I must admit though that for all my love of gadgetry, this is my first “smart” phone, so much of my adoration might be due to that. Regardless, here are some thoughts.

Having instant access to email is wonderful. I host my email via Google Apps. IMAP + Gmail (Google Apples) = Amazing. It’s fantastic. I also have Google’s mobile Gmail client as well. It gives more of a true Gmail interface with Searching / Starring, etc but it is slower to update. The Blackberry client updates continuously, while the Google client polls every fifteen minutes. I’ve heard they will make this configurable in the next version, but I can’t find any concrete documentation saying so. If they do, it will literally be perfect.

The web browser works surprisingly well. On the Verizon network, I can browse the internet quite nicely.

I also enjoy the click screen very much. I was unconvinced of this feature when I first read about it, but it is actually implemented quite intuitively, and it works well for me.

The Blackberry Messenger is great for instant communication with other Blackberry users. I am also using the Google Talk client.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality from the camera – both for still pictures and video. The touch/drag zoom works very well.

Copying and pasting comes in quite handy, too.

I’ve also loaded a few applications:

The aforementioned Gmail Mobile Client – I already described it, but it functions as you’d expect – very well.

Google Talk – Instant access to other Google Talk users.

Google Sync – Flawlessly synchronizes with my Google Calendars and Contacts.

Opera Mini – This is a terrific little mobile browser. It is not optimized / fully compatible with the Storm yet, so there are a couple quirks, but it is more than useable.

Twitterberry – I’m not a hardcore “Twitterer,” but it is fun and Twitterberry is an excellent client that doesn’t rely on SMS messages.

Weatherbug – Don’t know why – maybe I am a weather nerd. I enjoy having the world’s weather forecast in my pocket.

YouVersion – YouVersion is a terrific Bible application from the LifeChurch team. It is not quite ready for primetime on the Storm though. It is useable for reading and searching though, which is what I guess is the main point. Unfortunately, it cannot download translations to my Storm right now, which would be very nice for the odd occasion when I don’t have a reliable signal. I’m sure it will be though. I’ve played with it on my dad’s iPhone and it works perfectly.

Youtube Mobile Client – It’s just what it sounds like. It let’s you kill countless hours on Youtube.

Flycast – Oh yeah, THIS is nice. In an office where radios aren’t allowed and streaming audio is blocked, this is a wonderful addition to my workday. Flycast allows you to stream radio via the Storm.

To sum up, I love my Storm and in less than a week, have become completely dependant on / addicted to it. I’ll never go back to a “normal” cell phone again!

Apple released iTunes 8 to the public on Tuesday. As a major iTunes user, I was more curious about this than the new iPods, the details of which we have known for a while. While iTunes 8 is certainly not a major update, there are some interesting new features.

First of all, the much-touted Genius functionality. Genius is a feature that analyzes your iTunes library and the uploads that information into a shared repository maintained by Apple. The information is supposedly anonymous, etc, but we’re talking music genres, artists, ratings and play count information, so I’m not all the concerned either way. Anyways, once enabled, it allows you to select a track and generate a playlist based on that particular song. I have created several “Genius Playlists” and with the exception of an odd track or two, it has worked remarkably well and has created some very enjoyable playlists. The other aspect is that it can recommend songs to you based on songs in your library. These songs can then be purchased from the iTunes Store. I may use it to discover new music, but I don’t typically buy from iTunes. I despise restrictive DRM and even their non-DRM’ed tracks are in Apple’s m4a format. I buy my digital music from Amazon’s excellent MP3 service.

There is one major problem with Genius right now though: The Beatles. Well, not exclusively The Beatles, but they are the most glaring example. The Genius feature apparently employs some data from the iTunes store, even when simply creating playlists from your own library. As such, artists that are not present in the iTunes Store do not work with the Genius feature. For example, I can not use the song Hey Jude as a source for a Genius playlist because The Beatles are not available from the iTunes Store. This is true for other artists as well. This is poor design and Apple should address it. The Genius feature should be “genius” enough to build playlists based on artists not on the iTunes Store using data from my own library and that of the libraries of others out in “the cloud.” A big thumbs down for this glaring omission. Genius is a great feature overall, but Apple needs to fix it.

Apple has also added a new Grid View for viewing your library by album cover. This is a nice looking view, but it is something other players have had for a while and is a feature I’ll rarely use. Still, it does look very pretty. Check it out here.

iTunes has a new, “improved” visualization now. While it is certainly interesting-looking, visualizations never interested me much back in 1998 with Winamp and not much has changed. I guess it could look cool on a big screen TV or something at a party, but I really don’t care much for visualizations and I can’t imagine too many other people care either.

Another welcome addition to iTunes 8 is the ability to set much more specific preferences for podcast downloads. Bravo! It’s about time!

iTunes is a large, cumbersome, resource-intensive application, but the actual resource utilization in this version does not seem to have increased, which is a good thing. In addition, the application itself seems a good bit more responsive. Moving around within it seems to be much smoother, with fewer pauses or hesitations. Many people complain about the impact iTunes has on a system. It is certainly not lightweight. However, for managing my music library (which is hundreds of GB), iTunes does exactly what I need and want it to do and I don’t plan to replace it anytime soon (though I am keeping a sharp eye on Songbird).

Generally speaking, iTunes 8 is a worthy upgrade. The Genius feature is something I’ll use (but they need to correct its glaring flaw), podcast configuration is much improved and resource impact is about the same. If you are a heavy iTunes user, I’d recommend this latest version.

Enter Newsbin Pro. I’ve known about Newsbin for a long time. In fact, I had installed and attempted to use it many times in the past, but it never did anything for me. I recently grew increasingly frustrated with a quirk in Xnews, so I gave Newsbin another try. This time, it “clicked” and I’m not looking back. Newsbin Pro is not free, but it is only $35 for life. I am a huge fan of using free software (such as Xnews), but I also believe in paying for a good product. At $35 for a lifetime license and unlimited upgrades, Newsbin Pro is a bargain.

Most highly recommended!

Newsbin Homepage

I love Christmas. It is by far my favorite time of the year. I have strict self-imposed rules though:

• No Christmas music before Thanksgiving
• No Christmas movies before Thanksgiving
• No decorating before Thanksgiving

I made an exception this Saturday. A friend of mine obtained free passes to an advanced screening of the new holiday movie Fred Claus, starring Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughn. (Thanks for the ticket, Stephen!)

Vaughn stars as Santa’s (Giamatti) older brother Fred, who has lived his entire life in the shadow of his legendary “saint” of a brother. Due to some crazy circumstances, Fred has to go to the North Pole and assist his brother in preparing for the big night..Christmas Eve.

Fred Claus is a better-than-average, standard family Christmas film. It certainly isn’t a hilarious movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it was funny, festive and genuine enough to keep me interested. I’m sure it is one that would be great with the family as well. There was little to no profanity of any kind, so it is certainly “kid-safe.” I don’t think it is aimed at young children to the extent that a film such as “The Santa Clause” is though, but there is plenty to keep them involved and interested.

Overall, I’d recommend it for an enjoyable evening out with your family. In fact, we often catch a movie when the entire family is together for Thanksgiving and Fred Claus has that kind of gathering written all over it.

Installation was painless, with no reboot required. I launched iTunes (with its new, blue icon) and was immediately greeted by a prompt informing me that iTunes was not my default player for certain file types. “Yes, I know this. I don’t want to modify my file associations, and please don’t ask me again,” I politely replied. While I much prefer being asked than having my settings hijacked, it would be nice if Apple would just see that I already had their previous version installed and assume I had my files associated how I wanted them.

One new feature is the automatic downloading of album art. This is just awesome since I always tag my music with album art. However, there does appear to be a minor issue. If you let iTunes download the album art, the images are not actually embedded in the files per the file tag specs, but are placed in a specific directory. This is nice in that it saves space on your iPod since each image is only copied once per album. However, if you wanted to play those files in another application or on another portable player, the album art would not be present. I actually think this is an oversight that will eventually be fixed. If you go to “Get Info” and add the art there manually, it is correctly added to the actual files. No big deal for me though, as all my current music already has art, but the ability to easily download it for new tracks would be useful for me assuming Apple either corrects this or makes it an option to embed the downloaded art.

iTunes 7 and the new 1.2 firmware also support gapless playback. Gapless playback is pretty self-explanatory. You can now tag albums so that there will be no gap between tracks. It’s a great feature for live albums and those on which songs/titles should be played with no break between them. This is a very welcome feature and I am thrilled they added it. I tested it out and my concert CDs are perfect and Sgt. Pepper now sounds as it should on my iPod. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, and umm, what took you so long?

IPod Updater is now gone. iPod firmware updates are now handled through iTunes. The new version 1.2 is out and adds some new features such as the capability to download games, screen brightness controls and various bug fixes. I did have an issue updating the firmware though. I clicked to update, the status bar said “Updating” but nothing ever happened. Finally, thanks to a suggestion over at iLounge, I got it working. What I had to do was go through the update and wait until it got stuck. Eventually, the iPod dismounted (went back from Do Not Disconnect to the standard interface) and I immediately unplugged and plugged it back in. This worked like a champ. Thanks to the iLounge community for bringing this to my attention!

A new feature of the iPod firmware that I am a huge fan of is the ability to browse alphabetically by letter when scrolling quicly through your artists, songs or whatever. In other words, if I flip through the A-B songs very fast, the iPod starts scrolling through the letters of the alphabet and then only displays the contained songs/artists when I slow down. This makes browsing for a particular track or artist way down the list much fast for those with large libraries.

As with any new software release or firmware update, there are undoubtedly bugs and quirks with it. I have read numerous reports of people having issues with the new iTunes, the firmware or both. Many of them end up being simply misconfiguration or misunderstanding of new features or terminology. Overall though, I have been very satisfied with both iTunes 7 and firmware 1.2 during my brief time witb it. Other than the initially annoying firmware updating problem I was having, I have had no problems.

Essential Link: iLounge (especially their Forums)

Last night, I had the pleasure of reacquainting myself with a cinematic masterpiece from my youth – The Wizard. In 1989, The Wizard took the nation by storm with its harrowing tale of three kids determined to make it to “Video Armageddon,” a national Nintendo competition at Universal Studios in California.

With a cast like Fred Savage, Christian Slater and Beau Bridges, how can you possibly go wrong? Fred Savage plays Corey Woods, a nine year-old boy from Utah whose family is in ruins. Christian Slater plays his older brother Nick. Beau Bridges plays his father, Sam. Corey and Nick also have a younger half-brother, Jimmy, who lives with his mother (his mother is Sam’s second ex-wife). Jimmy is “special.” Ever since the drowning of his twin sister Jennifer, he rarely speaks and is eventually institutionalized. Doing what every nine year-old kid would do, Corey springs his little brother and they begin hitchhiking their way west toward California.

Along the way, they meet another young wandering soul, Haley, played by Jenny Lewis. They pick her up at a gas station/bus stop and she joins them in their westward trek. At that same stop, Corey accidentally discovers that his little brother has a gift. “You got 50,000 on Double Dragon?!” he exclaims. You see, Jimmy is like the Nintendo Rain Man – master of all things 8-bit. Once his true skills are recognized, the group decides to make the journey to Video Armageddon and attempt to win the $50,000 prize. Oh, and did I mention that there is a laughingly wimpy bounty hunter sent to retrieve Jimmy? That’s right. The plot is: A 9-year old and his Nintendo-genius pick up a girl at a gas station and travel alone to California to win a video game championship while being pursued by a bounty hunter and culminating with an exciting game of Super Mario Bros. 3.

Let me tell you – this movie is ridiculous. Seriously, it is. However, any movie that prominently features Double Dragon, Ninja Gaiden, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Super Mario Bros. 3 and the Power Glove is OK in my book.

I had not seen The Wizard in at least fifteen years. It was never even one of my favorite movies as a kid, though I remember liking it. Still, I had so much fun watching it last week. In fact, I need to pull out my favorite emulator and freshen up on some 8-bit video game awesomeness. A gripe though: “Rain man” or not – there’s no way that kid knew about that warp whistle if he had never seen the game before. I don’t care how good he is. If you’ve ever played SMB3, you know what I’m talking about.

An additional bonus: You get to see young Spider-man make a cameo appearance. Check out this screenshot!

I had intended to do a much more through review than this. Unfortunately, I have just not had the free time to devote to it. So, I have written up some initial thoughts. Time permitting; I will post a revised version in the future. I will also be adding screenshots tonight. I forgot to upload them before I left this morning.

Windows Vista Beta 2 was released to the public last week. After downloading the 3+ gigabyte image file, I decided to take the plunge. I burned the image file, backed up my data, rebooted and prayed for the best.

First of all, the installation went smoothly, however it was a very lengthy process. After rebooting off the Vista DVD, I was presented with installation options. I chose to format my hard drive and install a clean copy of Vista, though I did have the choice to upgrade. The rudimentary disk manager interface was better than previous incarnations, allowing me to delete my current partition, create a new partition and format it NTFS. I left 20GB unformatted (have to have someplace for Ubuntu to live ). The format was very fast, after which I was prompted for the product key. I like that Microsoft has moved this step earlier in the process. It used to occur much later. There have been a few occasions in the past where I have installed Windows XP on a machine, getting more than halfway through the process, only to realize that I did not have the product key handy. It was my fault, of course, but if a product key is required, it is should be required at the beginning of the process. After inputting the key, the install routine continued. The first major action was copying files ?? and it was definitely a major process. It took 45 minutes to copy all the files. It then continued through the background install steps that required no user interaction. The system presented me with the regional options, asked my name and prompted me to enter a password. It never asked me any networking information, which was different from previous versions of Windows.

Once I logged into the system, I immediately noticed the overhauled user interface. The familiar Start Button no longer displayed the word “Start” and featured only the new Windows logo. The Gadget Pane was on the right side of the screen, displaying a clock and an RSS feed reader. Interesting, indeed – more on that later. The first thing I did was plug in my USB 2.0 external hard drive, containing all my crucial files and applications. The system immediately detected the device and presented me with the User Account Control dialog box. This is one of the new security features of Windows Vista. Essentially, all users (even when logged in as an administrator) run with limited access/rights. When a process or application requires administrative access, the system immediately locks and grays the screen and presents you with the User Account Control (UAC) box, asking if you want to allow the requested operation. While I admire the intention, the implementation needs a little work. It is very jarring and not very intelligent. For example, when installing certain software, I was prompted multiple times by UAC for various things ?? writing to C:\Program Files, modifying the registry, etc. It should be intelligent enough to understand that if I allow an installation routine to start, then I intend to allow it to perform all the necessary functions. I tolerated it for a while, but eventually disabled UAC altogether. Additionally, it is not where one would expect it to be located – in the Security Center. No, it is actually disabled through the System Configuration utility or through the User Accounts Control Panel applet. You can also modify its behavior via Local Security Settings.

The new Aero glass interface looks very nice. Windows and dialog boxes fade in and out with variable transparency. Windows seemed to open, close and move around with no real slowdown compared to Windows XP. There are some applications that do not work well (or at all) with the new interface. In those cases, the system defaults back to the default Windows desktop and disables all the new visual features until that application closes.

The gadget pane is an interesting new feature. Basically, you can plug in floating mini-apps to the desktop, such as clocks, CPU/memory monitors, timers, stock tickers and RSS readers. The only real use I would have would be having multiple clocks at work. I have to work on and manage servers located all over the world, so having easily-viewable clocks displaying multiple time zones might be beneficial to me. The RSS reader functions nicely and scrolls through a feed, displaying the headlines as it moves. Clicking on one of the headlines opens your default web browser and takes you to the topic in question. Kudos to Microsoft for using the default browser in this instance. I half-expected to see Internet Explorer open, but to my pleasant surprise, it was Firefox.

Virtually all of my “critical” applications installed and ran fine:

Firefox 1.5.0.4
Thunderbird 1.5.0.4
Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Portable Gimp
Trillian Pro 3.1
iTunes 6.0.4
PowerDVD 7.0
FlashFXP 3.4 RC3
Nero 6.6 ?? (Nero 7 would not work)
NewsBin Pro
ISOBuster
CutePDF

One sad casualty appears to be Xnews, my favorite newsgroup client. It is older and has not been updated in a while, but I use it all the time. Unfortunately, under Vista, there is a major problem with it. When opening multiple groups, it is next to impossible to get individual window controls on each group’s window. This makes it very difficult to close out a single group. I tried in every compatibility mode offered from Windows 98 to Windows XP Service Pack 2. No luck. The application itself actually works fine; you just don’t get the individual window control (Close, Minimize, and Restore). By clicking feverishly through open group windows, you can eventually get the controls on a window or two, but it is intolerable and a pretty big hindrance to the way I use the application, so unless I come up with a workaround, I might have to say goodbye to Xnews. Farewell, old friend. You have served me well.

Speaking of Xnews, it revealed an interesting new feature of Vista. As you probably know, many applications run as if they have complete control over the operating system, writing to protected directories updating files and other potentially dangerous activities. Vista seamlessly alters this behavior and redirects such calls to a hidden, user-specific directory. Here is an example. In Xnews, I sometimes download binaries to a \temp directory under C:\Program Files\Xnews. Well, I did that under Vista, but could not find the files. I searched and searched and simply could not find them. However, in Xnews, they were clearly visible. Hmm? After some digging, I discovered what was happening. Since Xnews is an older application that does not necessarily play nice with regards to the operating system, Vista redirected its requests to alter C:\Program Files to a private directory under my user profile. Xnews was attempting to “alter” C:\Program Files by adding downloaded files to C:\Program Files\Xnews\temp. What Windows did was redirect that to C:\Users\Zack\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Xnews. When this is done, Windows adds a new button to that application’s directory called “Compatibility Files.” When you click that, you are redirected to the hidden directory. This is a very intriguing operation that I actually think could be quite useful. It forces older applications to play in their own little virtual “sandbox” in the file system. However, I do think that it should be made more obvious the user. For instance, Windows should have alerted me to the fact that Xnews was being redirected. Regardless, this is a nice feature that, with some tweaks will be very welcome.

Another minor change is that user profiles have moved from (for example) C:\Documents and Settings\Zack to C:\Users\Zack. This makes the structure a bit more logical and makes sense to me.

For antivirus, I used Trend Micro PC-Cillin 14.55 for Windows Vista. It is free for personal use and testing until October 2006. I am only using the real-time and email virus-scanning features and it works great and has a small memory footprint on my system.

There is one major issue I had and that was the networking. Microsoft has completely revamped networking under Vista. When I first booted into the operating system, both my wired and wireless adapters were detected and appeared to work normally. Microsoft breaks up networks into separate areas now. You can tell the system that a particular connection has access to the internet, local network or both. I had to give my wired connection access to both and then I could browse the web, access my desktop PC, etc. Vista also had drivers for my wireless card and could detect my wireless network. Unfortunately, it told me that it could not connect to the access point. I suspect it had to do with the AES/WPA I was running, because if I removed all security from my access point, it would connect. That was not a viable option though, so I downloaded the latest Windows XP drivers for my card from Dell and installed those with no problem. Once I did that, I could connect to the access point. Great! Things were looking good??but then the real fun began.

I needed to upload a bunch of small files to my blog (the WordPress 2.0.3 upgrade). I fired up FlashFXP and started uploading. It was zipping right along, when all the sudden I was greeted by the trusty blue screen of death. Once I got back into Windows, I tried the same thing again ?? this time using CuteFTP. Same result ?? BSOD. I tested uploading a single, large file and that was successful, but any time I tried to do multiple small files quickly, the system halted. I disabled my wireless card and plugged in to my network directly. Everything uploaded fine. OK, so I assumed that it had something to do with loading Windows XP drivers for my wireless card and them not being totally compatible. I could live with that for now??if that were the only networking oddity. It gets better though. Once I actually got the blog upgraded, I could not reply to comments. I could post, edit, do everything ?? but NOT reply to comments. I kept getting odd database connection timeouts. This happened in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I was very concerned, thinking that I had somehow hosed the blog. I finally had to give up trying to troubleshoot the issue for a while. We headed to my parents’ house for dinner. While there, I tried replying to a comment??and it was successful. When I got home, I tried replying to several other blogs from Windows Vista and I got the same kind of errors. Then I realized what was going on. For some reason, Windows Vista’s networking was the problem. I did a netstat and saw a ton of packets in TIME_WAIT and FIN_WAIT. I need to investigate further, but the problem was definitely confined to the Vista machine. I have no idea why, but I am very curious to find out.

It also seems that Microsoft has made accessing network options very convoluted. By default, you have to go to Network > Network Center > Manage Network Connections to get to basic network settings like IP address and DNS servers. Additionally, if you notice any issues with network-aware applications, you should check out the Windows Firewall. The new version includes both inbound and outbound blocking, as opposed to the inbound-only protection offered by Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Overall, I am generally pleased with Vista Beta 2. Visually, it is a very attractive operating system. Microsoft seems to finally be trying to take advantage of hardware graphic acceleration for the operating system itself. Of course, you can default back to the older, standard Windows interface if the new Aero glass does not work for you or your hardware. Once you get used to some of the new interface tweaks and how certain functions are accessed, I actually think maneuvering through the system makes a bit more sense in this version of Windows. Vista also appears to be relatively stable, given that it is beta software. I have had no lockups or blue screens, with the notable exception of the network-related issues I mentioned. I think Microsoft has some work to do with their new network stack, but I’m sure it will get better in later betas. My critical applications all work well except Xnews. I had to use a slightly older version of Nero, but it worked flawlessly and I have no doubt that the latest versions will be compatible soon, because Nero has been certified for the Windows Vista Logo Quality Program. I had no major performance problems or any configuration issues that would prevent me from using Vista. I used Windows XP as my primary OS from Beta 2 onward and it looks like I will be doing the same with Vista. So far, I have had a generally positive experience. If you enjoy tinkering with the latest software, head on over to Microsoft and download Windows Vista Beta 2. With it being beta though, I definitely recommend you back up your data first.

You’ve been warned.

Google has decided to expand its horizons yet again by reaching into the spreadsheet arena. Google Spreadsheets went into limited testing. I signed up for and received an invitation. I’ve spent a little time playing with it, and so far, I am very impressed. Admittedly, I am not the most advanced Excel user. I just don’t have much use for its more advanced features. I use it primarily to sort and organize data and perform basic calculations.

On the surface, Google Spreadsheets appears to be a very capable web application. I was able to easily open, edit and save files to the online workspace. It also handled my existing spreadsheets with ease. Google allows you to save and download your files as csv, xls or html files for easy use with your existing spreadsheet application. Existing files that I opened using Google seemed to retain all my formatting and formulas. After making changes to the document via Google, I saved it back to my hard drive and opened it with Excel. There were no compatibility issues going between the two editors. Again, none of the files I tested made use of any really complicated formulas or layouts, but it worked well with what I gave it.

Another great feature that should be expected from Google by now — collaboration. Google allows you to invite people to either view or edit your spreadsheet in much the same manner that Google Calendar does. Multiple users can even be editing the same document at the same time. An integrated chat window shows the current edits/editors in real-time.

Overall, at this very early stage, Google Spreadsheets shows a lot of potential. It would be great to be able to edit spreadsheets on the road when you might not have access to Excel or whatever spreadsheet application you use.

With the release of this limited beta, Google is making its presence known in the office/productivity realm. Google Calendar could be seen as an attempt to give Gmail the scheduling functionality of email clients such as Microsoft Outlook. Google also recently purchased Writely, an online word processor, so don’t be surprised when you see “Google Write” or something like that in the near future. Should Microsoft be worried? Maybe. No enterprise business is going to switch over to Google to replace Microsoft Office. It just won’t happen. There are too many potential data security and accessibility issues to consider. However, for the casual office application user, Google Spreadsheets and other web-based productivity applications could be viable options. Like I said, Google Spreadsheets appears to do most of what I need out of a spreadsheet already. So, yes, Microsoft should at least take note. For the casual home user, Google Spreadsheets could be an excellent solution. For home users who don’t want to shell out several hundred dollars, but don’t trust or don’t want to do all their work online, there is always OpenOffice, the free, open-source productivity suite.

From just a quick review of its features, Google Spreadsheets looks like another success from Google. I am sure it will eventually feature AdSense or some other revenue-generating mechanism — which is fine with me. After all, Google exists to make money, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I recommend you give Google Spreadsheets a try. It is invitation-only right now, but a friend and I both signed up and received invitations within hours. Check it out – I doubt you will be disappointed.

Invitation Request

Tour

Screenshots: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

Their articles are aimed at the more “tech-savvy” readers, but I think they will be accessible to just about anyone with a decent grasp of the basics. The columns are often opinion pieces and best practices related to current hot security issues and can provide valuable insight into current hot topics in the security world. I consider SecurityFocus to be an indespensable resource and could not recommend it more highly.

SecurityFocus

In the beginning, I just did not get it. I thought the iPod was all hype. There must be equal or better alternatives out there. I quickly dismissed the iPod as nothing more than the current “it” gadget. I also did not care for the iTunes software. It just seemed clunky and unwieldy. I wrote off the iPod altogether paid little to no attention to it.

That all changed last fall. We were visiting with family for Thanksgiving and my brother brought along his 4th generation, 20GB iPod. Once I actually used it, I was hooked. I could not put it down and I had to get one. So, after racking up a stack of Best Buy gift cards as Christmas and birthday gifts, I visited my local Best Buy and took possession of a sleek, 5th generation, 60GB white iPod. This is the first version to offer video support via its 2.5 inch color screen.

My iPod is literally the best personal electronics product I have ever purchased. It absolutely revolutionized the way I listen to music. I have been a music fanatic for as long as I can remember. From popular songs of today to Christian praise and worship music to the Beatles and movie scores – I love it all. Long before got my iPod, I got into the habit of ripping all my CD’s as 256kbps MP3 files. And no, I am not interested in debating lossy/lossless compression or the various codecs…but I use the LAME encoder if you care. I am also insanely obsessive in keeping my digital music organized, both when it comes to the actual files themselves and the mp3 tags. This made getting my iPod loaded up a breeze.

Once I took it home, I downloaded and installed the latest iTunes software, pointed it to my root music drive and let it import. With hundreds of gigabytes of music, this took a while. Once it was finished, I went into iTunes, sorted by album and selected which albums and miscellaneous tracks I wanted copied over to the iPod. Once that was completed, I plugged the iPod into my laptop answered a few simple questions and immediately, my music was being copied from my local file server to the iPod. The USB 2.0 transfer speed was excellent and in no time, my iPod was loaded up and ready to go.

I was taken immediately with how wrong I was about the iTunes software. I had anticpated using it only to sync up my iPod, but never for any actual real playback or daily use. Well, the software had matured by leaps and bounds since I had last seen it. iTunes is an incredibly versatile application. The playlist features are incredible. You can create manual playlists of favorite songs, or smart playlists, which are built based on variables you specify. For example, a smart playlist could be comprised of all music where the Year contains 199 and has a 4 or 5 star rating. That would allow you to have a dynamic playlist of high rated songs from the 1990′s. Another great feature is the Party Shuffle option. Party shuffle randomly plays songs from your entire music library or from a specific playlist. It also allows you to remove or modify songs on the fly, so you only get the songs you want.

The playlist feature is probably what I use the most. I have several playlists I use all the time. I play in the band at our church. On my iPod, I have around 130 songs that we have played in church at various times. They are littered throughout numerous albums or are just individual tracks. So, I created a “Church” playlist and added all those songs to it. Now, at the touch of a button, I have access to almost any song I might have to play on a given Sunday. No more hunting around for a CD or trying to remember who did a particular song. I have a Beatles playlist holding all my personal favorite songs from my all-time favorite band. Nice.

I have many more playlist compilations that encompass various genres and albums that can be played depending on what I am in the mood to hear.

The iTunes Music Store is available if I want to buy music online. I rarely do that though. If I want to buy an album, I would prefer to actually buy the CD and rip it myself. While I understand the desire of the music industry to protect its content, the encryption on media files purchased through iTunes really irritates me. Besides, if I rip it myself, I get it in the quality I want using the encoder of my choice. If I did buy music through iTunes, I would definitely take advantage of software to allow me to remove encryption from the music I had purchased.

Podcasts are also another excellent reason to own an iPod, though you can listen to them on any portable audio device or your PC. A podcast is best described as a downloadable radio broadcast. People put podcasts out there on every topic: from sermons to movies to technology – the choices are literally endless. From within iTunes, you just search the iTunes Music Store for the topic of your choice. There are three podcasts that I listen to regularly: Cinecast (soon to be Filmspotting), This Week in Tech and SecurityNow.

The iPod hardware itself is just unmatched. It is simple and elegant, like most modern Apple hardware. The single handed interface is excellent. I can easily browse through albums, artists, genres or tracks, using just my thumb. The sound quality is also superb for such a small portable device. I can assign a star rating to a song as I listen to it for later inclusion in one of my ratings-based playlists. The screen is bright and crisp for easy viewing. Though I do not use it much for video, I have ripped a few television shows and movies and they look fantastic.

I literally take my iPod everywhere I go. If Rush is not on the radio, the odds are high that I am listening to my iPod. In the car? An adapter allows my iPod to play nicely through the car stereo. Doing some work on the computer? Listening to music on the iPod. Working around the house? Plug the iPod into my Onkyo receiver and work to my favorite songs blasting through the house.

I was not kidding when I said that my iPod was the best personal electronic device I have ever purchased. Thanks to this amazing piece of technology, I now have all my church music, the entire Beatles catalogue, my favorite movie scores, miscellaneous other albums and tracks and an assortment of podcasts at my fingertips wherever I go.

I went from dismissing it as hype to never leaving home without it. I was wrong.

To Apple: Thank You.

iPod Homepage – iLounge – SmartPlaylists – PodcastAlley