I present you this website through the medium of music!
I came across this website over at MandyMadrox.com and wondered what it would be like if I gave it the URL of my blog and my photography to see what they sounded like. My photography is a fairly chilled tune with a nice bit of synth in there for good measure my blog, however, is a completely different affair. I’ve thought of the best way to describe it but I really can’t other than it’s a mess of organ notes playing an odd scale.
The way Code Organ works is that it looks at the ‘body’ content of your page, ignores letters that isn’t a note, and from the rest it determines your most regularly used note. It also determines whether it’s a major or minor note if the number is even or odd. The next thing it does is to figure out what synth to use which is done based on the total amount characters used on that page and its percentage content. Finally it picks out a lovely drum loop by calculating the ratio of characters on the page versus the number of characters that are actually music notes.
It’s a pretty cool thing to mess around with and by putting in random URLs you can find some interesting tunes to listen to. If you want a rather long tune to listen to Wiki’s page on the Meaning of Life should do you just fine!
1984? Never heard of it!
In another twist of irony Apple has again proven that it’s more like ‘1984′ than it cares to admit. Before Apple would just refuse apps for a silly reason like Tweetie. Now, however, they’ve decided to remove outright any app that is slightly racy. What’s odd is they don’t seem to have applied this new stance to all apps as just now I was able to search and find the Playboy app.
So yet again Apple is jumping headfirst into a situation without actually thinking it through. Not only that it’s another example of Apple exerting it’s totalitarian control over what you can and can’t have on its phone. What is equally as ironic as the Playboy app is that fact that, using Safari, you can browse as many adult based sites as you like so what’s the point in yanking all the adult apps? According to the Beeb’s report about this Phil Schiller put it down to complaints from women and parents alike about the nature of the applications that could be found on its App Store. However I feel that Apple’s approach is wholly mis-guided and while they should listen to complaints and act upon them, banning these apps outright wasn’t the way to go.
There are many different avenues they could’ve gone down. First and foremost as far as parents whose children own an iPhone some sort of parental control could have been added to the next version of the iPhone firmware. This would allow parents to control what their children can and can’t download as far as apps are concerned and as long as all apps are age rated appropriately there shouldn’t be much issue with that. Added to this you could even have a filter that hides any adult content so you’d never know it was even there. In respect to those apps deemed degrading by all means take it up with the developer but you shouldn’t tar everyone with the same brush. At the same time though just because some people think something is degrading to women there are others who disagree and I’m not talking about men either. This however is a long-standing argument that has been around probably as long as pornography has and that’s a long time. However this does feel like the app store is run by those too scared to accept diversity in its applications and are quick to respond with knee-jerk reactions.
I’m hoping that in the end Apple will realise that what they have done was not right and that they should adopt a different method. They have to accept the fact that a portion of their user base want these types of apps along with companies ready to develop for them. At the same time they know now that the current setup of the App Store is broken with respect to adult content and needs to be corrected. While you may or may not like this type of content it is unfair to remove it outright when there is clearly other, fairer ways, to deal with the situation.
September 23rd, 2009
Pete
Just so darn useful
I’m a big Mac user at home. In fact the only time these days the only time I use a Windows machine is either when I’m at work or help Cati with stuff on her laptop/PC. However there are few things that I miss when I’m working in Windows but if there is one application I wish I had in Windows is Quicksilver.
Quicksilver (QS) is a now open source project which pretty much will replace finder. Why? Because you can do a heck of a lot with Quicksilver. First and foremost many people use it to launch applications, by invoking Quicksilver you can type the name of the application you wish to launch and, well, launch it. Fair enough you can do this in finder but you can do more. Say you invoke QS and type in iTunes, from there you can actually browse into your library and play a song. You can then browse to another and queue that track to play after the one you’re just playing and so on. Already you’re doing something Apple OSX’s finder wishes it could do. The list of actions you can do is almost endless. You can stack things into a shelf so you can access frequently used stuff not to mention my favourite ability which is finding a file or files, chosing to send them to someone and selecting a contact and watch as QS sends an e-mail without me even needing to open Mail.
It’s intuitive workflow style makes this application what it is and it’s why I love it so much. Things involving several mouse clicks and some hunting a lot quicker. I know there are Windows alternatives but none are as powerful and extensible as Quicksilver. In fact Quicksilver is probably one of the most powerful applications you can get for your Mac and best of all it’s free! It’s a application that I think any Mac user should have because it just makes sense.
If you’re thinking of giving Quicksilver a try have a look at these guides over at Lifehacker:
Future of online music?
So this past week Spotify launched it’s iPhone & Android application to allow it’s premium members the ability to tap into it’s music library on the go. Almost immediately people were complaining on the iTunes store about the fact that you have to pay to use it. The root cause being that the desktop version of Spotify is free to use. Do they have a point and is Spotify the way forward for online music?
Before the iPhone app I happily used the Spotify desktop application and put up with the ads as really I didn’t see the point in the premium account. At the time the bonus of the premium account was higher bit-rate tracks, no ads and a few other things besides. However once the iPhone application was released I took the plunge. For the price of the premium account (£10/mnth) I now have the ability to stream music on 3G and sync music for offline play. When you consider the cost benefit in terms of what you get it’s a pretty good deal. Consider that in the short time I’ve been a premium member I’ve synced four Kings of Leon albums, one album by Prodigy and another by Kimya Dawson. The cost of this through iTunes, where I buy most of my music, would be £47.85 so I’ve already made a saving. Now I appreciate I don’t “own” these albums. If I don’t renew my subscription come month end I will lose the ability to use the application and those offline playlists. Those who are against paying for Spotify point out that a years subscription costs £120 which is a lot of money for a service whereby in the end, you don’t own any of that music.
However I’ve chosen to look at the flipside. There are many times where I’ve heard a song that I like and thought of downloading an album to listen to more of their stuff or a friend has recommended at artist they think I might like but decided against it in case I don’t like it. Spotify allows me to check these artists out with out paying for that album. Now I appreciate the free desktop version of Spotify allowed me to do this but now if I do like it I don’t have to buy that album straight away. I can listen to it a few times, decide if I want to add it to my collection. On the cost side, if I sync more that 12 songs in a given month then, going by the average cost of a song in iTunes, again I’ve already made a saving. As far as the negative reviews on the iTunes store it’s been no secret that it was going to be a premium member only application. It’s also not the only company to employ this strategy when it comes to iPhone access. Remember the Milk, the online task management website, only allows its Pro members the ability to use its iPhone application.
So is Spotify the way forward for online music? I’d say it was complimentary rather than the way to follow. Spotify frees music lovers from having to buy a CD and wonder whether they’ve made a good choice and if not, live with an album they’ll never listen to again. It allows you, the listener, to be discerning in your choice of what you will actually purchase from your music provider be it iTunes or your local music store. Yes there are limitations to the service for a start there is nowhere near the same amount of music and artists on there as you would find in iTunes. A very good friend of mine has told me that one artist he listens to used to have 5 albums on Spotify but now just has the one. There could be licensing reasons for this decline but it is a bit of a concern.
However at the end of the day this is an amazing piece of software. The quality over 3G in my limited amount of testing is superb and the offline synching when on wi-fi was a breeze. It’s implemented well and is a real alternative for music listeners, the free offline application being a fantastic start point and the iPhone/Android app being there for those who wish to step up to premium. Yes it’s a little costly but when you do some of the math you find out it’s pretty good deal and Spotify isn’t forcing anyone to pay for premium. In some ways though the naysayers do have a point and they could create a free iPhone application to use but then if it wants to grow and increase it’s music library the money has got to come from somewhere and that somewhere I feel is the iPhone application. With it being locked to premium members only I would imagine more and more people will sign up to that service.
Look at our Google style 'W'
I must admit that I’m pretty late to this party. In fact it was someone at Taizé who pointed me in it’s direction. What I’m talking about is Google Wave, the big thing Google announced before Chrome OS. In simple terms it’s Google’s way of attempting to re-work how we and the Internet work. In the presentation video you can watch (which is quite long) the first thing they point out is Internet communications via e-mail or chat were digital ways of copying what we did in analogue. It was also pointed out that as the Internet has matured nothing has changed as the technologies are largely stayed the same.
So the clever people at Google have put forth Google Wave as the new way of communicating on the web. The main thing is that a lot of it is real time. You can create a “wave” and send it to a friend, they can reply to that and if you’re online it would show up real time. You can also reply at any point in the message so you can reply to specific parts. The real-time element means if both on line it sort of like chat however if one is offline it’s very much like e-mail. At the same time you can then include someone else on the wave and they can see all or just part of the full wave. You can also include your Blogger account as a recipient and post to your blog. Then if people reply they then show up in your wave account and you can reply there without going to your blog.
It’s this central hub aspect of Google Wave that I like. I comment on a few blogs as well as things like Twitter and Facebook. If the Wave API was include in all these services it would be fantastic. One central location where I can reply to any message I receive in the online world and thanks to Wave it’s not a far fetched idea. However one wonders how this will relate to those who want to Wave but don’t want to use a Googlemail account. I mean I have a gmail account and use it for things like calendar and groups but I don’t use it as my main e-mail account. Instead I use my e-mail attached to this domain and if I wanted to use Google Wave I’d want to use it with this account as it’s the one all my friends know and I use it on many different things. Now Google Wave is open source but I doubt they’d let anyone use it anywhere else as it uses a central server (more cloud stuff) so it won’t move from Google’s house.
So where would that leave me? I could set up a set of forwarders and the like so everything ends up at Google but that’s too much hassle. I could also tell people from henceforth to e-mail my gmail account but I’d rather not do that either. Yes I’m being a bit of a stick in the mud but I bought this domain with the sole purpose of giving me a place to blog, showcase my photos and to have an e-mail address that was more personal. While Google Wave is fascinating I won’t be abandoning ship on my e-mail here just to use it. No I think in the end I will Wave but in a limited capacity perhaps just to see what it’s like, test it’s features and see what cool stuff they’ll impliment between now and release. I may be suprised and they will have though of a way around my issue but I doubt it. However, I will say that if you’re a sole gmail user or happy to move your mail to it then by all accounts do so as Google Wave looks awesome and really is a cool new way to interact with the web.
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