A lot of news got snowed under by the mountain of savings that happened this past week. We shuffle through the marketing fluff to find you the best in bad jokes and the worst in horrible puns. We find some fun additions to our favorite software bundles, we discuss the burning of books, the navigational tactics of the vikings and the food addictions of mustache aficionados world wide.
Did you hear the one about the 2 guys who walked into a bar? Third one ducked! You need to listen to this show, the jokes are bad the news is fun and the vocabulary is off the chart!
No longer in Beta, Google has announced an update to their Google Music Service. Here is the breakdown.
The service will remain free to host 20,000 of your tracks online, for streaming playback via mobile devices, download and syncing of playlists between devices. I love being able to set a playlist as available for offline playback and forget about it until I want to listen to the music when a connection isn’t there. The service downloads music in the background, and has the ability to limit music streaming and downloads to wifi connections only if you are worried about blowing your data cap.
You can now buy tracks via the Android Market, and they will be available immediately in your online library, and sync to your computer shortly thereafter. There are a pretty good amount of free tracks available right now, some good some bad, some neither here nor there. You can do all of this from your browser, and the music shows up in your library within seconds.
The missing cog so far has been the social element. Google Music now allows your friends to listen to any song you buy once, via invitation. More than enough to share and let them know f they would like to buy it on their own. I like this addition, and I hope that they one day will open the sharing up to the rest of the songs in our library as well, but baby steps here folks.
The service now goes up against the Apple Music store directly, If yo have an Android device 2.2+ and you want the Music app update you can always download it immediately, or wait for the app store to prompt you. I like this player and I hope they come out with a app based client for iOs devices soon.
We’re all here because we’re not all there tonight!
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This week we have a full crew and half a deck of cards. So… after much trial and error it turns out the problem with the computer was not entirely the sound card but rather some sound card, some windows 7 junk and some cable problems. I’ve heard you have cable problems and I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but a hiss ain’t one. Turns out I was making things to complicated for my own good, Quite a common mistake I make. Overlooking the simple in favor of elaborate fixes. But We’re back with a brand new look and lease on life.
We hit the video game and tech news Hard this week. When it comes right down to it. People love themselves some coffee but in all honesty the Summertime is a bad time for coffee news. Its hot out, and one can only discuss the Iced Coffee Paradox only so many times. We have news from all over and an attitude straight outta Philly. Check out this weeks Hijinks.
Geek Cruft
Geeky This Week
Podcamp Philly! It’s coming and its going to be fantastic
Google is acquiring Motorola Mobility, which means Google now has a direct line to the manufacture of mobile devices. This means that the competition between the big three in smartphone technology is going to get interesting. Apple already has a direct line to manufacture its own devices. Microsoft not so much. Now Google and Android have not only gained access to all of the patents that Motorola had in their kitty, but they also gain access, directly to any hardware that motorola had in development.
Now I love Android, I find it to be a fantastic Mobile OS, however its open nature does have limitations. Without pushing for deep integration with hardware the OS has been able to spread rapidly. However Perhaps by acquiring a true hardware giant in the industry will push for such integration, and break new ground in terms of overall OS Speed, and reliability.
So far some of the best phones for Android have been a toss up between the Google developed devices and the Motorola. Although some people will disagree with that.
I can only hope that this will lead to more robust android core, and better class of phones. I love my original Droid, and I’m not due to get a new phone until after the new year, what do you think the chances of getting an awesome new Google Phone out by then are?
We touch on the recent Hacker Crackdown / Backdown. A bit of Lulz, a bit of Sneakers, Converse Sneakers. We talk about social music and social networks. Google+ and beyond. We also discuss the fun and interesting ways in which tiered data plans will be the death of all of our wallets.
Parents are wonderful creatures… And as with any blanket statements there will always be exceptions, but Parents of a certain age and new technology do not always mix. Teach Parents Tech aims to help fix that issue. Yes it started as a holiday helper. but there is never a wrong time to reach out and help a family member.
Enter the fine folks at Google, who have not only developed this wonderful web form for easy tutorial transmission. This helps but realize that people in the know are often blindsided by questions. This way we have a resource to turn to to give our wonderful parental units quick, direct tutorial explainations on how to do very around 52 common tasks. Now that is a lot of support that you don’t have on your plate anymore.
Can you hear the music? Well now it lives in the cloud. This isn’t just talking to angels, a stairway to heaven or any other bad pun you can think of this is real, good old-fashioned music, that you own already, streaming to you anywhere, anytime. The beta is available for sign ups at Music.google.com. And here is how it works. You upload your music to the service, your own songs, and then they become available to your android phone, via a spiffy new app. Or are playable in any browser out there, from anywhere.
Sounds too good to be true? Well for right now the service is free, no word yet on the pricing, and no idea how Google plans to make money off of this but it is astounding the amount of features are available at launch.
Good Stuff: Everything is at your fingertips, literally, your phone has the ability to browse, search and organize your library just as easily as your internet browser does. And there does not seem to be any limit to the number of clients who can access the stuff at once.
The layout you can embiggen on the right is beautiful and smooth. The features just seem to work. The only complaint i have is i kinda like the player stuff to be on the top of the page but after a day or so I’m used to it. click the little arrow next to any song to add it to a playlist, create an instant mix based off this song, or a selection of songs. Overall it is a wonderful service. The desktop client has a version for Mac, PC and Linux! As of yet there is no App for iOS.
Bad Stuff: The streaming playback needs a decent internet connection obviously, so if you are on a metered Data plan, or in an area with poor reception this might not be the best time to surf for music, unless you plan… On your phone you can even mark a playlist as Available offline and your phone will download the playlist to your phone so when your network cuts out you will still be set to go. I love this feature! So Google saw that network connectivity isn’t a guaranteed thing and even built a feature into the software to fix it. And other than the initial setup there isn’t a real bad thing about the service unless you have to yell.
Damn you iTunes!
Google Music does integrate with iTunes nicely, even importing all music and playlists directly from your existing library. But if you bought any music from Apple way back when they were the champion of DRM you won’t be able to use that music in anything but iTunes. Yes you can pay Apple 30 cents per song to free your music, for me that would be able $87 dollars to free the 289 songs we have in our library from those dark times when both my wife and I had iPods, gift cards and those wonderful Pepsi giveaways. Yes we could burn each song to a CD and rip the CD back into the library and free them but this is beyond the point. That is just annoying, and would take roughly 41 or 42 CD’s. But all new music you buy from iTunes works quite well in this application.
Time: I have a modest library of over 8,000 songs, not many by some people’s standards but still not a small amount. this took about 4 days of syncing to get all the music up. The good thing is that if you have any music in playlists in iTunes or Windows Media Player they get uploaded first, and as each song is uploaded they are available to play on any device. So yes this is a ton of music and takes a bit to set up, but once its up man alive is it fantastic. And the application on your machine can even keep track of your iTunes and other media libraries to make sure your online library stays in order, and updated.
Family Friendly: My wife is a long suffering WOG, Wife of a Geek. She puts up with a ton of extra steps to do things that should be dead simple, just because I have goofy and geeky gadgets everywhere. Our Main TV in the House has Google TV on it, and as much of a fan of the system as I am she just wants to watch TV and doesn’t understand the need for an extra gadget in her way. The Xbox talks to the PC, there is a file server in the garage, I have Ethernet running in our walls, and constantly fidget with things. If this service touched her music I’d be dead. No bones about it I have a feeling that would be the final straw. She can take the experiments with coffee vodka in the freezer, the goofy gadgets on the TV, she enjoys the home network and being able to print from any room in the house, when it works.
But if I messed with her iTunes Library it would be a bad day for me. The fact that the software works well with iTunes and doesn’t interfere with her ability to buy music and have it on her iPod is a fantastic thing! I can’t wait for the Google Music app for Google TV!
I feel bad for Skype, well as much as I can feel bad about any business that was just purchased for a sum I will never see in my life. 8.5 billion in cash. the company has been passed around a lot. it seems the service is great but the marriage had its problems. And to be honest ebay always seemed like the wrong fit for a telephony company.
Working with and being part of Microsoft could be a fantastic transition for Skype. between skype coming to Kinect, Xbox and windows mobile platforms. It does leave the support for the software on other platforms in doubt. Not that a company with Microsoft’s footprint couldn’t do it but rather that any delay will be seen as a slight.
Being that I’m nto a heavy user of the service I won’t be using any sleep but I honestly hope for good things for Skype.
After recently downloading Google Chrome, I found an application that was truly a blessing. After installing the app, it will bring you to NESbox.com. This website has a huge library of old Nintendo games. The list goes from Super Mario Bros. to Contra, and Blades of Steel to Ice Climber. You could be busy for hours just sitting in your office, or at home, playing all the classic games you played back in the day. Although most of these games were released, some are actually considered bootlegs. However, you can still enjoy every game, just like you did back then. From one gamer to another, check this out and let me know what you think.
Tonight’s show has a bit of things you may hear elsewhere, Like Net Neutrality and Facebook Places A bit you may find intriguing like Coffee toothpicks and bits that just had to be shared because of their sheer awesomeness, like a set of filing cabinets… Wait…. Doesn’t sound too awesome? Well you need to listen in to find out why they ARE!
Life is still throwing curveballs and I’m still fouling them off. But I think I’m wearing the pitcher down a bit. So Sports metaphors aside. Its late, the show must go on and I have a ton of great things to share. Trying to keep the tone light and fluffy, way too much doom and gloom in the world. We need more fluffy, bright shiny and fun news.
Today’s selection is filled to the brim with awesome. I’m going to be working on a couple videos this week and some product reviews so While the stuff isn’t out yet I have big plans! So for tonight i collected the best of this past week’s news and shared it in one easy to enjoy format.
On today’s show we discuss the video rundown from last week, Lasers, Darth Vader, Knock off Toys, Google drops a lawn ornament, Steve Jobs defends his ideas, and The Grill gets its due.
BP Gulf Oil Spill Continues to run, Methods are getting desperate,
Privacy, Facebook loves you and reads your diary
Google Wifi Kerfuffle. Company Slogan or no, its bothersome
General News and tomfoolery seen through a hazy weekend. But that little fact can’t stop the awesome news and tech we have coming for you tonight. I have a heavy does of reality and honest to goodness real news to talk about from apple running at HTC to the importance of Adopt a Newb. You’ll need to listen to find out the particulars
Turkey Hangover ain’t no joke
Thanks for Listening & Stay Caffeinated!
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