bruceb news

You can be excused if you haven’t heard of Spotify yet. For months it’s been a hot topic for music junkies who have been impatient for it to debut in the United States. People addicted to tech blogs have been scrounging for invitations since the U.S. service was opened up last week.

If you have any interest in music at all, you should pay attention, because there’s a chance that this will be the service that becomes your primary source of tunes. In fact, if things go the way some industry insiders expect, Spotify will be a colossal success and after you get used to the idea, you’ll consider giving up the very idea of a library of “your” songs. […] continued

Apple’s announcement of a collection of services sharing the name “iCloud” has generated endless articles about what it all means. I’ll talk about some of the details in the next few days but let’s step back and look at the bigger picture, because it encapsulates so many things that are happening right before your eyes.

Almost overnight it has become a truism that we are in a “post-PC” world. Instead of a single computer that holds all of our digital files, each of us is surrounded by a multitude of devices that we want to use as interchangeably as possible – computers at home and computers in the office and notebooks in the briefcase, smartphones everywhere, and iPads and other tablets on the coffee table. […] continued

The little box in the picture to the left measures eight inches across and just over three inches tall. It’s quiet and inexpensive. In this difficult world of technology, the best I can tell you is that it might be just what you’re looking for.

The Dell Inspiron Zino HD is a compact little computer that is best used for a single purpose: to bring your photos, music, and videos to the big screen TV in your living room. There are more details about the Zino in this review.

The Zino runs Windows 7 and has sufficient processing and video power to decode most video formats. […] continued

Long time readers know that periodically I mention J River Media Center, the program I’ve used for many years to organize my embarrassingly large music library. If you’re not familiar with the program, then please go read my write-up a few months ago, where I tried to make it clear who it might appeal to – and more importantly, who should not consider it. Anything that touches your music library, your photos and your videos should not be taken lightly!

Development has begun on J River Media Center 15, as the company continues to add features for the rapidly evolving multimedia world. […] continued

Grooveshark is an online site for streaming music – a free service for finding artists and albums and listening to them on your computer. The albums have been uploaded by regular folks and by this time the library available for streaming is remarkably large, including big hits and obscure rarities, official releases and unauthorized concert recordings.

The web site is fast and streamlined and advertisements are unobtrusive. Streaming starts immediately and sound quality is surprisingly good.The music can’t be saved and can’t be transferred to an iPod; this is for your computer only.

The question I can’t answer is why in the world it exists. […] continued

What software do you use to listen to music on a computer?

Most people use iTunes. A few lonely folks have gotten the new Zune HD and use its software. Still others use Windows Media Player. All of them are just fine. They’re very attractive and they handle basic functions to help you buy and listen to music. If they make you happy, don’t change!*

Some of you are outgrowing those programs.

If you’ve accumulated a large music library, you’ve probably realized that iTunes and the others are terrible at handling collections of more than a few hundred songs. Navigation is clumsy and it’s nearly impossible to do a lot of handy operations on the files and tags. […] continued

Wired Magazine has delivered more insightful articles in the last couple of years than any other magazine, offline or online. Take a few minutes to read a fascinating piece in this month’s issue, “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine.”

Traditionally when we pictured high quality products, we’ve always understood that they were the products with the highest fidelity or the most power or the most features.

Right in front of our eyes, in more markets than you expect, there is a transformation underway: the products that are succeeding are the ones that trade power or fidelity for low price, flexibility, and convenience. […] continued

A heartwarming story for the end of 2008! On December 31 every owner of a 30Gb Microsoft Zune woke up to a crashed device that couldn’t be started. (The Zune is Microsoft’s competitor for the iPod. Only 14 people own them, so this isn’t all that significant except that it makes Microsoft look so deliciously boneheaded.)

After reports of the glitch started flooding in to Gizmodo and other gadget web sites, Microsoft started scrambling for an answer and eventually turned up a software bug related to leap years. The official answer: avert your eyes, don’t ask a lot of questions, and put the Zune away until January 1, when it will be okay again. […] continued

Apple’s software for Windows has been causing problems on more and more of my clients’ computers. I’ve been wrestling with bluescreens caused by iTunes, file extensions hijacked by Quicktime, and now I’m suspicious that an uninvited service has been causing problems in Outlook.

An iTunes installation includes far more than a music library that syncs to your iPod. There are multiple services and kernel mode drivers and program addins, with very little of it included in any disclosure or presented with any options. Apple also installs its “software update” framework, which it has used to install additional unrelated software without adequate disclosure, notably when it used the update service to install its insecure Safari web browser a few months ago. […] continued

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together a fascinating article summarizing the history and effect of the RIAA’s five-year battle against online music sharing. The conclusion is compelling: every single move made by the recording industry has backfired. The RIAA has filed more than thirty thousand lawsuits and threatened even more people, turning public opinion overwhelmingly against the RIAA and the labels, and has accomplished nothing.

“The RIAA’s lawsuit campaign against individual American music fans has failed. It has failed to curtail P2P downloading. It has not persuaded music fans that sharing is equivalent to shoplifting. It has not put a penny into the pockets of artists.

[…] continued