If you don’t mind other people knowing what you listen to, then check this out. http://www.last.fm – builds a music profile for you from things you listen to. Pretty cool, I just signed up. Once I get some more songs played I will probably add the little widget to my site 🙂
Tag: Media Consumption
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Hauppauge WinTV
I purchased a Hauppauge WinTV 1.5 PVR card recently. What a cool device. First off, I can watch tv down in the corner of my desktop while doing other things. I can record shows directly to my computer. I can use MSN remote record to record a show that I might want to see but I am not at home. I can use orb to stream the recorded shows over the net to anywhere, or even stream live TV. This week I have been streaming MSNBC and just minimizing it, listening to it over the headphones instead of music. It is just so cool, being able to be connected to your media all the time. With Media Center Edition, Orb, a TV Tuner Card and TV Recorder Card you are all set. Add in your music collection, dvd’s and then downloaded movies, you are all set. The only thing missing is the abilty to remotely play your video games!
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Orb
So in my last post, I mentioned that I was working on my music library. Well, I have it pretty much clean (as clean as you can get a 10 year old mp3 library). I decided to check out Orb (http://www.orb.com/) which lets me steam out my library so I can listen anywhere with a web connection. What is really cool as I can listen to my library as a 3GP stream on my phone. Right now I am streaming 311 from my computer to my phone and listening to it with headphones, how cool is that! The quality isn’t cd quality or anything, more like internet radio.
I tested just from a pc and it streams at 128kbs which isn’t bad at all. For sure you want shuffle on as it is just live stream. There can be a little skippage as well, like a song will just skip 50% in and goto the next, I don’t know why…maybe I will look at the support forum.
Anyway, something cool to play with at least 😉
Update: I tried this out at work and it worked very well, no skipping at all. I am liking it
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KARE 11 Makes Me Download TV Shows
Yeah, you heard it right. KARE 11 – the NBC affilate, makes me download TV shows. Why? Becuase shows I try to dvr error out when they break in with news and the show gets cut off. I got E-Ring and Law and Order from last week, dl’d last night. Torrents are great.
I pay for cable, I should be able to at least watch the shows on there. DVR doesn’t seem to cut it with KARE-11, who seem to think I want to know about Twin Cities weather and other junk when I live in Waite Park.
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Free Ringtones
I know how to get free ringtones from 3gupload.com if anyone is intrested. I really don’t want to post it up here but I can let someone know if they really want. You can get music tones and polyphonic tones, its pretty easy, especially if you are a little techie.
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Whats on your DVR?
What TV shows do you record on your DVR? What “station” are you?
1) Medical Investigation (NBC)
2) Law & Order (NBC)
3) Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC)
4) Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC)
5) The Apprentice (NBC)
6) ER (NBC)
7) American Dreams (NBC)
8) Crossing Jordan (NBC)
9) 24 (FOX)
10) The Simpsons (FOX)
11) Law & Order: Trial By Jury (NBC)
Looks like I am an NBC guy, since all but two of the series’ that I record are on NBC. They are all dramas too, with the exception of The Simpsons and The Apprentice. Most of them are crime dramas at that (Law & Orders, Medical Investigation and Crossing Jordan, 24)
I like the fact that all the series’ I record I get the channels in HD, so they come through much clearer.
Also, I only record the new shows, not repeats…
Gotta love DVR!
TV Is a ripoff IMHO. You pay for service every month, but yet you still have to sit through commercials. WTF is up with that? I like HBO and other pay extra channels – no commercials. That is the way the rest of TV should be. Now I hear that TiVo is putting up ads when you fast forward through commercials. Don’t these companies listen to their customers? The reason they are FF through commercials is not to see ads, duh!
I think TV should be set up so you can just pick and choose channels you want to watch, and pay by the minute or something, like .002 cents a minute. Or pay by the half hour. So like I could say I want channels 40, 60, 11, and 32 on certain hours, and I just pay for that.
Think about it – regular AM/FM radio – you don’t pay for it, so there are commercials, and I can understand that. XM radio on the other hand, you pay for, so there are no commercials. TV should be set up this way.
The other thing that would really be cool with TV is if you could pause it, and then get information on the web or something on every single item on the screen, no matter what it was. Like if there was metadata on every item. The clothes the people wear, clocks, cars, places, carpets, song playing, etc. Everything! What a trip that would be. The metadata database would be HUGE! But this would be so cool!! Why doesn’t Microsoft of some company with a butt ton of money come up with this?
🙂
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New Law and Order Character
Yahoo news is reporting that Bebe Neuwirth (from Cheers and Fraiser) is joining the 4th installment of Law and Order – Trial By Jury. I don’t know, I have never liked her. I think it has something to do with her voice – to snotty. At least Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) will be there too.
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ITunes Commercials
I don’t use or like ITunes, but I do have to say they have cool music in their commericals. Like a year ago it was Jet, now the latest is Steriogram. Check it out. You can be the envy of all your friends.
Steriogram – Walkie Talkie Man
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Napster
Napster.
The long forgotten music downloading application. Well, a while back when the “new” Napster came out, I signed up for it, downloading some singles at 99 cents a piece. Well, today I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for Napster Premium for like 12 bux a month, and I am getting a free portable player to boot. I have jacked tons of music from the net for almost 10 years, so I figure it might be time to go legit. The premium service is cool, you can download as many tracks as you want, and listen to them online or offline. The downside is you can’t burn them, but you can transfer them to a portable device, which is cool. If you wan to burn a track, you need to purchase it standalone from your premium subscription.
Some other things that kind of irk me are that some bands don’t have any tracks (The Beatles are the biggest I see), so you can’t get all the music you want. When I first signed up, 311 didn’t have any tracks, now all their mainstream albums are on there! Still, there are almost a million tracks, but you won’t find the “bootleg” tracks for artists, so you are left to searching the net or using a p2p app to look for those.
CD Burning is built into the application, and there is radio/magazine/message boards, with radio and message boards only available to premium members.
Steve Novoselac's Blog 