Audio Archives - Page 46 of 51

Digital Media Bytes: Zune Edition

A periodic roundup of relevant news… Microsoft eying WiFi-enabled Zune filling stations: Engadget Flash-based Zune due in Q407, better WiFi soon: Digital Music News Microsoft made Zune because partner hardware “sucks”: Bloomberg Universal and Sony prohibit Zune sharing for certain artists: Zune Thoughts Europe dreaming of a brown (Zune) Christmas: Washington Post

Question of the Day: Repair or Replace iPod?

I get a decent amount of questions via email covering a variety of topics — Believe it or not, I try to answer everything that comes my way. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this sooner, but I’m going to start running selected questions and answers. Perhaps my response will be useful to a larger group, and perhaps you readers will have alternate suggestions worth considering.

First up we have a question from a long-time supporter of the site. The last time I heard from John he was debating between television models at Best Buy. We had a few back and forths and then he didn’t take my advice. Ha! This time around, I think John and I are in agreement:

I bought an 20 gig iPod 2 yrs ago but now it has some sort of – can you believe it – frown face. Apple wants $250 to “fix” it. I have all of my tunes backed up so it’s not a problem to start over. What do you recommend? Also, have you ever heard of the frown face icon on the iPod? Weird I know.

Mari’s Gadget-Giving Post-Mortem, Part 2

If you missed Post-Mortem Part 1, I covered the Christmas gadget insanity in my house with the Wii, Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick and iRecord. Part 2 starts with the Dash. The Dash Way to Ruin the Surprise I should have listened to my own advice. I knew it was a bad idea to buy … Read more

Pandora’s Grass Roots Marketing

Another quick note about Pandora as the next-generation MySpace… They’re taking a very social-networking approach to marketing. A musician friend of mine attended an event back in November hosted by Pandora at UPenn. The event was not directed at press, but instead consisted of founder Tim Westergren talking to students and gathering feedback and suggestions … Read more

Pandora the New MySpace?

I’m not an expert Pandora user. I only discovered it this year, and I haven’t remotely finished plumbing the feature set. Mostly I just create new stations when I remember a particular artist or song I love and leave it at that. That’s one of the great things about Pandora. You can be a casual user and still thoroughly enjoy the service.

Last week, however, Michael Arrington and I got an email from the Pandora folks: Seems they’ve gone and made the service more Web 2.0’ish. Now you can find shared stations within the Pandora community, see who is listening to what, and search for songs, stations and listener profiles by keyword.

The original, innovative idea behind Pandora is music discovery, and the fact that you can do things like seed stations with specific music to discover similar works is a great one. While the latest features still clearly fall under that concept, there is also something else going on here. Check out this quote from Pandora’s blog:

Find other Pandora listeners that share your musical tastes, hometown, school, or place of work. Explore their favorite songs and artists, listen to their stations, and leave them comments. Even bookmark them so you can check what they’re into later.

Once you add in elements like “hometown” and “school,” Pandora suddenly starts to sound a lot more like MySpace or Facebook to me. And indeed, I’ve heard from a lot of companies lately suggesting that the next wave of social networking sites will be based around specific interests. Vertical social networks.

So is Pandora the new, cooler MySpace?

Digital Media Bytes: PSP Edition

A periodic roundup of relevant news… PSP 3.01 software update released Buy PSone games online via Playstation3, view music animations, and disable UMD auto-start. Sony PSP Internet Video Guide Learn how to use PSP Video 9 to get YouTube and Google Video onto your system. DVR Playground PSP sales up Hardware sales up 280% and … Read more

Squeezebox Review: On My X’mas List

I admit to feeling some trepidation when my Slim Devices Squeezebox review unit arrived. Since buying a house a year and a half ago, my stereo from early high school has sat unused in our basement. (Note the cheesy, Space-Invaders-like display on the screen and the layers of dust.)

I popped open one of the tape decks and look what I found:

So imagine my nervousness at trying to combine the archaic technology of my high school years with something as beautiful as the Squeezebox.

I’ve contemplated upgrading my music options for quite a while now, but frankly I’ve been pretty happy with my iPod and the kitchen radio for listening to NPR. Satellite radio has a monthly fee, which I’m not willing to pay, and my music collection isn’t stellar enough to warrant buying an iPod dock with speakers.

Looking at the Squeezebox, I wondered not only if I could make it work with my stereo, but if it would even be worthwhile given my decidedly low-key approach to music.

Here’s the answer: Yes, yes, unequivocally yes. Can I have it for Christmas, please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?

Every new thing I tried with the Squeezebox just made it better — Starting with streaming my own music, then accessing the SqueezeNetwork and finally going full out with Pandora. If you want to skip set-up and some of the more gory details, scroll to the end for a list of pros and (very few) cons.

Digital Media Bytes

A periodic roundup of relevant news… Beatles and Apple near exclusive iTunes deal: Fortune EchoStar retrial on TiVo patents denied: Denver Post Will paying for user video pay off: GigaOm Xbox movie downloads timed: Gizmodo Control BeyondTV with Slingbox: Fresh Arrival TiVo Glo Remote available for 8,500 Reward Points: TiVo