To those that said such things couldn’t or wouldn’t happen, here’s some back up of my point.

Not so long ago I posted a blog about DRM and its evils. To me, the biggest is that DRM’ed music isn’t purchased at all. It’s only rented. Eventually, any DRM scheme that depends on heading out to the interweb to authorize the user is doomed to eventual shutdown.

According to an Engadget article MSN is already shutting down its support for the MSN Music service. They even mention iTunes (as I did), even though it was a bit of …

Over the course of my geek life, I have collected and used many gadgets.  Some have been good and some have been bad.  To shed light on what makes a gadget good in the eyes of a geek, I give you “The 10 Commandments of Geek Gadgetry.”

I. Thou shalt use a standard plug (preferably USB).  I cannot tell you how convenient it is to have gadgets that use standard plugs for power and to interface with a PC or other piece of hardware.  It just makes life so much better when something fails or if you have to, God forbid, …

Okay, I broke down and got an iPhone, against my better judgement.  But I played with it at the store and it was just so slick and fun to use, I couldn’t resist.  But there are caveats, my friends!

Well, my Windows Mobile phone ticked me off for the last time on Saturday.  Add to that the fact that I live a mere 565 yards from the Apple Store, and the next thing you know, I have an iPhone.  There are goods and there are bads.  Here are my thoughts.

iPod: Apple says this is the best iPod they’ve ever produced.  Malarkey!  …

Why can’t anyone come up with a decent iPod interface for cars?

If you read my previous post, you probably suspect that I went ahead with the purchase.  Yes I did.  The Acura RDX is indeed geek nirvana.  And understated in my prose was the voice command capability of the vehicle.  Oh, it’s awesome!  So far, my favorite commands are “XM 41″ for some head-banging tunes, “passenger temperature 32 degrees” to freeze out whoever is riding with me, and “find nearest fast food restaurant” for righteous eats.  The whole system is very seamless and it seems like pretty much every function …

I believe I have found my next car.  The Acura RDX!  And for all the geek reasons!

Right now, I have two cars: an Isuzu Rodeo Sport (affordable, but bad mileage) and a Honda S2000 (testosterone nirvana!).  Neither is blessed with an abundance of geek goodness.  Heck, the interior of the S2000 is very spartan.  Some S2000 afficionados even feel that the car is so purely a race car that it shouldn’t even have a radio!  But I digress.

As such, I have decided that my next automobile purchase will be based on geeky goodness.  That means all the creature comforts I …

Is the music industry dying?  Is piracy killing it?

Confession time.  I don’t believe the music industry is dying.  Not in the least.  But I had to have a catchy title to get you to read, didn’t I?  Gotcha!

But seriously, what can be made of the music industry today?  The industry spokespeople are all up-in-arms because the sales of CDs is declining and the sales of online purchases aren’t making up the difference.  I recently had an email conversation with a friend about the current state of music and how it makes it onto our iPods.

First of all, it is my …

Okay, now that you have a good understanding of XML and RSS, it is time to discuss how these technologies are brought together to make a podcast.

Some bright and enterprising person (I looked it up but couldn’t get a clear answer as to who) decided to add a new tag to the RSS XML standard: the Enclosure tag. This indicates that there is a file associated with an RSS feed’s entry. This opened up many possibilities.

But we are only interested at this time in the possibilities that are strictly podcast related. Specifically enclosures that are audio content. …

Many of you are wondering what this podcasting thing is. Here’s a brief primer on what it is and how to catch the wave.To understand podcasting, you must first understand RSS. Don’t worry, you don’t have to understand all of it, and you won’t be tested. But a decent idea of what RSS is helps.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and was originally devised to help news aggregators get the latest stories as soon as they were available. It is still used as such today and has gone even further. This blog, for instance is available via …

I am sure that if you ask 100 iTunes users that you will get at least 20 different responses on how iTunes could be improved. Everything from how it organizes music to the depth of “Smart Playlists”.

Anyone who spends any time listening to various podcasts has probably come across Macbreak Weekly and Alex Lindsay’s lament on how he wants iTunes’ Smart Playlists to function. Personally, I would welcome some sort of plugin that allowed users to go much further in setting up iTunes to work in a more personable fashion.
I recently got an email from a good friend …

The first step is to determine size. In order to sound good, MP3s need to be encoded around 128kbps (kilobits per second… 128 is considered “near CD quality”). So, a standard 4 minute song is 240 seconds, which means 128×240=30720kb which is about 3,840KBytes (8 bits in a byte). Now, let’s look at the 20GB model MP3 player (you can do the math to see how much the other sizes can hold). 20GB is 20,000,000,000 bytes. So, this means that 5,208 songs will fit on in 20GB. So, where’d they get the 9,900 from?

Well, most MP3 players these days …