Texxors.com

The Three Best Music Streaming Options

bryan — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:35:08 +0000

If you're wondering which music streaming service is best for you, you've come to the right place. We've evaluated of some of the top contenders and compiled a list of the three services that provide the best options and features. As you might expect, the one that is ultimately best for you depends on what kind of services you're interested in, whether you're willing to lay out money to get them and how you'll be using the products.

First of all, these are wonderful times for audiophiles. The original iPod made it exceptionally easy to have a mobile library of music that could serve as the soundtrack to your life. And since then it's just gotten better and better. These days streaming audio services offer more variety than you're likely to have in your mp3 or smartphone library and provide, if nothing else, a good supplement to your current music stockpile. But choosing the right one for you out of the available options can be a little daunting, so let's begin.

Spotify
One of our favorite streaming music services is Spotify, and there's certainly a lot of buzz around them these days, after their Facebook acquisition, so let's start there. As Spotify made its westward migration last year, we tested the free version for a couple of weeks and were initially very unimpressed. It seemed buggy and very limited when compared with other free software. The one thing it had going for it, of course, was the ability to select any song in their library and play it ad nauseum.

At the time the library was spotty enough and the kinks in the system large enough that it wasn't really worth the effort. But given the buzz, we gave the premium service a try. Again we were still rather unimpressed. It was good, but not really worth the cost ($9.99). We decided to give it till the end of the month and cancel after that.

Several months later we're still using Spotify at home and at work and we wouldn't think of canceling it. What happened in that time? Well, for one, their library has grown. I used to be frustrated at not being able to find major releases for major bands, now I'm continually surprised by the deeper cuts that show up in searches. There are still notable exceptions (e.g., Led Zeppelin and Tool), but on the whole the selection is definitely good and growing. Second, I discovered a lot of kid's music, which keeps my toddler happy at home and in the car, ergo, my quality of life is much better. Third, and probably as important as any other factor, I realized that one account can run on multiple devices. Although the devices can't both stream at the same time, that's not often an issue. It still gives you more mileage out of one account, making the $9.99/month much more palatable.

Pandora
When Pandora was just hitting the scene several years ago, we posted a couple of competing reviews (the good,the bad). In a testament to how groundbreaking it was and how successful they have been with hardware partnerships, Pandora is still around despite the plethora of competition they spawned. Pandora still offers a great service if you're interested in a passive, radio-style experience. In fact, now that the free version of Pandora includes ads, it's very similar to listening to FM, with the exception that (generally) you select your station by band rather than genre and you'll get deeper cuts than you would on FM (although, not necessarily less rotation). If you are currently using a Pandora account with hardware devices such as your entertainment system or television and you don't want to complicate your life with lots of streaming audio services, you can rest comfortably that you're not missing much from other services. At $3.00/month to lose the ads, the premium version is cheaper than Spotify, but whether it's worth it or not depends on how much you hate the ads.

Slacker Radio
Probably the most successful Pandora spawn and the closest competitor for either of these services is Slacker Radio - and they are a very strong competitor, indeed. Slacker seems to have a better library than Pandora in terms of diversity and depth and hardware support aside, we prefer it to Pandora for that reason. It offers two levels of premium service, one that is similar to the paid version of Pandora, the difference is that is slightly more expensive $3.99/month, and adds a little more functionality - dedicated news and sports channels and song lyrics. The second is similar to Spotify's service, in that it is $9.99/month and allows on demand selection of songs and playlists.

Two key distinctions between Slacker Premium and Spotify Premium these days are the libraries and the level of Facebook integration. For us, the latter is a negative. Our Spotify Premium account was created before they began requiring a Facebook account to register, so we can't speak to that process of component of the service, but generally we tend to frown on Facebook integration. If you want a premium service, but want to avoid giving Facebook control over your music and insight into your listening behaviors, you should probably start with a trial of Slacker Premium and consider Spotify as a Plan B, if you can't find all the songs you want to rock out to.

In summary, if you've got a lot of devices that have Pandora support and you aren't interested in a premium service that lets you select what you hear, then there's no reason to go exploring - be comfortable in the knowledge that you're in a fine place. If you want a premium service (and especially if you want to avoid Facebook's growing homogenization of the web), you should probably start with Slacker Radio. Give the library a try, if it has what you want, you'll get that plus a few extra features over Spotify. If you like the idea of Facebook integration and are looking for a service that will almost certainly be around in 5 years, then Spotify is the way to go.

Creating poster photo collages

Beth — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

When two geeks get together and have a baby, they tend to create geek baby projects. We took at least one digital photo of our little girl every day for the first 365 days of her life. At the end of all that, we wanted to create a poster photo collage.

The problem we found were that none of the clear options seemed that great. Most of the major photo sites, such as Snapfish, let you create a "poster collage," but you're limited to 8-12 photos. You can download photo collage software, but you have to pay for it if you don't want a big ol' watermark on your finished product. Photoshop and Fireworks would take way more effort than we had the energy for. (Hello, we're chasing around a 1-year-old!)

Then we got smart and combined products. Picasa desktop has a great collage option to make a sharp collage in moments. I wish you could tweak things a bit more, since it crops photos to get them to fit. I'd like the ability to drag the photo around within its placement, so it crops what I want cropped. But overall, it works really well. We set the dimensions to the poster size we were going to order, and with the press of a button, voila! beautiful collage.

Then we uploaded the collage to Snapfish and uploaded the one image to a poster. We didn't use the collage feature; we just used the Picasa collage as one image on the poster. The final result is pretty cool, and will make a great gift for the grandparents.

Office 2010

Beth — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 01:46:42 +0000

Our company recently started rolling out Office 2010 to anyone who needed any kind of computer fix. Problem is, no one knows how to use it yet, and we don't have any formal training or support for Office 2010.

I'm in the process of learning Office 2010 so that I can offer a quick overview to my coworkers on the best new features and the biggest gotchas.

Are you using Office 2010?

What are your favorite new features? What drives you most up the wall? Have you figured out any cool new tricks, or ways to turn off the most irritating features? What about add-ins? If you use programs like SnagIt, Camtasia, Articulate, etc., have you run into any issues with your add-ins?

I'll post a summary on Texxors a little later this fall with the top new features that we like (not the ones that Microsoft tells us we should like) and the top new irritants.

Overdue Review: Keeping it together with GrandCentral

bryan — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:30:13 +0000

Damnit. I've been working on a great review of GrandCentral's online service for several (ok several, several) months and we keep finding a reason to postpone it. First, there was the buyout by Google and as usually happens, no one cared about the service, they just cared about the price. Then there was the fact that they closed the Beta and the only thing anyone cared about was, "Where can I get a Grand Central invitation?"

Well, screw it. I'm ready to get this review off my desk and out to the people. Keep in mind there may be some changes as things get more integrated with Google's other services, and if you aren't already a member, this is just going to be adding to the hype, but one day soon, you can be a GrandCentral member, too. And when that time comes, you'll have a good appreciation for it.

One good thing about the fact that it has taken me so long to finish this review is that it's based on almost a year of testing. I and some other Texxors authors use it literally every day. And unequivocally we agree that GrandCentral is one of the coolest things we've come across since we've been writing about tech stuff. It is the ultimate in great services for a great price, in no small way because it's completely free to use.

GrandCentral primarily bills itself as a service that allows you to consolidate all of your current phone numbers into one, but this is a serious underrepresentation of its abilities. Yes, GrandCentral provides you with a single phone number that will ring all of your current communication devices when someone calls, but there's soooo much more you can do with the service.

Let's start off with a small but useful feature here: GrandCentral allows you to use caller id differently than traditional lines by setting it to show the number that is being called - that is, you can see when someone is calling your GrandCentral number versus directly dialing your cell (or home) number. Then when you answer the call, GrandCentral will tell you the name of the caller at that time, if known (you can even force them to leave a name before connecting), and give you an option to accept or decline the call. I usually give my GrandCentral number out to one time contacts (i.e. delivery people, craigslist users, etc.) or in online forms, so I can use this feature so I know whether I am getting a call from someone I want to talk to, or someone I probably don't (unless I am expecting a delivery).

A different approach is used by one of our writers who recently moved from Texas to the east coast. Her cell phone has an area code for the city she used to live in, but she wanted a local number for contacts in her new city. She set up a GrandCentral number that is a local call in her new location and gives that out to new friends, while keeping the old cell phone number for friends and family in the old town. She uses caller id traditionally, and doesn't bother to answer if she doesn't recognize the number. If she wanted to, she could use GrandCentral's ListenIn feature, that allows you to listen to the message as it's being recorded and jump in if you decide you want to answer it.

GrandCentral stores your voicemail on its website, and you can have it send email or text messages when you have a new voicemail. It logs all calls online too, so you can save numbers to your address book with the caller's name, or you can mark them as spam. When you mark calls as spam, they will always go straight to a SPAM voicemail box, or you can even have it play a "Number not in service," so that telemarketers and collection agencies stop trying.

We've only used a handful of the features, but there's other cool ones, too:

You can set up personalized voicemail greetings for a specific person or group
You can record calls on the fly
You can add a button to your website so people can call you without getting access to your phone number
You can have different rings play for callers while they wait for you to answer their call

GrandCentral could make a great number to give out to your grandparents too, for those who have trouble remembering your home phone, your cell phone, your spouse's cell phone, your work phone, your spouse's work phone, etc. GrandCentral will let you add up to 6 lines to your GrandCentral number, including Gizmo numbers. (What's Gizmo? We'll get to that soon.) So what are you waiting for? Oh yeah, that's right, they're not offering accounts right now. But you can still go put your name on the reservation list!

Installing PHP 5 and Apache 2.2 on Vista

bryan — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:22:31 +0000

Sometimes you want to get things done right and sometimes you just want to get them done. When you're installing a PHP 5 and Apache 2.2 development setup on Windows Vista using the automatic installers, it may seem like neither one of these is an option. This quick tip is going to save you a lot of time and trouble.

If you're setting up a development system on Vista using the PHP and Apache installers my guess is that you're looking for ease over that smug feeling of accomplishment that comes from manual installs. You've probably gotten Apache installed and working, but when you throw PHP into the mix it all comes to a screeching, cataclysmic halt.

You may not know it yet, but the problem is two fold. The PHP installer cannot update the apache httpd.conf file and several files aren't getting copied to the PHP directory. You are probably aware of the former issue since it produces and error message, but you may not have yet discovered the latter.

Since this is a quick tip, let's get right to the solution:

1. Just to be safe, uninstall any current PHP installs. And if this quick tip doesn't work the first time, you can repeat and start with a fresh Apache install as well.

2. Run the PHP installer. Pass through all the Vista and installer prompts. Allow all requests and accept all defaults (you can change the install directory if you would like, but since this is a development system we're not concerned about security). If you got the "can't configure httpd.conf" message just ignore it for now.

3. Here you can do one of two things: 3a) Check your PHP directory for a file called "php5apache2_2.dll". If it's not there, just rerun the PHP installer again. 3b) Take my word for it that it is not there and just run the PHP installer again.

That's it. On the second go round your PHP installation will get the rest of the required files. However, if you received the httpd error message (or even if you didn't) you probably still need to fix your Apache configuration by adding a few lines to your httpd.conf file before the whole system will work. You can easily get that information here (the comment by henke on 2/22/08 is a good place to start).

Good luck with your new development platform!

Will AT&T burn you with the new iPhone?

bryan — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:28:39 +0000

Are you one of the loyal AT&T customers who will have to pay full price to upgrade to the new version of the iPhone?

QuickTip: Fixing a Bluetooth® pairing problem in MacOS

bryan — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:45:55 +0000

If you're having problems pairing a Bluetooth® device (for example a phone or PDA) with your Mac here is a quick suggestion. Make sure that your computer's name (listed under System Preferences --> Sharing) is less than 20 characters. Longer names can cause problems with the pairing process in some versions of MacOS.

A review of the ShoppingAds and AuctionAds services

bryan — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:10:30 +0000

I've been testing the AuctionAds and ShoppingAds services for several months now. Despite some promising results early on (as mentioned in this post), I am very disappointed with the overall results. Over the past six months, I tested a variety of AuctionAds and ShoppingAds ad blocks from in numerous positions on various sites.

Bridge the gaps in Outlook

Tara — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:33:41 +0000

Timebridge has released a web-based, public scheduling manager into beta that may cut down on the amount of "back and forth" it takes to schedule a meeting through Outlook. If you have ever scheduled a meeting through Outlook, you know that it may take several emails and cancellations to get a time that works for all attending parties. With Timbridge, you are allowed to pick up to 5 possible meeting times that attendees can pick from. And you're not restricted to Outlook, as Timebridge also interfaces with Google calendars.

Convert Those Old Cassette Tapes

Tara — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:37:19 +0000

The BTO Plusdeck 2c is a nifty little invention that allows you to convert cassette tapes into CD's.Â Had I known that a technology like this was going to emerge, I might not have gotten rid of all of my tapes from the past.Â