100 Classical Pieces for 5.99

Got to give the credit for this one to Scott Kleinberg over at the Chicago Tribune. Heck, I’ll even throw in an Eat n Park smiley cookie!

While I usually like to point you toward free music, I think six cents a track is close enough. iTunes has a CD available that compiles 100 of what they call essential classical pieces. In other words, even if you don’t like classical music, you will probably recognize more than a few of them. And if nothing else, it’s a treasure trove of ringtones.

The operative word here is “pieces” - you’re not getting full recordings. Instead, it’s more of a sampler. That’s OK, really. Saying that a movement of a symphony cannot stand on it’s own is kind of like saying you can’t just listen to “Love, Reign o’er Me” from the Who’s Quadrophenia.

The direct link is here. (Will launch in iTunes.) And if you’re like me and awaiting iPhone news, make sure to stop by Scott’s blog: iPhone, Therefore I Blog.

Evernote - this is your brain on steroids.

Saying that I love Evernote is like saying I love oxygen.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

There are an increasing number of times that I find my mind to be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at all. I have mounted a dry erase board on my front door with a checklist - coffee, lunch, phone. I have left the house without one or another of these items on far too many occasions. For me, Evernote has become an invaluable tool. And, scatter-brained or not, it’s a fantastic way to store and organize notes.

You may be thinking that you can do all of that with any number of task list apps. But part of the power of Evernote is its OCR capabilities. Take a photo of a street sign or upload a photo of a cool saying on a t-shirt. Once it hits Evernote’s servers and is cataloged, you can simply search your notebook by text. Type in “stupid” and up pops that great Bush tee you saw. Upload scans of your receipts to organize your spending. It’s really limitless - check out this blog post to see how other people are using the service. And from Evernote’s own suggestions:

* Create new notes using desktop, web, and mobile versions of Evernote
* Take a snapshot using your camera phone or webcam. We’ll even recognize the text in the image.
* Clip entire webpages, screenshots, and just about anything else you can copy
* Drag and drop content into the desktop clients for Mac and Windows
* Email notes directly into your account using your personalized email address
* Scan receipts, recipes, tags, brochures, and anything else into Evernote
* Record audio wherever you are and listen to it whenever you want

Evernote is cross-platform, so the info you clip on your Mac at home will be on the PC at work. You can get it from your mobile device and everything syncs within moments. The basic service is free. Zero dollars buys you 40MB of monthly storage, each month. That’s 480 MB/year. Not too shabby - think 4800 mobile pics. They have recently introduced a premium subscription at $45US per year that increases your monthly allowance to 500MB. Either membership option gives you access to the all of the available tools, desktop or web.

It’s your brain - everywhere you need it.

Can you stand one more iPhone article?

I think the folks over at Buzz Out Loud nailed it with today’s show title - “iPhone hangover day”. I was so, so thankful for the non-tech podcasts I had lined up today. I did listen to more than my fair share of iPhone news before I switched over to “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” - hilarious as usual but even more notable as the first time I’ve ever heard the term “tramp stamp” on NPR.

Overload acknowledgment aside, I will absolutely be in line on July 11 for my iPhone 3G. The speed is a welcome upgrade since Pittsburgh isn’t exactly a wifi motherlode. The main reason for me, though, is that my puny little 4GB phone is just not going to be able to handle things like the applications store since I pretty much fill up what memory I have with podcasts and a whole three CDs. Honestly, if I had gotten the 8GB model I probably wouldn’t be as eager to upgrade. GPS is nice, but I rarely travel. Apple didn’t make any changes to the camera, which is one thing I use quite often. The most compelling factors for me are the 3G network, 16GB memory and…well, it’s pretty.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Even though most of the reviews I’ve come across don’t seem to like the white model, there’s something about the white one that is just so much more “Apple” to me. And besides, if everyone else hates it then they shouldn’t sell out quite as fast. I settled once - it’s not happening again.

Let me count the ways…

I was poking around on the Apple site to find new webapps for my iPhone when I stumbled across Digicounter. It’s a handy enough app, but I had to laugh when I read the description: 

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Count the number of times a coworker did something annoying? Jeebus…I’d burn my phone out before lunch.

Keynote thoughts

Well, it’s nice to know that my national tech debt will not be increasing.  Not that there wasn’t some great stuff rolled out at Macworld, but there was nothing that came forward as a must-have item for me.

The MacBook Air is a beautiful machine, no doubt.  Weighing in at three pounds, the specs put the Eee PC that I’m using for this post to shame.  An 80 GB hard drive, 2 GB memory, super-thin with a full-sized screen.  But with my casual usage needs, I couldn’t justify spending even the base price of 1800 bucks.  My Eee was 400, and except for not working on Seesmic, it really does everything I need a mobile device to do.  I’m not a professional (I wish!) and I really don’t ask a lot of my machine, though.  That said, the Air is going to sell like crazy.

The upgrade to Apple TV would be tempting, especially with the hardware price drop.  But I also know that TiVo has an upgrade coming that will allow for streaming web video.  Since I already have my TiVo box, there’s not much compelling for me - at least not right now.

My favorite announcement was free.  The iPhone update rocks.  Being able to add web icons to the home screen makes all of those web apps a lot more appealing.  One click access makes all the difference in the world.  Pittsburgh must not be the thriving metropolis I thought it was, since Google was off by a good twenty miles when I tried to find my position.  We’ll see how much better it is from downtown.  I know the changes they’ve made so far really whets my appetite for whatever comes out of the SDK when it’s released next month.

I’m truly amazed that I have no desire to buy anything after CES and now Macworld.  It’s a really weird feeling.

I guess I’m not as much of a rebel as I’d like to think.

I started this entry off as a diatribe about the whole hack vs no hack thing in regard to the iPhone.  As I wrote, I began to realize that my overall opinion is “meh”.