In case you’re wondering, it’s a remix of Nina Simone – Sinnerman, found on the Verve Remixed, Vol 2 album. I picked up the album (actually the first three Verve Remixed albums) and they’re all excellent. Especially “Speak Low (Bent Remix)” by Billie Holiday found on Vol 3.

I had heard of Slacker Radio, but always thought it had a physical device that you needed to purchase in order to listen to the music. It turns out that’s not entirely true. You can actually listen online in your web browser (similiar to Pandora) for free all you want. They also have an excellent iPhone app that gives you a lot of the same functionality as their hardware device, but for free. I’ve been using the iPhone app on and off the past month, so I’m going to be basing my review on that.

First off, I have a regular iPhone. It doesn’t do the faster 3G data transfers (just EDGE.) I have tried other radio applications on my iPhone and found that they either sounded terrible, or skipped/stuttered all of the time (due to the aforementioned EDGE vs. 3G speeds.) Slacker works differently than other streaming radios in that it actually sends you the entire song as fast as it can. This means the odds of it stuttering are pretty slim to none, even on the slower EDGE network. Once a week I drive to Riverside (easily 2 hours each way) and I have only experienced a few “drop outs” of service in that time.

Slacker is different from Pandora in that it has pre-programmed “Stations” of music, similiar to picking a genre on your iPod or type of radio station in your car. The selection is pretty good, too. I sometimes listen to “Electronic Hits” and am surprised at some of the old/rare gems that it chooses to play.

Slacker is also different in that it allows you to skip songs and also ban songs/artists that you no longer want to hear on that channel. If you don’t pay for the service, you are allowed 6 song skips each channel each hour. If you pay their modest subscription fee, you’re free to skip as many songs as you want. No limits. And you can request to hear any artist or song instantly as much as you want.

I recently cancelled my XM radio subscription, so Slacker has basically replaced it. I really think this is the future of in-car/portable radio, due to more and more cell phones being internet-capable. I was even able to use it in the “middle of nowhere” during a vacation getaway up in Julian a few weeks back. I hooked my iPhone up to a set of speakers and put on the Slacker “80s, 90s, & Todays Hits” station as background music to just hanging out with friends. Worked great.

I really recommend this application, especially if you’ve got an iPhone and are tired of hearing the same ol’ stuff in your car. Check it out and let me know what you thought in the comments below.

I always love the concept of random people doing something unexpected in a crowd. It’s funny to see how people react.

I love this rendition; something very pure and calming about it.

_{(or download an mp3.)}

This is the best ever. Just kick off your shoes, curl up next to the fire with a cup of apple cider, and enjoy.

(As heard on the Mikey Show on Rock 105.3)

Overall I like it, but there’s still some slightly rough edges that will hopefully be addressed via minor updates.

Until I’m able to write further on the subject, I’ll leave you with the swank “Now Playing” screen:

7:52 pm Update: If you’re having album art troubles (where some of the album art doesn’t match properly), check out this workaround from Microsoft. I had a few that were off, but are now fixed.

I was using my favorite audio player/manager, MediaMonkey, this afternoon and ran into a really annoying bug. All of the songs in a particular album would play except for one. MediaMonkey would just skip the file, no error or anything.

At first I thought the file was “corrupt”, but it couldn’t be. It had only been ripped a few weeks ago, and plays fine in other players, such as Winamp, VLC and Foobar2000. I started to think logically about the problem, and noticed that particular track had parenthesis in it’s filename. I removed the parathesis, and replaced them with another character. Nope, still skipping.

So I thought more, and concluded that the filename was the longest filename on the album. I removed a few characters and tried again. Voila, now it works!

I do some research and find that MediaMonkey (at least the new beta for Vista) uses the Quicktime API to playback AAC files. I decided to try an experiment, and attempted to load the troublesome file (with it’s long filename) into Quicktime via Quicktime’s own “open file” menu. It’s leads me to a wonderfully unhelpful error message of “Error -37: a bad filename or volume name was encountered”. Oh, really?

Doing even further research, it seems that Quicktime can’t handle a file with a name longer than 60 characters. What the crap?

Searching around the web, I find a handful of people who have run into this same problem. Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is this why iTunes automatically stores most songs in a “cut off filename” state when “Keep my iTunes Folder Organized” is checked?

Ugh. Will someone at Apple get their head outta their butt, fire the entire Quicktime/iTunes for Windows development staff, and start over? I’m tired of it crashing, having exploits, making my computer slow to a crawl, and not playing back “HD” content on even screaming-fast PCs. All major reasons I switched to MediaMonkey. But alas, since MediaMonkey relies on Quicktime for it’s AAC playback, I’m going to have to truncate all my AAC filenames until a fix comes out.

Amazon unveiled their new “amazonmp3” service a short while ago, and it instantly replaced iTunes as my provider for purchasing legal music. Bye bye, iTunes, with your DRM/protection. Yes, I know Apple sells “unprotected” files via their store, but you’re paying more for that. At AmazonMP3, you’re not. Most tracks are .99 or .89, which is fine by me.

If you don’t understand what I’m saying.. If you purchase music through iTunes, just plain ‘ol .99 cent tracks, you’re paying for a track that is “protected” and locked to only work with iTunes and iPods. You can’t using the music in Windows Media Player, or any non-iPod digital audio players (well, you can, if you burn a CD, then re-import it, but that results in a loss of quality, and who has the time?!) — Apple is basically limiting what you can do with music you _own_.

Anyways, Amazon has a little downloader program too to help automatically download tracks you purchased and stick them into Windows Media Player or iTunes for you automatically.

If you like paying for music, head over to Amazon’s site and start browsing. They’ve got over two million songs. And the sound quality is great. Amazon says they’re 256kbps, but some of the tracks I’ve downloaded are actually VBR MP3s, encoded with Lame 3.97, using the profile “MP3 VBR V0”. If you ask the guys over at Hydrogen Audio, they’ll tell you those settings are awesome.

Apple announced all new iPods today, and whoopty-do, they manage to screw it up pretty bad.

1. Ringtones cost extra — Yeah, I really want to spend .99 cents more to take a PIECE of a song I already paid .99 for and make it into a ringtone. I also DO NOT WANT the ability to use tracks I ripped myself and convert them to ringtones. Bind my hands, please.
2. iPhone is now $200 cheaper — All you suckers who paid top dollar for the privilage of having an iPhone right away.. I am pointing and laughing at you. I still don’t want an iPhone, even with the cheaper price point.
3. The new Nano looks terrible — I know some people will disagree with me and say it’s beautiful, but I’m sorry, you’re wrong. It’s like a hobbit made love to one of the new “classic” iPods. Rumors of terrible performance (coverflow is jerky, etc.) and the small video screen don’t help my desire to get one at all.
4. The new iPod “touch”, oh wait, don’t you mean IPHONE? — Jeez, you might as well buy an iPhone. Or wait for iPhone v2, where they finally put WiFi into the iPhone. Shouldn’t they also have changed the form factor just a tad? I mean, it’s skinnier, sure, but what about making the screen bigger? Or changing up the face.. just anything to make it stand out against an iPhone. And don’t just disable things, either, *cough*e-mail*cough* on the iPod Touch to make it not compete with the iPhone.
5. Starbucks integration; who cares? — So, your iPod Touch will light up like Christmas every time you walk past a Starbucks? And you’ll get to see what artist/song is currently playing? And be able to buy it?!? It sounds like you want to force advertising in my face. And for all that, I don’t even get free WiFi internet access? Boohoo, Starbucks. Hopefully you can turn this “feature” off. I’m sure Starbucks and Apple will make gakillions of dollars, though. Whatever.
6. No WiFi syncing — Isn’t this obvious? You’ve got an iPod now with WiFi capabilities.. why can’t someone sync it when they get home automatically through the power of WiFi?

Enjoy! I didn’t like it at first, but it’s growing on me. I guess I was just expecting something a little more “large budget”. But some shots stand out, such as the hands grabbing her underwater, and the very large dress at the end. Yay Eisley!