No, that wasn’t a typo. For those of you that know me well enough, that statement is like saying that the Earth is just a little big.

With all these sites that I visit that have to do with music, it’s a wonder I can even settle on one to browse regularly. I have an account with Last.fm… correction: HAD an account with Last.fm. It was a cool site for friend networking, kind of like MySpace, but based around your music tastes. Good concept, but it was a little complicated sometimes and didn’t have some of the features I was thinking of. I just discontinued it today, especially after using a new service that goes by the name of iLike.

The one thing I hated the most about Last.fm is their way of getting info on what music you’re currently listening to. I had iTunes open and playing music, then I had to open Last.fm’s app so it could get the info from iTunes to send to Last.fm’s servers. This uses a process they call “scrobbling”, and at times it just kept getting hung up! Information on my music listening wouldn’t show up sometimes for hours. Other things about the service were good, but having to keep an extra app open and wait times being an annoyance were starting to get to me.

Enter iLike.com. The service is still in beta status but, so far with the exception of a couple hangups, it seems to work a lot smoother than Last.fm. First, when you sign up, you have to download the iLike plugin for iTunes (yes it only works with iTunes for Windows and also Macintosh… for now!). That’s right… it’s not a full-blown app, it’s just a plugin that works with iTunes! I like not having another app to open. (The downside to this: you can’t turn off the plugin without taking it out of your “Library” folder… I’ll write to them about this!)

Then, this little baby not only starts feeding information to their servers on what you’re listening to, but all your listening habits info, too. This all shows up on your main profile. If you want, you can let the service know what artist listening info you’d like to leave off your profile as well. From there, it’s database works with your complete listening history (along with any direct artist “likes” that you picked while signing up) to see what music-loving friends you would be compatible with. The way the iLike service does these things alone beats Last.fm by a landslide!

As far as meeting and communicating with users that have similar tastes, it’s very easy to do so, much like other sites. There are at least three ways to communicate: music recommendations sent out en massé or to individuals, tag messages and private messages. So far, I’ve met seven people on iLike. I’ve always been sociable, so I’ve been having a good time with this.

Even though iLike is still in beta status, barely out of the alpha gate, it’s becoming a good experience. The designers and programmers are working on the remaining bugs and I’ve been seeing improvements every few days. Let’s hope that this service isn’t already eclipsed by anyone else because, with it’s minimalist design and features compared to Last.fm, it deserves to get a lot bigger in order to see what it can really be capable of!

Click here for my iLike profile… and cheers!

Tags: iLike, Social, Networking

In my recent postings, I talked about how my vacation was going. I think it went well… very well. Granted, I didn’t relax much, choosing instead to do lots of work around the home. Sometimes, that can be even better than just relaxing to the point of laziness! I think, either way I could have chosen to go, the time would’ve flown by regardless.

Now, in a few minutes, it’s with a heavy heart that I will be going back to my work to start off the workweek. Unfortunately, I’m pulling an overnight shift… what a way to get back to work! Ah well, it is good to be employed so I can’t complain too much. I did visit this last Friday to pick up my wife’s prescriptions. Everyone who noticed seemed glad to see me and I had to admit that it was nice to be there. Kinda like being in my natural element again! Well, I gotta go now.

Wish me luck!

Tags: Esoterik

It’s not everyday that I see a music application that, not only works well with iTunes, but makes your music life easier and fun. Potion Factory is one of the many small developers out there creating music and sound applications that work with the iLife suite of Apple apps. So far, they have two established applications under their belt. They’re working on their third one called Tangerine. What a nice, calm name for a program! Tangerine does one thing for you: helps you create playlists in iTunes where selections are based on beats-per-minute and the intensity of those beats.

There have been one or two apps I’ve seen on Versiontracker that were built for this purpose as well. These kind of applications have to first analyze your music collection. I tried out one of these (I can’t remember the name) and it took the program several hours to analyze my library of, then, 1500 songs. It didn’t even get close to finishing during that time, causing me to quit it and never open the app again!

I downloaded Tangerine, opened it and it didn’t waste any time analyzing my music library, which now is over 2000 songs. I dreaded the wait time on this one but, fortunately, the estimated time turned out to be an hour. So I did some things around the house, came back to it, and it was done in about 45 minutes. Much better analysis time! Now to see just what this thing can do, I immediately selected the plus button to make a new playlist. A drop down menu appears with sliders to control the range of BPM’s and beat intensities you want the songs in the playlist to be around. You can also dictate the playlist duration and specific BPM patterns (there are four patterns available) you want the selections to be in. Other options include controlling the frequency of rated songs and duplicate track removal. In the menubar, there’s even an option to save the BPM’s into each track’s metadata (this may take as long as the initial analysis, due to encoding.)
After hitting create, it gave me a playlist that exceeded my expectations, considering that not many programs can accurately measure BPM or beat strength. If you click on the post’s picture, you’ll see my fourth playlist run-through. Tangerine’s preferences are simple, with a pane to set up exclusion rules for kinds of tracks you don’t want added. The pane works similar to iTunes’ Smart Playlist editing. The developer even included a default rule set that works well for most trial runs. If you’re not quite satistfied with the order of the tracks, you can simply click-and-drag the boxes that represent the songs to wherever you want them. Even though you can save newly-created playlist to iTunes, you don’t have to resort to flipping back to iTunes to play it. Tangerine’s standalone audio capabilities perform the job admirably.

My music collection, small by most audiophile’s standards, runs the gamut from classical and new age to rock and metal to industrial, eurodance and techno. I’ve found through experimentation that lower beat intensities will usually procure music along the lines of rock and metal. Higher beat strengths yield more “danceable” music. One playlist made with higher beat strengths gave me a good dance mix with a little electronica thrown in for variety. Much less work than creating a Smart Playlist in iTunes and utilizing Party Shuffle, then having to re-order the tracks for consistency from one song to the next.

Potion Factory has done a great job with this app, even with it still in beta status. However, there are some bugs to work out. After making my first playlist, the “+” button (Make new playlist) wouldn’t work. I shut down the app, restarted, and everything was fine. The problem hasn’t repeated itself with other lists, but it’s worth mentioning. Also, sometimes the artwork only shows up half-and-half, as if the app had trouble generating it all the way from the top of the image to the bottom. The BPM analysis, while being good, can still use some refinement. Somehow, I don’t think Fear Factory’s “Machines of Hate” is a mere 124 BPM’s (more like 180!). Maybe the way the song starts out threw Tangerine for a loop. There is a column for song ratings, but it doesn’t seem to let you rate songs independently of iTunes. Click-dragging the song order on the graphical list works and is reflected on playback, but the song order in the list view stays the same… and you can’t reorder the tracks in the list view. One more thing… there doesn’t seem to be a way to make a playlist based upon the Smart Playlists that are displayed. Making a playlist after selecting a Smart Playlist only results in tracks from the main library. This is, I think, the only really bad omission.

Other than the bugs mentioned, Tangerine is shaping up to be a worthy iTunes companion and a fine addition to any Mac users Application folder. It has some awesome features, but I could suggest a few more. A built-in EQ would be nice. Also, while the BPM pattern generator’s four presets are good for most users, some may want more variety to choose from. Maybe even an option inside the drop-down pane to customize a pattern. However, I can work around these small details. This is an application I’m going to enjoy playing around with and it will make my listening hours more pleasureable!

(Kudos to Sebastian of Void Inside for the heads-up!)

Tags: Tangerine, iTunes, Potion Factory, Playlists, Music Apps

Y’know during this vacation, just when I think I’ve done enough around the home to where I think I can take the next day to relax, I start thinking of other things to do! What is wrong with me? Am I physically and mentally unable to just calm down and relax? A good friend of mine once said that I was the type of person that just can’t stand still. I always have to be doing something. Well… sometimes I think that when I’m sitting at the computer reading online, I’m being lazy. I’ve cleaned, straightened, organized this whole apartment, more than what it’s ever been in the two years we’ve lived here. I’ve gotten rid of soooooo much clutter, filed away everything imaginable and even shredded stacks of old bill reciepts and documents. All this in the past four days…. and I’m still finding things to do, clean and organize!!

Some of the things I planned to do to relax included: Sitting on the patio for a couple of hours, watching the hummingbirds, maybe even take more snapshots of them; playing the demo of Civilization IV that’s been sitting on my computer desktop begging for attention; Work on our personal family website to finally have a dedicated page for each of our birds…. Ok maybe that last one may not be relaxing, but it’s fun to do anyways! All I’ve done this week to have fun is going out for short walks and enjoying the sunshine. Oh, and listen to some great music, too.

I do have a healthy sense of accomplishment in what I’ve done this week, though! The home is one of those places that is a huge part of your life and helps to keep you balanced and grounded. When it’s a mess, your life is a mess. It’s a cathartic thing to do a “spring cleaning” of your life. I can’t complain too much about doing this on vacation because, as the saying goes, if not now… when?

Now I’m off to organize the music clutter in the living room. Hopefully, that will be the last thing! Cheers!

Tags: Esoterik

Well, I’ve concluded my second day of vacation. Much of these past two days wasn’t really spent doing nothing however. A lot of work had to be done around the apartment. Filing, shredding, re-organizing, dusting… there was so much stuff that built up in a 7 to 12 month time period where we’ve gotten lazy and just accumulated piles upon piles. After today, things are starting to look really neat and organized. More work on it tomorrow, but not much more!

I’ll write more tomorrow, especially after reading all about the controversy over DRM. Cheers!