Tuesday, September 09, 2008

iTunes 8 quick review

I downloaded iTunes 8 today and installed it. It quickly went through my 70 gigabye music library and then asked me if I wanted to start the Genius tool. It took a little while though I have heard complaints that it could take quite sometime to go through a library of my size. My system is a rather speedy XPS 720 (3.7Ghz, 4 Gigs, 2x1TB RAID 0) and it only took about 15 minutes to get though the entire library.

I tried out the Genius playlist tool. It is FAST! I selected 25 songs and reminds me of Pandora. Unfortunately it does not analyze the music to determine the songs to select after you have made your song selection. It relies on user input and eventually will get better as users begin to use it. It did a fairly good job with locating songs that made a nice playlist. I will definetly use this tool in the future.

Apple needs to be real careful where it is heading with iTunes. It is nearing bloatware as they continue to add features. It is no longer a music player but an entertainment center. Your games, podcasts, movies, tv shows, music, and now your education center (thanks to schools like UC Berkely, Stanford, MIT, etc). It is struggeling with my 70 gig library and in the recent past I have had the xml file it uses to index the library get corrupted. I am happy to use the program and have to say it works just as well on my Vista machine as it does on my iMac. I am sure there are many features waiting to be discovered...

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Family Trip to the Big Island of Hawaii

Here are a few pictures from our trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. It is a beautiful place and we have a great time. We stayed in the Kona area and enjoyed adverturing around the island. Unfortunately when they say big island, they mean BIG island. A week is nowhere near enough time to even see the good tourist spots much less the not-so-traveled areas. I will get more pictures up soon, just too busy with school starting for the kids...