iTunes Ping is dead to me! Literally!

By Dave M. on September 29, 2010

I tried it. Really, I did. However, the more I used it the more I hated it.

Recently, Apple updated iTunes to add the ability to “Like” individual songs from your music library, which is a huge improvement over having to search for the song in Apple’s song catalog.

The “last straw” for Ping was when I turned it off. Something, an application or iPhone app or something wanted me to turn Ping off for a second for some reason that escapes me now. So I turned Ping off, did what I needed to do, then turned it back on. At this point, I am now not able to access my Ping stream. I can see it as a private stream that I need to get permission to see (acting as if I am someone else other than me), but I can’t regain access to the actual account.

Ping associates your Apple ID as your account so no matter what, so long as your iTunes is logged into your Apple ID, you should have full access to your Ping data. Not the case with Ping however.

Am I upset over this? Nah, not at all. I just turned Ping back off and wish there was a way of removing the Ping from the left sidebar as well as that top bar where the rest of iTunes services are. There are Defaults settings to turn off the Ping link in music library entries as well as the right side bar that replaced the Genius side bar. (That’s another stupid move on Apple’s part, but maybe they figure they will make more money from Ping suggestions rather than Genius suggestions)

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Xmarks ending service

By Dave M. on September 29, 2010

After quite a run, Xmarks is throwing in the towel. They just were not able to make the service profitable.

I used to use the service myself. I started using FoxMarks way back in late 2006. They changed their name to Xmarks at some point later. It seemed to work pretty well.

It was only later when I switched to other browsers that I found out that Xmarks was not working all that well. I found I had about 6 copies of all the bookmarks in Safari. I could never convince Xmarks that I didn’t want the duplicated bookmarks.

I have been using Google’s Chrome browser lately and Chrome has it’s own syncing service that will sync bookmarks between Chrome browsers on any and all of your computers you tell it to.

I suspect that between all the browser companies doing their own syncing service, they just couldn’t keep users interested in Xmarks.

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Apple finally approves Google Voice app

By Dave M. on September 29, 2010

After many months (hasn’t it been like 18), Apple finally approved Google Voice. Google’s application for the iPhone to access it’s Voice service.

It will be appearing in the App Store just as soon as Google updates it for iOS 4 multitasking, the iPhone 4′s Retina display and other minor changes.

So after Apple publishes it’s official policy guide for App development, Google finally gets to see it’s Google Voice app approved. I suspect that the previous lawsuits by the EU had a little something to do with it not to mention other investigations.

No matter what the reason, we users get the benefit of finally getting applications that were, for all extents and purposes, taken away from us because Apple didn’t want them in their store.

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Apple finally updates Remote and makes it Universal

By Dave M. on September 29, 2010

It’s been quite some time now, but Apple finally updated their Remote app and made it Universal.

The iPhone version has been updated for the iPhone 4′s Retina display and the iPad version takes full advantage of the iPad’s screen real estate.

Remote also now supports iTunes’ “Home Sharing” to locate iTunes Libraries so you don’t need to “Pair” Remote with an iTunes library.

Remote now supports all versions of AppleTV (of course).

Remote works perfectly and supports all of iTunes’ features including the ability to adjust the volume of remote speakers connected to iTunes via AirPlay.

Hopefully, this is a sign that Apple has assigned a developer to Remote so that we will see more frequent updates to this app in the future.

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Hog Bay Software releases a DropBox based Text Editor for iPad

By Dave M. on September 29, 2010

Hog Bay Software recently released a great FREE iPad text editor app that allows you to work in DropBox. Similar to ELEMENTS which I mentioned as one of my Top 5 iPhone/iPad apps not long ago, PlainText is pretty much the same thing, but absolutely free.

It’s got a very clean interface and one thing that it does do that ELEMENTS doesn’t do is allow you to access any “.txt” file in your DropBox. The way this is accomplished is by pointing the “Linked Folder” to the root level ( / ) when linking PlainText to your DropBox account.

A “con” to the app is that you have to “Link” your DropBox account setting a folder path. You can’t change that folder path later without “re-linking” your DropBox account. PlainText also doesn’t recognize text documents that do not have the .TXT extension. So, .HTML or .XML for example can’t be loaded into PlainText without first renaming the file’s extension to .TXT.

That con aside, PlainText is a great FREE alternative to ELEMENTS that should be a no-brainer for anyone wanting to work with text files in their DropBox accounts.

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Podcast Episode #034

By Dave M. on September 17, 2010

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Even more iPod touch bad news…

By Dave M. on September 9, 2010

iPhoneHacks.com is reporting that iFixIt.com completed its teardown of the new iPod touch and has found some rather disturbing facts.

First off, they verified that the new iPod touch has a measly 0.7 megapixel camera for its rear facing camera. 960×720 is just piss poor considering that even the original iPhone at least had a 3 megapixel camera (1600×1200). What was Apple thinking here?

Secondly, Apple only gave the iPod touch 256MB’s of execution RAM. Half that of the iPhone. Again, what the heck is Apple thinking here. Sure that’s the same size as the iPad and the iPad seems to be functioning fine, but still. Why only 256MB’s when the iPhone has 512MB’s?

The battery in the iPod touch is smaller, but since the iPod touch doesn’t have 3G, they figure that the battery life will be pretty good.

No vibrating alert; it was rumored that there was a vibration motor in the iPod touch, but iFixIt determined that what people thought was the vibration motor was, in fact, a microphone.

The vibration and battery facts are not so bad, but the lack of execution memory and piss-poor camera really makes me wonder what they were thinking. I wonder if the previous generation of the iPod Nano’s camera was better than this new iPod touch? (Just checked, and no, the 5th gen iPod Nano camera was 640×480 video only.)

I’m reading that Apple wanted to keep the costs down, but looking at the price for the various iPod touch sizes, they didn’t succeed. When you look at the 8GB iPod touch price, $229, that’s more than the 16GB iPhone and the other two iPod touches are the same and $100 more than the 32GB iPhone. To be fair, the iPhone comes with a huge hidden cost of nearly $3,000 for the 2 year contract with AT&T, but still…

I have to say that I am very disappointed with Apple’s choices on the iPod touch.

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Podcast Episode #033

By Dave M. on September 9, 2010

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Ping: Advertising Shill

By hargrove on September 1, 2010

As someone who frigging loves music, I was (overly) excited by Apple’s Ping announcement, their foray into music social networking. With 160M registered credit cards all set to 1-click purchase, that’s an impressive base for starting a social networking site. Sure, most people won’t give a shit, but out of 160M people, even if only 10% care, that’s an impressive starting base.

So I downloaded and installed iTunes 10, registered for Ping, and … wtf is this shit? Seriously? Even the most optimistic fan would have to classify this as nothing more than promotional shill.

Ping. Advertising shill. It’s not what I what I wanted to see but I got a face-full of it.

Here’s a list of iTunes “recommendations” which are hugely wtf. Those with NO listed beside them are artists I do not like and have no idea why iTunes is recommending to me:

  • Lady Gaga NO
  • Yo-Yo Ma
  • Katy Perry NO
  • U2 NO
  • Jack Johnson
  • Linkin Park
  • Shakira NO
  • Coldplay NO
  • Mark Ronson NO
  • Taylor Swift NO
  • Linkin Park AGAIN
  • Dave Matthews Band NO
  • Diddy NO
  • U2 AGAIN NO

That’s a recommendation score of 3 out of 14, which leads me to believe the initial recommendations are bullshit, based on nothing more than record label contributions to Apple’s advertising campaign. I checked and, yes, Genius is turned on, so these recommendations apparently have no relation to Genius. What they’re related to, I have no idea. NONE.

As an aside, am I the only one who thought Lady Gaga was overly represented at the event yesterday? Seriously? Because I never figured Jobs to be a Lady Gaga fan. But we all by-god sat through her video and her name was on almost every screenshot. She was everywhere.

So, I figured so what?, right? iTunes has a search feature. I can just search and follow my favorites, right?

Not so fast there, skippy.

Here’s a list of artists I dig who don’t have “Follow” links:

  • Clapton, Eric
  • Cooper, Alice
  • Disturbed
  • Drowning Pool
  • Flying Burrito Brothers
  • Flyleaf
  • Godsmack
  • Leadbelly
  • KISS
  • Korn
  • Marilyn Manson
  • Owens, Buck
  • Parsons, Gram
  • Strait, George
  • Train

At present, it’s not possible for me to follow any of these artists. I’ve tried to keep the list genre-neutral, but it’s slightly metal-positive. But really? Leadbelly? He should be a given in any sane system.

So it looks like Ping is akin to many of Google’s products: not ready for prime-time, but pushed forward just the same. Hopefully we’ll see some progress in the near — if not immediate — future, otherwise Ping will be nothing more than a pebble in the ocean … a small splash that no one cares about.

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Dave’s All-Time Top 5 iPhone / iPad Apps

By Dave M. on September 1, 2010

This is my list of iPhone/iPod touch/iPad apps:

elements.png

Elements (Universal – $4.99)

This is pretty much the best text editor for the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad. It uses DropBox as its file system which is pretty much the best way to deal with storing files being edited.

reeder for ipad.png

Reeder (iPad – $4.99)
Reeder (iPhone – $2.99)

A very well done RSS Feed Reader that sync’s with Google Reader. Excellent UI for both iPad and iPhone. Probably the fasted RSS feed reader in the App Store.

groceryiq.png

GroceryIQ (Universal – Free)

I use this app every week to speed up my grocery shopping. With this app, I go through the store in order picking items on the list and I’m out the door faster than ever.

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Pinball HD 4 iPhone (iPhone – $2.99 (currently $0.99))

Gameprom has the best lineup of pinball games for the iPhone and iPad. Their prices are very reasonable and they even have an iPhone app that acts as a remote control for a desktop version of the three tables in this app. I have purchased every version and platform of Pinball that Gameprom sells.

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Edge by Mobigame (iPhone – $4.99 (currently $2.99))

This game has been on my iPhone for 18+ months now and will never ever be deleted. Its seen its share of hardship having been removed from the App Store not once, but twice due to Tim Langdell claiming to have trademarked the word “Edge”. It has taken many months of fighting by Mobigame, but they finally won the right to use the name Edge and is now focusing on future games.

And that’s the list!

As many games as I have purchased/downloaded from the App Store, it’s only fair that a couple were listed in my top 5.

There are, of course, many other apps that I use/play on a regular basis, but these are truly my favorite.

We should do a top 5 favorite iPhone Jailbrake apps next week.

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