I am Totally into Podcasts
Bring ‘em on – the more the merrier. I gravitate towards the tech podcasts (This Week in Tech, Diggnation, CNET BuzzCast, SETI) and news casts – NPR has a ton of their stuff available for download. I drive a lot for work and regular radio is just not an option. On average my iPod has about 10-15 hours worth of podcasts at any one particular time. I could go on with what I listen to, but no one cares.
The point of this ramble-in-progress is that with the 33 different podcasts that I subscribe to, iTunes starts to break down a bit. iTunes will pull the newest RSS feed from all the podcasts all at once. This is not too bad since it’s just text that is being transfered. But then it tries to download every single new episode also all at once – 10 or 15 or more large mp3′s all fighting for bandwidth.
I’ve found that because of this a good number of episodes just die in downloading and you end up with 5 minutes of a 30 minute show. One of my CNET BuzzCasts was 9 seconds long.
There is no ‘reload podcast’ button.
If iTunes choked your internet connection and botched a download your S.O.L. You can’t reset the feed to redownload an episode. You may be able to unsubscribe and then resubscribe and get a new feed but that is a pain in the ass and I’ve not tried it (and won’t).
Please iTunes, do two things for me in your next version:
1) Download just one mp3 at a time.
2) Give me the option to redownload a podcast that got botched in transfer.
Love & Thanks, Dan.
Mike Is Hooked On DriveTime
I’m not that into Podcasts. I have one that I listen to regularly: This Week In Tech. And to be honest I really don’t do much in the way of exploring for new Podcasts because I feel like the pool has been too diluted with 16 year old Jimmy doing one about his Dungeons and Dragons games that it isn’t worth the effort to dig through the crap to find something good. Pretty much the same goes for Vodcasts (or whatever it is you call them), though to a lesser extent, I really don’t have the desire to go trolling around looking for stuff to watch. Now if the suggestion is made to go check something out that is known to be good, I will check it out. Such is the case when I read about DriveTime on BoingBoing the other day. I don’t know what it is, but I’m hooked on DriveTime.
What is DriveTime? Well, to quote the information in iTunes about it: “A video blog talk show produced during a driving commute through the streets of Boston.” It has guests that he picks up on his was to and from work and at times there is a co-host (his wife) when he picks her up and drops her off a work. Its exactly the type of fun little program that can come in a time where creating, editing and now publishing video content is something anyone with a desire can do.
Too bad I don’t live anywhere near Boston…it would be great to be a guest.
Radio is Dead! Long Live Last.fm!
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with online radio stations. It’s great to hear new music that you don’t have in your own collection, but it totally sucks to have to wade thru crappy song after crappy song in-between gems. Too often it seems like someone had a collection of a few thousand songs and they just hit ‘shuffle’. Not to say that they all suck, the Atlanta Blues Society has a superb online radio station. Radioio gets an honorable mention for a wide selection of genres and audio formats.
Last.fm runs things a little different. You can get a custom-generated radio station based on a certain artist of your choosing. Now, who remembers musicplasma.com? You could type in ‘Eric Clapton’ and MusicPlasma returns all the artists that are like Clapton (Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Allman Bros, Neil Young, etc). Last.fm creates a radio station based around all those artists. The ‘Eric Clapton’ station includes the Eagles, Jimi Hendrix Cream, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, CCR, The Beatles, etc etc.
There’s iTunes and Winamp plugins, as well as an RSS feed of what has been playing that you can include in your website or whatever.
Did I mention that it’s free?
Read on for more…
Guy Makes DOS Website, Cool For a Minute or Two
File this under trendy / weird websites.
20-goto-10.com is a website that’s navigation kind of emulates DOS. Its fun for a little bit as you play around with it but then after you try out each of the 10 commands you get tired of it. The navigation is fun, interesting and crappy to use. The visuals of the site are interesting and lame. Of course none of this is that surprising because it emulates DOS and DOS sucks. Although its a cool trick with some AJAX and CSS, its really better suited as a section of someone’s site, not the whole thing.
Check it out and l let me know what you think. Though I’m assuming you’ll agree with me because I’m awesome.
Via Digg
Who Uses 800×600? Anyone?
Recently, at Gagetopia, Deane did some research to see what resolution most of his readership is using for the window opening on their browser. (He didn’t use total screen resolution because not everyone keeps their browser window maximized…especially true for us OS X users.) Deane found that 90% of the Gadgetopia readers were at 1024 x 768 or more. Thats a large number of people that aren’t using 800×600, which the width of this site was designed to accommodate. So my question is: Should I bother accommodating them any longer?
When I do my professional designs at work I always design for 800×600 without question. The reason for that is on the sites that my company runs, their clientele is not exactly technically savvy which means that probably have older computers running at 800 x 600. Of course, that rule of thumb doesn’t really follow for the viewers of Hell Yeah Bitch! .com. I assume most of you are members of the more computer-oriented crowd.
So what do you think? Should I play with the design a bit and give it some more room? If so, do you have any suggestions on what to do with the new space? Now, I’m not planning on doing anything soon, I’ve got a big night tomorrow of watching Monday Night Football and switching during the commercials to the Halloween episode of Moesha, but I was just playing with some ideas in my head and I figured I’d let you all in on my thoughts.
Happy Sunshine Story Time
This is the very super-duper special story of Happy Flower Rainbow Bunny Nice & Cheerful Sunshine Muffin Panda.
Enjoy.
And kids: don’t do drugs!
Perez Hilton Goes Down…Because of A Hacker
PerezHilton.com, the wonderfully trashy gossip site, was taken down today by a hacker. I’m not sure, but I’m picking up on a little hostility vibe from Perez about the whole thing:
Yes, we were hacked today.
But, like the fucking cockroach that Perez is, not even nuclear anihiliation can take him down.
You want a piece of me? Take it! I’m Cuban, bitch. And I will cut you!
Hacking someone’s website is so lame. Unless its a Nazi or KKK site, but even then I’m not wild about it…free speech and all. Ok, here’s the rule: Hacking someone’s website is only acceptable if it is someone that I don’t like…sorry, not someone that you don’t like, it has to be up to me. So just ask me and I’ll tell you if its cool or not. Also, if I do give you the ok, you have to replace the site with something fun to look at like a big picture of Angelina Jolie naked or a picture of your girl friend naked (unless she is a fatty) or just a picture some other girl that is hot…and naked. Then hacking websites is cool.
How great is it that I can write a story about a site getting hacked and somehow twist it so that I can justify putting a big picture of Angelina Jolie at the top of the article?
The America’s Next Top Model Recap
UPN’s America’s Next Top Model is a fantastic show, not fantastic enough to watch it instead of the World Series, but definitely good enough for me to flip to during the commercials. However, flipping back and forth is not how one should be watching a TV show, especially one as great and demeaning to their pretty contanstants as ANTM is. You miss large chunks of lesbo action, naked pictures, cat fights and of course crying! What are you to do? Those in the know, make sure to check out fourfour’s ANTM recap of every show.
After every show, there is a complete rundown of what happened, who cried, what photo shoots they did, who cried again, and, of course, who got themselves the pointy end of Tyra’s heel as she kicked their ass off the show. To be honest with you, even if you don’t watch the show, its funny…hell it might be better than the show. Wait, no…its not better than the show…but its close!
Link: This week’s coverage
Link: fourfour | front page
(Fantastic Tyra animated image, courtesy of fourfour.typepad.com)
iTunes Essentials: MORE COWBELL!
Someone’s been having a bit of fun over at the iTunes Music Store…
Invented by dairy farmers for use in fog, the humble cowbell has evolved into a vital component of rock’s percussive arsenal: hit with enough style and vigor, it can make the difference between a track that rocks, and a track that totally rocks. Try to imagine Chicago’s “Beginnings” without the cowbell. It can’t be done. No Way.
Some cuts get a boost from the cowbell, others are simply naked without its insistent hollow thowk. Here, we’ve stashed some of the greatest cowbell-dependent tunes in history, from “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel to the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermint” and the Donnas’ “You Wanna Get Me High.”
The songs are a bit all over the place. Includes (of course) ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ by the Blue Oyster Cult, Santana’s ‘Evil Ways’, Bob Dylan, Kiss and Tom Petty. The compilation continues with natural inclusions like Sir Mix-a-Lot and Britney Spears.
Are PowerPC Macs Down To Their Last Four Years?
Now that I have just plunked down some currency and bought one of the new iMacs, what do you say we start a discussion and see how depressed I can make myself (with some help from you)? According to Chris Adamson, Apple computers purchased today have about a four year lifespan (Is It Time to Wait for Intel?).
Here is Adamson’s logic:
The key is probably: how soon will it be until new stuff that you want won’t run on your PowerPC Mac? Here’s how I’m teasing out this logic: at WWDC 2005, we were promised a look at Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) at WWDC 2006, which is next Spring or Summer. There’s usually a lag between unveiling an OS to developers and shipping it, so the developers can learn and use the new features. Add 6-12 months to the Leopard preview and we probably don’t expect Leopard until, what, late 2006 or (more likely) sometime in 2007. Intel Macs are supposed to ship in mid 2006, so clearly some future version of Tiger will support them, as will Leopard.
Apple said with the release of Tiger that the timeframe between major OS releases would slow down, so when do we expect to see Leopard’s successor? If Tiger shipped in 2004 and Leopard is in 2007, then maybe Mac OS X 10.6 ships around 2010 or so. That’s four years after the Intel switch.
Of course, just because you can’t run the latest operating system, it doesn’t mean that machine is dead. There are many, many functioning, productive computers out there running strong on Panther or Jaguar. The real question boils down to: How long will your computer be “Modern”? “Modern” meaning that your computer can run the tasks of a current off the line computer. Do you think 4 years from now Steve will be extolling the joys of OS X 10.6 (lets say Ocelot) and then mention that the “transition is complete! …so we aren’t offering this for PowerPC.” and then quickly move on to the new iPod that cooks you breakfast and doubles as a vibrator? Mac people do tend to hold on to their computers longer than most PC users, but does that mean that Apple has the same bond to their legacy computers?
Is my new iMac not going to make it past the age of 4? Will I ever get to see it get on the bus to kindergarden?! Talk amongst yourselves…I’m getting vaclempt.