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All posts tagged "music"


Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Google Renames Android Market to Play Store

Posted by Craig Horlacher in "Android News" @ 11:30 AM

http://www.androidcentral.com/googl...books-and-video

"Google's content portal for Android apps, music, books and video content has been consolidated under a new name -- Google Play."

If you haven't gotten the update you probably will very soon. Google is pushing out a new version of the Market called the Play Store. They are also replacing your current Books, Music, and Movies apps with Play Books, Play Music, and Play Movies. I think this move makes a lot of sense rather than educating people that they can use the Android Market on the web with their Windows PC to buy books, music, and video. It's a good time to check for deals too. There are apps for $0.49 and lots of other discounts as well.

Here is one thing to watch out for if you have a Motorola device. This update will cause your Market link at the top right of your app drawer to stop working. Hopefully Motorola will fix this soon on many of their devices. It's not a huge deal since you can still launch the new store using the Play Store icon but it's annoying.


Friday, October 21, 2011

The Sweet Sound of Quality: Win a Set of $399 Audioengine A5+ Speakers

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Events" @ 09:00 AM

http://audioengineusa.com/Store/Aud...5-Plus#overview

I may be selling these sites and working full time for HTC now, but who says I can't have a little more fun giving away a great prize before I go? Last week I posted about the new Audioengine A5+ powered desktop speakers; the generous folks at Audioengine have offered up a set of these new speakers for a contest. With dual inputs (3.5mm and RCA, the latter of which is easily converted to an addition 3.5mm input with a cable) and a USB charging port, the A5+ speakers are a great companion to an endless variety of devices: desktop computers, laptop computers, tablets, smartphones, and yes, even the humble Zune. Ringing in at $399 USD, these are high-quality speakers that I guarantee will blow you away.

How do you win this contest? Simply post a comment to this discussion thread (one entry per person) telling me what your current audio solution for speakers is and how the Audioengine A5+ speakers will be better. One winner will be randomly selected from amongst all the entries and they'll get to chose either a set of black or white A5+ speakers. Due to the size and weight of this prize, it will only be shipped within the continental USA. The contest will remain open until Friday the 28th at 12 PM mountain time (GMT -7).

Best of luck everyone, and I look forward to reading some interesting entries. :-)

UPDATE: The contest is now over, and the winner is ITforSmallBiz. Thanks to everyone for entering!


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Pogoplug Mobile Offers Anywhere-You-Go Streaming

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 09:30 AM

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2011/09...ablet-a-breeze/

"Looking for a drop-dead simple solution for streaming media (photos, music, video) and accessing files from home on your smartphone or tablet? Or how about backing up your smartphone's recently taken photos and video? Well, Pogoplug's new $79 Pogoplug Mobile product offers to do just that."

There's definitely something very appealing about having access to all of your music, videos, and photos anywhere you go. I've solve this by by uploading every photo I've ever taken to Smugmug, every song I have to Amazon's Cloud Drive, and videos...well, I don't have a good solution for that yet. I can access them remotely via my Windows Home Server, but only when that works (the last time it didn't). This is rather appealing, especially given the $79 price point. What solution do you use for everywhere-you-go media access?


Thursday, May 26, 2011

IK Multimedia's Amazing Music Tools for Your iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Laptop Thoughts Accessories" @ 11:30 AM

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/Main.ht...tware/index.php

For some of you, none of this will be new - but if you're like me and hadn't heard of these impressive products before now, check out these videos...

There are three products that are particularly exciting for musicians/vocalists who own an iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch: the iRig Mic, the iRig, and the iKlip. They also have some impressive software that goes along with these products. Any Laptop Thoughts or Apple Thoughts readers using this hardware or software? What do you think of it? I play bass guitar and sing, but no longer have an amp in my home...so the idea of being able to plug into my iPad and play is really appealing, not to mention being able to lay down a vocal track if inspiration hits!


Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Are We All Digitally OCD Now?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Articles & Resources" @ 05:30 PM

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/a...2042340,00.html

"We are all OCD now. We do these things not just because digital filing gives us the satisfaction of cleaning without the unpleasant feeling of getting up from our chairs. It's because we're constantly confronting the onslaught of information, and our brains are trying to make patterns out of the randomness. We believe that if we just finish a list of every movie we want to see, we can finish that task, despite the fact that Rob Schneider is going to make more films."

Photo Credit: Gizmodo

This is a humour column, but there's some truth to the idea that sometimes we spend more time organizing and fretting away over the details of our digital collections than actually enjoying them. However, unlike the author of this column, I've always been detail-oriented and I appreciate creating digital order from digital chaos...it's almost soothing to me to see things organized properly. I don't think I could ever embrace digital chaos the way the author is suggesting - could you?


Friday, October 22, 2010

Music Metadata: It's Here to Stay

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Talk" @ 01:00 PM

On a private mailing list I'm a part of, the issue of music metadata was brought up - specifically, that the Zune desktop and device software relies on metadata for everything, and if you're the kind of person who has a collection of digital music stretching back 10+ years, there's a good chance it's missing proper metadata. Many people have worked around that by organizing and playing back their music like they would a Word document; via the file system. This is a habit that you should seriously consider breaking, and I'll tell you why. Read more...


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