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In The Driver’s Seat – #KloutChevySonic

// December 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // Family

I’ve already had to return the Chevy Sonic that I had on loan for a weekend through Klout, but I did manage to shoot another video of the interior of the car, this time with my 6-foot frame stuffed inside. The Chevy Sonic is definitely a compact car, but it was actually quite nice for a few days. Here’s a peek at the inside:

We had a great time cruising through the backroads of Texas in the Chevy Sonic. It performed great on the highway, streets, and even dirt/gravel roads winding up the hills of Texas. It rained/drizzled the entire trip – from the time we left our driveway to the time we returned, so we were really grateful for the wipers on the front windshield, but also the rear wiper, so I could see what was coming up behind me.

The Chevy Sonic came with several music options, including XM Radio and inputs for my iPod. The XM Radio was awesome – hundreds of stations, mostly commercial-free, and they worked everywhere, without having to re-tune when we came in or out of range. It was beautiful. The controls on the steering wheel of the Sonic also made it easy for me to adjust the music without taking my eyes off the road.

The iPod hookups weren’t as easy. There are 2 standard 3.5mm audio-in plugs on the Sonic – one in the front dashboard and one in a small compartment above the glovebox (shown in the video above). These work as expected, and were how we used the iPod. There is a USB input in that small compartment, and when I plugged my iPod’s USB cable in there, it was a more robust connection, showing the currently playing song on the radio display and allowing me to browse the current playlist with the steering wheel controls. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to figure out how to browse through the rest of the iPod this way – if I wanted to load up a different playlist, for instance. I did not read the manual, and it’s entirely likely that I just missed a button somewhere, but it wasn’t obvious, so I didn’t use that option.

How do you listen to music in your car?

When Customer Service Isn’t

// October 24th, 2011 // 3 Comments » // stupid

There was a story circulating the Internet last week about a little girl at an Apple store. It seems this little 10-year-old girl saved every penny she could for nearly a year so that she could buy herself an Apple iPod touch, which she desperately wanted. All good so far – I’m all in favor of teaching the younger generations the importance of saving and paying cash, especially for gadgets.

The story gets weird then, when the little girl and her mom arrived at an Apple Store at 10:30 am, and were greeted by Apple employees who told them the store would be closing from 11a-2p and that they could not shop at the moment. The story goes that the mom put up a fight but they were turned away anyways, until the ‘heroic’ Apple store manager chased them down and was willing to make a ‘special exception’ to allow her to purchase her new toy.

The story is making the rounds as some sort of a big deal for the Apple store, how the manager went out of his way to help this ‘poor little girl’ and how it’s the experience of the Apple store, blah blah blah. Not so fast, let’s recap those details, shall we?

1. The girl and her mom arrived at 10:30a

2. They were told that the store was closing from 11a-2p and they could not shop.

I’m not sure what reality distortion field others live in, but I grew up knowing that 10:30a comes shortly BEFORE 11a, which means the mom and daughter had a full 30 minutes to shop before the store’s scheduled closing. The girl didn’t need to wander the store – she had known exactly what she wanted to buy for like, 9 months.

Maybe I’m missing something but the whole thing sounds silly to me. Also, is the Apple store the only place to get an iPod touch these days? I’m pretty sure I know of at least one retailer with over 4,000 stores that carries them and DOESN’T close randomly for 3 hours in the middle of the day. As we lead up to the U.S. holiday season, I’m fairly certain we’ll see more ‘customer service’ stories pop up here and there.

My iPod Classic SkinIt Has Arrived!

// September 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // toys

I bought my iPod Classic a few weeks ago and have been loving the ease of synchronization between mobile and desktop again. I got the black one, which looks great, but if you know me, you know I like to customize my stuff, and it wasn’t long before I was on SkinIt.com building a custom skin for my iPod.

Of course, I started with my default camo design, as I’m a huge fan of camo electronics. However, after a bit of thought, I decided I wanted my iPod to be different, since it serves an entirely different purpose than my laptop or phone. I use music to relax and focus my brain. I’ve never been officially diagnosed with A.D.D. or anything, but I’m sure I have it, and all my life I’ve had to had music playing to help me focus on things. When I have too many things on my todo list, I know I can just pop my earphones in and zone out to get things done. Hence, I wanted my iPod to show that it’s a source of relaxation, as well as of energy and focus.

I chose to use this image, which I’ve also used as a background on my various devices at different times. It’s a pretty simple view of water, but it’s extremely relaxing, and makes me think of laying in a pool in the summertime, with the sun baking your skin, when everything just feels right with the world. Water is also a very powerful force, capable of creating awesome things.

I also chose to put words on this skin – I don’t normally like text to interfere with graphics and imagery, and am not one to put labels on my photos, but this is a bit different. Since my music is my motivation and energy, I chose the words ‘Let the beat rock‘. I realize that’s a Black-Eyed Peas song, but think to the most fun, memorable, or exciting times in your life – odds are, there’s a song with a beat that gets you back to that spot, every time. Let the beat rock reminds me that no matter what, all it takes is a little beat to get my brain moving in whatever direction it needs to go.

So, that’s why my iPod skin isn’t camo – it’s water, it’s relaxing, and it’s inspirational. Let the beat rock.

If you haven’t already checked out SkinIt.com as a way to personalize your gadgets, I’d highly recommend you do. They’re pretty cheap (comparable to a case or something) and the skins are printed on a really high-quality material that sticks like glue to your stuff, but is also easily removable and doesn’t leave any residue at all. They have hundreds of designs you can choose from, or you can upload your own image and customize it to suit you.

Why I Bought An iPod

// August 27th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // annoying, Mobile, technology

In college, I bought a 4th generation 20GB black and white iPod at Sam’s Club (the HP Edition, actually). Back then, my music collection was only 10GB, and I figured that gave me plenty of room to grow. While using that iPod, I developed a pretty simple, yet strict method for keeping my music library clean and fresh. This system requires two pieces of metadata – star ratings and playcount/last played – to be synchronized between my portable device and my desktop computer.

For star ratings, I use this differently than most people. When I’m listening to music, if I come across a track that, for whatever reason, I don’t want to have in my library, I give it 5 stars. Why 5? Because on an iPod, that’s the easiest rating to give something, no matter what else you’re doing (driving, walking, etc). I can use my iPod all day long, rating tracks, and then synchronize with my computer, sort by star rating, and delete the 5′s. Super easy, and I’ve still got 1-4 stars for an actual rating system.

Playcounts/last played come into effect when I want to keep things fresh. My music library is now coming up to 20,000 tracks, and let’s face it – there’s no easy way to manage that. What I’ve done is setup playlists for each genre – these smart playlists are automatically populated with tracks that I haven’t listened to in the past XX days. The timeframe isn’t really important (sometimes it’s 30, sometimes it’s 60), but what’s important is that it’s music I haven’t heard in a while, conveniently packaged in a playlist.

These playlists are also useful on phones that have limited storage – rather than painstakingly trying to figure out what to transfer (or worse, risk the ‘random’ sync and take up space with junk), I can limit these playlists to ~1GB in size and have several of them on an 8GB microSD with plenty of extra room.

Since that original iPod died several years ago, I’ve tried in vain to replicate that system using various phones as MP3 players. I’ve tried every version of Windows Mobile since 2005, Symbian (various versions), Android, and even BlackBerry, and no phone that I’ve found is able to synchronize star ratings and playcounts/last played back to the desktop, which is the core requirement for my system to work.

Windows Mobile does synchronize this, but Windows Media Player on the desktop is such a pain to use, I just couldn’t handle it. My last-ditch effort was to try the new DoubleTwist player on my Nexus One. They advertise full synchronization of both ratings and playcounts back to iTunes, so I figured it was worth a shot. I’ll be honest, I never synced my phone twice. The DoubleTwist app on my computer is slow as molasses – it has to re-load *ALL* of my music every time I launch it – that takes quite a while when you have 120GB. Further, once it’s done loading all your stuff, it has to talk to iTunes to find out any changes to your media there. It’s easily 30-45 minutes of ‘loading’ before I’m even able to use the app, much less synchronize anything with it.

Thus, after fighting it for several years, I finally broke down tonite and bought the 160GB iPod Classic. I’m not really happy about it, and I’ve had to switch from MediaMonkey back to iTunes for my desktop solution, but I finally have just that – a solution, instead of a clunky workaround. I bought the 160GB iPod Classic mainly because it’s pretty mellow – there’s no frills, and this is purely a functional toy, I don’t need a touchscreen or any apps and such. Second, I bought it because, at least currently, I can fit my entire 120GB music collection on it – which means I always have my entire collection with me, which is something I’ve missed since I’ve been using my phones, even the N97 which had 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot.

It’s really unfortunate, honestly. There are so many benefits to using your phone as your MP3 player that it’s not even funny. I really find it quite depressing that no one in the mobile industry is working to address these two small (but incredibly important) issues. I’ve spoken at length with the http://blog.ovi.com/2009/11/12/welcome-to-nokia-ovi-player/ team about this, and they’ve simply (repeatedly) said it’s just not on their roadmap right now.

I’m keeping my eye on DoubleTwist, though – with a few speed improvements, they could finally be the key that I’ve been looking for. In the meantime, I’ve got my 160GB iPod Classic, and I’ll be using it to weed out the crappy music tracks I’ve accumulated over the years, until someone else is able to compete.

Have you found a way to synchronize ratings and playcounts/last played with anything other than an iPod? What do you use to keep your music library fresh? Have you given up on locally-stored media and gone cloud-only with Last.FM or Pandora?

Microsoft Going With Simple Advertising

// May 12th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // marketing

Let’s face it – Microsoft is not exactly known for great advertising campaigns, specifically when it comes to consumer electronics such as its Zune MP3 player and music store. For several reasons, the iPod has dominated the MP3 market, mainly due to its tight integration with iTunes, and that application’s robust feature set. However, the iPod/iTunes habit is an expensive one, without question, and Microsoft is finally taking advantage of the current economic environment to remind consumers that being an Apple fan is expensive.

Take this latest ad, comparing the Zune and Zune Pass to the latest iPod. Both the 120GB iPod Classic and the 120GB Zune MP3 players are priced at ~$230 on Amazon, currently. The Zune has TONS more features, but we’ll ignore that, for now. In the ad, Microsoft points out – correctly – that in order to load that 120GB iPod Classic up with a full 30,000 songs, it would cost…well…$30,000. Alternatively, the ZunePass is a subscription service that gives you unlimited downloads each month.

Yes, there are several caveats to the ZunePass – DRM-protected, limited device support, etc. However, you could easily argue that most people with an MP3 player are listening to their songs in one of 2 places – on that MP3 player, or on their computer. For a large majority of people purchasing either a 120GB iPod Classic or a 120GB Zune, this comparison is tough to argue with.

I like this ad because it’s loud, but not annoyingly so, and because it’s simple. It doesn’t take much to see the sense in the argument, and there’s a really simple call to action – go check out the Zune. Easy as that. There’s no question left in the viewer’s head as to who the advertiser is or what the promised benefit is. The only real question in my mind is why Microsoft hasn’t released a Zune app for Windows Mobile that allows you to play ZunePass content on your smartphone. What do you think?