Comments are more than welcome!

MP3 tag editing

If you download many podcasts, you’ll often find that some of them aren’t tagged properly, and so don’t show up in your MP3 player where they should. There are two ways you can deal with this. First is the manual method with a graphical application. My recommendation goes to MP3TAG. It is a highly flexible system which can handle all the tag fields you’d need to handle, including cover art. It can also fill in tag information from systematically named files, and vice versa, as well as pulling tag data from Amazon and the CD internet database. When I was organising my 1,800+ MP3 collection, I was able to tag and rename every file with a ridiculous amount of ease.

Manual tag editing is all well and good for occasional jobs, but when you need see to podcasts that your computer gets every week, it can get repeative and time consuming. Therefore you need an automated method. The best way to automate a task is to find a command line tool for which you can write a script and execute on your operating system’s scheduler.

This is were ID3 Mass Tagger comes in. This is a really handy little utility, pointed out to me by fellow blogger, Pokeh. Fortunately the author makes versions of this for most operating systems. I run a script on my Ubuntu laptop for synchronising my podcasts with my mobile phone, and I’ve been able to incorporate this into that script to correct all my genre tags.

MP3Tag in action

References:

• ID3 Mass Tagger Homepage
• MP3TAG

The Spotify application and its "home page"

You have no doubt heard about Spotify, in fact given the amount of e-mails I get asking for invites, I’d be amazed if you haven’t. In my opinion, Spotify plays a crucial roll in the world of on-line music distrobution. Before you commit your money to buying a whole album, I believe, you have a right to try before you buy. Much to the chagrin of music companies, illegal file sharing perfectly fits the roll. You get the try the album with no hassle and no money changing hands, and then, as long as you’re honest, when you’ve made your decision, you can choose to delete the album, or go and buy it from a DRM free online music store. To me, doing this, while of questionable legality, was the nearest on-line alternative we had to the headphone booth in your local music store.

However, Spotify came along and took away all the grey area of illegally sampling music. With Spotify you can stream music across the internet and listen to it as much as you like. With adverts if you pay nothing, and without if you pay £10 a month, we’ll return to the premium service below.

That is not to say that Spotify is perfect. When it first started it was more perfect that it is now. Since it’s been going, the record companies have been stamping their ignorant size 12 boots all over it, so that we now have region restriction on some albums, while others have been pulled completely, even though Spotify are constantly adding more and more tracks. To the record labels I say this; the more restrictions you put onto a service like Spotify, which you should be thanking your lucky stars for, the more you will push people back towards illegal file sharing. It’s a simple mathematical matter of convenience. Spotify is actually more convenient than getting music via file sharing. If you prevent people listening via Spotify, they will by simple human nature, opt for the next most convenient option. Sorry, but it’s a fact of life and you can either work with it, or be burned by it. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s how things are.

Now, lets look at Spotify premium. For some people who would spend hundreds of pounds a year on music, and hate the adverts, then this £10 a month could represent good value. Speaking for myself, I just don’t get that much new music, so £10 a month is an expensive option for me, just to block adverts, which to be honest, aren’t that intrusive (and if I’m saying that, then that means something). So I will stick with Spotify making advertising revenue from my listening, and I think the majority of Spotify users are the same.

Spotify Mobile running on Android

The next generation of Spotify is a version for your mobile phone. As of today, we know that Spotify Mobile is available on the iPhone and Android phones. So hopefully, we will soon see it available on other platforms like Symbian.

I find the prospect of the mobile Spotify being a premium only feature somewhat self-defeating. However you look at it, paying to effectively rent your music, never has been, and never will be, a good deal for the consumer. I don’t see the added value of a mobile application is going to change this. Let’s prove this by contradiction. If you weren’t prepared to pay for Spotify premium on your desktop, but the addition of a mobile app would change your mind, then you are effectively saying you’d be willing to pay £10 a month to have an application on your phone. I find it hard to believe anyone would fall into this category.

Conversely, if Spotify made their mobile application available to everyone, they would be expanding their prospective advertising audience. Advertising revenue must be valuable to them, given that it’s unlikely many users pay for premium. Speculatively, they must only be surviving on advertising revenue, with the addition of some venture capitol.

To conclude, please Spotify, reconsider the mobile application. We all love you, and want to use your service, but £10 a month for no ads and a mobile app is too much. Just mirror your desktop business to the mobile world, and everyone wins.

P.S.
NO, I don’t have any Spotify invites to give you, but I will make a blog post, if and when I do

An example of searching for music on Spotify

Recently I’ve been trying out a music program called Spotify, I actually posted about handing out invites last week and this week. I would describe Spotify as an internet jukebox. It looks much like any other library based media player. I.e. you browse or search for artists or albums and you are presented with a list of results and you choose what to listen to. Except here, that the music isn’t stored on your computer, it’s out there on the internet. Spotify also has a novel feature of shared playlists, which is great for spreading the word about certain music.

While using Spotify for the short time I’ve had it, I’ve had a number of thoughts of changes that I think they need to make. Not that I’m a know it all, although for the moment it’s a one trick pony, it only searches the Spotify system for music that Spotify has, and stream it to you over the internet.

If you either don’t want to pay for your music, or want to try before you buy, in many ways it is still more convenient to visit your favourite file sharing site. Spotify gives you free music with adverts and you can only use it on your computer. Whereas shared/pirated music can be put on any portable device and has no adverts, what’s not to like?

Spotify does have a great community feature of collaborative playlists (E.g. CNET UK is currently running a playlist for its forum members), as well as last.fm inegration. I think this is where they need to build value in their product. I don’t just mean community features within the application, I mean inviting a community to build a whole ecosystem around their service.

So here are my thoughts of what needs to be added to Spotify

• Publish an API so that other media players can connect to the Spotify network. E.g. Songbird and WinAmp support plugins and it would extend Spotify’s potential audience.
• Support Shoutcast radio stations. Spotify already has something called “Radio”, but it isn’t really internet radio. It’s just another way of searching their server library.
• Write a mobile client for Spotify. Support several smartphone platforms, Symbian, Android, iPhone & even Windows Mobile if they’re in a good mood
• Have the Spotify client integrate your existing music library. This would be done by means of supporting iTunes for those users and watching hard drive folders for everyone else. As much music as Spotify has, its library isn’t that comprehensive. Although, if you already have the music you want to hear, you could then still listen within the Spotify application.
• Rate music so you can search for highly rated music.
• Have the option to submit creative commons music. This of course would be subject to moderation, which would cost money. Although Spotify could really help out amateur and upcoming artists by allowing them to upload from their desktop.
• The ability to request copy righted music that you could not legitimately submit yourself.

Related links

• Spotify Playlists
• Suggestion for Spotify
• Spotify First Look
• Spotify goes live today
• The celestial jukebox arrives – Spotify launches!
• Spotify – Last.fm on crack!
• Spotify: hours of free music, basically

The Spotify application and it's "home page"

I’m currently trying out a peice of music related software called Spotify. It’s an online music service set up by the makers of  uTorrent, to supposedly tackle music piracy.

The idea is that you search for what you want to listen to, and it will stream 160kbps audio to you. You can pay a monthly fee or have to endure an advert every few songs. It also has an internet radio feature and a limited ability to suggest music you may like.

I think this is an interesting way to try before you buy. I also think it could be of use to mobile devices with little storage for your library of MP3′s.

Spotify is currently only operating on an invite only basis. As an invited user, I have 10 invites I can hand out. So if you are interested in trying Spotify for yourself, please just leave a comment on this post and I’ll hook you up.

I ordered the phone from mobilefun.co.uk, I was very impressed with the delivery and packing. I ordered it at noon and it was with me by 7:45am the next morning. As you can see, it was protected in the box by air bags, which hopefully hadn’t inflated due to impact!

Taking everything out, the E51 box is a very small compact thing, really reflecting the diminutive nature of the contents. With it, I also ordered: a retractable USB charger, a Krussel case and a 2GB Micro SD card. (I have since upgraded the 2GB microSD to an 8GB microSDCH).

Let’s talk a little about the physical design:

The screen is 240×320 and 2″ corner to corner. It is based on “transflective” technology to make it easier to read in bright daylight, which I find to work very well.

The E51 has three ports, USB, charging and headphone/hands-free. I ordered a USB cable to charge from my laptop’s USB ports. Even now after 6 months, I have had no need to use the mains charger. Nokia use, as standard, mini USB ports on their smartphones for data connectivity. This could easily be used as a charging port too, but no, Nokia have stuck to their venerable 2mm DC jack. So, you need two cables when you could use one. The E51 has a 2.5mm headphone & hands free jack. To be fair on this point, the phone is so slim it is hard to imagine a 3.5mm jack in the same place.

Here’s how I charge mine:

Here’s a size comparison of the E51 against my old phone, the Sony Ericsson K700i.

On the back of the phone, just below the 2 megapixel camera, is a loud speaker which can be used for having speakerphone calls. I can report it can reach as high a volume as you’ll need. Your multimedia audio comes through this as well, and you can certainly fill a small room with the power of this speaker.

There are a few rubberised buttons along the sides and top of the E51. There are three on the right-side; a mute button, flanked by volume up and down buttons. These also work with multimedia applications. On the left side is the infra-red port and a record button, which launches a voice memo application. If you launch this while you are in a call, you can record both sides of your phone call. I like that the rubber is part of the case, making the buttons seamless. The power button on the top of the phone is the same as these too.

On the face of the E51 you have a total of 13 keys. There are the normal software keys plus two keys for accepting and rejecting/ending calls. Those four keys encircle the D-pad and four application keys. The application keys can be mapped to launch any application of your choice, they also have a double function by means of being held down. For example, in the default configuration, the e-mail key takes you to your inbox with a short press, but will take you to the e-mail composition screen after a long press. The numeric keypad is a joy to use. While the E51 is so slim, they’ve managed to be really generous with the size of the number keys, which makes a quick text message easy.

The back of the phone is dominated by a stainless steel plate, which slides away to reveal the battery, SIM slot and Micro SD slot. It is a mild inconvenience to have to open the phone to remove the memory card, although I personally prefer this to an external slot with a rubber bung.

The E51 does all the setting up for you. As soon as I’d installed my old SIM card, it set it’s web brower home page to that of my mobile provider, and it also downloaded all the data connection settings. It also sets its clock according to the mobile network time. All this was a really nice touch.

I was impressed with the WiFi sensitivity, the E51 can detect more local access points than my Centrino laptop can!

Finally, battery life. The reported battery life of the E51 was one of the influencing factors in my choice. Now, my appraisal of the battery life may not be fair because I do tend to use the E51 more as a portable media player than I do as a phone and I use a lot of WiFi, as such, I need to charge everyday. However, there have been rare days where I’ve been away from a charging point, and I’ve just used the E51 as a phone. On days like that I’ve only lost something like 2 out of 7 battery bars.

Now, lets move on to the software:

The phone has a basic video player and a music player. The user interfaces of each definitely have their shortcomings. The video player (supplied by Real) even lacks forward/reverse searching, very frustrating if you want to re-watch the bit of a video that you just missed. At least the music player has a library function so you can filter out music albums and composers (and it has forward/reverse searching!).

I have since upgraded with a paid application called “CorePlayer”. This works with a galaxy of video and audio formats. While CorePlayer is vastly superior to the built-in video player, I still prefer to use the built-in Music application for audio. This is because the media library is so easy to use, when compared to CorePlayer’s relatively clunky library feature.

On more business related matters (as befitting an E-Series handset), I am very happy to report that the built-in PIM synchronisation client works flawlessly. This was a very important factor for me, as it’s something I’d rely on everyday. If you use websites such as ScheduleWorld.com, Memotoo.com or even Mobical.net, then you need to use the SyncML protocol to synchronise the calendar and address book of your phone with an online server. The only shortcoming of the E51′s PIM software is that categories are not supported (unlike Windows Mobile as I understand it).

The Adobe PDF viewer is impressive when you see the speed at which it renders a page. Although the shine dims somewhat when you realise there is no “re-flow text” facility. However, there is a pay-for upgrade, which has the re-flow option and does indeed make for a much better reading experience. In fact, I am already on to reading my second e-novel on the E51. I do think it’s disappointing that I had to pay extra just for this feature though.

The E51 also comes with Quick Office‘s office suite, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation application, all of which are compatible with Microsoft formats. Out of the box, these are only readers, and there are various upgrade options all of which are at graded prices. The Word processor upgrade is a welcome addition. I have been able to receive Microsoft Word files via e-mail, make alternations, and send the edited version back, via e-mail, all on the E51, with no PC being involved at all. As for spreadsheet and presentations; the spreadsheet is somewhat lacking in it’s editing abilities, and I have still not yet had need to test out the presentation application.

On to internet applications …

The e-mail client works well. I use an IMAP e-mail service and I was impressed to see that the e-mail client could see my IMAP folders. This means that I have access to all my archived e-mail The S60 web browser is also impressive. I have used it a lot, and I have even managed to use it for posting on forums. There are some advanced websites it can’t handle, and it does not have flash. I am just beginning to experiment with Opera Mini as a faster alternative. Although because of the proxy technology that Opera uses, I would always go back to the S60 browser for better privacy.

Conclusion

Am I glad I bought an E51?
Yes I certainly am.

What do I like most about the E51?
The looks and the size, being able to view all my media, read PDF’s, get my IMAP e-mail and browse the web.

What would I change?
Not that much really. I wish there was an all in one data & charging port. I wish it had a little more processing power for some hi-res video podcasts.

AudioSurf is a music visualisation game. If you’re like me, then the idea of standing in front of a TV with a toy guitar for something like Guitar Hero makes you cringe. AudioSurf is different though, besides the music visualisation, AudioSurf feels like the result of a wild one night stand between F-Zero and Columns. The audio visualisation comes by means of determining the course’s speed and curvature, and density of blocks. As the music’s tempo slows down you tend to climb up hill, as if you’re on a roller coaster. Then when the tempo speeds up you’re going down hill, and fast! For particularly intense periods in the music, you get treated to a psychedelic tunnel of light.

When you first play the game you are taken through a helpful set of video tutorials, which give you an idea of what you’re doing. My first impression when I started playing was “WOW”. Not because of the graphics, but because of the speed and intensity of the experience. As you’ll have gathered, I liked this, I liked it a lot. Your basic view is a three lane highway with a “hard shoulder” on each side. The central three lanes are littered with different coloured blocks. You have to hit the blocks with your car, which then register as coloured squares in a grid beneath your car. Making patterns of three or more blocks scores you points and makes them disappear. Blocks which were above the ones you’ve just made disappear fall down in a Tetris/Columns fashion, hopefully to make new like-colour patterns.

After racing to your first few tracks, you get to unlock “characters”. Characters in this games are different sorts of racing cars. Each have different abilities, which gives you very different styles of game play. For instance, there’s the “Picker” with which you can scoop up blocks by pressing your left mouse button, then drop them with your right mouse button. There’s the “Pusher” with which you can push blocks into neighbouring lanes with your left or right mouse buttons. These different cars also have difficulty related variants, at “Casual”, “Pro”, and “Elite” levels. There is also a co-operative type car for a two player mode, but I haven’t found anyone to play this with yet . Given that we’re living in the social web age, there are also internet wide high-score tables to compare yourself against. The latter makes it all the more surprising to me that you can’t play the cooperative mode with a friend elsewhere via the internet.

We haven’t even covered the most attractive features yet though! The biggest selling point of this game to me was that you can use all of your own music. AudioSurf can play MP3, OGG, FLAC, M4A, WMA. It can even pull music from your iTunes library, if you have one. If you’re not pulling from iTunes, you are given a simple file navigator to choose your music from. This level of freedom is a welcome breath of fresh air. The other very attractive feature of this game is that it only cost 5 UK Pounds to order on Steam.

Overall, AudioSurf is a highly original game with fantastic graphics. Most of all though, it is fun, which is something games tend to miss these days. It’s too early to say whether this game is relying on its novelty value instead of longevity. Although for £5, a novelty game isn’t that painful. My only other possible concern with this game is that, I hope it isn’t some elaborate industry ploy to spy on what music we all have. All that said, and putting my tinfoil hat aside, I am happy with my purchase and I recommend it.

Finally, here is a video of me playing the game (excuse the poor camera work):