Headphones, Technology, and Stuff

Miro: Internet TV Made Easy

When Miro 1.2 came out, I decided to give it another try after some previously failed attempts due to annoying bugs. Well, I’ve been using this free and open source, next generation video platform on my Mac for a while now, and I must say it’s quite nice if you fancy yourself watching some of the great, free video content available on the internet.

Miro is RSS + Bittorrent. Find sites with cool videos that interest you, subscribe to their feeds, and when new content is published, you can have it downloaded and waiting for you by the time you realize it’s there. It’s just so smooth the way I can play the first video, and all the new content plays like my personal TV station. Cmd+F throws me into full-screen mode. It didn’t used to work nearly this well, and I’m just all so very pleased with today’s offering. (It will even search and play YouTube videos.)

Ok, so you want to try this. Click the “Miro” link above and grab the player. It comes with some default channels, but I’ve deleted all but the Onion News Network. The Miro Guide appears to be a nice index of most/all of the content available for the platform, but please allow me to recommend a few of my favorites.

Revision3 is The TV Network of Kevin Rose (of TechTV and Digg fame) with great shows like Tekzilla, Systm, and of course Diggnation. I also have come to watch the goofy Internet Superstar… I haven’t even tasted many of the Rev3 shows yet!
Mahalo Daily is a great 5-day/wk short form (3-5 mins) show with Veronica Belmont. (Although she’s about to leave…) They visit someone and show of something… usually very interesting stuff. I like the one about the dude who makes music with Gameboys.
WebbAlert is another daily, short form show with Megan Webb. Just a quick overview of the tech news.
GeekBrief.TV is yet another daily, short form show with the bouncy character that of Cali Lewis. Again, it’s an overview of the tech news. Maybe a product review or interview here and there.
commandN is a longer form (15-20 mins), weekly show with Amber MacArthur, Will Pate, and others. They talk about the news and share cool website picks. Amber’s brother, Jeff, usually has a longer segment where he usually reviews a product.
Hak5 Is a great, long standing show with a great crew. They hack stuff and talk about it on the show.
Cranky Geeks is a talk show with John C. Dvorak.
DL.TV is a tech show with some of the folks from TechTV.

Also, anything from Leo Laporte is fantastic. I’m a very regular listener of Security Now, TWiT, MacBreak Weekly, Net@Nite, and Windows Weekly on his TWiT.TV (audio) podcast network. While there aren’t any regular, internet-available video shows from him yet, he’s been talking recently about a new studio he’s setting up where he’ll start doing some video shows. He’s a great personality… One to watch.

I hope I’ve captured the interest of some new internet TV consumers. Watching this web-based, independent content has really never been this easy.

Friday, April 4th, 2008 Reviews, Software No Comments

Celemony to Release Revolutionary Audio Tool

Celemony is set to release Direct Note Access in Autumn of 2008. There is a nice video on the DNA page that explains what it does, but this software is able to identify and isolate different voices within a single audio recording. The user can then change the pitch of and mute individual notes without affecting the overall mix! This is the first piece of software that allows you to reach into a simple, flat audio stream and manipulate its components in this way.

It’ll be really interesting to see how artists use this product to remix familiar tunes.

Thursday, March 20th, 2008 Software, Stuff, Technology No Comments

Korg Makes a Synth From a DS

Holy crap this is totally awesome. Korg will soon release Korg DS-10: a music composition tool that runs on the Nintendo DS. Check out the short video for an idea what it does. It seems like it could be significantly more versatile than the Kaossilator Touchpad Synthesizer.

Link via Wired Blog

Thursday, March 13th, 2008 Software, Stuff No Comments

Shure E500 vs UE Triple.fi 10 Pro

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my audio equipment (or about much of anything) … So allow me to give a short comparison between two of the best universal fit IEMs available. It goes on and on, so allow me to place it below the fold.

› Continue reading

Thursday, February 28th, 2008 Audio, Reviews 1 Comment

Quizzle is Live!

The project that I’ve been a part of for most of my time here at Quicken Loans has finally gone live. Think of it as a flexible financial tool. We want Quizzle to one day be your one-stop shop for learning where you financially stand against the ever-changing climates of the home markets and economy.

The most important feature for most folks seems to be the FREE credit report. You might laugh and say there’s no such thing as a free lunch (as you may have learned in attempting to get other “free” credit reports from other sites) but at Quizzle, we not only give you a completely free and easy to understand credit report, but we manage to do so without your having to provide your SSN! I don’t believe anyone else is doing this right now.

There is a lot to be had inside Quizzle apart from the credit report. A set of your incomes and debts will be You’ll receive an estimate of your home’s value

Monday, February 25th, 2008 Software No Comments

Quizzle Goes Live!

The project that I’ve been a part of for most of my time here at Quicken Loans has finally gone live. Think of it as a flexible financial tool. We want Quizzle to one day be your one-stop shop for learning where you financially stand against the ever-changing climates of the home markets and economy.

The most important feature for most folks seems to be the FREE credit report. You might laugh and say there’s no such thing as a free lunch (as you may have learned in attempting to get other “free” credit reports from other sites). But at Quizzle, we not only give you a completely free and easy to understand credit report, but we manage to do so without your having to provide your SSN! I don’t believe anyone else is doing this right now.

There is a lot to be had inside Quizzle apart from the credit report, though. A set of your incomes and debts will be imported from your credit report into the Budget section of Quizzle where you’ll be able to manipulate them to gauge your debt-to-income ratio. You will receive a free home value estimate along with a list of comparable homes in your area. You will have access to handy calculators to help determine how much you should be saving each month for your retirement or your children’s college funds.

We have a lot of interesting ideas for the future of Quizzle, and there’s just no end in sight for the development of this intriguing new tool. We even have the groundwork laid for an invite system where people can refer others to Quizzle and gain credit towards perks and freebies.

I encourage home owners out there to check it out, see what they think, and perhaps offer some feedback! We’ve really only just kicked this thing off. And if you’re a renter, let us know during sign-up, and we’ll let you know when functionality for renters is added!

Monday, February 25th, 2008 General No Comments

Scientology is Funny

With recent happenings in the news revolving around Scientology (leaked vids, new enemy) I’ve found myself a bit interested in it. Before approximately a week ago, I knew nothing about this organization. Now, though, I’ve come to know it as a fake “religion” conceived by sci-fi writer L. Ron. Hubbard to make a buck. He basically wrote a great many books and spoke a great many lectures where he outlined his mad ideas about where we come from and how things work.

Now I understand weak-minded people with personal issues who need something like this to turn to… and… after a bit more coercing, you might have me making sense of how popular, insane celebrities with too much cash might find themselves belonging to this group. But anyone with common sense who has done any amount of research on the organization could tell you that it’s a complete fraud. I am fascinated by the numbers who call themselves supporters.

I hereby dub the ideas and writings of “Scientology” as an Encyclopedia of Nonsense.

And as part of this, I’ve created a new slang use of the word “scientology”: Use it as a synonym for nonsense.

Example: The guy went and upped the price on us! What a bunch of fucking scientology!

And please vote up my new word on urbandictionary.com. It’s #49 at the very bottom.

Update: It moves. Currently, I’m at the bottom of page 6.

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 Stuff No Comments

Goodbye, OiNK…

It really sucked to see OiNK’s home raided this Tuesday morning. The servers went down, and 180,000 music fans worldwide lost their music gold mine.

It’s pretty much the consensus that OiNK was the #1 best place on the internet to find music. They usually had multiple versions (qualities) of just about every single album you could think of—old or new. Often, they had FLAC rips, too. There is no doubt that it was the best place to find lossless music.

People consume music differently these days. It’s not like a music enthusiast is going to actually buy every single album they want to hear. OiNK provided a very easy way to taste a broad spectrum of music, and most will tell you that it has led them to purchase CD’s, go to concerts, etc.

Artists used the service, too. I’m actually making this post because I really wanted to link to this brilliant posting from DJ Rapture. He sums the whole thing up rather well from a unique point of view. Check it out.

Update: Rob from Demonbaby made an excellent (even longer) post about how the record industry has totally blown the new era and shot itself in the foot. He has a lot of good points, and a few good laughs. He calls for a boycott of the labels so they will hurry up and get the point.

Friday, October 26th, 2007 Stuff No Comments

Less Choice == Better?

I found this article & video about a talk from Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, way interesting. According to his research, happiness has little to do with the things your brain leads you to believe will make you happy like material possessions. He says that having limited choices can actually lead to more happiness than more choice.

There’s a video at the bottom of the page that I highly recommend!

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 Stuff 1 Comment

DJ Thread – The Unraveling [2007-09-04]

Spun a nice set yesterday. Get it right here from Sendspace in ogg vorbis or right here from dnbradio.com. The DNBRadio one is a while longer as I didn’t want to go too long on my recording. The ogg will sound better, though… and the first hour and a half was the good part, anyway. Lots of new tunage. You even get a track list!