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May 19, 2012

iTunes Weirdness

One of the reasons I love using Apple products is because they’re incredibly simple and easy to use. I don’t need to worry about what’s going on under the hood – I just click and it works.

Of course the downside to Apple products is that when they don’t work you’re left scratching your head.

My latest issue is with albums bought via iTunes.

For some really odd reason the audio files download, but are not playable!

And to make it all the more “fun” iTunes doesn’t throw any errors

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Written by in apple, audio, Music 0 Comments
April 16, 2012

Home Network Storage Problem Solved (Hopefully!)

Over the weekend I discovered what was eating up most of my hard drive space and a few people made some suggestions via the comments here and also on Facebook.

I didn’t realise that a lot of network storage devices supported iTunes (and similar), so I hadn’t done much research into my options.

Based on what people were saying I went off and found that Iomega had several devices that could probably do what I wanted. Some people have had issues with Iomega hardware, but I’ve never had any. In fact I have very fond memories of Iomega’s customer service years ago when I had issues with a Zip drive (remember them?).

Iomega have a very broad range of storage solutions, but they’ve got some devices that are aimed at the “home network” and among them is the “Iomega® Home Media Network Hard Drive, Cloud Edition“. Bit of a mouthful, but the feature list is damn impressive, with support for pretty much everything I could imagine – and more. It comes in three different capacities 1, 2 and 3 TB, so I naturally went for the biggest one.

Checking the pricing online I originally thought that buying direct from Iomega was going to be the cheapest option, as their direct pricing is significantly cheaper than most of their resellers. However, for some odd reason, Amazon UK worked out quite a bit cheaper – even when I opted for express delivery. Hopefully I’ll be taking delivery of my new “toy” in the next day or so! (Amazon expect to deliver it tomorrow)

What’s it got?

Pretty much everything you could think of and then some.

You can get a full list of the features here, but basically it’ll do all the storage for all the Mac computers in the house (desktops and laptops) while also supporting media streaming, remote backups and a lot more.  It’s got a builtin media server and also supports automatic uploading of photos to various social media sites including Facebook and Flickr. The web interface to control the entire thing looks pretty slick and I’m looking forward to exploring its features, though I know I’ll only use a small fraction of them.

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Written by in apple, audio, Techie :: Techno :: 1 Comment
August 7, 2011

Roberts Stream 83i – Quick Review

Roberts Stream 83i – Quick Review

I am a fan of gadgets. I guess it comes with the territory.

For the last few years I’ve been using a pretty awful alarm clock radio. Sure it works – most of the time, but the audio quality is pretty dire and it lacked a few features that I wanted – like the ability to have alarms only on working days. If you forget to turn off your alarm on a Friday night being rudely awakened on a Saturday morning is more than a little annoying.

A couple of months ago I decided it was time to get a better alarm clock radio, but I ended up opting for a completely over-speced solution instead – a Roberts Stream 83i.
As a bit of a geek the Roberts’ radio is probably just what the doctor ordered!

The device looks pretty slick:roberts-stream83i-radio.jpg

In terms of features it’s got so many that it’s hard to even begin to list them, but here we go.. with the official specification:
  • WiFi/DAB/FM RDS
  • USB socket
  • Intuitive menu system
  • Listen to over 10,000 radio stations from around the world
  • Listen to previous broadcast material using Listen Again
  • Listen to Podcasts
  • Stream your music collection from your PC
  • Wired or wireless connection
  • 10 station presets
  • Clock with 2 multi function alarms
  • Audio formats: MP3/WMA/Real/FLAC/AAC playback
  • Auxiliary input socket for iPod or MP3 play playback
  • USB socket for audio playback
  • Headphone socket
  •  AC Adaptor (included)
  •  Remote control (included)
  •  Size (mm) 248w x 210h x 135d
  •  Weight 1.8Kg
Hooking it up to my home network over wifi was incredibly easy, as it the Fritzbox was able to “pair” itself with it using WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup), which means you don’t have to try typing in long passwords into a device that doesn’t have an actual keyboard.
Unfortunately I can’t access any DAB channels where I live.. though I assume that they’ll become available eventually ..
The feature that I really love is the integration with my last.fm account, as it means I can listen to the kind of music I like in any room of the house, ie. without having to use a computer.
I had problems getting the media streaming working initially, but the latest version of EyeConnect works very well, so I can now listen to music stored on my home office desktop machine in my bedroom if I want. The user interface for browsing it isn’t exactly amazing, but it is quite functional :)
I have to admit that I haven’t used a lot of the features, such as the iPod connection etc., as I haven’t had any need to.
All in all it’s a lovely device and I’m happy to have made the investment.
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May 14, 2008

Play With Last.fm

Play With Last.fm

lastfm red logo

Last.fm’s team have made available a couple of web applications that they put together in their spare time.

The “Playground” currently has three applications which take advantage of the huge amount of music data that last.fm aggregates.

You probably won’t improve your life much with any of these little apps, but they are fun to play with.

Checking the typos of artists names can be a great way to while away the time, but you could also use the info for seo.

Of course if you wanted to manipulate the data yourself they do offer both data feeds and a full API (though there are licensing conditions to be aware of). For the top artists for users in Ireland try this XML feed

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March 29, 2008

Home Audio Pricing – Feeling Ripped Off?

I’m more than a little peeved by the price difference between the US and Ireland / UK.

Can someone please explain how the Onkyo DX-C390 (a 6 disc cd changer) is listed on the Onkyo USA site with a RRP of $219 while pricing for it in Ireland seems to be more than double that at EUR350!

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