Hello September!

Today Apple is having a big surprise ‘thing’, so no doubt there will be some kind of shiny new technology for everyone to coo over. I’m hoping they resurrect Lala and get rid of that Genius crap. I never bought a single thing on iTunes because of genius. Whereas on Lala my web (and some mp3s) library was up to date with the latest in what I was listening and what was in my library. I’ve never gotten relevant or interesting recommendations for purchase on iTunes. So mostly I just torrent mp3s. On top of that I’ve been floundering around trying to get my library streaming on the web. The replacement services never really matched up to lala’s awesomeness so I dabbled in home media servers. First I tried Sockso, and that was sufficient for awhile. The playlist and flash player system was functional, but mostly annoying and it was only for audio. It did a good job letting me share my library in a user by user way, but had no social plugins. Then I needed to share video with my xbox, so I tried out TVersity. That definitely worked when I needed to stream P90X from computer to home gym, but listening to music at work has been so bad I’ve ditched it almost entirely, returning with tail tucked in to Pandora. Don’t get me wrong, I love Pandora, but sometimes I like to dig into the recesses of my own library, and no ADS please. So there it is, my only wishlist item for Apple: bring back lala…. please….

Last night I went uninstall crazy. A good thing too, because at dinner last night Tom the Talking Cat was requested the cutesy parlor trick it is. I ended up taking Broadsides off too. I loved the game, the writing was phenomenal. I figure I reached the best and worst possible endings and was skimming most of it so I feel like I outgrew it. I’m ready and waiting for them to come up with a new story though! They did a great job on it. I took out Craps and Othello because I never really played them.

So here’s the games that I’m keeping for now:

World War is one of those MMOs that is points-as-turns based play. You represent a country and there is an ongoing count on which country is winning the pvp battles. Without other humans, you run missions and earn xp and money to build your army. It isn’t very engaging or interesting, but the idea of filling bars, doing missions, building an empire and so on is good for wasting time when i’m just hanging out. The company has a bunch of other games that are the exact same but with mafia, ninja, street racing or zombie themes. The war one is good enough for me.

GalaxIR is a fun casual game that has a near identical counterpart: Galaxy Domination. I’d recommend Galaxy Domination over GalaxIR because the simplified graphics make it run like a dream. But GD uses a great multiplayer (free version limits your time on its network) system, has more difficulty settings, lets you control the percentage of ships you attack with and has other nice control tweaks.

Abduction was the first game I ever played on an Android system. It’s a fun, addicting, casual game where you control a bouncing cow going up to space via floating pads of earth. I’ve never bought the full version – I simply don’t play it enough. But the campaign mode is beginning to itch my curiosity, so I may eventually make the jump.

There are several clones of this: Air Traffic Control and Flight Director. I’ve only tried Air Control and Flight Director and so far I’ve stuck with Air Control. Basically you have a bird’s eye of an airfield and direct oncoming planes or helicopters to their respective runways. Flight Director includes fancy graphics and uses sat images of real airfields, but their tweaks to the speed of the plans and other small game dynamics really didn’t please me. Air Control keeps it simple and makes it a little competitive even by keeping your percentage ranking against other Air Control players. I definitely recommend this little gem.

There’s a bunch of these type of puzzle game clones and I have only tried this one. They all play the same, I just chanced on this one. One thing I like about it is that it shows you progressing through the difficulty of the puzzles and shows you how you rank to the minimum moves need to finish. I’ve loved this puzzle since I was a kid and I love to dig into this one when I want to tickle my brain.

This is the second time I’ve put taskswitcher on my machine. This would be a helpful app, but I need it to overtake the homebutton longpress. The current options of search longpress and home press simply don’t work on my phone due to the genius crapware from T-mobile that I haven’t been able to root out.

This looks like it could have been a pretty powerful app for contact list management. There are two problems. One, it took me on a contact by contact odyssey that I just don’t have the patience for. And two, I have come to the realization that the contact access on the phone is good enough that I don’t really care about duplicates etc. I need to just stop being attracted to all the OCD contact management apps

This probably could be a great grocery list manager. It purports to sync family lists, it organizes items by category and store and well, it’s a list manager. I’ve got SpringPad to do that for me. I realized it just as I finished the install and I immediately just deleted it off my phone for the precious space. Sorry.

I also removed Financisto, Google Sky and my weather widgets to make room on the system memory. Financisto looked to be an awesome finance app, but I already have one (mvelopes, which needs an app version). Google Sky is mostly a parlor trick app for me. It was fun for the double moon night, Friday and when I’m hanging out on the back porch with friends and brews. But it isn’t really worth it day-to-day for the size it costs. I’m still looking for the perfect weather widget since I switched to launcher pro and can’t use the HTC widget. The one I just removed did weird things with time and location that I just didn’t feel like dealing with, twice.

http://www.appbrain.com/

http://www.appbrain.com/my_apps

In addition to learning how to build apps on android, I’ve also gotten my very own android based phone. I found appbrain to be the best alternative to the Android Market. It syncs my apps and tracks them in a shareable way. I find that its recommendations are terrible and never really changing, but I do love the “hot” listing. It changes frequently and I’m always finding new.

My other new awesome app for your desktop is the Vista Switcher: http://www.ntwind.com/

I used to use the XP advanced switcher when I was on XP, and then Vista’s tab switcher was OK. I recently found this in one of my software feeds and I’ve really liked it. Moving forward it will be my new must-have switcher.

Hi all, some banal updates from yours truly.

First off – I’m on twitter as prodaea. Fun little microblogging piece of software that you can update from anywhere and basically do anything you want with it. Some sites that I like to use with twitter are:

• twtrfrnd.com - for those times when christi1987 is following you and has NSFW pics.
• tweet stats - nice graphs etc.  to let you and your friends know just how much you tweet.
• twanalyst.com - brings you one of those personality tests – based on some twitter stats algorithms. is fun.
• twitpics.com - by far the most useful you can email or txt twitpics and it will post a short url for that pic to your twitter account.
• twitter.grader.com - gives you a grade out of 100 based on how you’re networked and some other stuff that i never really took the time to care about. i got a 70.
• www.twibes.com – is a system for group management and group tweeting based on the # thing that some genious came up with. i’m in a twibe, but i’m hoping twitter just integrates groupings.

I’m sure there’s a ton more that I’m not aware of, but I use these fairly regularly. Also you can plug twitter right into your facebook status. is fun.

Finally get involved in politics using twitter. Starting with Mr. Obama, there have been many politicians to get into Twitter. Some are good and informative – even responsive, some suck. Here’s  a great aricle I found that highlights several and let’s you know how useful they found them to be.

Ok, I’ve been a blog slacker, but since my wife is making me post at our new family site : Talk Is Sheep, I’ve been more apt to write interesting things.

I’ve started using some new fun software that I thought I’d fill you in on.

Digsby – Multi chat client that also logs into social services like facebook and twitter, putting all that stuff in one fun place. Also has a nice proxy and account setup system which makes it great for going from my work computer to my home computer.

Songbird – they say it’s an iTunes killer, but I’m holding my breath. Mostly because I’ve moved my media to the cloud using Lala, and I get my music recommendations from Pandora (despite the ads, its still my favorite for music discovery).

Dropbox – this thing is a life saver. Its software that syncs a file on your computer (up to 2GB) over the web. You can install it on multiple computers and if you can’t install it, you can grab your files over the web. I’ve also heard rumor of a portable version that would allow you to have a thumb drive that synced with dropbox. I need to get a big enough thumb drive, but don’t worry, I’ll get there. Currently, I’m using it to keep my working files in a convenient location.

I know it’s been a while faithful, if sparse, readers. And I apologize. Recently a great travesty has been done to my normal way of life. Pandora has begun putting invasive advertising in my playlists. Normally, I listen in peace, enjoy new music and can avoid the passive advertising on their site. Of course they offer a subscription service for money, but seriously, NOT WORTH IT OK. Streaming netflix and hulu to my XBOX because I don’t get cable, is a little more worth it.

so here goes, I googled “pandora alternative,” and while i mostly found yahoo! answers… here’s the results of my search (untested).

• musicovery - this is probably the one i will recommend for being the most like pandora in the way it takes your input and gives you new music to listen to.
• finetune – this is a really interesting one. I signed up for this a long time ago when they first came out with their player for the wii. I’m thinking I may get back into this one if musicovery bombs out. You enter an artist that you like and they make you a playlist with music you may like. A playlist that you can share! on your wii!
• allmuzz/lavabeat - these aren’t really suggestion programs as much as they are media purchasing centers. I’d recommend lala over these any day.
• rhapsody – i think this one is also like lala/allmuzz/lavabeat, but you have to subscribe, and i think realplayer is trash, so avoid this one like the plague.
• delicast – internet radio, not so much music recommendation, but it has a huge variety of stations to check out. presentation is uber lo-fi, so shoutcast may be better in this genre of things.
• shoutcast – AOL‘s streaming radio. it used to be winamp’s streaming radio… or maybe it never was until aol bought winamp. i personally prefer podcasts to radios, plus itunes does the whole streaming audio thing too. but for a web based music source, this isn’t too bad.
• imeem – this is like virb or myspace for music lovers. i haven’t really jumped into this one mostly because i’m clinging to last.fm for dear life and honestly i’m not sure how many more social networks my life will support.
• last.fm – you get the plugin and listen to music. it logs what you’re listening to. then if you’re ever without your prized music library, you can login, and they have a radio that recommends music to you based on your listens. i’m trying this out now as we speak, but it’s tricky because i haven’t used their audio scrobbler in ages.

first of all, this is a game called loops of zen. i’m linking you to the full window version because it’s way better that way. the game is a great little brain teaser that doesn’t require that much commitment… not that i’m afraid of commitment… well maybe i am when it comes to video games.

in the way of games, i’ve added two more neat ones to my arcade repertoire. the first is age of booty. it’s a fun pirate themed real time strategy game that strikes me to be in the theme of settlers of catan… but in real time, not turn based. at any rate, it’s probably just the hex tiles that remind me of it. you move your ship around the ocean board attacking merchant ships, other players and harbors around the map. i’ve been extremely addicted to it as of late, and i highly recommend it.

the second xbla title i recently downloaded is castle crashers. i’m not sure on the history of this game, but i do know it has quite a cult following so i’m guessing this game was originally launched as an artsy flash game. at any rate, sarah saw the demo of this one and we were hooked. it’s a well designed 2d side scrolling rpg reminisce of the old days of gauntlet.

finally, my good friend phil introduced me to portal for the first time last night. from the guys that did half-life and a group of college kids, this game presents an interesting and worthwhile twist in fps to bring you the fps puzzle game like never before. basically, you shoot portals out and warp everywhere. it sounds underwhelmingly simple, but it actually makes for a great new puzzle idea that i’m now itching for more of.

next up is a shiny new site that i’m dying to tell everyone about. it’s lala.com, and it’s part itunes, part itunes music store, and part last.fm all blended together into one, pretty easy, pretty familiar interface. i signed up yesterday, uploaded my entire library over the course of the evening, and voila! i can listen to almost all of my music over the internet through lala.com. if you go there, sign up, and like it, be sure to friend me.

oh yeah! and last up, before i forget is hobnox.com. the site has a bunch of interesting stuff, but i haven’t really taken the time to explore. the big thing that’s really caught my eye in the past is their audiotool. it’s a reason-like synthesizer that’s web-based. they finally added a record feature, so besides just doodling around on it, you can now save what you’ve done.

over and out!