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Monday, September 18th, 2006

Pandora Internet Radio

I was introduced to Pandora today, the free web radio. I'm certain there's been something similar to this before, but I have to admit, this one works pretty well.

The basic concept is easy to understand: you make a "station" by choosing a song or artist you like. You then listen to that song/artist, and rank it (like/dislike). Pandora will compare that information to their Music Genome Project, their six year project where they broke thousands of songs into individual music qualities. Then, you get an unending series of songs that will, theoretically, be in the same vein you like. If you like a song, rate it up. If you don't, rate it down.

Best of all, you can have more than one "station". Currently, I have one primed with Tom Waits and one primed with White Stripes/Franz Ferdinand. I'll shortly add a third, this time using Monster Magnet as a base. Definitely not stuff I want to get mixed up :)

The interface could use a little loving, though. Once someone helped walk me through it, it was very straight forward. Lots of useful help text, letting me know what it was doing every step of the way. But if I had stumble through it the first time, I would probably have given up in frustration. The interface is designed to be compact, but suffers from "what am I supposed to do now" -itis. Also, their song licensing is a bit limiting, as you cannot rewind or go back to songs, nor can you skip ahead more than a handfuil of songs an hour. If you think of it as a radio rather than a CD player, it makes more sense.

If you hit the site for the first time, I recommend reading the FAQ and the About page, both links annoyingly tucked away at the bottom of the homepage. Oh, and it only accepts USA postal codes, so us canucks have to be creative :)

Friday, August 25th, 2006

Team Fortress 2

After being gone or "in progress" since the original Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2 is coming, and it looks great. It’s moved away from the mostly realistic styles that most Half-Life mods strive for, instead going for an Incredibles-esque appearence.

Here’s how Alex Simmons at IGN introduces it...

With its stylised graphics and arcade-focused gameplay, Team Fortress 2 is a world apart from the gritty realism of Counter-Strike, at least on the surface. But beneath TF2’s cartoon façade lies a team-based first-person shooter that’s surprisingly familiar, with players choosing from a selection of defined character types before working as a team to overpower the enemy.

You can read the IGN article for more details, and I recommend you watch the teaser video to get a feel for all the character types. I love the look, I love the style. If the game retains that feel, it’s sure to stand out against the numerous mods trying to be the next Counter-Strike. It’s a shame, in my opinion anyway, that it’ll never have a single player component.

I’ve always enjoyed a good first person shooter, but in terms of multiplayer, I always preferred co-op play rather than head to head. Shrug. I never got into player versus player aspect... except for a short stint with Return To Castle Wolfenstein’s team multiplayer; I liked the team aspect of it. It was like a compromise between real co-op and full out deathmatch.

I diddled with that and I tried Counter-Strike, but eventually I let it pass me by. It wasn’t that it wasn’t fun, I really liked it, it was just that I wasn’t interested in putting the amount of time and practice required to keep up with the playing field. Same goes for any MMO that eventually tries to enforce an us-versus-them mentality on a player... when a game goes from being plain fun to being competitive, when it requires me to stop enjoying myself so I can learn the indepth strategies and key combinations and battle tactics, I lose interest.

But hey, that’s just me :)

Monday, August 7th, 2006

Apple Announcements at WWDC 2006

Apple’s WWDC 2006 announcement went out. They used the time to announce the new Mac Pro and to preview some of Leopard’s features. I’m not going to go into too much detail, there’s a hundred better articles out there that already do that. Instead, I’ll give you a sampling and my impressions.

The new Mac Pro, replacing the G5 PowerMacs. I admit I’m disappointed the rumours that a new enclosure was coming out turned out to be false. Personally, I think the titanium look is nice, but I’m yearning for a new look from Apple. The white Macbooks are sweet!

The new Mac Pro’s are Apple’s top end machines, and unlessy ou have serious coin to drop and really need the extra horsepower, you’ll give this a pass. Let’s face it, I do not need 16Gb or RAM or four harddrive bays :)

The juicy bits I was waiting for came with the Leopard preview. I might have mentioned it before; I want to buy a Mac as my next machine, but I’m holding off until Leopard is released. Looks like that won’t be until spring 2007, but with what they showed today, it looks like it’s going to be worth the wait.

Mail got a bump, making it a little more like Apple’s answer to Outlook. Addition of Notes and a To-Do list, which integrates with other apps. I preferred Mail when it was fairly stand alone, and I worry about it starting to do too much. If the To-Do integration with iCal and other apps are solid, it’ll probably work out all well, but I’d have to hands-on it to be sure.

Time Machine is Leopard’s built in backup software. Don’t let the fancy name and graphics fool you, there’s some solid thinking behind it. I’ll have to read up in more depth to form a full opinion, but right now, three things spring to mind. One, great idea, love being able to retrieve past versions of documents I saved or deleted outright. Could be useful. Two, how much drive space and resources does this constant backup take? How much can it be configured. Or outright turned off? And three, the 3D effects are cute, but can they be turned off?

Another feature in Leopard is Spaces, virtual desktops. It’s like the tabs on your web browser; open a new blank desktop for apps, to reduce clutter on screen. You can tab between desktops, and easily drag apps to and from Spaces. For some people who work with a dozen apps open, this will help keep things easier to manage. Move iTunes and Mail in one Space, then open browsers, editors, etc in a workspace Space instead.

In my opinion, the coolest feature in the set was the Dashboard upgrades. Not only did they add Dashcode, allowing for faster and easier creation of widgets, but they also added Web Clips, through Safari. Basically, on any webpage you view in Safari, you can press a button, choose an area in that webpage, and make it a widget... instantly. For those of you like me who would love very specific widgets but never had the time to learn the nitty gritty, this is magic.

There were more announcements, of course. Core animations, to make slicker apps, iCal upgrade to match up with the Mail upgrade, Spotlight upgrade, better accessibility through text readers, and more. Also, there were some unannounced bonuses on the Apple Store, like the one-third price drop on Apple’s 20inch, 23inch, and 30inch Cinema Displays.

For full information, I recommend you check out this article at Engadget, who provided excellent coverage live from the keynote. Or, if you missed it completely, watch the entire keynote in Quicktime.