As I sit here listening to Sunlounger’s “Sunny Tales”, I can’t help but think how music takes me back to memories or events in my life. Being one of the more recent ones, whenever I hear Sunlounger, my thoughts automatically go back to last year, sitting on the Metro and heading into DC almost on a weekly basis to catch shows at Ibiza for Armin, Guetta, Kaskade, and many others. I would just chill to the music for the 30 minutes I was on the Metro.

But Sunlounger is simply one of the more recent music memories. My life seems to be defined by the music I listen to and what stage of my life I am in at the time. Finley Quaye’s “Dice” reminds me of nights back at home, Fragma’s “Toca’s Miracle” takes me back to 2002 and when I first started working at Saks, whereas Eve 6’s “Inside Out” takes me to when I worked a part time job at a furniture store in 1998.

I was reminded again last week how music can bring up memories you thought were lost when I heard Dr Alban’s “It’s My Life” on the radio, and upon getting home and grabbing a couple Dr Alban songs, hearing a 3 second clip from a Scatman John song. These took me back to when I lived in the 1990’s techno heavy Dominican Republic.

I have found that I can place the years, and even months, of events in my life based off the music of the time, whether it is an artist, a single song, or an entire genre.

Nada Surf, Butthole Surfers, Silverchair, and Superdrag take me to one period. Bone Thugs-in-Harmony, Domino, Dr Dre, and Snoop take me to another; while Metallica, Guns-n-Roses, and Pearl Jam take me to a whole other time and place.

Although work or school may be the places where memory retention is most important, most of that knowledge is easily forgotten, but it is always amazing to see how a song that you may have not heard in 10+ years brings back instant memories of the past (both good and bad).

Link via lifehacker.com
Lifehacker - Hive Five Winner for Best Netbook: ASUS EEEPC 1000HE - NetBooks

The ASUS EEEPC 1000HE secured the top spot as our readers’ favorite netbook, building on the reputation of the EEEPC line as a very capable netbook and cinching the deal with one of the longest running batteries in its class.

The ASUS may have won by a lot, but my MSI Wind is no slouch and came in second. Take that Dell!

Link via www.randsinrepose.com
Rands In Repose: N.A.D.D.

Super old article (2003/07/10), but I can’t believe I missed it.

3) You enjoy the content fire hose. Give me tabbed browsing, tabbed instant messaging, music all the time, and TIVO TIVO TIVO. Welcome to NADD.

I certainly have N.A.D.D. when read from this “definition.” With me, replace “TIVO TIVO TIVO” with “Usenet/Streaming/EyeTV”.

Although I have thought for awhile this is becoming all more common, I am finding it is much less so than I had imagined. Other than faceless internet “contacts” (and my brother and brother-in-law), I don’t have any RL friends I would classify as having N.A.D.D.

The presence of NADD in your friends is equally detectable. Here’s a simple test. Ask to sit down at THEIR computer and start mucking with stuff on their desktop. Move an icon here… adjust a window size there. If your friend calmly watches as you tinker away, they’re probably NADD-free, for now. However, if your friend is anxiously rubbing their forehead and/or climbing out of their skin when you move that icon 12 PIXELS TO THE RIGHT, there’s NADD in the house. BACK AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER.

This is where I was truly nailed down. I know, it sounds a little OCD, and it is, but please don’t resize my windows, don’t move things around, and don’t put anything on my desktop. My desktop is void of any icons with the occasional exception of being a temp/staging area for current, at-the-moment work.

Link via arstechnica.com
Young people who embrace mobile tech can feel overconnected - Ars Technica

Not not quite sure how I would classify myself, but it is probably a hybrid of a Digital Callaborator and an Ambivalent Networker.

For example, Digital Collaborators have the most tech assets (PDAs, cell phones, laptops, MP3 players, etc.) out of the five groups, and use those assets to both work and share their creations with others. Media Movers are more likely to create “information nuggets,” like digital photos, and pass them on right away. Roving Nodes get the most out of basic applications, like e-mail and texting, and “find them great for arranging the logistics of their lives.”

Ambivalent Networkers, however, are distinct in that Pew says they have folded mobile devices into every aspect of their social lives. Texting, social networking, entertainment—you name it and this group is doing it with mobile devices of some sort. They’re significantly less likely to watch traditional TV on a daily basis than the rest of the adult population (24 percent, versus 79 of all adults), though they do watch TV shows on on non-TV devices more than any other group. Additionally, 66 percent of this group performs at least one non-voice activity on their cell phones per day, the highest of all the groups, and 91 percent of this group relies on their cell phones for all of their calls.

Link via HyperionReactor
Multiple emails addresses with a single Mail.app account

Multiple “reply to” addresses in Mail.app similar to gmail has been a long time desire of mine. I have one gmail account where all other addresses are routed, but I have never figured out how to get Mail.app to allow me to use the address an email was sent to as my “reply to” address.

Finally I figured it out. What if i just entered a bunch of email addresses seperated by commas (like you normally do when you want to send it to multiple people) in the Email setup? Would it work? Yes! It did work!

Sadly, this tip is so simple, I can’t believe I never knew to do this.

Although I have been a Vimeo user for a little while, I recently started to upload videos. I decided to purchase the PLUS service since I have a Kodak Zi6 and wanted to be sure the videos I uploaded would be available in HD.

Currently, all but 2 of the videos were recorded using Cycorder on my iPhone. These are from Inauguration 2009 here in DC. They should have been taken with my Zi6, but much like me, I left it at home that day.

I have many more videos to upload later this week that show off what the Zi6 can and cannot do.

Vimeo

Link via ArsTechnica
Hands on: Virb 2.0 social network gets smarter, integrated

Very good overview of Virb. Where it came from and how it is today.

In 2007, Virb wrapped the social aspects of Facebook with the rich, media-centric platform of MySpace in a gorgeous package that looks better than both.

When Virb came to the scene, it desired to do MySpace the right way, while adding a good bit of original and artistic flare based off the individual users. The Facebook social aspects included items such as groups and photo sharing. It looked to be the answer to those frustrated with MySpace and those that wanted more than what Facebook offered at the time.

One of Virb’s most unfortunate shortcomings, however, is its substantial lack of a mobile version. Users can e-mail blog posts, status updates, and photos from any mobile phone, but Virb has no optimized version for mobile phones, though a native iPhone client is in the works.

This statement is very true in today’s world of Twitter, Facebook Mobile, MySpace Mobile, and everything social going mobile, but Virb also suffers from the problem with what it initially set out to accomplish.

As already stated, Virb brought together the best of both Facebook and MySpace in a much better looking package. At first glance, this would be considered a winner, but by 2007, both social giants had huge followings with the numbers continuing to soar higher. No one wanted to leave their social site because that is where their friends were.

Facebook was able to succeed in taking from MySpace by filling a niche from the start with the University and High school students. They created an almost elitist group of people. You had to have a “membership” card to even get in. MySpace initially filled the niche of music interests, indie bands, and their fans.

Virb’s originality was not really apparent. It wanted to do the same, just better.

In an effort to become a “social homepage” like FriendFeed, Virb has increased the number of services it can import, including Twitter, Digg, Flickr, Vimeo, and more. But your stuff from some services, such as Flickr and Vimeo, are not just imported as entries on a sandboxed activity stream—they actually get displayed in your photo and video album areas alongside the content you create at the site.

Virb 2.0 is heading in a new direction. Rather than simply duplicate, they are now going to use all the other services to create a social aggregate. This idea isn’t new to Virb 2.0, but Virb 2.0 appears to be putting this in the forefront. This is their new direction.

Although this idea too is not entirely original, let’s hope their execution of the idea increases their 250k user base and makes them a real contender in the social scene.