How to move the tunes without missing a beat

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

Working with iTunes can be a pain sometimes. Just listen to Leigh on our podcast — 2gnj Episode 16: Itunes is a Pain.

Leigh was just trying to purchase a the season premiere of the tv show Office. Unfortunately, she did it with her nano connected. Listen to hear how she really had a hard time doing it because iTunes kept wanting to make an upgrade to the iPod. Things got bad and not so nice. She couldn’t do it.

Another pain with iTunes is moving the files from place to place. Don’t move around or delete music or movie files directly from your hard drive. Much to many people’s dismay. Good old DRM and wanting to keep music from being shared keeps us from fair use to get it from one place on our hard drive to another. Sigh.

Now, Apple prides itself on being great design and all that. Ability to use and feel good about using a product is #1 principle on ‘design’.

I like Apple and what it’s doing today. I find them to have great products that feel good to use and make me love them.

That’s why I bring you this article from the HiFi Blog on how to move your tunes from one place to another.

HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (when you don’t let iTunes manage your music library

Let’s drop another pain from the iTunes fray.

Do you have any iTunes horror stories? We’d love to hear about them, maybe have you on the podcast to share them.

Drop a comment here and let’s take the pain outta iTunes and music listening.

Rent a car? Don’t try to pay cash!

Posted by Ed:
I recently rented a car from one of the LARGE rental car chains.  The rental went smoothly and I even got the insurance.  When I returned the car I had the cash in my pocket to pay for it.  The employee told me that she could accept cash, but could not make change.  How about that?  I had to pay with a credit card and then hope that I remembered to deposite the money to cover it.  By the time the bill comes to me I will have already spent the cash in my pocket and forgotten to deposite the money and make the payment to the credit card company.  Then the credit card company will charge me the finance charge on top of it.  Sigh.  We are moving to a cashless society very quickly, and it’s costing us quite a lot of money.  The credit card companies must be raking in the profits because they are right in the middle of all of these transactions, and they are hoping that we will forget to pay the bill so that they can collect even more.  We pay all this money to the government (in taxes) to create currency, and then we go and use credit cards for transactions anyway.  Sometimes it seems that advancements in technology always make me spend more money.  With that said, go out and spend cash on some new technology today.  Go justify the tax money that you pay to have currency produced.

XM Satellite Radio Needs a Technology Channel

I have been an XM satellite  subscriber for two years and love the service.  I enjoy going from one end of the country to the other without losing a channel or trying to fight through the local stations to find something I may be mildly interested in.  Ok, I don’t drive that much but it does come in handy when driving long distances.  As a technology buff I want that tech news every day.  I want new topics to put on my podcast and I guess I need to subscribe to technology podcasts to get my tech fix instead.  (Speaking of which, have you subscribed to the 2 guys named Joe podcast yet?)  XM had a CNET channel at one time but it’s not clear where it went.  I submitted a request to XM but don’t anticipate much of a response.  If I get one, I will post it here for all of you who are interested.

Nike+Ipod = More to learn about

Posted by Ed:

I spoke with a woman today who was interested in the Nike+Ipod for when she was running. She liked it because it kept track of her mileage . What does the nike ipod offer? Possible podcast topic? Also, she said that if she got an ipod, it would sit in the closet for weeks because she doesn’t
have the time to figure it out.  I related it to my willingness to learn how
to sew, but I don’t have the time to learn it.  If I had a sewing machine, it would sit in the closet for months because I don’t have the time to figure it out.  Does that happen to you?  What piece of technology do you put on the shelf because you don’t have time to learn it?

Shoplifting false alarms

Posted by Ed:
Ever walk out of a store that has those anti-shoplifting sensors only to have the darn thing go off when you didn’t steal anything?  I saw this a lot during the holiday season.  I watched people get the “I didn’t do it” look on their faces as they walk out of the store.  They are minding their own business exiting the store and then they have to turn around to see if any store clerk really cares that the alarm is going off.  The industry calls this “False alarms” and stores try their best to prevent it.  Ever have a retail worker chase after you for setting off an alarm that was not your fault to begin with?  What’s even more alarming is when the siren goes off and no employee cares.  That’s when you feel real good about the store and it’s contents.  I recently bought an ethernet switch at a circuit city, walked out of the store with no problems.  I then walked into a Bed Bath and Beyond to look for some pillows.  As I walked out of the store, the sirens went off.  I kept walking without looking back because I knew I had done nothing wrong.  And you know what?  No one cared.  No employee tried to stop me, no employee even asked me to stop.  How effective are these devices really?

Pandora kinda kicks ass

Posted by Ed:

I am a big music fan and am always on the lookout for new music that I like to listen to.  I began using a service by Pandora  to help me find music that I like, and I really love it.  They do some analysis of music to catagorize the sounds in the music, and this makes it easier for people to find music that matches songs they like.  For instance, it asked me what songs or artists I like and I entered in Green Day, Carbon Leaf, Andrew W. K, and Disturbed, and It started playing songs for me and I actually like most of them.  The sound quality is pretty good too.  I gave a thumbs down to the songs I didn’t like and it skipped to the next tune.  The more feedback you give Pandora, the more it can tailor the music to your liking.  You can create stations based on types of music that you like (depending on the mood you are in.)  I have  rock station and a classical station that I created for myself.  Now if I can only listen to it through the bloody proxy server I’m behind her at work.  Arrrrrrrgggggg.  Give it a try if you are not behind a proxy server that blocks streaming music and let us know what you think.