Author: Lorin Olsen

Platform Pivot Possibilities

Lorin Olsen


Anyone who has read my musings before already knows that I have loved technology for a very long time. You are also aware that I’ve used many different forms and flavors of technology. The list of operating systems is quite long. On the server side, I’ve used: Univac Exec 8, IBM MVS, IBM VM/ESA, IBM MVS/ESA, IBM z/OS, SunOS, Solaris, Irix, DG-UX, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Windows NT, Win2K(x), Linux and a host of other platforms. On the desktop, I’ve used: CPM, UCSD Pascal, HDOS, MS-DOS, PC-DOS, Windows (many flavors), MacOS (many flavors), Xenix, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux (many flavors) and a plethora of experimental OSes.
As you look at this list, you have to be thinking a few things:

  • Roo is really old,
  • Roo is fickle,
  • Roo has been through a lot of tech transitions, and
  • Roo is really, really old

So why would I recite this list?  Am I building a new resume?  [No, I’m not.]  Am I a preening, arrogant technology elitist?  [Yes, I am.  But that’s not the reason I recorded the list.]  I wrote the list because I’m becoming convinced that it is time for yet another technology pivot.
There are some big trends that are becoming absolutely obvious:

  1. Computing technology is for everyone.  So it must necessarily be simple and bullet-proof.  Over the past three years, I have deployed more “appliance” devices at home than I have deployed computers.  Yes the appliances are computers.  But for the average consumer, they are plug and play functionality.  This includes: set top boxes, wireless routers, wireless extenders, wireless printers, wireless cameras, wireless phones, wireless monitoring systems, etc.
  2. Everything is becoming mobile.  Computers are getting smaller.  They are embedded in everything (including my heart).  And they are increasingly becoming disconnected from fixed structures (like an office or a home).
  3. We are finally starting to see new user interfaces.  Just as the keyboard was displaced by the mouse, the mouse is now being displaced by human touch.  Haven’t we had pen computing for almost a decade?  Yes, we have.  But the iPhone made touch computing ubiquitous.  More importantly, touch is not the only new user interface.  Speech recognition is becoming ubiquitous as well.  I can now talk to my phone and place calls (or write emails).  I can now talk to my car (or its GPS) and get driving directions.  With speech and touch replacing the hands and fingers that were tethered to a swivel chair, we are accelerating the move towards mobility.
  4. Retail purchasing and provisioning are finally reducing the need to go to the store.  It is very possible to sit in your chair at home and order anything for delivery right to your door.  I won’t go into the moral impacts of promoting such sedentary lives.  But I do think that this change is transforming the way that we live – and the computer systems that we utilize.

These trends (and a few other minor trends) are allowing new competitors to jump into prominent positions.  And these changes are putting strains on older competitors.
The big boys do see these trends.  Microsoft recognizes these changes.  And I think that they are trying to compete in these spaces.  But their corporate identity (based on sales pros getting commissions) is becoming outdated.  Their corporate ethos allowed them to miss the entire music resurgence that Apple inspired.  Sure, Microsoft is now in that business.  But not before Apple seized the entire market.  The Zune is cool.  And the Zune market is feature-complete.  But the battle was lost because Microsoft was trying to protect their existing channel model.
The Microsoft phone strategy has been equally anemic.  They did indeed recognize the mobility trend.  But Windows Mobile was incomplete and clunky.  Can WP7 and its successors thrive?  Uh, using the number ‘7’ in your name won’t repeat the Windows 7 success.  Did Microsoft have a chance?  Yes.  Can they seize market from both Google and Apple?  Sure, but they are taking table scraps from their competitors.  And their corporate heritage is holding them back.  Android has succeeded because it is repeating Microsoft’s PC success: Google has built an open platform.
Microsoft isn’t the only company at a crossroads.  Apple is also at a crossroads.  Their model of retail purchase via iTunes and delivery to a desktop device is now under assault.  The iTunes infrastructure has always used the desktop as the hub of your music experience.  But staying with that model would be like staying with high-end audio equipment.  Sure, some audiophiles still have a stylus and all of their other component gear.  But component audio was replaced by compact discs and then by PC audio.
The new model is to buy the rights to the music and to store the music remotely.  This allows you to access your content anytime and anywhere.  You don’t have to be at your desktop. You don’t have to stream from that same desktop.  And you don’t have to sync with that desktop.  You store your licensed content in the “cloud” and then stream it to wherever you want to play it.  For me, this meant that I could stream some cool music to Meredith’s outdoor wedding site while we decorated that site.  It also means that I can have my entire library available while I’m at work or in the car or on my bike.
And as of this morning, I’ve now switched all of my podcast content from my desktop (and iTunes) to my mobile device.  I’m playing with both Doggcatcher and Google Listen.  I haven’t chosen my final podcast catcher, but the choice to push content to my mobile device is now made.
That’s a horribly long setup to the real point of this article: I have finally broken the musical cord that tied me to my desktop computer.  And last year, I severed the cord related to web content browsing.  For me, this mobility push has been thanks to Google and Android.  For others, they are thanking Apple and iOS.  But the trend is obvious: cloud-based music is yet another desktop tether that can be severed.  And with cloud-based services like file storage (via Google Docs, or Dropbox or any number of other tools), I can snip yet another tether.
Think of a bundle of helium-filled balloons.  I’m slowly snipping the strings that hold them down.  And I think I may soon be cutting the last of the ties that hold me to my desktop computer.  Once I can effectively type on a mobile device, I may be able to come out of the cave where my desktop computer is connected.
The final straw will be whenever I purchase a tablet.  And when that happens, I will be free of both Microsoft and Apple.  I may end up being dependent upon new vendors (like Google or Amazon). But it is just about time to change things up in my computing ecosystem.  I can’t wait for yet another technology transition.
-Roo

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What Isn’t In The Cloud?

Lorin Olsen

Cloud computing has been around for as long as there have been computers.  When I was in high school, I was involved in “cloud gaming.”  Yeah, it wasn’t the same kind of thing back in 1976-1979.  But I could connect the school’s remote terminal to the district’s mainframe.  From this connection, I programmed (and played) Blackjack and poker.  I also began to play games like Colossal Cave.

In the eighties, we saw the emergence of email and file transfer across unimaginable distances.  We also began to see network games being offered by startups like CompuServe.  No, I don’t remember my original CIS id number.  Nor do I remember my first real accounts with an ISP (in the early nineties).  But I do remember MUD’s.

Times sure have changed – and my how they haven’t changed.

Today, I use “the cloud” for the following services:

  • Email,
  • File/document transfer/sharing,
  • Reading,
  • Photo sharing,
  • Music streaming,
  • Video streaming,
  • Remote access (to corporate systems as well as to my own systems),
  • Remote banking,
  • Shopping (and shipping),
  • Ticket ordering (i.e., transportation, entertainment, etc),
  • Bureaucratic animal taming (i.e., tax forms, student loans, job apps, medical forms, insurance forms, pharmacy/prescriptions, daycare payment and forms, etc),
  • …and an endless list that would be too darned tedious to fully enumerate.

So what has changed since I was young?

  • Everything is available online,
  • Everything is available in real-time (except government services),
  • Everything looks good, appealing and/or enticing,
  • Almost everyone has access to these online services.

Are new things available each and every day?  They are indeed.  Just look at the image above.  I can use my phone to control file transfers to/from my home PC.  There are some really unique and exciting things that materialize every day.

But let’s really think about this for a minute.  Is there really anything new under the sun?  That’s a debatable proposition.  The means of communication are varying – but the need to communicate remains.  The means of commerce are changing – but the need for trading skills for money and money for goods remains.  The means of government control are varying – but the innate desire for people (and governments) to control you still remains.  Solomon was right when he wrote (in Ecclesiastes 1:9) that there was nothing new under the sun.

In my limited view, I see a compelling truth: if there really is nothing new, then the tried and true solutions (as found in the Scriptures) are still very applicable – even to a twenty-first century citizen.  God is in control.  And our Creator can still teach us about our own condition – and His solutions for our difficulties.

-Roo

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What Isn't In The Cloud?

Lorin Olsen



Cloud computing has been around for as long as there have been computers.  When I was in high school, I was involved in “cloud gaming.”  Yeah, it wasn’t the same kind of thing back in 1976-1979.  But I could connect the school’s remote terminal to the district’s mainframe.  From this connection, I programmed (and played) Blackjack and poker.  I also began to play games like Colossal Cave.
In the eighties, we saw the emergence of email and file transfer across unimaginable distances.  We also began to see network games being offered by startups like CompuServe.  No, I don’t remember my original CIS id number.  Nor do I remember my first real accounts with an ISP (in the early nineties).  But I do remember MUD’s.
Times sure have changed – and my how they haven’t changed.
Today, I use “the cloud” for the following services:

  • Email,
  • File/document transfer/sharing,
  • Reading,
  • Photo sharing,
  • Music streaming,
  • Video streaming,
  • Remote access (to corporate systems as well as to my own systems),
  • Remote banking,
  • Shopping (and shipping),
  • Ticket ordering (i.e., transportation, entertainment, etc),
  • Bureaucratic animal taming (i.e., tax forms, student loans, job apps, medical forms, insurance forms, pharmacy/prescriptions, daycare payment and forms, etc),
  • …and an endless list that would be too darned tedious to fully enumerate.

So what has changed since I was young?

  • Everything is available online,
  • Everything is available in real-time (except government services),
  • Everything looks good, appealing and/or enticing,
  • Almost everyone has access to these online services.

Are new things available each and every day?  They are indeed.  Just look at the image above.  I can use my phone to control file transfers to/from my home PC.  There are some really unique and exciting things that materialize every day.
But let’s really think about this for a minute.  Is there really anything new under the sun?  That’s a debatable proposition.  The means of communication are varying – but the need to communicate remains.  The means of commerce are changing – but the need for trading skills for money and money for goods remains.  The means of government control are varying – but the innate desire for people (and governments) to control you still remains.  Solomon was right when he wrote (in Ecclesiastes 1:9) that there was nothing new under the sun.
In my limited view, I see a compelling truth: if there really is nothing new, then the tried and true solutions (as found in the Scriptures) are still very applicable – even to a twenty-first century citizen.  God is in control.  And our Creator can still teach us about our own condition – and His solutions for our difficulties.
-Roo

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A Welcome (And Unexpected) Resolution

Lorin Olsen


Last weekend, I tried to get my Android phone to scrobble the songs that I listened to via Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player.  I tried the Last.fm Android client.  I loaded the ScrobbleDroid client (which did work with the Android Music app).  But I had no success.  So I set the problem aside for a few days.
And then things started to work.
I decided to play something at the office.  And I noticed that there was a message in the information bar of my phone.  The message was simple: my music was being scrobbled to Last.fm (via the Last.fm client).  This was great news.  But as an analytical geek, I was disappointed because I had no idea which change resulted in the successful outcome I was experiencing.
Unsatisfied with success, I’m now trying to reconstruct my apparent success.  The only thing that changed during the time between when it wasn’t working and the time that it began working was that a new version of the Last.fm client was deployed to my phone.  [Note: I used passive voice in the last sentence because I didn’t deploy it by choice.  I had selected automatic updates for this app.  And it got updated.  Using active voice, I would say that my phone (and the app market) updated the application.]
Since this is the only change I can identify thus far, I must lean towards this change as being the probable source of my success.  But I am not wholly convinced – yet.  There is an obvious interaction between Google Music, Last.fm and ScrobbleDroid.  And since one of those components did change, then I could just close the book: problem solved.  Unfortunately, I haven”t seen the code for any of these components, so I can’t really say which is the root cause for the change in status.
But at this moment, I am going to accept victory as a desirable outcome.  I now have one cloud music application that does meet the majority of my listening needs.  That system is the Google Music client.  I also have one retail music channel that meets my needs.  That music channel is Amazon.
On the whole, I have one question: what’s changed?  That’s easy.  I’ve finally broken the leash that iTunes has on my music library.  Now that I am not wholly dependent upon Apple, I can objectively evaluate the iCloud offering whenever it becomes available.
For now, there is peace in the music valley at Chez Roo.
-Roo

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Which One Will I Choose?

Lorin Olsen


Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent time and money on assessing a variety of streaming audio solutions. My assessment has considered many factors. But chief among those factors was the mobile experience. When I was at home, I used iTunes. It’s not that iTunes is necessarily the best. Indeed, I’ve used dozens of tools at home.  As a general rule, I have always favored things that also provide for metadata management (e.g., MediaMonkey). But iTunes has always been the “gold standard” for both “look and feel” as well as for application compatibility. Everyone is “compatible” with iTunes because it IS the de facto market leader.
But that market may be shifting – at least for me.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve assessed two different audio streaming tools: Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music.  Both have their pros and cons.  Google has much more storage available that is (currently) free of charge.  Amazon has a pre-exisiting (and built-in) retail channel that allows for easy (and impulsive) music purchasing.  Both have good web clients.  And both have good Android clients.
But both suffer from one key problem: I can’t capture and record my listening data on Last.fm.  Yes, I can scrobble data from the web client (if I use third-party scripts to do the job).  But neither product has any native capability to scrobble from an Android device.  There are music players that do scrobble from Android.  If you use the Android Music player, you can use tools like ScrobbleDroid.  And if you are a fan of Winamp, you can scrobble through the Last.fm Android app.  But neither of these players can stream audio from my library.  So I was stuck in a quandary.  Should I store music on my phone and utilize a player that scrobbles?  Or should I use a cloud-based music player and forego the ability to scrobble my music?
The only solution was to either code up my own solution – or use something that already does both.  Since I still have another wedding in five weeks,I chose the latter approach.  Based upon some searches in Google and Twitter, I decided that I would try out the Audiogalaxy product.  Based upon its marketing, the product provides streaming audio (from your home and through their servers) and the product scrobbles via the Last.fm Android app.  So I began yet another quest in search of a mythical chalice.
Audiogalaxy is relatively simple to install.  The site provides the step-by-step instructions that will get you going.  But the basic process is as follows:

  1. Create a free account on the Audiogalaxy site.
  2. Download and install the Audiogalaxy “helper” application.
  3. Point the “helper” application at your music files.
  4. Wait for the helper application to collect metadata and send it to the Audiogalaxy service.
  5. Install the Android app on your phone.
  6. Start listening to your music.

The process is relatively straightforward.  And I had no technical issues with the setup.  I can now listen to my music library from my phone.  And as I listen, my listening habits are recorded at Last.fm.

Unfortunately, Audiogalaxy has the same privacy issues that are present in Amazon’s service and also present in Google’s service: all of your music is streamed through a third-party service.  So the architecture of all of these products is an architecture of control, not anonymity.
As I’ve said before, this doesn’t pose a problem for me at this time.  After all, my music is positively pedestrian.  But what would happen if my musical tastes were more scandalous?  Or what would happen if the government decided that rock music was not to be tolerated at all? Then where would I be?  I would need to rethink my listening habits.  Of course, if something that draconian ever happened, then I would rethink my need to scrobble at all!  And for those kinds of over-the-top situations, I might need to assemble a BOB (bug out bag)! 😉
After this exercise, I now have a streaming solution that I can utilize.  And I think I know what to look for when it comes to government snooping into my private life.  And there is one more option that has to be noted: Apple has not put its offering on the table yet.  Maybe that offering will be announced this week.  If so, I suspect that my options will grow even broader.
Finally, I really ought to point you to a vey fine comparison of all of these options.  David Ruddock (and the folks at AndroidPolice) put together a great comparison of music apps on the Android platform.  Check it out for a comprehensive view of all of the Android options.
-Roo

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Get Motivated, At His Feet!

Lorin Olsen


I am so very excited.  Our program manager (who works for the United States Marine Corps) has asked us to attend the Get Motivated seminar that will be in Kansas City on May 31.  The list of attendees is truly remarkable.  I am amazed that so many important and inspirational people will be in the same place at one time.  This will be totally AWESOME!
But there will come a day when I will be among the most inspirational people of all time.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

On that day, I will be at the very feet of Jesus.  I can only imagine what that day will be like.  Last weekend, we were all told that the end was near.  In fact, the end was supposed to happen on Meredith’s wedding day.  But the end did not occur as predicted.  We were told that we would need to wait to be in the presence of Jesus.
However, God doesn’t make us wait until that day.  We can be at Jesus’ feet every day.  Yes, the day of His return will come “soon and very soon.”  But the day that we kneel at His feet can be this very day and this very moment.

Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. Psalms 95:2

God, teach me to come into your presence with each and every breath that I take.  May I kneel before Your awesome majesty.  And may I trust in Your will for my life.  So let it be written! So let it be done
-Roo

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ScrobbleDroid – Closer, But Not Quite There Yet

Lorin Olsen

For many music fans, a key to their listening experience is scrobbling to Last.fm.  For those not familiar with the term, it refers to recording the songs that you play.  Last.fm has built its unique offering based on the ability to record when and how you listen to music.  The process of recording is called scrobbling.  For years, whenever you listened to things on iTunes, they could be recorded on Last.fm’s site.  Even the Songbird team built scrobling into their basic product offering.
Why is this data important?  That’s a great question.  People care about this kind of data for a variety of reasons.  Some people just want their friends and followers to know more about themselves.  Some people like to be considered experts in something (e.g., a band, an album or a community of mutual interests).  And some people like to meet and interact with other people that share their interests.  Scrobbling collects data that makes all of these things possible.  [Note: Scrobbling also lets record companies and bands target their music and their marketing to serious fans.]
Because a large and active community chooses to publicly record their music preferences via scrobbling, most music products have open interfaces and/or direct interfaces to the Last.fm service.  Consequently, you can scrobble with almost any PC or Mac-based music player.  But this is not the case with mobile phone-based music players.
Because most music players on Android do not provide native support for scrobbling, creative people have built their own scrobbling engines for use on the Android platform.  ScrobbleDroid is one such engine.  This product was originally a Google Code project.  It is now a product that can be obtained from the Android Market.  And it is an excellent (and free) tool for scrobbling your listening habits to Last.fm.
Unfortunately, it only works if you use the Android Music application.  So it currently supports only music that is stored on your Android phone.  But I have high hopes that someday, it will be extended to support both the Google Music platform as well as the Amazon Cloud Drive platform.
In the meantime, if any of you know of a different scrobbling tool that works with streaming music, drop me a note (via comment, email or Twitter).
-Roo

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Google Music Is A Real Beta

Lorin Olsen


I have spent a great deal of time this week working with the new Google Music Beta.  And I am finally at a point where I can speak with a degree of confidence.  What do I think of the new Google service?  I think it is a real beta.  It has some very rough edges.  But it is chock full of promise.  It has some unique and innovative features.  And there are some things that are simply undone or they are incomplete.
The Good
There are a lot of outstanding features in the Google offering.

  • The current Google offering provides for storage of up to 20,000 songs.  This is outstanding.  If this model is carried forward, Google Music will destroy the competition by starving the market.  My song base alone is over 12GB.  So if I stay with Amazon, I will need to pay for a 20GB allotment.  That will mean ~$20 per year.  That’s not much.  But when it’s compared to a free product, I will always take free – unless free doesn’t meet my minimum feature requirements.  [Note: Google may get themselves into some trouble with such a generous storage limit.  The government might choose to bring a case against Google for anti-competitive practices.  I don’t think that I’d agree with such a claim.  But I can see where Amazon and Apple might support someone else bringing such a claim to the federal courts.]
  • The service itself is stable and the music streams reliably.  While I have had some challenges with streaming to my phone, most of my experience has been outstanding.
  • The user interface on the phone is beautiful.  It is a joy to work with the mobile tool.  While the “look and feel” of the Amazon tool is eminently functional, it is positively clunky.  Google has obviously spent some time making the mobile experience very appealing.

The Bad
Despite all the good features, there are some serious shortcomings in the initial offering.

  • The tool that loads music onto the service is positively anemic.  As noted in my previous post, loading music is an all-or-nothing proposition.  To load individual songs (or new sub-folders in a nested hierarchy), you have to reconfigure the music loading tool to point to specific folders.  Then you have to find the option in Settings that allows you to manually load music.  Then you have to push the Start Now button.  Google really needs to spend some time working on this process.  You can “stretch” the tool to do your bidding.  But ease of use in music loading is a definite weakness.
  • The view options are really limited.  Yes, you can navigate around in the web client.  But it is not a beautiful and robust client: it is a functional client.  That said, the Android client is beautiful.  And it has some of the view options that I like.  But it would be nice to have similar options between dissimilar clients.  Whether for good or ill, the Amazon client has a common appearance across every platform – including the Apple platform.
  • There is no music store interface.  When I went through the process of loading files, I noted that some of the songs (that I had on my hard drive) came from questionable sources.  In my case, I had gotten a copy of “Riders on the Storm” (by the Doors) from the web.  I had used the song for a video that I had made for my son a few years ago.  But I had never gotten around to buying a copy of the song.  So I used Amazon’s service to buy the “Best of…” album from The Doors.  Having an integrated service (from any vendor) would be most welcome.  I have found that since using the Amazon client, I’ve probably purchased a half dozen albums that I would have otherwise not purchased.  This is especially true of impulse purchases.  Having an electronic wallet and an “always on” connection has allowed me to experience impulse buying in a whole new light.
  • There are no tag searching or tag editing options at all.  For some folks, ID3 tags are vitally important.  And there is no attention to this subject at all.
  • There is no support for scrobbling music to Last.fm.  Yes, there are ways of scrobbling when using the web client.  Dan Slaughter has put together some excellent scripts that work with both Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive.  You can find information about these tools here.  But it must be noted that there is no support currently available for the mobile (i.e., Android) client.

The Ugly
Finally, there are some ugly issues that really need to be resolved before this product can become a traditional Google beta (i.e., a complete product).
It took me almost a week to get the product to work on my phone.  The product would install successfully. And I could see all of the local music, but I couldn’t see anything that was on my cloud drive.  At first, I thought that this was a problem with my custom ROM.  I use Liberty 2.0.  And some apps have trouble with some of the things that jrummy does with the ROM.  But that was not the case.
I was about ready to give up on it when I had an unforeseen (and problematic) product upgrade for LauncherPro.  My entire LauncherPro config was wiped out and needed to be rebuilt.  Once I solved that problem, I went back to the Google Music service.  And what to my wondering eyes did appear, but my music collection (but no tiny reindeer). I have to assume that the cleanup of LauncherPro solved my issues – though I have no way of proving it.  Either way, the Google Music product now works superbly – though I wish I really knew what caused the trouble in the first place.
But to me, the most troubling aspect of this service (as well as the Amazon service) is the issue of privacy.  It is one thing to believe in the safety and security of your own home.  But when you store your media on an external service that is not within your home, do you have any degree of privacy?  Perhaps you do.  Then again, perhaps you don’t.
Part of me is very troubled that I have my musical tastes  (and my reading tastes) exposed to any corporation.  But it would be even more troubling if that same corporation made my content tastes accessible to the government.  Do I have anything to fear currently?  No, I really don’t.  I try to ensure that all of my content is licensed.  And I am pretty darned pedestrian in my reading and musical tastes.  In fact, most people call me a prude.  But I don’t want the government to know what I think.  It’s none of their business.  Finally, I broadcast (via blog, tweet and scrobble) all of my media-related activities.  So am I concerned that anyone will use this information against me?  No, I’m not.  At least, I’m not concerned currently.
But what happens if corporations (or the government) change and become more insidious?  Or what happens when they try to use my data for their own selfish marketing needs?  For me, this possibility is real.  And it gives me reason to pause.  I don’t want to see the firemen break down my front door and seize my copy of the Bible (or the sonnets of Shakespeare, or the music of The Doors).
Bottom Line
I am impressed with the Google service.  I really like their Android client.  I hope that they will create a common client interface across all platforms (including Apple’s iOS).  And I really hope that they take time and care in developing their EULA.  There are some real challenges that must be solved.  Nevertheless, the “all you can drink” service is far more compelling than a “pay per gigabyte” service.
But for now, I’m leaning towards the Amazon platform.  It is a little more polished and a lot more ubiquitous.  Moreover, the Amazon case for privacy is a little more comforting (given Google’s historic willingness to work with the repressive Chinese government).  Finally, Amazon’s integration with a working retail channel is far more compelling.  But if Google can overcome some (or all) of these hurdles, they do have a chance to win my business.
-Roo

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Quick Takes on Music Beta (by Google)

Lorin Olsen


After spending quite a bit of time (and devoting a little coin of the realm) to the Amazon Cloud Drive, I received an email informing me that Google has requested me to participate in the private beta of their new music service.  I am more than a little surprised that I was included.  But who am I to complain.  It’s that much more tech to play with.
But don’t expect this post to be a complete review.  This is just a few quick takes from what I’ve seen so far.
Here are my first thoughts (in order of relative importance to me):

  • Google is offering this service for free.  And that means free.  I can store up to 20,000 songs free of charge.  Period.  This simple truth is more than worth the price of admission.  And it surely beats the pricing that Amazon is offering.  [Note: I do wonder how Google will monetize this.  I suspect that it will be context-driven ads.  But without a retail engine, where will they drive the traffic to?]
  • The music selection and loading tools are blunt instruments, at best.  You can select everything from iTunes or everything from Windows Media Player.  You can also select everything in a directory.  This is hardly a precise instrument.  You can take a big swing at everything or take no swing at all.  The crudity of this method is heart-wrenching.  With the Amazon Cloud Drive, you have far more options to selecting and loading your music.  But both tools really need to take advantage of metadata that you may already have in your music.  I want to do complex Boolean searches on tags and have the selected files loaded.
  • I really want to control the loading of all files onto the service.  I still have a bunch of files that came from unclear origins.  Don’t get me wrong, I own all the music that I have on my hard drive.  But sometimes I have downloaded songs rather than record them from LP.  And after spending years of using tools like MusicBrainz and MP3tagger, I have files with some really oddball ID3 tags.
  • I would really like more social media tools.  Thee is no Last.fm integration.  There is no way to comment and tweet those comments to my followers.  And there is absolutely no interaction with Facebook.  I really want my cloud music service to be more social.  After all, music is a community affair.  Sharing occurs within fan groups.  Even the folks at Myspace knew that.  I really think that Google should link this offering to Buzz, Wave, Facebook and Twitter.
  • Finally, where is the integration with a music retailer.  Apple (and iTunes) integrate with the Apple iTunes Music store.  And Amazon integrates with their well-established MP3 sales channel.  Without a retail engine or agreements with the labels, I am skeptical of the overall success of this offering.  I am sure that these things will be added.  But their absence in the initial product is rather troubling.

I will write a much more comprehensive review when all of my songs are loaded.  Right now, I am +4,000 files of my +6,500 song iTunes library.  Let’s see how this car drives when I have all of my clutter on board.  But for now, the truck is a good one.  It will haul my stuff.  I just need to drive it around for a while to see how it handles.
-Roo

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The Liberman’s: We’re Going to Disney World

Lorin Olsen

When you win the Super Bowl, the MVP always seems to say, “I’m going to Disney World!”  Now that the Libermans are married, they too are headed to Disney World.  This is so very appropriate for the both of them.  The night before they were married, the whole wedding party went to see the latest installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.  Now, the two of them are winging their way to the Magic Kingdom.  Have fun!  May the magic be life-long!

-Roo

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