OT: Technology and Geek Stuff Thread

[unknown lions fan]

What are you guys paying for spotify, like $10 a month? To listen to stuff you could have stored local? I don't get it...

[Panoptes]

What are you guys paying for spotify, like $10 a month? To listen to stuff you could have stored local? I don't get it...

.

[Panoptes]

BTW, lovin my first smart phone. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is everything i waited for and with the T-Mobile jump program, ill get the note 4 as soon as it becomes available.

eat my dust AT&T....i broke your chains

[dpatnod]

I use pagepluscellular.com and am really happy now with my second smart phone. I don't know how I lived without it now. Its the cheapest service I have found, is over Verizon's network. But my 4g phone is limited to 3g service. I can live with it.

[nhwbrooklyn]

So I have 500 GB of music on my HD. Will spotify organize that or is it only streaming new stuff?

Yeah it plays local content if you want but there really isn't much need to do that since you can probably just find everything you already have online. It's all about playlists with spotify (or the new google solution or plenty of other new streaming music apps). Not the actual song files. That doesn't matter anymore.

[nhwbrooklyn]

What are you guys paying for spotify, like $10 a month? To listen to stuff you could have stored local? I don't get it...

Oh I forgot to mention that you don't need to abuse your data plan. You can download a playlist that you like so it plays local and also set it to only download when you are on wifi (if you're really low on data). The DL'ed files are encrypted and essentially just a temp cache. You never experience the songs as files.

Another thing that makes spotify or other services like this great is that I edit my playlists on my computer and it changes on my mobile automatically. All my devices and my wife's devices are all synced. For example we use our first gen nexus 7 tablet (that you can get for super cheap now) as an alarm clock and for spotify streaming in one room. My laptop has spotify, my phone has spotify, my work computer has spotify, someday my car will have spotify.

[Tony G]

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/02/26/google-glass-attack-against-social-media-consultant-spurs-huge-backlash/

Woman’s Google Glass Attack In SF Bar Spurs Huge Social Media Backlash



SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – The woman who claimed her Google Glass computer was ripped off her face during an altercation at a San Francisco Haight-Ashbury bar is gaining a huge social media following, with most of it casting her – and the tech industry she purportedly represents – in an unflattering light.
Sarah Slocum, whose Facebook profile lists her as social media/business consultant, has given her version of the events at Molotov’s Bar over the weekend, in which she says she was attacked for wearing Glass and ended up being robbed of her purse and cellphone. Other witnesses have disputed her version of the events.
Her story has since gone viral and has been featured on a host of publications – including the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail and the popular Taiwanese Next Media Animation


From other story...

Several witnesses told KPIX5 that Slocum was very friendly, as were others in the bar who were excited to see the high tech glasses demonstrated.
But then, the witnesses said some people inside the bar got upset about the possibility of being recorded by the glasses. Brian Lester said he watched as a man insulted Slocum, then a man accompanying her retaliated with his fists.
“The crowd was jeering as any last call crowd would do with a fight outside of a bar,” Lester said. “She was running around very excited … and people were telling her, ‘you’re being an *** take those glasses off.”
A patron at Molotov’s in San Francisco took this photo of Sarah Slocum wearing Google Glass before she said she was attacked on February 21, 2014. (Sagesse Gwinn Graham / CBS)

“I think everybody was just upset that she would be recording outside of a bar this late with obvious embarrassing behavior going on,” Lester added. “And just rather insulted that someone thinks it’s okay to record them the entire time they’re in public.”

[Panoptes]

Been on a bit of an electronics upgrade kick lately. I previously mentioned that I joined the new millennium with the purchase of my first smart phone at the end of December by splurging on a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phone. Its performed like a champ since day one and makes for a great personal music player regurgitating my music that I have stuffed into the 64GB microSD card.

Then last Saturday, I finally made the move on a new laptop after being without one for about 6 months due to my 7+ year old Toshiba Qosmio giving up the ghost (blown screen, 2x, 1st time was under warranty).

I went with the ASUS N550JV-DB72T 15.6" Full HD Touchscreen Laptop Computer - Grey Aluminum.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/415320/N550JV-DB72T_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Grey_Aluminum

http://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/N550JV/..

It is nicely equipped for the sub $1K price. The 1TB 5400 RPM partitioned hard drive is the known weak point but it is easily replaced by an SSD drive to make this unit fly even more so than with OEM HDD. It came with Windows 8 but I upgraded to 8.1 without the slightest hiccup (unlike others that seem to have major issues with the 8.1 patch).

I'm most pleased with this purchase because I can now get away from using that POS Ipad3 and the short replies it elicited from me due to the shitty touch screen typing method I was often forced into using (despite the fact we have the Bluetooth keypad for it but you can't use it while in the "library" very well).

Hopefully this unit lasts 5+ years like my prior laptop.

[Marko69]

Google glasses? Those glasses the girl is wearing in the photograph above is a computer? Sorry if thats me being techno-thick again, but they just look like glasses,....., granted they look like stupid fkers that maybe Bono would wear, but they just look like glasses.

I'd expect people with computerised glasses to be walking around with eyes like C3P0 from Star Wars.

[bimmer84]

Check this out Marko. It's like a Russian dash cam for those on foot.

http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/

[bimmer84]

Nice choice g. Plenty of power, storage, and graphics capacity.

[Marko69]

Thanks for that, Bimmer. Very neat object. But maybe for cyclists or rock climbers or skydivers........, not for going down the boozer and having a few pints. What was she thinking. Got to be honest, I think I'd be telling someone down the pub to get those things off their face. And is that girl really Marylin Manson with the make up removed?

They'd just put that straight onto Youtube though eh? How embarrassing would that be! A video of a bar and people drinking then someone walking up and, "OI, asshole, get that fkn thing off your face....," picture goes shaky, visions of outstretched hands, then blank.

The positive side of these things could be that they weed out the paedos. Schools all over the world with dodgy looking bstds wearing raincoats and those glasses all lurking around.

Edit: Bimmer. That squirrel in your avatar looks like a frog.

[DeanUK]

heh - it's really quite simple. Moving your entire library to mp3s takes some time, but it's something I've been working on for a while. And once it's done, it's with you for life provided you keep a good backup and all.

The car stereo part is easy, just go with a bluetooth enabled head unit. Poweramp is the killer app, it's a $5 Android music player. It's what pauses / restarts the playlist when the bluetooth connects. Like I said, I don't even take the phone out of my pocket.

I had been looking at building a whole android tablet based car stereo system. That requires some real work to integrate one of those into your dash. Once I figured out that I could do it all from my phone, it was a no-brainer.

I was really not listening to my music much anymore because of all the problems with CDs. Now I'm really enjoying all my stuff again.

Your post has inspired me to burn my CD's to the PC and I'll eventually get some of them on my phone and use with a cheap FM transmitter for the car.

50 CD's burnt so far tonight, and about ?25 from an online trade in company, could probably double that I use ebay, but too much hassle.

[Tony G]

Your post has inspired me to burn my CD's to the PC and I'll eventually get some of them on my phone and use with a cheap FM transmitter for the car.

50 CD's burnt so far tonight, and about ?25 from an online trade in company, could probably double that I use ebay, but too much hassle.

If you want to spring a few more quid, get a radio that pairs with bluetooth. It's much better sound quality than the transmitters. I almost always seemed to get interference when I tried those.

[Panoptes]

Nice choice g. Plenty of power, storage, and graphics capacity.

Pretty nice rig but 10 days into ownership exposed a system flaw. Whenever I had my right hand resting heavily on the rest area of the keyboard, the computer would begin typing a period (.), as though I am purposely pressing the period key.

Turns out, if I press on the right hand rest almost anywhere near the space bar, the computer writes a period (.).

System flawed.

SOB!

Taking it back for a replacement tomorrow. If it does it again, back to the shopping drawing board for another computer.