Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Passwords
I started listening to a new podcast today--Leo Laporte: The Tech Guy
I'm sure none of you know who this guy is, but he used to be the host on Tech TV's The Screensavers. His podcast is pretty interesting.
Anyways, today he pointed to two different password managers--Roboform and LastPass--which allow you to store all your passwords on a usb drive and autofill web forms with your username and password (only when your usb drive is in the PC!). The free version of Roboform only allows you to store 10 passwords, but the free version of LastPass looks like it will do more. I'm trying it when I get home today.
I'm sure none of you know who this guy is, but he used to be the host on Tech TV's The Screensavers. His podcast is pretty interesting.
Anyways, today he pointed to two different password managers--Roboform and LastPass--which allow you to store all your passwords on a usb drive and autofill web forms with your username and password (only when your usb drive is in the PC!). The free version of Roboform only allows you to store 10 passwords, but the free version of LastPass looks like it will do more. I'm trying it when I get home today.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Zune HD
So if you read only one line from this: The Zune HD coupled with the Zune Pass is one of the best musical experiences out there. Period
I've owned the Zune HD for a good 2 months now and feel it is time for a review. Please note that my experience with mp3 players consists of a Creative Zen Xtra, Ipod Shuffle, and Ipod Nano. I have only used an Ipod Touch a few times and although the apps are cool, I've never seen anybody listen to music on one. Huhh....??? It's also worth mentioning that I have developed a deep hatred of Apple over the years because of their insanely high priced devices *coughmacbookcough* and their terrible software *coughitunescough*
Let's give a little backstory first. I was becoming frustrated with my lack of music at work. All streaming video/music websites and software are prohibited from work computers. I had to resort to my Ipod in order to listen to music at work. Now my music collection mostly consists of songs ripped from friends cd's and through the college sharing network. The handfull of music that I have *ehem* obtained online is stuff that is not for sale in the US (Japanese Rock/Pop and European Techno). I was getting tired of listening to the songs in my collection and wanted more options.
I wanted a way to listen to new music at work that was not an online streaming service. Unfortunately the Itunes Genius software only mixes songs from your collection. On top of that it only mixes songs that are in the Itunes store, rendering half my collection useless for mixing.
Enter the Zune Pass.
$14.99 a month for 10 song downloads (to keep) and unlimited access to EVERY song in the Zune library. I can open the software and tell it an artist I like and it returns a 30 song playlist of music from both my collection and the online Zune library. Then if I like the songs I can download them to keep. Not only that, but I can set up a random playlist based on an artist or genre which will update with new music every time I connect my Zune.
Did I mention that if you are in a wifi hotspot that you can access the store directly from the Zune?
So now I have a random playlist of new music related to artists that I like which I can listen to at work.
The Zune HD is all about listening to music, and it does that really well. The device stores extra information about artists like pictures and biographies, and also lists similar artists. As stated before, this is the best music player on the market.
"But wait!" says the Ipod fan, "The Ipod Touch has all those cool apps and games!"
"Really?" I reply, "I have a perfectly functional PC for apps and a DS/PSP for games. Why would I want all that sub-par functionality on my mp3 player?"
The Zune HD does feature a little menu for apps on it, but sadly development is closed off for now. The only apps available are some simple games like chess and PGR, and a weather/calculator app.
It also features an internet browser which works fairly well.
The highlight of the extra features however is the radio, which I use every morning to listen to the Elvis Duran Show. It supports HD radio of course, and also song tagging for later download.
The OLED screen looks amazing. Nuff said.
I get about 2.5 - 3 days of battery life out of it, which translates to about 15 hours.
Microsoft finally has a product to take on the Ipod giant.
I've owned the Zune HD for a good 2 months now and feel it is time for a review. Please note that my experience with mp3 players consists of a Creative Zen Xtra, Ipod Shuffle, and Ipod Nano. I have only used an Ipod Touch a few times and although the apps are cool, I've never seen anybody listen to music on one. Huhh....??? It's also worth mentioning that I have developed a deep hatred of Apple over the years because of their insanely high priced devices *coughmacbookcough* and their terrible software *coughitunescough*
Let's give a little backstory first. I was becoming frustrated with my lack of music at work. All streaming video/music websites and software are prohibited from work computers. I had to resort to my Ipod in order to listen to music at work. Now my music collection mostly consists of songs ripped from friends cd's and through the college sharing network. The handfull of music that I have *ehem* obtained online is stuff that is not for sale in the US (Japanese Rock/Pop and European Techno). I was getting tired of listening to the songs in my collection and wanted more options.
I wanted a way to listen to new music at work that was not an online streaming service. Unfortunately the Itunes Genius software only mixes songs from your collection. On top of that it only mixes songs that are in the Itunes store, rendering half my collection useless for mixing.
Enter the Zune Pass.
$14.99 a month for 10 song downloads (to keep) and unlimited access to EVERY song in the Zune library. I can open the software and tell it an artist I like and it returns a 30 song playlist of music from both my collection and the online Zune library. Then if I like the songs I can download them to keep. Not only that, but I can set up a random playlist based on an artist or genre which will update with new music every time I connect my Zune.
Did I mention that if you are in a wifi hotspot that you can access the store directly from the Zune?
So now I have a random playlist of new music related to artists that I like which I can listen to at work.
The Zune HD is all about listening to music, and it does that really well. The device stores extra information about artists like pictures and biographies, and also lists similar artists. As stated before, this is the best music player on the market.
"But wait!" says the Ipod fan, "The Ipod Touch has all those cool apps and games!"
"Really?" I reply, "I have a perfectly functional PC for apps and a DS/PSP for games. Why would I want all that sub-par functionality on my mp3 player?"
The Zune HD does feature a little menu for apps on it, but sadly development is closed off for now. The only apps available are some simple games like chess and PGR, and a weather/calculator app.
It also features an internet browser which works fairly well.
The highlight of the extra features however is the radio, which I use every morning to listen to the Elvis Duran Show. It supports HD radio of course, and also song tagging for later download.
The OLED screen looks amazing. Nuff said.
I get about 2.5 - 3 days of battery life out of it, which translates to about 15 hours.
Microsoft finally has a product to take on the Ipod giant.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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