Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Voodoo Music Festival in New Orleans... great line-up: Beastie Boys, The Pixies, Green Day, Sonic Youth, Cypress Hill, BRMC, The Killers, and many more.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Apple iTunes for Motorola phones... the limited storage capacity of the current generation of phones really limits them as compelling portable music players imho, but I'd love to see this on the next Windows Mobile-based Motorola phone!
This is by far the geekiest undertaking I've heard about in awhile...iPod as Universal Infrared Remote Control... impressive. PT never ceases to amaze me.

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Props to the power of the Internet and fast, high-quality customer service...

All of a sudden one day last week my Tivo stopped changing channels on my cable box, which was annoying while watching live TV and caused the Tivo to record the wrong programs the rest of the time. I double-checked the Tivo settings just to make sure nothing had changed (it hadn't), then lived with it for a few days because I dreaded having to crawl behind my entertainment center after a long day at work.

Tonight I finally got around to looking up the problem on the Internet, and quickly came across a post on the Tivo forums that described the problem was due to a Comcast update that disabled the serial port on the cable box. I called up Comcast customer service as suggested in the forum, and within two minutes the problem was fixed. I was even able to verify that channel changing worked again while still on the phone with the cust serv rep.

Thanks Tivo users! Thanks Comcast!

Saturday, July 03, 2004

Apple and BMW partner to deliver a better in-car iPod experience. You store your iPod in the glove compartment and control playback using controls on the steering wheel. Seems like kind of a bummer that you have to create special playlists and that song information isn't displayed on the dash - not to mention having to purchase a BMW. Apparently Alpine will soon be releasing a new iPod-compatible receiver that will enable much better integration and should work with most any car make/model. The Alpine receiver displays song information and can be used to control playback, and it sounds like you won't have to create special playlists. Can't wait for the day when there's a standard hardware/software interface that makes it seamless to plug your portable music player of choice (be it a dedicated device like an iPod or a multi-purpose device like a mobile phone, handheld, or something else that hasn't been dreamed up yet) into your car.