Karlo.Org - Weblog

Ran into the MoodLogic 2.0 MP3 organizer this morning, and I think it's the best answer I've seen to everyone's growing MP3 libraries. Moodlogic scans your MP3 collection and matches the files to songs based on analysis of the waveform audio rather than fileneames or ID3 tags. It then categorizes them, and lets you build playlists by selecting based on mood, artist, tempo, genre or even year. Plus, it will fix your ID3 tags. The database itself is generated by other users of the service manually adding new songs when they hit one that's not in the database.

One nice feature is the ability to create an instant playlist simply by selecting one song and asking for whatever else you have that's similar. Seems to work well, although I only have 25 songs to test with in the trial version.

It's $20 right now to get the full service, but I'm seriously thinking about joining if it means I can finally sort out my large but awkward-to-navigate MP3 library. (Figure it's cheaper than two CDs, eh?)

Posted by at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

News.Com is reporting that a draft bill being introduced in Congress would authorize copyright holders to disable consumer's PCs being used for illicit file trading. Not only that, but it would immunize them from any state or federal laws and most civil liability for damages. Sounds like it's time to finally join the EFF.

"The legislation would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America from all state and federal laws if they disable, block or otherwise impair a 'publicly accessible peer-to-peer network'"

Posted by at 2:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

Doonesbury did a great Sunday comic on "wardriving" (the practice of driving around searching for Wireless networks.) Between this and his recent stabs at the Bush administration, I'm going to have to start reading the strip again (missing comics is definitely one downside to switching from the Boston Globe to the Wall Street Journal and Times.

Posted by at 1:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a wave of new Apple products at yesterday's MacWorld Expo keynote. They included higher-capacity, smaller-form, and Windows-compatible iPods, a new 17-inch-LCD iMac, and a number of OS X applications.

I was at Job's first keynote after returning to Apple, at the 1997 Boston expo. That was the one where he scored a coup by having Bill Gates teleconference in. To those in the room, it was like having Darth Vader pop up on the screen during a meeting of the Rebel Alliance. Still, it gave no clue to the amount of turnaround Jobs would produce at Apple. I don't think there's any corporate CEO of late whose amazing arrogance and personality is matched by raw strength in product development. I can't think of any other company that has ever released in one year the number of well-designed, innovative products that Apple regularly debuts at the MacWorld expo keynote.

(For those of you who didn't catch the title reference, Insanely Great is a book about the early days of Apple computer and the design of the Macintosh computer. )

Posted by at 8:38 AM | Permalink

My favorite television drama, Six Feet Under, led this year's Emmy nominations with 23, beating out The West Wing. (Nyah-nyah.)

HBO has really done a turnaround, in my eyes, from the days when they primarily offered second-rate reruns of movies you didn't want to see the first time. Their drama lineup, at least, reads like a who's who of top television. Comedy (Arliss, Larry Sandler) however, remains somewhat weak. I'll take NBC's Scrubs over those two any day.

Posted by at 8:19 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

If you're interested in seeing the draft proposals for the World Trade Center Site, you can view them in full online The site is very complete, including documents, renderings, skyline-level views, models, and rendered videos.

I hate all of them.

I grew up in Manhattan and went to high school across the street from the towers. I also remember how impersonal, deserted and useless most of the plazas and streets around them were. The proposals here will largely recreate that by mostly only creating large, faceless office towers and leaving no room for the personality, culture and vitality that is the real New York -- the one at ground level, not the one you see when looking at the skyline on a post card.

Worse, although the proposals mostly respect the request that the footprints of the original towers be left undeveloped, they're completely uninspired in their use of the space. It's not sufficient to simply leave it blank -- the space will be overwhelmed by the 50-story buildings next to it.

Also, the towers being proposed simply aren't very good. I know they only had a month or two to design this, but could they have picked any more boring designs? Skyscraper design has advanced a lot since the original towers were built, and while we aren't going to build as big, we should try to build something that enhances the skyline, rather than just echoing it.

One thing I do agree with in the proposals: let's submerge West Street (the 6-lane "street" that runs along the edge of the site.) Boston has already figured out you're better off putting highways underground and leaving the surface to pedestrians. As it is, it's an eyesore and obstruction, not to mention dangerous.

The Times has rightly taken these proposals to task as completely insufficient. " These are dreary, leaden proposals that fall far short of what New York City -- and the world -- expect to see rise at ground zero." Let's hope that the people making the decisions aren't satisfied, either.

Posted by at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm going to have to start an "Apple Computer" category at this rate (and no, I don't presently own a Mac -- I gave up my Dual G4 at work after we stopped developing for the Mac.) Here's an interesting exercise in technology journalism. David Coursey, executive editor of ZDnet's AnchorDesk (a thoroughly Windows-centric publication) authored an interesting seven-part series on trying out the Apple iBook.

It's a nice piece of personal technology journalism that probably earned him a wall of flame mail from both Windows and MacOS X users, if my own experience reporting on Apple applies. Still, I think he did a really evenhanded, honest evaluation of the experience that's worth reading about even if you'll only leave Windows when they pry it out of your RSI-gnarled fingers.

Posted by at 8:37 AM | Permalink

I've released a minor redesign of this site today. Those of you who visit regularly will notice that I've gotten rid of the really light gray text, and made hyperlinks a little more prominent by adding slight underlining (thanks kottke)... I guess if I used a strong color for them they would also stand out more, but I'm kind of attached to the current dark aqua.

I've also used MoveableType's new GoogleAPI tag to add a few links under each story on the main page. These are the top 3 entries you'd previously see at the top of the page obtained by following the "Google!" link, but it's a little bit nicer to see a few more headlines right along with the story. Speaking of which, I should probably add some of the extra meta-information to the archive versions as well.

Posted by at 2:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

The first alpha release of KDE 3.1 is out and looking amazing. Eye candy city (I'll say if it's stable only after using it.)

I'm still on KDE 2.0, which is pretty sad compared to this package. But given it's running on my server, I'm reluctant to run around installing alpha stuff. Maybe it's time to get Partition Magic 7.0 and put a Linux partition on my laptop to play around with. Just wish I didn't have the XP drive in NTFS mode.

Posted by at 8:53 AM | Permalink

The New York Times has a great requiem for Jimmie Lee Robinson, a Chicago-native blues guitarist/vocalist who fought the gentrification of the neighborhood near U. Chicago where he learned his trade. "A Chicago Bluesman, Reaching Crossroads, Gives Up His Fights."

Watching NYU community gobble up the immigrant neighborhoods of the East Village... replacing genuine ethnic restaurants with the Taco Bells and KFC's that suburban students prefer... it's not hard to understand that Robinson had reasons to fight for a neighborhood that others simply saw as delapidated.

"It was the bullet that killed him, the coroner said, but he had bone cancer and was dying anyway.

Some here say the same about Maxwell Street, the historic and once-colorful strip of merchants and musicians on the city's Near West Side, where Mr. Robinson spent his whole life, playing the blues and, in the end, fighting to stop urban redevelopment and its wrecking crews. In the end, his efforts were futile.

People here call it death by gentrification."

Posted by at 8:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

If cutting himself shaving hadn't decided it, Marty was now definitely realizing that it was probably going to be a bad day, on the balance.

Okay, the photographer wasn't gored or anything... he probably had the camera on a boom with a remote shutter release, so he may not have even been on the street level. Still, nice photo.

Posted by at 9:08 AM | Permalink

Too often, designers and engineers assume that to build something really innovative, you have to create it from the ground up. Especially for technology start-ups, this is a very dangerious ideology to entertain. Many of the best products are the intelligent merger of proven technologies. Regardless, it's still rare to see a really beautiful design come from a consortium of companies -- too often it devolves into design-by-committee.

Electronics Design Chain Magazine has a terrific story on the development of Apple's portable MP3 player: Inside the Apple iPod Design Triumph. Not only did Apple create a groundbreaking product with relatively little custom design or production, but they accomplished it by leveraging the intellectual power of a consortium of technical firms, leveraging the unique experience of each company. Amazing to read about, and something to keep in mind if you're at a company that builds consumer products.

Posted by at 2:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Paul Krugman has an excellent opinion piece in the NYT about the irony of George W. Bush's outrage over corporate fraud. (Requires free registration.)

"Mr. Bush portrays himself as a regular guy, someone ordinary Americans can identify with. But his personal fortune was built on privilege and insider dealings — and after his Harken sale, on large-scale corporate welfare. Some people have it easy."

Posted by at 12:21 PM | Permalink

Apple Computer has instructed its PR company to revoke MacWorld Expo Press Passes distributed to certain online sites [slashdot], reportedly because it considers them "rumor-mills." Blacklisting otherwise positive enthusiast sites simply because they might get overeager and publish details of upcoming products is a mistake for Apple, especially if these sites aren't violating NDA (non-disclosure agreements) or press embargoes. Mostly, these sites feed Mac-enthusiasm and community, providing Apple with free PR and user culture on a daily basis.

It seems to me this is a poor call made by a new Apple PR rep who's simply unfamiliar with enthusiast-reporting in the tech sector. It's simply not as clean, or organized, as mainstream media relations. But it's also a much more intense, vibrant media with a better link to its readership. Unless Apple rescinds this decision, it's only going to be ugly for them.

Posted by at 7:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

There's an amusing and reasonably concise critique of basic technology-related plot holes in Spielberg's Minority Report by the author of umamitsunami.com, Jane Pickard. Worth a gander, although I'll maintain my position that this was the best "big" movie of the year so far.

Posted by at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One thing I miss in the MP3-era is the old practice of discovering new music by listening to the radio. Even if you still listen to FM on a regular basis, it's rare you'll hear them play much that's not already on the top-40, given their emphasis on widely-palatable, predictable playlists (low-power college stations are an exception to this rule, but hard to tune into and often erratic in quality.)

Today, I've been trying out Streamer, a new (and I mean alpha, watch-your-fingers new) peer-to-peer Internet radio system. It allows users, even those with very limited bandwidth available, to create largely anonymous online radio stations that can broadcast to a theoretically unlimited number of end users, by having the other listeners also act like "repeaters" -- to borrow some VHF/UHF parlance.

Aside from a tiny (~100K) download, the system mostly uses the MP3 player you already have, probably WinAmp, and builds on existing standards for Internet broadcasting, primarily the free Shoutcast server from Nullsoft and/or the freely-available, open-source IceCast server.

Give it a try, and be patient - getting a connection to a new station can take a minute or two, and at first I didn't even get a listing of available stations. It's a nifty system, especially if you're a music junky and would like to consider re-transmitting your music tastes to the world.

Posted by at 1:44 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Those of you who downloaded recent security updates to Windows Media player (and if you cared about security, you pretty much had to) may have missed a nice shiny new addition to the product's EULA (end user license agreement):

You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ('Secure Content'), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer.

Ouch. Basically, they're saying they reserve the right to send updates to your computer (without asking permission) that may "disable your abilility to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer." That's a pretty large license, so to speak.

Hmm. Maybe it is time to finally switch over to Mandrake on the desktop for real work, and leave Windows for gaming time.

(Via The Register)

Posted by at 7:24 AM | Permalink

Okay, can everyone stop quoting spokesmen when they declare that some massive failure was the result of a "perfect storm" of some condition they were supposed to have under control?

The latest to float this claim was NYSE chairman Richard Grasso, who called the Worldcom scandal "the perfect storm of failure." Ummm.. no. This was not the convergence of three minor failures. This was a huge case of accounting fraud. And it wasn't a once-per-hundred-year kind of thing, either, quite obviously.

Before this, we've had the perfect forest fire (can't find the citation, but it's been used to refer to several), the perfect meteor storm, and even a "perfect little ice storm", just to name a few.

Time for a perfect little thesaurus, perhaps.

Posted by at 8:25 AM | Permalink