Showing posts with label iPod. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPod. Show all posts

Saturday, 26 November 2011

10-Day Music Challenge: Day Three - the first 8 songs to come on shuffle

Day Three of my 10-Day Music Challenge and I may have to bend the rules slightly as I have a fair bit of instrumental music on my iPhone - so, despite regularly having to correct students who refer to a symphony or an overture as a song, I'm going to do the first 8 pieces of music that come on shuffle, whether they be a song or instrumental.

Unlike Days One and Two, at least Day Three involves no thinking!

Here goes..... SHUFFLE!!

1. Up! with end credits (Michael Giacchino)


2. Secret World (live) (Peter Gabriel)


3. Amigos Para Siempre (Friends Forever)(Sarah Brightman & Jose Carreras)


4. Hand Covers Bruise (from "The Social Network") by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross


5. In Pursuit of Happiness (The Divine Comedy)


6. Skimbleshanks, the Railway Cat (from "Cats" by Andrew Lloyd Webber)


7. The Grid (from "Koyaanisqatsi" by Philip Glass)


8. Les piqûres d'araignées (Vincent Delerm)


What comes up on your shuffle list?


This is the plan of my 10-Day Music Challenge - I'm currently on Day Three:

Day 1 - My 10 favourite albums
Day 2 - My 9 favourite songs
Day 3 - The first 8 songs to come on shuffle
Day 4 - My 7 favourite bands
Day 5 - My 6 favourite song covers
Day 6 - 5 Bands for my dream gig line up
Day 7 - My 4 guilty pleasures (artists or songs)
Day 8 - My 3 favourite vocalists
Day 9 - My 2 favourite music videos
Day 10 - My all time favourite gig

Thursday, 27 October 2011

REVIEW: Tap! On Newsstand

If you've not used Newsstand on an iOS5 device yet you really don't know what you're missing (obviously).

In the same way as the iTunes store revolutionised online music sales, Apple hopes that Newsstand will revolutionise the newspaper and magazine market. It is both an online newsagents and a library for your purchases - so far I love it. I've felt guilty for a while that I hadn't given up paper magazines in the same way as I've stopped buying CDs, books and DVDs (unless they're offered very cheaply in a sale!).

I've never bought a lot of magazines, and early attempts at e-magazines were awful... Just PDFs of the physical product that you flipped through. Newsstand takes magazines into the 21st century - at last!

It's like the newspapers from Harry Potter - the pages come alive!

Tap! is a magazine I've bought since it launched a couple of years back. It gives information and reviews about apps, devices, etc. for iPhones, iPods and iPads. It's always been a good read but the Newsstand version takes things on and makes it a much more enjoyable experience.

But it's not just a web site - it's a completely different experience!

The writing is good, informative and not too techy. There's always a celeb part (in the latest edition Graham Linehan discusses his iPhones home screen) and there used to be a column by Caitlin Moran but that seems have gone. I guess it was unnecessary puff.

Via the Newsstand version you can not only read a review of, say, an new app, scan through various images of it in use but, from with within the magazine, click straight to the app store so that you can download it. You can purchase individual issues or subscribe too.

Genius!

The other publication I love is the Guardian newspaper Newsstand edition. Currently it's free (due to a sponsorship from Channel 4) - then it will become become about £10 per month.

Yes, yes, I'm sure I'm going to be called a Fanboy again but, really, you should try it out or, at least, get someone to show you how good it is.

The one thing Newsstand needs is a bigger range of magazines but, surely, this both heralds the end of print media whilst giving a lifeline to the same publications.

Thursday, 6 October 2011

OBITUARY: Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Of course I never met Steve Jobs but he still had an amazing effect on my life.

I still remember the date: December 4th 1999. That was the day I bought my first Apple product.

It was a Blueberry iMac. I loved it. It just worked. Straight from the box, it worked. No effort, no installing countless disks. Within minutes I was online from home for the first time ever.

Before that, I had been using an Atari for music stuff - notation was done on a program called Sharpscore, which was good but a bit buggy, and sequencing using Cubase. My old Atari was great for music things but it wasn't the way ahead.

My iMac had, what was then, a huge hard drive (a whole 8GB!) and, because it was in the days before broadband had arrived, it announced it was connecting to the Internet with that fanfare of pings and pings and white noise that will surely be remembered as one of the most important sounds as we reached the new Millennium.

For the creative industries there is no other choice. Apple computers are the ONLY ones worth bothering with.

Apple products have made being a musician much easier and PCs have, and still, trail in their wake.

Since then I have had MacBooks and a more recent iMac, various iPods, several iPhones and an iPad. I've used my Apple TV to stream movies from computer to TV. I've bought books and magazines digitally. My life has been totally transformed by Apple. They've made life simpler and easier and they've done it better than anyone else.

Sure, I've been accused of being a Fanboy I'm not. So many who snipe at Apple products do so having either never tried them or simply from a position of jealousy. And even if I was a fanboy, doesn't it make sense to be a fan of things that are just so good. As near to perfect as is possible?

But, of course, Steve Jobs was more than just Apple. As a parent, Pixar and their innovations have enriched the lives of my children. Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E and Up! to name just four of their movies, will be remembered as some of the greatest movies ever made.

Steve Jobs was an inspirational figure, who took a whole generation and made them realise that it was right to dream. His products have changed lives in a positive way. His contribution to society will not be forgotten.