Since all Media players I’ve tested so far lack the feature of an efficient indexing tool I stick to the Google Desktop search to find certain titles. It is limited to an only text based search and the result’s appearance is kind of limited (viewed like a standard Google search result set) but it does the trick. Since I’ve got a browser window open at all times, anyway it is just damn fast. Ctrl-Ctrl to pop up the search mask and sometimes an additional “filetype:mp3” after the search terms gets my a result set onto the monitor within a second! Searching for an unambiguous term you won’t even need the browser window, but can send the file directly to your media player. Well, sometimes a nice graphical user interface would be preferable, but the waiting times which come with those are unjustifiable.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch at 00:41 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

This skiing holiday, I discovered some flaws using my S/O/N/Y P1i combined with an AD2P Bluetooth headset as mp3 player. First of all my headset’s batteries won’t last longer than four hours playing music. Not a problem if you want to listen to a song occasional while you are busy anyway – but if you want to listen continuously for a longer time it is just not enough. Switching to a cable headset I then had had the problems, that I couldn’t influence the played songs as much as I liked to. I first had to get the phone and then even use the touch screen to make adjustments.. To get a cable headset with remote control would cost another 30-40 Euros

Add another 20 Euros and you can get a full fetched mp3 player! But then there is the problem which one to chose. For sure it shouldn’t be too big. The BT Headset weighs about 30gr and it would be nice if the mp3 player would not be too much heavier – but then you only get those pretty “cheap” looking ones, or pretty basic ones. But it should be at least as nice and sexy as my BT headset.. Well, not to easy to find something. But I already had seen a nice and sex player with some of my friends – an Ipod Nano.

The touch wheel fascinates me since I first got to use a friends first generation Ipod some years ago. Now I couldn’t resist in paying a hug extra amount for an mp3 player just to get one. How can men like me be so obsessed with gadgets? Anyway – at least I will be able to scrobble music, to which I’m listening on the road. But at least there is no use to get a Napster to go subscription now, since it won’t work with that Ipod. Should you be interested in getting an Ipod Nano, you can do it here.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 22:42 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

This is a lucky week for all those music lovers out there. Using the promo code “c45972p” at the very first page of registration, you get the Napster music flat rate free for three month (for details see this MyDeal.de article). The files you get through Napster are .wma files with a strict licensing – you are only allowed to play those files on three computers as long as you keep your Napster subscription. But on certain software tools allow to “hack” this protection, whether this is legal is another question.

Starting from yesterday last.fm opened its archives for public listening; now you can’t just get 30 second snippets of the songs, but full versions! The songs there are limited to three times of playback - if you want to listen to them more often, you got to buy them. But currently this protection is not too effective, since the files get stored in your browser cache upon playback. All you have to do is to search for the right file size (usually there are not too many files bigger than 3MB in your cache) and rename the files to mp3... I expect they will find a way to close this hole soon.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Media at 21:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)