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2011

  • 1 min read

The End of Free Will

Check out The End of Free Will(from Dilbert.com Blog:

"First we need to define free will. In the past, I've defined it as the brain's magical ability to make decisions independent of the physical laws of the universe. And since I don't believe in magic, or souls, I conclude that free will doesn't exist, at least by that limited definition. In my view, we're just moist robots bumping around and imagining we have control." (from:The End of Free Will)

Dilbert Blog often has crazy excursions of fancy intellectual humor!

  • 1 min read

Update about Spotify

So I have now been using Spotify for about a week after sumarily deserting Rhapsody (no stickyness at all!) Here's my summary:

Pro Spotify

  • Has a nice downloadable client on Mac which I can launch from the Dock

  • I seem to be discovering some new music from non-American Jazz artists. Not sure this is a credit to Spotify or just luck

Neutral

  • Exactly the same price

  • Apparently equally large catalogs

Against Spotify

  • Relies purely on an obscure search syntax (e.g. "genre:"Piano Jazz") to search genres

  • Does not have ratings based on genres - i.e. top downloads or new this week in Classical.

  • Has a confusing relationship with iTunes. Why does it offer me to 'download' my iTunes and make it available 'offline'? iTunes already does this on iPhone

  • No way to know what 'genres' it actually knows about beyond the obvious: "Classical" and so on. Is there "Singer Songwriter"? Is there "New Orleans Jazz"? No idea.

Jury is still out for me…


  • 1 min read

Big announcement about twitter

Actually it's about Twitter Support in BlogBridge. If you are a BlogBridge user, please try it out. Just click on BlogBridge Weekly Release and it will just work.

If you aren't still or yet, please help me spread the word!

"I have exciting news. We have released a new beta build of BlogBridge with IMO awesome new twitter support. This is bringing us another step to being the ultimate personal social media dashboard." (from me!)

Spread the word!

  • 1 min read

BillGuard

This site looks really good, but I am not signing up yet.

Screen shot 2011 07 17 at 9 58 01 AM

I am famously promiscuous signing up with new services just so I can 'know what's going on', but when the first thing I have to do is to give this site my account and password for a credit card that I use, I stop and take a breath.

Who are these guys? Fred Wilson, a highly reputable VC blogger is the one who recommended it in his blog. Maybe he's an investor? I don't know. But for now, I am holding off.

  • 1 min read

Cancelled Rhapsody, Trying Spotify

As I said in the previous post, I am a bit of a promiscuous signer upper. From a cursory look, Rhapsody and Spotify are fairly similar. They both charge $10 per month for unlimited listening to all kinds of music. I saw a few blog posts that took one side or the other.

With all the geek news about spotify, one would like to know more. So, I capriciously cancelled my Rhapsody and am now trying the new thing.

That's a problem they both have. No stickiness whatsoever. I know that for example the Sonos product supports Rhapsody. If I had spent $1000's of dollars on a Sonos set up (like friends of mine have) AND Sonos didn't support Spotify, then I might think twice. But here, it's just another bit of software to set up and play with.

I will report back!

  • 1 min read

Spotify – genres?

Ok a few hours into it, I've located what looks like a major weakness in Spotify. One of the fun things about Rhapsody is discovering new music. What are the top albums in "Piano Jazz". Had to look and look for a similar feature in Spotify. The closest I can find is to type this into the search box:

genre:"piano jazz"

Oy! And by the way, how am I supposed to know that "piano jazz" is a legitimate genre? Oh just look on this list.

Whoops. Piano Jazz is not a real genre, so it doesn't work.

Any one know any tips?

  • 2 min read

Preparation needed

I've been thinking a lot lately about what kind of preparation college students need as they graduate to pursue their futures. Thomas Friedman writes an excellent column in the New York Times where he says:

"Look at the news these days from the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy — Silicon Valley. Facebook is now valued near $100 billion, Twitter at $8 billion, Groupon at $30 billion, Zynga at $20 billion and LinkedIn at $8 billion. These are the fastest-growing Internet/social networking companies in the world, and here’s what’s scary: You could easily fit all their employees together into the 20,000 seats in Madison Square Garden, and still have room for grandma. They just don’t employ a lot of people, relative to their valuations, and while they’re all hiring today, they are largely looking for talented engineers.

Indeed, what is most striking when you talk to employers today is how many of them have used the pressure of the recession to become even more productive by deploying more automation technologies, software, outsourcing, robotics — anything they can use to make better products with reduced head count and health care and pension liabilities. That is not going to change. And while many of them are hiring, they are increasingly picky. They are all looking for the same kind of people — people who not only have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can’t, but also people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs every day, in a market that changes faster than ever. " (From The New York Times: The Start-Up of You)

This is really true. If your life's ambition is to pursue an advanced degree then often a college degree is great preparation. For many though, their life's passion is to join or create a startup and have a really big impact on the world.

  • 1 min read

Are you losing money?

From ABC News, but I've seen a similar story elsewhere:

"There are 300 million third-party charges totaling $2 billion on U.S. phone bills each year, according to the Senate Commerce Committee.

What's more, according to the Federal Communications Commission, about 15 million to 20 million households are overcharged for their telephone landlines by third-party companies but only 5 percent realize they are victims."

Here's the article: "Phone Bill Fees: How to Identify 3rd-Party Charges and Protect Yourself".

The article seems to focus on landlines. Does that mean that this problem does not occur with cell phones? That would be good to know?