Let me explain myself. First, I must mention that I consider myself quite the technology aficionado (no surprise to many of you) and I attempt to stay abreast of the latest “web2.0″ trends. I try new web services often and usually abandon them quickly. When exploring a new service, I try to find a way to enhance my life with its’ functionality. Unfortunately the majority of these new services fail to meet that goal and I never log in again. Occasionally, however, I stubmle across a new gem with potential for greatness.

Google Latitude is one such product.

For the past year, many people have been touting “Location Based Services” (LBS) as the next big application for internet connected mobile devices; I’ve maintained a passing interest in this since I got my iPhone. There are a few small players experimenting in this area (such as Loopt), but nothing huge. The largest social networks (Facebook and MySpace) are strangely absent from this area, even though both networks offer decent iPhone applications.

When Google released it’s Latitude product a few weeks back, I immediately signed myself up and added a few friends to my network. Currently my location is updated by hand and at random intervals, since the functionality has not been released for the iPhone (it is rumored that it will be an addon to the Maps application). After playing with the iGoogle widget for a few days, it seems clear to me that Latitude is intended to be a location platform not a service. Its current interface is not much more than a basic proof of concept; Latitude will not truely shine until the API is released and it becomes a behind-the-scenes service that manages your location data and its distribution to outside services and applications (like Facebook or MySpace).

Facebook is the current home of my most extensive social graph, with over 800 connections. While Facebook could easily develop their own location service and integrate it with thier iPhone/BlackBerry applications, I think that this would be a terible move. In my perfect world, Google would host the platform (Latitude), giving me a central repository for my location data. I could then select the web applications with which I would like to share the data (and updates about it). Such as Facebook and MySpace, or any other location based service that I deem will add value to my life.

I’m hoping that is what Google has in mind, but they are laying out the pieces slowly and trying to get each step of the puzzle correct. There’s huge potential for LBS, and Google is making a very “googlesque” play here. I just hope that companies such as Facebook continue opening their platforms and playing nice together; I don’t want to need a seperate application to update location information on each of my 12,031 networks. I want one platform that can be updated with my choice of program and will push the information out to my networks. Simple!

Note: there’s also Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, which provides a similar service but already has an API and some programs that work with it. I haven’t played with it much, but I have similar concerns… and it would be nice if location data could be passed between Fire Eagle and Latitude, even though they’re both supposed to do the same thing.

Since I have this shiny new HD camera, I figured I should probably grab a few minutes of footage, since the band is actually quite good. You can watch 11 minutes of the concert below (click the here to go to the Vimeo page and watch it in full glory). The sound is kinda crappy, especially at the beginning. I must also apologize for the random movements, I was shooting handheld from the middle of the crowd, with the camera above my head. Any idea how tiring that is?

They are returning to Macon for another concert on First Friday October (October 3rd), so if you are around you should definately try to attend (I don’t have any further details at the moment). By the way, you may have previously heard them as “Blackbird” but they’ve undergone a name change in recent weeks.

Without further ado:

You can find them on MySpace.

Over the past few days, I’ve been enjoying my new iPhone 3G immensely. There are a few annoyances, such as buggy software, a little DRM issue I had with the app store, and various other things. However, one issue that was really bothering me was the inability to sync my iPhone calendar with my Google Calendars. I keep all of my events on my Google Calendar, using several calendars (some of which are shared) to keep up with everything.

Apple does provide the ability to sync (using iTunes) your iPhone and Outlook calendars – unfortunately that requires you to use Outlook along with extra plug-ins to retrieve your Google Calendars, and you only sync when you connect to iTunes. Even worse, I read that you could only sync your main calendar in this manner.

Then I ran across the perfect solution: NuevaSync! NuevaSync is brilliantly simple – it simply provides a gateway between your Google and the Exchange syncing features of the new iPhone 2.0 software. This means that you can sync all of your Google Calendars (bi-directionally) with the iPhone calendar. Better yet, all this happens over the air, in real time – no syncing with iTunes to update your calendars!!

The setup couldn’t be simpler – simply sign up for a new account at NuevaSync, supply your Google account details (you can sync both calendars and contacts if you wish – I chose only calendar syncing), and follow the simple setup instructions for the iPhone. In minutes you’ll be getting synchronized with your iPhone calendar!

The only limitation I’ve noticed so far is the inability to select what calendar you would like to use when creating new events (however, you can see the events on all calendars). New events created on your phone go to the default calendar. However, I think this is an iPhone limitation, or something I’ve simply overlooked. A small price to pay for the huge convenience of OTA synchronization with Google Calendars!!

Update: The Post Show Review

I arrived at the show just in time for the last few minutes of the first set (I was previously occupied installing Christmas decorations for my fraternity house). The music of IFP is definitely not for the faint of heart or the casually disinterested – one must relax, listen, and feel the music to properly enjoy it. As my friend Nick mentioned later in the evening, “It’s six excellent musicians having a musical hay-day!” And he’s right – each member of the band is an excellent musician, and you give each of them some musical framework to experiment with, then send them out to play. The result? A field of musical color and emotion, surging and ebbing around you. Best enjoyed live or loud (preferably a combination of the two). The perfect blend to drink to… or relax… and forget about the troubles of the day, because nothing matters as you float away on a fantastic ride.

So next time they’re playing near you, grab a friend and a beer and go enjoy!

Incudes CD with same track listing as digital download (see above). Also includes a DVD ROM (not a movie) that contains every track from Year Zero in multitrack format for you to do with what you please. Mac or PC.

We’ve included:
Pre-formatted for Apple GarageBand
Pre-formatted for Ableton Live (Mac or PC)
Demo version of Ableton Live (Mac or PC)
Generic WAVE files at 16 bit 44K that can be loaded into any audio editor

Soon you will be able to share your custom remixes online, and listen to others, at remix.nin.com.

I love that bands are embracing their fans in such fantastic ways (see also the new Radiohead CD, In Rainbows). Sure, the music industry is light years behind on almost everything, but that doesn’t mean that the bands are as well. Bravo to those who stand up.

It’s also worthy to note that this is not the first time that NIN has done something like this (they have released multi-track masters to the public for a couple several songs), but I’m pretty sure this is the first time anything of this magnitude has been done perhaps not, see previous link…

Let the creation begin! And thank you NIN!

There are tons of alternatives available, from full featured (and complicated) backup suites to simple utilities. If you don’t have significant sync needs, I’d recommend checking out ySync. This is a very simple but handy utility that will allow you to synchronize two folders. I use this to copy my music library from my desktop to my external hard drive – it’s much faster than doing things by hand. Since I don’t have any complicated scheme for backing up files (I just need to copy all changes from one folder to another), ySync meets my needs perfectly – and it’s free. Grab a copy today!

Let me just lay down some of the symptoms for you: sometimes I am just browsing the internet and it gives me a little write error bubble (I didn’t know I was writing anything), it takes about 10 minutes to actually start up, it takes forever to run any programs (about the only thing it can do with relative ease is internet browsing), and it seems to have misplaced the procedure for shutting down since every time I try that it “begins dump of physical memory” thus launching into an infinite circle of restarting, running a disk check, getting an error, dumping physical memory, and et cetera, finally I will return home some days and find my computer already in this infiinite loop of restarting and I wonder how long it has been thrashing itself. Long story short, it is dying, and it is only a matter of time.

Anyhow, after my computer starting having these problems on a daily basis (probably shouldn’t have waited that long), I went out and bought an external hard drive to back up my data. For me, the most important thing to keep intact were my pictures, the rest was for the most part replaceable (or I didn’t really care about losing it, like papers). If I had been planning ahead, I would have shopped around, found the best deal for my needs and made an informed purchase. However, since I waited until the brink of disaster, I needed something urgently, and I drove down to the ol Best Buy. My laptop only has a 60 GB hard drive, so I didn’t need anything incredibly spacious, and I wanted to spend as little money as possible.

I settled on this nice little Western Digital Passport (80 GB version) which set me back a cool $80. It comes with some pretty nifty software that allows you to sync the files of your choosing with the hard drive. Whenever you sync it, it checks in the folders you have indicated to see if anything has changed and makes the appropriate updates. Also, if you take it and use it on another computer, you can sync whatever changes you have made back onto the original computer. I must admit, it was quite frustrating to get it set up the frst time, but I blame my problems on the growing inadequacies of my computer. Oh, and it is quite small, you could carry it around in your pocket, also apparently quite durable from what I have read.

So now I can sleep at night knowing that although my computer is dying, my data is safe and sound. It is quite refreshing.

Compared to David’s most recent works, the music production on the Newtons album sounds feeble and undeveloped. However, the Newtons represented an important first step and a significant experimental milestone. I believe that if Dave had his current knowledge and skill when he recorded the Newtons album, the CD would have be absolutely amazing.

Enough about the Newtons – David’s most recent work, Good Morning Coffee (a song written around the lyrics of the great John Comeaux) represents a new pinnacle in the evolution of David the producer. Better yet, the same song was recorded in two radically different styles, giving David even more room to flex his developing acoustic muscles.

The sound quality on these two pieces is amazing (especially when you consider that David does all his work with an iMac, a little cool hardware, and no real studio). I believe that the sound on these two recordings rivals that of many “professionally mastered” recordings. I was even more astounded when David showed me some new little tricks that he has learned and the subtle but profound effect they have on the recordings.

Anyway, without further ado, here is Good Morning Coffee – the country and the blues version! (read Dave’s comments on the country and blues versions)

Country:
[See post to listen to audio]

Blues:
[See post to listen to audio]

Enjoy, and keep an ear out for some great new music from David – there’s some awesome new stuff on the horizon!

I’d always heard that keeping a log of your progress is a great way to stay on task and improve things. In high school my weight training routines were assigned by the coach and as for running, I just ran as far as I could and left it at that. When I started college, I “took a year off” so to speak, and when I started working out again, I tried keeping track of my workouts on paper. Unfortunately, I’m rather disorganized and this didn’t last long. I then tried a piece of software called “Crosstrainer” but it wasn’t free and I stopped using it after a while.

A couple of years ago, a friend told me about a website that would allow you to measure the distance of your outdoor runs using Google maps. This was a great help, because I could figure out how far I was running. A few months later, I stumbled across Runstoppable, which allowed you to not only measure your routes, but to save multiple routes and log your runs. This was great, and I used it for several months. However, development on the site was slow to non-existent and there were a few bugs in the system.

Yesterday I was browsing around after being slightly annoyed with Runstoppable when I discovered a new site, RunningAHEAD. After completing the sign up (completely free), I entered all of my prior runs. I was impressed with the fit and polish of the site, the flexibility, and the features. Not only can you log runs, you can log weight training routines, biking routes, swimming, and other types of exercises. There is a myriad of data that can be entered for each activity, and a nice array of stats to keep you encouraged and help set new goals.

For now, I’ll be using RunningAHEAD to keep track of my activity. I would like to see a few new features, such as the ability to set and track goals and to compete with other users. If they were to develop a Facebook app that would allow you to challenge your friends to various activities (such as the first person to run fifty miles), I would be extremely excited… but for now, the site serves all my needs quite nicely and seems to be under active development. I’d say this is a must see for anyone involved in athletics or personal fitness.