dallas moore

Clown College … Conspicous Consumption

After last night’s rant, it dawned on me.  I’ve bought the Google phone/iPhone marketing hook, line, and sinker.  And that’s what the rant is about, subconsciously fighting the marketing.  Do I really need to spend more money on something that is arguably very trivial?  Better yet, how could I illustrate the point?  I delved into my brain for a grand design on how I could make the point visually and this little scene from The Simpsons came to mind.

Homer fell for the marketing, he did what the advertisers wanted, he went to clown college.  He has a brief and exciting adventure that ends up with his purchase backfiring on him. Next episode it isn’t even acknowledged.  That’s what I’m afraid of … being a fool for spending a ton of money on something that is exciting at first then becomes boring and blah in a month or so.

So here I sit, perplexed at how I’m trying to justify spending about $1200-1500 more over the next two years for the privelege of spending more time on the Internet.

Google Phone or iPhone?

Earlier this year when the 2nd generation iPhone 3G was release, I was all excited.

“Oooooo… cool geek toy is now improved and ready to purchase!”

Then excitement waned.  This was mainly due to the initial bugs upon release (dropped calls, lockups, etc.).  I became slightly less enamored. I think those bugs have been fixed with the latest patch, but who knows?  Not me… I don’t own one yet.  My craving is there though.  Not having internet access anywhere has reached a point that it has become an obscene void in my now not-so-geeky life.  I want to be able to do really nerdy … er … cool things.

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iTunes Genius Actually Works; New Visualization

Building a playlist in iTunes has always been a chore for me.  I tend to overthink the process, get overwhelmed by all the available tracks, and end up forgetting several that I’d like to include.  Sure, I’ve got the track somewhere on my iPod, but I don’t want to twiddle with the click wheel while driving beyond just clicking skip.  With a good playlist, I’ll get to it eventually … skip … skip … skip.  Forget good, the new “Genius” function actually makes great playlists.

The Genius feature in iTunes 8 is too easy.  You just click a favorite song, click the swirly Atomic Genius icon, and a rather clever playlist gets generated for you.  It is a kind of weird thing that the crowd-sourcing works and it pick songs that do mesh well together.

Genius playlists are a bit more clever than even the so called Smart Playlist.  The Smart playlist is a user programmed feat where you create one or more rules for gathering songs.  With Genius, iTunes just seems to know what to do.  Your only effort is just determining how many songs you’d like in total.  If you are inclined, once you’ve compiled a Genius playlist, it can be saved.

In other news, I do like the new visualization in iTunes 8.  It looks nice with the spheres, particles, and faux gravity feel.  The reactions to the music are on the sluggish side, but overall it’s very appealing.

iPod Touch … Skype?

I finally digested the Apple event today.

The genius playlist feature in iTunes 8 sounds like a great solution for me.  I’m always having trouble quickly putting together a good playlist.  Instead, I’ll be heading out on a bit of a drive and grab the iPod, realize I need to sync, and then want to throw together a new playlist.  Twenty to forty minutes later, I’m done and syncing.  Too much thought goes into a playlist.  Hopefully with genius playlists, it will be moments later.

I’m mainly in buyer’s remorse for getting an iPod nano 3G six months after last year’s release.  I was gambling that this release would be a memory upgrade with the same form factor.  I was wrong.  I’ll live

The iPod touch got a lot of interest because of the new applications for it.  That seems to be the going thing for the touch, the iPhone popularity has rubbed off on it.

The big announcement to me was kind of between the lines.  The voice recording microphone dealy.

“iPod nano can do recording… awesome!” (not really; it’s okay)

But the subtle knowledge that the iPod touch can do it too… Hmmm…

Will the recording capability be available to iPhone/iPod touch App programmers?

Does this mean VOIP programs (like Skype) are now possible and coming soon?