet connection but that’s an network issue, not a problem with the iPhone itself. I’ve gone with Vodafone here in Australia and have found that 90% of the time internet connection/speed is more than adequate.

Integration is the other awesome thing about the iPhone – just how well the mail, messaging, calendar, contacts and related apps talk to each other, and how smooth and simply it all works. This is no real surprise though, coming from Apple. Having a Mac computer and a MobileMe account makes this whole experience even easier and smoother. Through push notifications all my contacts/calendar/bookmarks/email etc are instantaneously kept in Sync between my iPhone, my iMac and my MacBook. Push email through MobileMe works very well – there is virtually no spam and the email client is very easy to use. Using this hint I’ve been able to easily set it up so it sends as my main baggas.com email address instead of @me.com, which is nice.

As a phone it seems fine.  Call quality is good. As I said previously integration with the address book is fast and smooth. Visual voicemail is a cool feature where you can see all your voicemail messages on the screen and choose which one you want to listen to or just delete, without having to listen through them all in order or follow a bunch of menus (ie “press 3 to delete”) – it’s all there on the phone, just like SMS/MMS. Very cool. I don’t think all phone networks offer this functionality though.

The Camera is still probably the iPhone’s Achilles Heel. Apparently the 3 megapixel camera has been improved compared to the old iPhone 3G but it’s still not great. I like the autofocus or touch to focus feature. Photos of still subjects in good light actually look pretty nice, but in lower light or subjects that aren’t perfectly still (like 1 year old girls) the photos are blurry/grainy. Even compared to my old HTC phone there is a massive lack of settings here – no ability to adjust the camera in any way, and no ability that I can find to edit the photos at all. I’m really surprised at how little attention Apple seems to have given to this, given their excellent desktop photo software. It may be that there are third party photo editing Apps available for the iPhone but it’s one area I haven’t looked into… yet.

Taking Video recordings is a little better than photos. The videos aren’t bad quality for a phone, and you can do some basic editing like trimming your video clip which is implemented nicely. And sending your videos onward via email, MMS or uploading to MobileMe or YouTube is handled very easily and elegantly. Here’s the one and only video I’ve done so far, as a test mainly of the uploading process. The light in this room was a bit dim but it gives you a rough idea. It took me only a couple of minutes to take this video, trim it, and upload to YouTube. Very simple and smooth process – ideal for if you are out and about and want to share a video right away… I’ll try and take another video out in the sun in the next day or so to get a better idea.

Media playback is through the iPod section. What can I say about this? It’s an iPod! Music playback is flawless. The genius feature works well to create instant playlists of related music, you can flip through album covers using CoverFlow (never been a huge user of this on the Mac but on the iPhone it’s very nice). Searching for music works well and is very fast through the global Spotlight search (which you can also use to search the enture contents of the iPhone for just about anything). You can shake to shuffle which is kinda cool, and you can use voice controls (more about that later). Glad I went for the 32 Gig version so I can fit plenty of stuff on there. It won’t completely replace my 160Gig iPod classic, but it’s a nice option for when I only want to carry one device (which is most of the time actually). Media controls and a mic are built into the new headphones, which are fairly good.  Video playback is very nice on the widescreen – very usuable for watching TV shows or movies while commuting/travelling.

Voice control is another new feature on the iPhone which other phones have had for years. I’ve never been a huge fan of voice recognition stuff but the iPhone adaptation works fairly well. It gets it right for phone control about 80% of the time (eg “Call Jennifer mobile”) but probably only about 2/3 of the time for iPod control – maybe because the iPod database is many hundreds of time bigger than the phone database? I still haven’t quite learnt all the commands it recognizes yet. There’s also a nifty Google search App you can download which enables voice searches and is location aware, so if you say “Movie show times” or “Chinese restaurant,” it will fairly reliable bring up local results.

GPS seems to work well. Satellite fix outdoors takes only a few seconds. You can now buy turn-by-turn navigation software for the iPhone (I haven’t yet). The new iPhone also features a compass which you can see in the stand-alone compass App, or use in Google maps to orient your map. There are a  number of GPS apps you can download but this seems to me to be a relatively under-explored area of functionality.

Web browsing on the iPhone is a dream. This will not be news to previous iPhone users but compared to Windows Mobile the difference is immense. It’s great to be able to see the whole page rendered and then smoothly zoom in to view the sections you want. The text magnifies and renders beautifully and scrolling vertically and horizontally is easy and smooth. I love the way the iPhone responds to touch. It’s so easy to learn and use. The new iPhone 3.0 software also supports tethering where you can use the iPhone as a modem for your laptop via USB or bluetooth. Old news for other phones but I found this so much easier than it ever was on my old WM phone. Within 30 seconds I had my MacBook Air accessing the internet through my iPhone over blueooth. Simple. With a decent sized data plan road warriors may consider making this their preferred method of accessing the internet. Vodafone currently seems the best for this in Australia – I’m on a plan which includes 1Gig of data but you can add on more data if necessary. Optus have decided to charge people extra for tethering, and Telstra I’m not sure about, but the amount of data in their plans is paltry (a shame since they have the best network – offer a decent value data plan and customers would flock to them). Another beauty of the iPhone is it’s implementation of WiFi – if a network is available it will always either automatically connect or give you the option to, thus potentially saving a lot on your 3G usage.

Anyway that’s enough for now. If you couldn’t tell, I love this phone. It’s not perfect, but still amazing. The other awesome feature I haven’t mentioned yet is the App store, where you can download a myriad of free or cheap Applications for a multitude of uses, from games to networking to productivity… over the coming weeks I’ll start blogging here about some of the Apps I think are cool.

CNET : Is microSD the music medium of the future? This story is something I don’t really see the point of.  Sandisk are partnering with the major music labels to release albums pre-loaded onto Micro-SD cards – the idea being to “bridge the gap between the physical and the digital”

Doesn’t make sense to me. I either want my music in one of two formats – either a digital file for my iPod or a physical medium such as a CD with artwork and liner notes that I can file on my shelf. The other advantage of CDs being the quality of the sound is generally better than most compressed digital files such as mp3, aac, wma etc. The disadvantages of the Micro-SD concept are many. If I want digital files I will download them from somewhere like the iTunes store or just rip them from CDs I have bought (my method of choice since that way I have the best of both worlds) – I’m not going to go and physically buy cards with songs on. This would mean either having to continually swap cards every time I want to listen to a different album or to use a computer to transfer them onto a larger card or hard drive based MP3 player (like my iPod). One of the big advtanges for me of an iPod or similar MP3 player is the ability to carry around a library of music so you can select what you want to listen to based on your mood, or just randomise it. So why would I want to carry around a bunch of little fingernail sized cards that can easily get lost? Crazy. Plus it will also necessitate people going out and buying new MP3 players and phones which support Micro-SD. In an age dominated by iPod and iPhone, I can’t see this happening to the extent required for this to be successful.

The future of music is continued growth of online downloads and ongoing improvement of MP3 devices to play those downloaded files. Wireless purchasing like on the iPod touch and iPhone will gradually become more widespread for those who want to get new music while they are out and about and listen to it immediately. Hopefully at some point a worthy successor to the humble CD will catch on and gain wide acceptance (like Blu-Ray is succeeding DVD, albeit very slowly). This will be some sort of high definition audio contained on a standard sized disc, with all the usual booklet/notes/lyrics etc. I know there have been a few candidates in recent years but none has really caught on. This is where the industry needs to get together to build consensus but in times dominated by digital music downloads and the recent video format wars I guess it’s not a priority issue. Whatever the future of audio is, Micro-SD is a dead end alleyway.

Like many, I’ve been watching the release of the iPhone 3G with interest. At present I have no definite plans to get an iPhone although I’m sure I will end up with one in the next couple of years. The main thing holding me back is that I’m less than halfway through my current phone contract and I’m fairly happy with my current HTC TyTnII phone – but if I found a way to get an iPhone cheap without having to pay huge contract fees I would jump at it. The other thing is, even in it’s second iteration I’m still not convinced the iPhone is a complete product – as a phone it lacks simple things like a decent camera, video capabilities, and MMS – I still cannot fathom why it won’t work with MMS. So for now I shall continue to bide my time, whilst still envying those cool people who have the iPhone already.

The other new release from Apple is their MobileMe service, which is an upgrade of .Mac which allows automatic over the air syncing of calendars, contacts, email and more between your Macs, PCs and iPhone. I’m quite excited about this one, having tried to achive similar things previously with Google with limited success. If I had an iPhone I would sign up for this in an instant but even without one I am quite tempted to do so anyway. Will be nice to have synchronized calendars on my Work and Home PCs and my MacBook Pro, which I can then sync to my phone with Missing Sync. I’m also planning to invest in a MacBook Air in the next couple of months to use for my Masters degree study and travel (just booked flights for my first Uni trip over to Townsville in October) – so keeping that in sync as well will be great. In fact, I think I’ve just talked myself into trying MobileMe. I’ll sign up for the free trial and let you know how it goes.

United Airlines offers in-flight iPhone and iPod Connectivity | The Apple Blog

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent many hours on planes, huddled over my iPod watching shows and movies on the little screen. In fact I watched the first three seasons on Battlestar Galactica (awesome show) in this manner. And almost invariably if you look around the cabin on any flight you will see several people with those characteristic white earphones in their ears. So the above story definitely appeals to me and I’m sure many other travellers. In a nod to the increasing ubiquity of these devices, United Airlines have installed iPod connectors in some of their planes so you can browse your iPod or iPhone and watch or listen to your own content on their screens, as well as keep your device charged. Certainly beats huddling over a tiny screen and definitely good to have more choice beyond the usual in-flight entertainment. Hope this comes to Australia soon…

In other iPod news, I noticed today that you can now purchase some TV shows via the Australian iTunes store. Only a couple of years behind the rest of the world! Hopefully movie rentals will follow. My guess is they’ve finally got their act together and done this because of the upcoming Australian iPhone launch.

Heard an interesting statistic yesterday – apparently only around 1% of those who have the iTunes software installed actually purchase music from he iTunes online store. The inference being that most of the rest of people are filling their iPods with illegally downloaded content. I doubt this is the case. Certainly  proportion of people will be using downloaded tracks, ad most probably it is much more than 1%, however I’d still say the vast majority of those 99% of non iTunes store users are not. Rather these people are the millions upon millions of people who have bought or been given an iPod, and simply use iTunes to transfer their CD collection to it. Mums and dads and teens and kids – most iPod owners probably wouldn’t know where to find music on the undernet if they wanted to. As I commented in another post, I rarely buy stuff from the iTunes store, but I do still buy a lot of CDs, which I always immediately rip to MP3 and load into iTunes. I think most people are in the same boat, using iTunes simply as a way of getting their music onto their iPods, rather than as a way of getting new music. It would be interesting to see a statistic of how many people actually use the full capacity of their iPods – my guess is a lot would not.

Interestingly though, even though only 1% of iTunes software users shop through the store, it has still become the number one music retailer in the US, surpassing Wal-Mart. I would imagine we will begin to see that 1% figure start to rise a little bit, in view of that.

A bittersweet look at ten years of MP3s

Excellent article here looking back on ten years since the first MP3 players were produced. The author mentions some of the good things about digital music, but also some of the things he misses such as borrowing and lending music, shopping for used music, album liner notes and artwork, and (my favourite) music as furniture.

I can relate to many of his points. I jumped on the MP3 bandwagon fairly early, using my dialup connection in the heyday of Napster to download hundreds of tracks. It was slow but fun in a way, and challenging -like trying to find that elusive final song you were missing from an album, or the rare album that few people had. And although it was anonymous there was still the pleasure of finding a user with similar music tastes and a huge collection of songs – even better if they had a fast internet connection to leech from. And there was the built in chat box that added at least a little bit of human interaction into the process. None of the P2P software I’ve used since has been quite the same, although I did use one called DC++ a few years back that came close. But by then we had broadband, which took some of that challenge out of the whole thing and gave us the ability to flood our hard drives with vast quantities of files that we were unlikely to ever seriously listen to. And after a while the whole downloading thing just lost it’s shine. Now we have bit-torrent which is easy and fast, but no fun.

Going back to the points in the article above I guess I’ve come the full circle as well. I now purchase more CDs than I ever have before. Admittedly it’s partly because I have more income than before, but it’s also because I like to have the CDs in my hand, reading the notes, looking to see what track is coming up next, and sitting on my shelf as a reminder of what I have and what I like, instead of being tucked away on a hard drive. I totally get the whole “music as furniture” appeal – a bit chunk of the wall in the room I’m sitting in is full of CDs (as you can see in the photo, taken from the couch I’m sitting on with my iSight camera). A related concept is the “books as furniture” one – few things make a room or house more inviting and appealing than shelves and shelves of books. If you’ve been to my house you’ll know I’m definitely a big adherent to this.

I love my iPod and having a collection of digital music at my fingertips, but it’s still just not the same as having something physical to hold, to collect, and to enjoy as part of the overall experience of the music. I’ve bought a few albums over iTunes but probably at least half of those I’ve then gone on to purchase the physical CD. Nowadays I don’t bother as much with the iTunes store unless I’m in a real hurry to get something or if I just want an individual track for some reason (like this Reindeer song I sang at our Christmas carols event last year). I did get one album on iTunes last month – Luka Bloom’s Before Sleep Comes (which is a brilliant mellow acoustic album) but I liked it so much I’ll definitely be getting the CD. I rarely acquire music now by less legitimate means, but even then it will usually now lead to a purchase. For example I’ve had the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack languishing on my hard drive for years (I think I actually got it when I traded some MP3 CDs with a friend rather than downloading it myself) – never listened to it until a month or so ago, and when I finally did I immediately went out and bought the CD at the next opportunity.

So from my perspective at least the music industry need not fear the death of the CD just yet. For all it’s benefits digital music is still just not quite the same.

Continuing to work with my Mac – now starting to deal with connectivity to various devices. Firstly I was pleased to find that I could get my Windows Mobile 6 PDA phone to sync with my MacBook without too much difficulty. All it took was a download of a beta version of a program called Missing Sync and within minutes I was able to use Bluetooth to synchronise my calendar, contacts, to-do list and more with the relevant applications on my Mac. Changes were reflected accurately in both directions. It also enables you to sync a whole lot of other items including photos, videos, call and sms logs etc, but I haven’t really explored that. But being able to get this working so quickly was a bit of a bonus. I hadn’t expected it to be so painless.

A different story with my Digitech GNX4 guitar effects board. For many months I have had problems with this since Digitech were extremely slow in releasing drivers for it to work with Vista (they finally have within the last few weeks). And now it seems I can’t get it working with my Mac. Not sure if this is a problem relating to the new Leopard version of OSX or what but it’s quite frustrating. Not only can I not install the X-edit software for editing my effect presets on the GNX4, but I cannot even use it as a recording input via USB. It shows up in audio preferences and I can even “see” the sound when I play guitar on the little input meter – but when I load up recording software like GarageBand or Audacity it complains of MIDI driver clashes and refuses to work. Very frustrating – mostly I blame Digitech for this – releasing a product and not providing adequate software support to ensure it works on all platforms. I’m still exploring the forums and hoping for a way around this but I’m not holding my breath.

Finally I’ll just mention the cool iSight camera that is built in to the MacBook Pro. Very handy for recording little video clips like in the intro to the video below of Luke playing piano. The picture quality is very good and it’s quick and easy to use. The iChat software for video chat seems pretty cool, with some fun background and picture effects the kids enjoyed playing around with. Sadly it is not compatible with MSN which is where my few chat contacts hang out – but I’ll see if there’s a workaround for that. I’m not a heavy duty chat user anyway, but this camera may well come in handy for other things.

In the meantime, enjoy Maestro Luke…

Experiencing a bit of blogging block this week, so for want of something more interesting to post on, let me briefly discuss my new phone.

Previously I had a Softbank, which is the same as a Dopod 838pro or iMate JasJam, but they all are manufactured by the company HTC, which is now releasing phones under it’s own moniker. For a few weeks I had been experiencing a few problems with the phone – a shorter and shorter battery life, and poor responsiveness and delays when using various programs. So I had a look around and discovered the upgraded model the TyTN II, which I could get on a monthly cap plan on the Three network for about what I was paying already. The perfect excuse to upgrade my phone then!

I tried to order it online through 3 but got an email back saying there would be a several week wait, and to try going in to one of their stores. So the next day I went into the Rockingham store and walked out with my new phone (and they threw in a car kit too!)

After using the phone for a week I am thrilled. It has everything I liked about the old one but it does it all better, faster, and without any stalls or crashes. It still has the big screen and fold out keyboard, but the overall feel is that it is slightly thinner but more solid (in a good way) – The keyboard now tilts to provide a more natural typing posture, as you can see in the picture. Connectivity options are mostly the same – multiple band phone network connecting including 3G video calling and high speed data. Wi-fi b/g remains but the connections are quicker and more stable. Bluetooth works well. They seem to have done away with an infra-red port although I rarely use it nowadays, but that is more than compensated for by the fact that this new phone has GPS. GPS seems to work good, and has been fun playing with, although sometimes it seems a little slow to aquire my location, and the provided maps are a year or so out of date.

Other features of the phone that have been improved are the onboard memory (which has doubled to 128 meg) and camera, which has improved from 2 to 3 megapixels. The old phone had a little flash though, which was useful at times, and I was a little disappointed to see that had been removed. The processor is a 400Mhz processor, and the PDA is very responsive as I mentioned. It comes with Windows Mobile 6 installed, which is a great OS. Also I’ve found that there seems to be less problems with syncing to my PC than with the previous phone. Everything syncs smoothly and flawlessly (especially now I seem to have resolved my issues with daylight savings screwing up my calendar).

So I am very very happy with this phone so far. What about the network? I’ve been with Optus for many many years and have never had any major problems with them so I was hesitant to change. But I must say I’m pretty impressed with their plans and performance. I’m on an “X-series” plan which includes up to 100Mb of data per month and unlimited 3 email and  instant messenging. Data sessions connect quickly and the download speeds are fast. Because of the unlimited email I have forwarded all my email on to the three 3 email address and have it set to check and download every 5 minutes. So it’s not quite Blackberry style “push” email but it’s pretty close to it, and at a fraction of the cost. The native WM6 email app is a little limited in it’s options though so I might try and find an alternative when I get a chance. Video calling seems to work okay (although I can’t see myself using it very much) and the TV options etc seem fine (though I probably won’t use those much either, except maybe for cricket if I was out and about). So it’s so far, so good with three.

I discovered a new way to my house last night.

Actually I had a few suggestions but only one was of any use and some were completely wrong. I was trying out a new phone I’ve gotten – the HTC TyTN II, which has a built in GPS. Quite accurate tracking, although the maps were totally wrong in a couple of places, listing streets that had been closed off or changed considerably in the last couple of years. I’ll have to see if they can be updated at all.

If, like me, you’ve ever wondered how GPS works, there’s a good article on Wikipedia. I never knew it was run by the US defence department. I doubt I’ll use this a whole lot, but I needed a new phone and having GPS is an added bonus. Owen enjoyed watching where we were going on the way to school this morning. More useful will be the one in our Prado when we get it in a few weeks.

CNET : Will ‘the beat go on’ with a new iPod?

Keep your ears open, it looks like Steve Jobs is set to make an iPod related announcement this Thursday – hopefully concerning the release of a new generation of iPods.

With all the hype around the iPhone and other products like AppleTV, the humble iPod seems to have been forgotten the last couple of years. My old 60gig one is still fine for music but in these days of video it doesn’t quite cut it. I used mine a lot on our recent trip watching TV show episodes, and it was fine but it would be great to have a larger screen.

So my wish list for the next generation iPod would include :

1. Larger, brighter screen
2. More storage – how bout a 120Gig iPod?
3. Touch-screen controls
4. More connectivity options – maybe bluetooth (for headphone and care stereo connections), ? wi-fi, or a built in FM tuner or how bout a built in FM transmitter!

I look forward to seeing what Jobs pulls out of the bag. The other thing that the article mentions is the likely iTunes release of The Beatles catalog. Long overdue, no doubt, but for any serious Beatles’ fan it shouldn’t really matter. I’ve had all The Beatles’ albums on my iPod since day one, since I already own the CDs. And I wouldn’t have it any other way – as much as I am in to iPods and downloading music etc, it still doesn’t beat having a big wall of CDs in your collection to choose from. If I really like an album, I’ll still go and buy the CD. Maybe I’m just showing my age…

I’ll take advantage in a slight lull in the morning and start writing about my new phone.

For many years now I have been loyal to Palm, since my first m515 Palm Pilot, then a couple of Tungstens and finally the Treo 650. I liked the simplicity of Palm and the fact that it just worked well for all the tasks I wanted. Plus there seemed to be a lot more software available to download for Palms than for Pocket PC. I accumulated a number of useful programs for work and other uses – my most used were Agendus (a date-book/address book replacement), MyBible, a Pregnancy database program to keep track of my obstetric patients, and a prescription drug information database. As well as these key programs I had a myriad of other ones I used less often.

When my Treo 650 was gone 2 weeks ago it seemed the perfect opportunity to upgrade to a new Smartphone, and this time all the bells and whistles of the Windows Mobile versions were enough to persuade me to go over to the dark side. The current Treos (both Palm and WM versions) are still very nice units, but they lacked some of the features I was interested in such as Wi-Fi, better mobile network capabilities including 3G, a decent camera, a bigger screen etc.

And after researching a whole lot of different Windows Mobile PDAs I decided to go with the Dopod 838pro, which is the same as the imate JasJam, which is the same as the Softbank X01HT, which is the model I ended up getting from eBay – the advantage of this model is that it is running Windows Mobile 6, the latest operating system version, in contrast to the others which are still on WM5.

Overall I am quite happy with the unit. I runs well, is fast, and the various connectivity options work well. Very few crashes so far. The only glitch I have discovered is that MMS doesn’t seem to work, which seems to be an issue with this unit coming from Japan. Still searching for a solution to that.  [EDIT : Googled again and found some more specific server settings for Optus, entered those in an obscure menu and Viola! MMS now works - it's all good ]

Software : Aside from loyalty, one of the reasons I was sticking with Palm was that I had spent a lot purchasing different Bible add-ins for the MyBible software and didn’t want to have to pay all over again for Windows Mobile versions. This issue was dealt with last year when Laridian software made it possible to download Bibles that you had already purchased for multiple platforms. So I only had to pay $10 for the Pocket Bible reader and was able to download the 17 Bibles and various other commentaries and dictionaries etc that I had on my Palm. Plus I got the NRSV, which for some reason was never available on the Palm platform.

I also got Agendus for Windows Mobile. The native calendar and address book apps are extremely basic and being used to the enhanced functionality and better visualisation in Agendus for Palm I simply had to get the WM version. Fortunately they also had a deal where previous Palm customers could get the Windows version at a big discount. I simply don’t know how anyone manages with the native WM apps – Agendus for Windows is perhaps not quite as feature packed as the Palm version, but it’s still a vast improvement over what Windows offers. Essential software.

Other Palm apps I used were Avantgo, a newsreader service which flawlessly installed on the new phone. It updates my selected news and information channels each time I sync the phone or wirelessly. And I’ve been progressively reloading the various medical apps including my drug database. The one huge problem I have struck is that I simply cannot find an obstetric patient tracking software program for WM, even though there are about 5 different ones for Palm. I’ve compromised by setting up a HanDbase database, but even that won’t give me an accurate gestational age calculation based on the due date. The closest I have been able to get is a calculation for the number of weeks which gives an answer like 35.7, instead of 35 weeks + 5 days which is the format I really need. So still searching for a program that will do that or a database formula that will derive a gestational age from the due date and give it in a Weeks+Days format.

Anyway I’d better get back to work but there’s my first impressions. Overall the phone is great, but with a few snags. The WM6 operating system is nice, but it’s taking a little getting used to after using PalmOS for so long. It’s almost like starting to use a Windows PC after being a Mac person for many years.

Zazz! One Day. One Thing. One Chance.

A friend told me last night about this cool site called Zazz. Rather than try and describe it myself I’ll quote from their FAQ (or wtf?) I especially like the last paragraph…

Q:  So what is Zazz?
A:  Zazz is a very special internet-based store that only sells one item a day, at a large quantity. Zazz will continue to sell that item until either it sells out, or the 24 hours ends. Should it end prematurely, you’re more than welcome to hang out but a new item won’t be available for sale until midnight the next day. Beyond this, Zazz is also a community of people who love gadgets and buying cool things they’ve always wanted but could never afford, until now.

Q:  That’s ridiculous. Are you guys insane? Why on earth would you do something so stupid as to sell one thing a day?
A:  In answer to your first question, No. In answer to your second question, we feel that online stores are too bogged down with items. You know what it’s like, you go to a major internet department store and unless you know exactly what you want it’s near impossible to find something suitable for your 3rd cousin’s 65th birthday. And if we were going to just sell one thing for the rest of the company’s lifetime we don’t think we’d make very much money, so we keep things fresh by selling new things every day.

Q:  That sounds an awful lot like impulse buying, is that the case?
A:  Look, Zazz really is impulse buying, but at it’s best. We’re willing to say that. A lot of the stuff we sell you DO NOT NEED. But that’s irrelevant; because last time I checked, the things I want (a new plasma tv, swiss army knife and coffee grinder) are much cooler than the things I need (air and water).  

These products go on sale at Midnight Australian Eastern time each day, which is cool for those of us in Western Australia since it’s only 10pm here. They also offer an sms alert service via twitter which I am yet to check out. Looking through their list of past products it seems most of them have been selected to appeal to the geeks and the gadget freaks. This may not have been such a timely discovery for me since I’m currently saving towards our upcoming trip and hopefully a new guitar, so I shall have to be strong not to give in to the temptation. I was even tempted by today’s $988 computer system, which is an awesome deal, even though I already have a relatively new PC. Anyway, check it out at your own risk!

USB thumb drives are getting cheaper and cheaper now. I bought my 1 Gig drive a couple of years ago for over $100 which was pretty good price at the time. Now you can get a 4 Gig drive cheaper than that. And with these kind of capacities available at a low price, there a few limits to what can be done with them.

Today I discovered a great site PortableApps.com which provides a great collection of stand-alone applications that can be run directly from a USB stick or portable hard drive, without any sort of installation on the host PC. All freeware and open-source stuff, they give you the ability to take your own personal suite of software, setup just the way you like it, to be used on any computer. This will be great for people who travel a lot, any maybe even students who access different PCs at university or school. Applications included include portable versions of Firefox browser, Thunderbird email, Open Office suite, instant messaging software, media players, rippers and recorders (like Portable Audacity) and FTP software. But these are just the start – you can find a portable app to achieve just about any task you might want be internet, office, media-related or whatever. Take a look at the Wikipeda List of Portable Apps for a large selelection. The beauty of the Portable Apps website is that they include an elegant launcher which displays the applications on your drive in a Start Menu like format.

Looks like it’s a week now since I’ve posted any kind of YouTube Video on this blog (and some of you are probably saying that’s a good thing), but I’ll make up for it now. It’s not a video of the kids or scenery this time but rather a demonstration of the latest product from Fender. Now for me, as both a guitarist and a techo-gadget-geek, this new VG Stratocaster seems to be the ultimate toy – a fully fledged American strat with the discrete addition of a small Roland pickup and two small control knobs which allow you to instantly change the tone and tuning of your guitar. No additional effects or special midi cables or anything required. Check out the demo :

I’ve already been wanting to get hold of a strat for quite a while now but this new product looks awesome! Time to start saving hard and praying that the exchange rate holds up and maybe, just maybe, I can check one of these babies when I hit Nashville in a couple of months. Sweet.

Take a look at Matt Van Stone’s in depth review, also this review and the Fender site for more information.

Also here’s another good demo video from the NAMM 2007 convention. The guy demonstrates how you can play all the parts to Stairway to Heaven just by flicking a switch on your guitar

Big news in the tech world at the moment, with the coolest geek in the world Steve Jobs, delivering his highly anticipated annual Macworld keynote speech yesterday.

The biggest new announcement was that of the iPhone – this cool device combines the features of a widescreen iPod, smart-phone, and mobile internet. You can check out the details at the Apple Website. Now I like te look of this gadget, it’s beautifully styled, and the user interface looks elegant and intuitive, like all Apple products. As an iPod lover, I particularly like the look of the iPod functionality, which is a big advance on the current generation iPods. The widescreen looks great and I could believe this would be a device that you might actually watch shows on (if Apple ever gets it’s act together and makes TV content available outside the USA!) – if nothing else, watching the demos on the Apple site makes me want to check out The Office, a show I haven’t really watched before (the little clip they show is pretty funny).

Father Roderick from SQPN has a good review of the Macworld announcements on his latest Daily Breakfast podcast, and I heartily agree with his comments, including his reservations about the iPhone and Apple TV (Apple’s new media server device). The biggest problems are :

1. The storage capacity is way too small – only 4 or 8 Gigabytes. To be taken seriously as an iPod replacement, particularly if you want to store and watch a lot of video, the capacity needs to be greatly enlarged – I would say a minimum of 20 Gig, and hopefully up to 80 Gig or beyond. With 8 Gig capacity this is still not the killer “one gadget to replace all others” that we’ve been hoping for.
2. The iPhone will not be available in the US for at least 6 months, and not available in other parts of the world like Australia until 2008! I’m getting tired of this constant lag in the release of products behind the US. In the 21st century there is no excuse for this sort of thing. It simply shows a lack of effort and a lack of care on the part of the big companies like Apple – people outside the USA are treated like second class citizens…. However this delay may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, as hopefully by the time this product is released here Apple may have got around to a second generation iPhone, with much better storage capacity, thus I won’t give in to the temptation to get the first generation product but will be forced to wait for the better next one.
3. They haven’t released an updated iPod. The widescreen Video capabilities and new software of the iPod component of the iPhone look so cool – why couldn’t they have released a stand-alone 120Gig widescreen video iPod at the same time? The technology is already there.
4. The Apple TV product is underwhelming in it’s functionality. As Fr Roderick says, you can do more in terms of media serving using a Microsoft Xbox-360. I use a great program called TVersity to stream media from my PC to my Xbox 360 which works well in streaming a large range of media formats. Apple have some catching up to do here.

Overall though, it’s exciting news for gadget freaks. I just think it will probably be another year or two before this stuff starts to reach it’s potential. Until then, I’ll still keep carrying around the combination of my trusty Treo 650 phone and 60Gb Video iPod. The hope of the “one gadget to rule them all” is still a little way off, but it’s getting closer…

Got emailed this morning to say that yet another replacement Palm Treo is on it’s way to me. If I’m lucky it’ll arrive today. Hopefully it’ll be third time lucky and this one will work properly!

Also on my way is my espresso machine which my coffee making friend tells me should have arrived from Italy. Bought myself a speccy looking coffee grinder yesterday so hopefully within days I’ll be able to start (and finish) the day with some fine espresso, cappucinos, machiatos and other more exotic beverages. Once I get the hang of using it that is.

Well I was happy yesterday to receive a replacement Treo 650 shipped from Palm in response to the problme I had with the screen. Plugged it all in and it worked fine… but onyl for the first 10 minutes or so – then it became unresponsive. Tried to reset it and the same problem again – works fine for a few minutes and then won’t do a thing. Very frustrating. So now I’ll have to wait til Monday (or Tuesday since I believe it might be a long weekend in Sydney) to be able to call them and arrange to send it back again. Which means yet another week sans PDA.

If this keeps happening I’d almost be tempted to go to the dark side and get a Pocket PC next time. Two of the things that have kept me loyal to Palm thus far have been

1. I’ve managed to find a lot more medical software for Palm
2. The amount of money I’ve invested in my Bible software. I wouldn’t want to have to re-purchase all the translations I have for a Pocket PC

Well these reasons are less compelling now that Laridian (makers of MyBible) have now changed their policy so that if you have purchased a version of the Bible or book for one format of their software, you can download for free the versions for other formats. So in order to migrate my Bible software to a Pocket PC all I would have to do would be to purchase the actual Pocket Bible software (for $10 I think) and then redownload all the books for it, which is not so painful as spending a couple of hundred dollars. (Plus Pocket Bible has the NRSV, which MyBible doesn’t – one of my few gripes with MyBible).

As for the medical software the truth is that although I keep a lot on my Palm I rarely use it. The only ones I have used with any regularity are MIMs and a program called PregPro which I use to keep track of my obstetric patients and when they are due. Getting those two programs for Pocket PC shouldn’t be a major problem I would imagine.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens with Palm customer service this time…

Just received two pieces of good news in the last half hour.

1. I don’t have HIV. Not that I seriously thought that I did but it’s nice to know for sure. Basically my insurance company requested I get some tests done in order to increase my insurance. So on Saturday I went down to a pathology lab in Mandurah and had the bloods taken. This was not the best of experiences. Normally I’m fine with needles and blood tests but after praising how good my veins were, the phlebotomist then proceeded to completely miss the vein in one arm and do a very botched job on the other arm. I still have an 8mm scratch at the site, 5 days later, which is inexcusable considering it’s a 1mm needle. I would have been better off taking the blood from myself! Jennifer thinks it was probably that she was nervous after realising that the name of the patient on the form and the name of the doctor were one and the same. Also she somehow missed one of the other blood tests I requested so I’ve had to ask the lab to add it on. But at least I don’t have HIV
2. My Palm is on it’s way home, or at least a replacement for it. Got an email just now to say that it has been dispatched and is now hopefully winging it’s way back across Australia. Even 6 days without a Palm is hard to take. Actually this time it’s not so much that I’ve missed the PDA, it’s more the fact that I’ve had to make do with an archaic Nokia from the early 2000’s as my phone. Hopefully tomorrow I can give the Nokia the flick again.

Well I’m sad to say that for the second time in 3 months my Palm Treo 650 has developed a problem. This time the touch screen has completely stopped working, rendering it unusable. Once again Palm customer service were very helpful and have asked me to send it back for a replacement. The last time I dealt with them the process was quick and painless so hopefully it will go just as well this time. Still it’s never fun being without your PDA, even if it’s only for a few days.

For some reason I seem to have bad luck with clock radios. After a period of time something always seems to go wrong with them, either the alarm or the clock or the music fails in some way. Anyway I hope my luck is going to change with my latest purchase, which I picked up on Saturday at Target – it’s a Jensen iPod clock radio. As well as a standard digital AM/FM alarm clock this baby is a charging docking station for my iPod, which means I can choose to wake to whatever tunes I like in the morning. I could even wake to a Podcast if I wanted to – maybe I should start the day with the Daily Breakfast (although that would annoy two people – Jennifer at 5:30am and Owen on the way to school. He loves listening to the podcast and just today was asking “What’s Father Roderick talking about now?”)

Anyway it comes with a remote control which allows you to work all the functions of the radio, as well as Play/Pause and skipping tracks on the iPod itself. The speakers are quite good for such a small unit and the sound is very listenable, unlike most clock radios I’ve ever owned. Even at higher volumes it still sounds good, which has already provided the soundtrack to some heavy duty dancing on the bed by the kids. Perhaps the only negatives about it are that it doesn’t have dual alarms (which I’ve found to be quite useful in the past) and the clock is not very clear from across the room. Oh, and it only lets you “snooze” 3 times in a row, which may turn out to be a little inconvenient on these cold winter mornings. But overall, I’m very happy with it so far.

FOXNews.com – Beatles, Stones Top Hillary Clinton’s iPod Picks – Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectrum

Likely US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is the latest US politician to reveal the contents of her iPod (a gift from husband Bill), in what seems to be becoming a standard form of political disclosure. In the future, in addition to disclosing investments, academic record, and other pieces of information, will all candidates be required to submit their iTunes playlists for public scrutiny?

I haven’t been able to find the full list anywhere online, but the news summaries of Hillary’s tunes suggest she hasn’t got bad taste – lots of Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Motown. Certainly seems to be a substantial improvement on the current First iPod of George W Bush. I’m not sure if I would want to know the contents of Australia’s leaders iPods. I wouldn’t be too surprised if PM John Howard has one, considering the amount of power walking he does, but the contents might be a little too scary for me (Slim Dusty, anyone?). Peter Costello (was was looking very comfortable in the Prime Ministerial chair the other day) might have a much cooler list. And I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath on Kim Beazley’s list being very interesting at all.

To conclude my story of dealing with Palm customer service, I am happy to report that I received my replacement Treo 650 phone yesterday, less than a week after initially phoning up Palm to report my problem. The whole process has been smooth and painless, and I am incredibly satisfied with the company. The new unit works perfectly – I just need to finish re-tweaking it with all my old settings etc. This is one happy customer

Expect this blog to be quiet over the next week or so as tomorrow we fly off to the Gold Coast for a week of fun and relaxation, with lots of theme park action to be had. Hopefully I’ll have plenty of photos to post when we get back.

Well thus far the process for getting my faulty Palm Treo 650 replaced has been very smooth. I posted it to Palm late on Friday last week, and this morning received two emails saying firstly that they have received it, and secondly that they have dispatched a replacement unit to me by courier which should arrive within 3 working days. Very good service thus far.

I just hope it arrives by Friday as we are flying off to the Gold Goast on Saturday for a week and I would definitely prefer to have my PDA with me instead of this old fashioned Nokia phone I am using. Texting with only 12 standard numerical keys is just too much!

Five out of six patients didn’t turn up last hour – that’s gotta be some kind of record. It’s not only frustrating but it costs me money – for every patient that doesn’t turn up is lost income. Which at the moment is definitely a concern given that we have a big new mortgage and I’ll have a full week off work next week for our holiday (I don’t get paid holidays)

On a positive note, my new iPod just arrived so I’ll be able to start playing around and transferring songs to it tonight. 60gig, yet it’s virtually the same size as my old 40gig one, yet with a much larger, clearer colour screen. I look forward to trying out the video capabilities of it

And being an iPod lover, it seems I’m in pretty good company – it seems the Pope loves his iPod too, having been spotted around the Vatican with those distinctive white earphones. Wonder what podcasts he subscribes to?

Sadly this evening my iPod seems to be no more. As I was rushing out the door to go out, a guitar in one hand, bag on my shoulder and iPod in the other, I managed to drop it onto the hard wooden floor. Now it is simply refusing to work, no matter what tricks I try. Tis a very sad day….
I guess I’ll have to console myself by replacing it with a new 60 Gig Video iPod – that just might help me get over the pain.

Never thought I’d be able to combine the categories iPod, Medical, and Humour in the one post but here you go. This is from one of the medical magazines I get from a few weeks back…

The gospel according to iPod – The Other Side – Breaking News 24/7 – NEWS.com.au – yet another iPod story. This time news.com.au are reporting the upcoming release of some software from Zondervan and Talking Panda Software which will allow you to listen to an audio Bible on your iPod whilst at the same time being able to read the text on the iPod screen. This will go on sale in February and will cost $US49.99.

I hate to burst their bubble, but this product isn’t so innovative as it seems. My favourite PDA Bible software company, Laridian, a few months back released iPocketBible, which does exactly the same thing. This is one of the few Laridian products that I don’t own (since I already have an audio Bible on my iPod) but it looks very good, as you can see in the screenshots below. So if you don’t want to have to wait til February to hear and read the Bible on your iPod, then check out iPocketBible (the cost is the same).

The one thing that did amuse me from the news article above is their little pun, “The product, which wits have dubbed the Book of Jobs, after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, will cost $US49.99 ($66)” It’s a pretty lame joke but it gave me a smile. Speaking of Job, check out this cool passage from Job 22:23-30 that I came across earlier today.

Twenty four hours after Australian iTunes launched, so I thought I’d give my first impressions. Like the other stores, the site is well laid out and easy to use. The range of music is good, but will hopefully be improved substantially when Song/BMG comes on board in the near future. Actually purchasing and downloading tracks is smooth and fast, once you have completed the easy registration process. Sound quality of the tracks are very good.

As a test case I got Ben Lee’s album, “Awake is the New Sleep” which is excellent. I’ve always enjoyed listening to Ben’s music on Triple J, but until now have never tried one of his albums. Wish I had’ve earlier. This leads me to the one reservation I have about iTunes, and in fact paying for music downloads in general – the materialistic side of me still likes actually having the physical CD, complete with the book and lyrics etc. It feels much more like you actually own something tangible that way, plus it’s easy to slip it into your Hi-Fi or car CD without having to plug the iPod in and navigate the menus, saving half a minute or so. Not forgetting the undoubtable fact that CD music is better quality than a compressed download, even of the good quality of those from iTunes. As far as convenience goes once you own a CD you can always rip it to your iPod anyway (notwithstanding Australia’s vague and stupid copyright laws which perhaps make that technically illegal – does anyone care?) I went through a phase of downloading a lot of music in the heady days of napster in the late 90s, but ultimately I came back around to buying CDs again, and in recent years have rarely downloaded anything. Perhaps it’s just because I went from being a “poor uni student” to actually working and having some money, but ultimately I’d much prefer to own a CD if I have the choice. So while I’m glad to see iTunes up and running, and will probably use it a bit, I still think most of my musical purchases will be of the old fashioned tangible compact discs.

It’s been a long time coming but we finally have an Australian iTunes Music Store. I don’t know how long it’s been up but I haven’t seen anything elsewhere on the net, so perhaps you might hear it here first! Can’t have been going too long as the Top 100 Downloads only has 18 songs in it at present.

Apple – iPod – well the inevitable has finally happened and Apple has released a video iPod, capable to playing movies and TV shows (which you can download via iTunes, if you are lucky enough to have it in your country, unlike us Australians.) I’m glad they’ve made the step but I can’t help but feeling there are other devices that probably do it better – why would you want to seriously watch video on such a small iPod screen when you can get a slightly bigger hard drive based unit with a screen 3 times the size? Also I don’t know how restricted is the format of the video that can be played on the iPod. Can you watch movies that have been downloaded elsewhere or rip your own DVDs or record TV shows to play on there? If not, then the utility of this new device will be limited. I don’t think I’ll be rushing off to upgrade any time soon.

I mentioned a week ago that I was selling some of my old guitar effects pedals in order to get myself a multi-effects board. Well the auctions went quite well and on the recommendations of the guitar shop guy and one of the other guitarists at church, and after doing a fair bit of research on the net, I ended up getting myself a Digitech GNX4 Guitar Workstation, with the sale of my other effects covering most of the cost.

Thus far I’ve only had a few hours to play with it and have only scratched the surface of what it can do, but already I am very happy with it. The quick list of features on board is :

• Built-in 8 track Digital Recorder
• Hands-Free Recording
• Built-in 24-bit USB Audio/MIDI Interface
• Built-in General MIDI Drum Machine
• Built-in MP3 Player
• Built-in Compact Flash Card Reader
• Built-in Direct Box with Active Speaker Compensation
• Unlimited Guitar and Bass Amp Models using GeNetX Processing
• Huge range of effects, using up to 11 at a time
• Internal dbx Mic Preamp with +48V Phantom Power
• Stereo Balanced XLR and 1/4″ Outputs
• 24-bit A/D/A Converters
• 80 User/80 Factory Presets/Additional 80 user with optional Compact Flash card

I must say I agree with what some other people on the net have said in that the factory preset effects patches leave a fair bit to be desired. Many of them do not sound all that great and some are unusable. However, the GNX4 redeems itself in the fact that it’s effects patches can be edited on the computer via the USB connection. The software is very versatile and allows easy manipulation of a huge range of settings for each patch. Within each individual effects patch you can actually get a greater range of tones as you can select between two different Amp models (or a warped combination of the two) and have the ability to assign the various pedals to toggle multiple effects at once. Changing settings on the software controls the GNX4 board in real time so I can play my guitar and hear the changes as I make them on my computer. There are over a thousand user presets which have been uploaded to the Digitech website, many of which sound excellent, particularly those produced by ‘guitar3456′ who also does this kind of thing commercially. Loading these presets onto my GNX-4 with a bit of extra tweaking myself, I have been able to achieve some absolutely brilliant tones, hampered only by my own mediocre guitar playing. I’ve ran the board through my amp, headphones, and the PA system at church, and the sound quality is superb, particularly in stereo.

There’s so much more that this baby can do that I haven’t even touched yet. I’ve only briefly fiddled with the drum machine, and have yet to go near the 8-track recorder, looper, MP3 player, and vocal effects, yet it’s already one of my favourite toys.

Also today I discovered another cool thing about this unit. I picked up a Guitar World magazine on the way home and it includes GNX 4 settings for each of the songs listed (and you can even download the patches from the website) – so now I’ll be able to play the Star Spangled Banner and sound just like Jimi … well maybe.

How cool is this? It’s the new ipod Nano. The size of a business card, the thickness of a pencil and the weight of a CD case, yet it’s a fully featured iPod with a colour screen that displays album covers and can store a thousand songs in flash memory. Simply beautiful. Already my 40 Gig iPod that I got a year ago is beginning to feel antiquated.

But what I’m really looking forward to is seeing further convergence of items. In two years time I want a fully featured 3G phone that’s also a PDA with a quality 5 megapixel camera for stills and video, and 60 Gig of storage for media including MP3s, photos, and movies. And all of this in a format that has a crisp clear colour screen for all PDA, camera and video watching but in a device that’s small enough to carry comfortably at my hip. I have no doubt that such a device wil come – there are many that do all or most of these features, but don’t do all of them well. For example my Treo 650 is a great phone and PDA but the camera is poor quality and the storage is limited. Sony Ericsson now have a phone with a good 2MP camera but without the features of a Palm or Pocket PC PDA. I just can’t wait to see a device that covers all these bases well – my ideal wish would be a collaboration between Palm and Apple, but we’ll have to wait and see.

One of the coolest things about modern technology is the convergence that we are beginning to see more and more. By that I mean that we are getting devices that can do tasks that we would have needed 3 or 4 for a few short years ago. My latest toy is a prime example of this. It’s a worldwide trend that sales of PDAs have reached their peak and are beginning to fall, while the sales of “smart phones” are rising rapidly. On Wednesday I got my first Smartphone – a Palm Treo 650. This combines a GSM phone with a PalmOS PDA, a camera, an MP3 player and much more. All of these functions are seamlessly integrated and it can be used to peform a myriad of tasks. And it’s not much bigger than a regular phone. Certainly it’s way smaller than my first phone – an NEC Sportz “brick” that I used to have strapped to my hip in the mid 90s, which had a single line display and have memory for 10 phone numbers (no words though) The things I can do now with my Treo would have boggled the mind way back then in the 90s. Who would have thought that I could walk around with multiple medical texts, 13 translations of the Bible, and a range of other resources permanently at my side? Or that I could be able to instantly access email or the internet wherever I go? For example just yesterday afternoon we were out driving and Jenni wanted to know something about a place. I was able to quickly fire up my web browser, connect via GPRS and access the information within less than a minute, whilst driving down the freeway at 100kph (Jenni was driving, not me) Already the freedom of not having to carry a separate PDA and phone with me everywhere is very liberating. And I’ve only scratched the surface of what this baby can do.

Now it’s official – iPods are no longer a geeky new gadget for technological early adopters – they now have the official sanction of the establishment, from the very top : CNN.com – Bush bares soul with ‘iPod One’ – Apr 12, 2005. The US President was given an iPod by his daughters as a present and now regularly uses it when out cycling, and at other times. I can’t say I like his choice of music very much (mostly country music and folk rock) by I’m impressed that he has one. Even if he does only have 250 songs on it (what a waste), “no black artists, no gay artists, no world music, only one woman, no genre less than 25 years old, and no Beatles”, and has a personal aide who’s job it is to download tracks from the iTunes music store for him.

I just put this together for the Warnbro page as an introduction to Podcasting – so if you want to know more about this cool subject check it out – Podcasting 101

Discovered this over at Phil’s blog this morning. It’s an early advertising campaign for one of the first iPod models – take a look. That’s classic!