Mr Ice T once said that Sade is the most stylish singer he has ever seen live.
Even though I never had the chance to attend a Sade concert, I have to say that after the performance of Madita today at a free afternoon Jazz Fest Wien concert, I think she’s on the best way to become Sade’s successor. Madita combines a light soul voice with smooth lounge sounds, and she does it in a very easy and stylish way when she’s on stage.
It was a really great show and we need more afternoon concerts of that kind!
After having tried several backup strategies I’ve decided to finally get a Mozy account: $5 a month for encrypted unlimited online storage.
I changed my opinion mainly because a friend told me last week about a terrible burglary. They stole the laptop, among a lot other things, but luckily didn’t take the external backup hard disk. It stood right next to the laptop and contained all digital photos (of a photographer). I’ve a similar setting right now, which would let me recover photos, music and other important private data in case of a hard disk crash. But in case of burglary or fire I’d be totally screwed. No insurance can bring back all my digital photographs.
Now Mozy runs in the background and takes care of my data. Good.
Until 31th December 2007 you can save 10% off the annual fee by entering the promo code DECEMBER (at least it worked for me).
New Mozy promo codes:
APRIL – 10% off an annual subscription to MozyUnlimited
APRIL2 – 10% off a biannual subscription to MozyUnlimited
The T-Mobile Austria EDGE network can carry data speeds up to 220 kbit/s. Last.fm radio uses an MP3 stream encoded at 128 kbit/s. So I guess this should basically work, but still depends on how reliable and stable EDGE is, where I don’t have any experiences with. A 3G iPhone connected to a broader bandwith would certainly do a better job on Last.fm radio.
The definition of flat-rate in most mobile phone contracts is another questionable point: a flat-rate ending at 200 MB per month (like offered in the T-Mobile Germany iPhone data package) wouldn’t allow me to enjoy Last.fm too much.
A quick example: my daily way to work, where I usually listen to my iPod, takes 25 minutes, one way. After 5 days, Monday to Friday going to work, listening to Last.fm radio only my way to work and back, streaming at 128 kbit/s, I would have already exceeded a flat-rate of 200 MB, without even using the internet on the iPhone for something else.
That wouldn’t make sense, and is in my opinion a gadget show stopper. [via macnotes]
Online shopping can be very convenient, in particular for buying (drm-free) music I prefer digital media over hard copies. Simply because digital media doesn’t visibly pile in my apartment.
Well, online shopping can be convenient unless you’re forced to register twice and fill out required fields starting with your birthdate up to your mother’s maiden name.
No thanks, that’s for one thing way too complicated and for another thing I don’t see a reason why a music vendor or payment service would need my mother’s maiden name. Strangely the service calls itself Clickandbuy, which is anything else but click-and-buy.
I find it pretty impressing – considering the non-mainstream touch of last.fm – that the old Modern Talking videos constantly show up on last.fm’s weekly top videos.
I definitely want a mobile version of Last.fm radio!
The availability of Flash-enabled mobile devices to use Last.fm’s player wouldn’t be the problem. It’s rather the bandwith consumption of an internet radio together with mobile data transfer limits of our mobile carriers and costs for exceeding those limits. Using a high speed mobile conneciton like UMTS for listening to Last.fm simply would make me a poor man.
Unfortunately Vienna is far away from being fully covered by free wifi, so another option like using wifi enabled mp3 players wouldn’t work either.
In the meantime the only alternative left is continuously rearranging my iPod playlists to match my Last.fm radio a bit. It’s a bit unfair, because Last.fm is computing my profile, providing me with excellent recommendations, and then I (have to) search for certain tracks on iTMS or Bleep and buy the songs there. So the work is done by Last.fm and the profit goes to others. The only option to purchase music on Last.fm for me would be via an Amazon link, but sorry, times of ordering CDs are over.
Could you imagine a better combination for an online music store than being embeded within Last.fm’s recommendation system?
