plzkthxbai

Spotify announced this week that it’s finally coming to the US. The streaming music service has been hugely popular in Europe since it started in late 2008, but presumably the record label deals have kept it from reaching the US… until now! Spotify offers three plans: Free, Unlimited, and Premium. The service is currently invite-only in the US for the Free plan, but if you are willing to pay $5/month for Unlimited (or $10 for Premium), you can sign up now on the Spotify website. On Thursday morning I received an invite for the free version but quickly upgraded to the Premium plan in order to give the service a fair trial. The Premium version offers mobile streaming, offline support, 320 Kbps high quality audio, and manages your local files in iTunes. So far, I have been extremely impressed with the service!

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This weekend I read a linked post on The Brooks Review which really irritated me. The linked post was about the popular 1Password application. Justin Blanton says:

“While on the topic, if you’re not using 1Password (or similar)—and you can afford it—then you’re an idiot. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but there just isn’t any excuse.”

Not a user of 1Password myself, I was unsurprisingly a bit offended by the “idiot” remark.  Especially because I consider my password management skills to be quite sufficient. Sure, I’ve heard of 1Password and KeePassX before. Many of my friends and coworkers use these type of password managers. Prior to this weekend, I had made a concious decision NOT to use this type of software. I had considered it on many occasions before and had always decided it wasn’t for me. Well, the above quote got me thinking and I decided to spend a day or two revisiting the topic.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the Mac App Store lately. The store is essentially the same thing as the iOS App Store that exists for iPhone and iPad devices, except for Mac OS X applications. The App Store makes it extremely easy to download and install free and not-so-free software. The store features the same familiar screenshots, ratings, and reviews for applications that you would find in the iOS App Store. The Mac App Store was released in late October 2010 during Apple’s “Back to the Mac” keynote event. The App Store currently runs on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and above.

When the Mac App Store was originally announced, I was completely taken by surprise. At first the App Store didn’t seem like such a great idea. Why do we need an App Store for the Mac? It’s easy enough to search for applications, download, and install them the traditional way. Or so I thought, until I used the new store. Just like iOS, Apple makes installing and updating applications extremely easy from the new store. It has motivated me to install (and even buy) more software than ever before.

The "Featured" section of the Mac App Store

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A week ago, my wife Caitlin had her iPhone 4 stolen at a local restaurant here in Raleigh. She was eating with some friends and decided to move outside near the end of the meal. The iPhone presumably slipped out of her pocket as she was getting up. A few minutes later she realized it was missing and went back inside to look for it, but the phone was gone. Her friends tried calling it, speaking with the restaurant staff, and searching all over but they couldn’t find the phone.

She gave me a call and asked if I would log into Find My iPhone on the iPad to see if I could locate her phone. I pulled up her account and it began to locate her phone. Before long, an error appeared above the phone that said “Location Services Disabled”. Uh oh. I have been using Find My iPhone for nearly 2 years now (we have a MobileMe account) and I have never had an issue locating a device before. At the time, I wasn’t sure if the Location services were actually disabled, or if this meant that the phone was simply turned off.

Since I was unable to locate the phone, I tried to use the “Send Message” feature. This feature allows you to send a message and play a beeping sound on the phone. This sound plays until you retrieve the phone and dismiss the notification. I sent a message (with sound) that said something like “Lost Phone. Please call ###-#### to return it!”. The Find My iPhone website seemed to indicate that the message was displayed properly on the device, and later Caitlin received an email confirming this. Great.

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While working on my blog this weekend, I stumbled upon the archives and started to read through some of my old posts. I found a screenshot of my iPhone home screen from August 2008. It’s fascinating to see the apps I was using back then and see how my “top apps” have changed over time. It’s cool to see how the Apple icons have changed, too. Check out that old “SMS Text” app.

August 2008

May 2011

Over the past few months I have been carefully following the news and reviews about Blackberry’s new tablet, the Playbook. I’m not exactly sure why, but something about Blackberry has sparked my interest lately. (Basically, I think their future is looking disastrous… but that’s a topic for another day.) I’ve been surprised by the significant amount of advertising that Blackberry has been rolling out for the Playbook. I’ve seen tons of internet ads, and A LOT of Playbook ads during the NHL Playoffs as well. Blackberry has been running a few different ads, and each seems to have a slightly different marketing message. Is this for college kids? Gamers? Business Exectives? Email junkies?

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Over the last month or so I’ve been on a quest to create the perfect cup of coffee. I’m definitely not there yet, but I think I’m headed down the right path. As a Software Engineer, it’s absolutely critical that I have a good supply of tasty coffee (and, good coding music) in order to keep me wired and productive. I’ve been reading forums, blog posts, tweets, and talking with friends to find some of the key secrets. This post will cover what I’ve learned so far. Read more »

If you’ve been following me on Twitter this week, you’ll know that I recently picked up a shiny new iPad. I decided not to write a review of the iPad right away, but instead spend a week using it and report back with my findings. It’s really easy to jump to conclusions (good or bad) when you first begin using something. I’ve been using it for a few hours every day, and I think I’m starting to see how it will fit into my life. And let me just say, it’s finding it’s niche very nicely. There have been MANY iPad reviews released this week, so I’ll try not to get too wordy…

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Wow, I haven’t written a blog post in weeks! The weather has been getting really nice here in Raleigh, NC and I’ve been trying to spend as much time outside as possible. Although I might not have been inspired to write about tech lately, I’ve definitely been keeping up with it. One of the most exciting things going on right now is obviously the iPad. I reserved mine on March 16th for in-store pickup. I decided to go this approach, rather than pre-ordering, for a couple reasons. I hate waiting around for the FedEx/UPS guy to come so that I don’t miss a package. Also, I wasn’t entirely convinced I would buy one at the time of reserving. I decided this would give me another few weeks to think about it. Not surprisingly, the blogs have been buzzing about iPad related goodness lately and I’ve decided that I will be headed to the Apple Store on launch day.

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I was originally planning to do a post about Google Buzz this weekend, but then something reminded me about  Google Wave. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard anything about Wave in weeks. It occurred to me that one of the most hyped products of 2009 might have fallen completely on it’s face. Ever since Wave was announced at Google I/O last May, there was non-stop hype surrounding the product on Twitter and tech blogs. The hype continued up to the end of September when Google opened up Wave to over 100,000 people, and then for another few weeks while people begged for invites on Twitter and other sites. By the end of October, I had over 25 contacts on Wave and managed to get the bulk of my web-savvy friends using the service. By the middle of November, it seemed like everyone who was remotely interested in Wave had received an invite. Google Wave finally dropped off the trending topics on Twitter and it seemed like the invite hype was effectively dead. It’s been over 2 months since the last activity in my Wave inbox and I can’t help but wonder, what happened?

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