Category Archives: Technology

KCRW Music Mine app – passionate people sharing music

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As a Los Angeles transplant, I miss KCRW programming. Listening online is good, but the new KCRW Music Mine app is so much better than live. Not only can you listen to a well curated list of music, you can listen to the various DJ’s most recent show. Unlike Pandora or Spotify, the ‘discovery’ is taken care of for you.

Back in the day, radio station people were interested in finding and sharing new music, sound, voice, and noise and using the radio waves to disseminate it. Slowly, it became less about discovery and more about profit (so is the cycle of business). Fast-forward to 2011. Most major cities have limited music variety on the radio. A rock station, hi-hop station, and pop station (sometimes all three in one). This mono-culture does very little for the small-brand, up-and-coming band/artist.

The power of KCRW and the KCRW Music Mine app is that it returns to the days of passionate people sharing music and noise. This is not a pop-star app, and it is not hipster, WTF was that noise maker app. It’s a perfect blend of both with a fantastic touch interface. Give Music Mine a spin (it’s free – duh).

And don’t forget to support KCRW and your local Public Radio Station.

Samsung’s case of Anorexia Nervosa

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Looks like Samsung just announced an “An Air for All” with their new Samsung 9 Series. This is a Windows machine with a 13.3 inch screen, almost identical dimensions to the MacBook Air (2.89 pounds and measures .68 inches thick), HDMI port, i5 processor (a lot faster than the MacBook Air), 128GB SSD drive, 4B RAM, built-in speakers with sub-woofer, and my favorite part – a back-lit keyboard! In addition to all that, it’s one sexy mo-fo. Made from black duralumin, it’s going to look sexy next to Alison’s MacBook Air.

samsung9series2

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American FourSquare Badges

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I have been using FourSquare for a while now and I enjoy collecting these badges.  If you are not using FourSquare, here is a little bit about it:

Foursquare is a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users “check in” to a place when they’re there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they’ve been and who they’ve been there with. For more information on how foursquare works, see our searchable FAQ.

There are badges that you can get for checking into specific types of places in a certain order. So I created a few of my own badges for people to collect. Here are the badges and how you can obtain them.

American Obesity Badge

FourSquare American Obesity Badge

Using your rotund fingers, check-in to four or more fast-food restaurants in one 24 hour period to unlock and add this badge to your collection.

Juvenile Diabetes Badge

FourSquare Juvenile Diabetes Badge

Check-in to McDonald’s six or more times in one week to unlock and add this valuable (and increasingly more common) badge to your collection.

Meth-Cooker

FourSquare Meth Cooker Badge

Check-in to three or more drug stores in one four-hour period (after buying up all the Sudafed of course) to unlock and add this valuable badge to your collection.

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Put Your Best Facebook Forward

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Want to PIMP your Facebook profile page? Well, maybe not “pimp”, but at least clean up your Facebook profile. You can do some cool things to your Facebook page. Your profile photo can be up to 600 pixels in height but only 200 pixels wide. So fire up your Adobe Photoshop (or Adobe Fireworks) and start building a new profile page.

Clean up the images on your Facebook Profile

The other thing you can do to your profile is edit those pictures in the photo bar above the status updates. These are images of you people have “tagged”. As your images are tagged, they are added to the bar. But sometimes the images suck and you’ll want to remove them. When you move your mouse over the image, you’ll see a small “X” in the upper right corner. Clicking the X will remove the image from the bar an replace it with the next image. Keep removing until you have your five favorite images in the bar.

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Restore Your XBOX 360 to Factory Default

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So I was selling my XBOX 360 Elite to buy a new 360S and wanted to make sure my gamer tag and credit card info was cleared. Figured “Factory Reset” would be an option in the system settings of the XBOX, but it is not. Searched the Google and BING for the answer; no luck.

So how do you reset your XBOX 360 to the factory default (for that just out of the box feeling)? Turns out to be very simple. You reformat your XBOX hard drive. But you also need to enter your systems Serial Number. Follow the steps below to reset your system:

  1. Go to the MY XBOX tab
  2. The last tab is SYSTEM SETTINGS
  3. Select CONSOLE SETTINGS from the list
  4. Select SYSTEM INFO from this list
  5. The first line is the CONSOLE SERIAL NUMBER – write this down
  6. Press B (red) twice on your controller, this will take you back to the SYSTEM SETTINGS screen
  7. Select MEMORY from the list of settings
  8. You will see your hard drive listed. If it is highlighted, press Y (Yellow button)
  9. You will now be presented with four options. Select FORMAT
  10. The XBOX will ask you to confirm that you want to continue, select YES
  11. On the next screen, select ENTER SERIAL NUMBER
  12. Enter your CONSOLE SERIAL NUMBER from step 5 (five) above
  13. Once you enter your CONSOLE SERIAL NUMBER correctly and press the START button, your hard drive will be formatted and you will have a factory fresh XBOX 360

Now you can sell your XBOX 360 or give it to a friend without all your amazing data, downloads, Credit Card info, etc. on the system.

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Motorola Droid: Part 05 – 9 month update

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So it’s been 9 months since I joined the smartphone revolution and I have to say, “Mine eyes have seen the glory!” Going from a dumb phone (calls and text only) to a smartphone (apps, email, calls, text, gps, etc.) would be the Plato’s Cave of technology.

Of course I had the option between iPhone and Android. I choose Android because it was not on the AT&T network. I was a loyal (if not foolish) customer of AT&T for several years but felt burned by my last customer service experience. So I moved to Verizon once the Motorola Droid was released. Best decision ever!

I lived in Los Angeles at the time I got the phone and had no issues with any of the 3G or voice networks. I have since moved to Las Vegas and the network is still strong. People who visit and use the iPhone have trouble making calls and getting text messages. To be honest, that totally blows, especially in a 24 hour city where you are bound to get separated from your main group. In the past 9 months, I have also visited Seattle, WA, the coast of Alaska (via cruise ship), and Portland, OR.; in each location there are strong data and voice networks.

The Android OS has had two major updates in the past 9 months. The most recent version being Fro-yo (Android 2.2). Here is where I can start to complain. The Droid is on the Verizon network and monitored by Motorola. So when an Android OS update is released, I have to wait for Motorola and Verizon to modify the OS and make it “Droid Ready”. This usually means the disablement of certain features and OS functions. For example, the current version of the OS allows for wi-fi hotspotting, but the Droid OS does no. This is a carrier issue as the Nexus One (T-Mobile) does offer free wifi hotspotting. Overall, it’s a small concession and something Apple US users also deal with. But I would rather have the Android OS be released by Google and not have to wait for the Moto-Verizon version to be “released”.

The Droid is an amazing phone overall. As I mentioned before, the audio is fantastic. Even when using the built-in speaker, it’s crystal clear. The camera takes amazing pics (especially during the day; at night, not so much). There are a few issues I have with the hardwear. First, there is no line-out option. When I bought my phone, I also purchased the car mount kit. That kit came with a dash mount and power adapter. However, unlike the iPhone or iPod, the USB plug on the Droid does not pass audio. This means that I have to plug an mini-jack audio cable into the headphone jack of my Droid. Then  I have to crank up the volume. I would rather have an audio source that is not pre-amplified by the device.

My second complaint is getting music onto the Droid is not a pleasurable experience. This disappointment stems from the 5 years I used iTunes. Although iTunes is a resource hog, it does what it does real well. Getting music onto my iPod was easy. No drag-and-drop needed. Just tell it what to sync and it did it. There are several apps in the market that try to replicate this, but I think they all fall short and that is disappointing.

Currently, I carry my iPod (fully loaded with music, video, and misc. audio books) and my Droid (loaded with the music, podcast, and audio books I am currently listening to) with me on road trips. I no longer carry a point-and-shoot and don’t need a separate GPS device. If you are on the fence about moving to a smartphone, I have to suggest getting an Android based phone on the Verizon network.