Digital vs Physical Media

Bookshelf full of Books

or iPad?

The days of physical media are numbered.  Take a cursory look at services like iTunes, LoveFilm, Amazon MP3 store and you’ll soon realise that physical copies are dying out to be replaced  by digital media downloaded from the Net. Instead of walking into a shop you simply enter in your card details press buy and voila you have the book or album available for your iPod, phone, and PC. I don’t deny this ease of accessbility is incredibly useful,  however it gives me some sadness deep down in the retro recesses of my heart.

Perhaps some parts of me are just plain old school but I love the idea of collecting media in a way I can physically touch, put on a shelf and pass onto my friends and family. A good example of this is my friend Martin who for most of his life has collected vinyls and placed in them sentimental mementos .  An amazing idea which means in the future revisiting a Vinyl brings back many memories for him and his family, something a  hard drive full of data cannot recreate.

Apple’s ‘Ping’, The Future of Music?

Today Apple have released ‘Ping’ integrated into iTunes which in their own words they describe as a “Social Network for Music”.  Ping will be a way to see what music your friends are listening to aswell as follow the updates of favourite artists such as new single or album release. These updates will be similar to the news feed on facebook and also allow you to see when those artists are playing near you, which friends are attending and buy tickets within iTunes itself. For more features and other information see the official page .

Piclens redefines image viewing on the net

Piclens is an amazing add on for all major internet browsers which completely changes the way you can view photos on the web. If you are familiar with cover flow on Mac’s the interface it is similar to that .Heres a screenshot of a “John Mayer” google image search I did using it. Download Piclens from here . Click here to view a video of it in operation.

Updated MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s, More Bang for Buck!

Went into Exeter’ Apple Store today as the Apple Website was coming back online (always happens when they update). Seems the workers there were even more excited than me about what It could be, apparently they didn’t know what it was going to be. Like many others I thought something was in the works after Engadget reported unknown MacBook part numbers appearing on Best Buys database. Here is what they’ve updated.

The good
• New Core 2 Duo versions across the board, which are apparently 50% faster and more power efficient.
• New GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB.
• Multitouch pad on MacBook Pro.
• New LED option on top of the line 17″ screen.

The bad
• No multitouch or LED on MacBooks.(shame I was hoping for MacBook with Gestures)

• Multitouch trackpad on MacBook Pro is smaller than Air.
• Apple Remote is now a $19 option where as before was free with the product.

Technical info from Gizmodo post .

Taking advantage of Starbucks Wi-Fi

These legends from ‘Improv Everywhere’ take a break from this age of MacBook air ultra-portability. Bringing back the old-school they make use of their desktop computers fully equipped with windows 95 and classic box-like CRT monitors. Hilarious.

View the video below:

Use your iPhone as a remote trackpad using ‘Touchpad’

 Touchpad for the iPhone is built on top of VNsea, but instead of allowing you to access and navigate your desktop on the device, it becomes a a wireless, remote trackpad, which gives you direct access to your system as if you were using a mouse or touch device for input. Looks amazing. If you have a iPhone ( presumably works on iPod touch to) try it out and let me know what its like. Check the video below, to find out more click here.

Retrieve any file on your home computer by email

 I came across this handy way to retrieve any files from your Mac . By using a simple AppleScript in conjunction with Mail.app. When you’ve finished configuring the script, you can send an email to your home computer with a keyword subject and the full path to the file you forgot—say your homework or that big Keynote presentation—and the script will automatically email the file to you.  Quite useful for getting files to your iPhone, touch or other mobile device. Heres the link to the full article.

*Update*- Don’t have a Mac, (like me) windows users click here for similar functionality.