Ringtones…

I’m relatively new to the whole multi-function cell phone technology. Up until a week ago, we had just regular old cell phones, no fancy features and horrible connectivity and service. Well, we are in the 21st century now (my wife and I), so we have brand new communication equipment. I got a Blackberry 8700c with unlimited text messaging and unlimited data.

I must say, AT&T is quite a step up from T-Mobile as far as connectivity goes. I never thought I would be happy with the connectivity and speeds offered. I am quite happily surprised. I even have a data connection in my office at work. I couldn’t even think about a signal with T-Mobile. I have it retrieving all of my email, accessing my Google Mail accounts (including my GAD accounts). Overall, it has been a pleasant experience… I’m still trying to fully leverage everything that this device brings to the table, but if nothing else, it has been a worthwhile experience.

I must say though that it would be nice to have a really cool ring tone. I’m just using the basic “telephone” ringtone, which I suppose works fine. Being a music buff and having over 4000 CDs in my collection, it would be cool to have an MP3-style ringtone.

I, however, am far too cheap to pay $2.49 (or anything for that matter) for a cool ringtone. Heck, I own most of the music and ringtones that I would think are cool. So, what to do? Well, try to make your own ringtone.

It gave me something to do during lunch today. I have Audacity portable on my Flash Voyager, so I picked one of my cool Satriani MP3s to try and make my own. I cut a 15 second slice out and saved it as an MP3 file and then mailed it to myself (so it would be on my Blackberry). The Blackberry was quite nice about it and I was able to select the attachment and listen – well, crappiness ensued. The sound quality sucked. I didn’t expect anything extravagant; however, a decent sound would have been good. No luck. Back to using the “classic telephone” ringtone.

It was a pleasant diversion and it was nice knowing that I could do all this within a 30 minute window, but I’m off to more important things.

New Live Writer Beta

I’m posting this from the new Windows Live Writer Beta. I’ve made it portable by placing it on my USB Voyager and it appears to be working well. There wasn’t anything really wrong with the old version of Windows Live Writer, so I’m not really looking for it to fix anything. A little snappier would be nice and this appears to fit that bill. I will post more of a review after I try some posts with pictures.

Blaze – Richard Bachman (a.k.a. Stephen King)

A very enjoyable quick read from King. He writes that this was a book that he had in the can for many years, and he recently dusted it off. Not the usual King fare, I can see why he kept it under the Bachman pseudonym. Vaguely reminiscent of Raising Arizona in that it is a kidnapping gone bad… although you can’t help feeling sympathy for Blaze, the “dummy” who is able to pull off the kidnapping of a 6-month old with the help of his dead “brains” of the outfit (George). Blaze operates while hearing the voice of his dead friend in his head, giving him the sage advice he needs to pull off the feat.

I had to smile and laugh when Blaze makes the kidnapping call to the parents… collect, because he doesn’t have any change… and he gives the operator his name to use.

I would recommend this… especially to those who don’t normally read King novels.

Let Me Vent A Little

This won’t be the permanent tone of this blog; however, I feel that I need to vent a little about online music services. I used to be a member of Rhapsody music service. The only reason for this was that there was a discount for Comcast customers. I was able to get to music for online listening rather easily. I didn’t need to purchase anything, I was just mainly listening online at work and at home.

This worked well for a while until work changed was was allowed. We were no longer able to access services like Rhapsody that required a client. No biggie, I just downgraded to the free account so I could use it as a radio if I liked. The one problem that I experienced was over the 3 or so years that I was using the service in this fashion, I did purchase some music from their service – so that I could make CDs. It was easier than going to a store.

Fast forward 3 years and the CD-Rs that I burned the music to are either nowhere to be found or they are a little worn from use. No problem, I think. I can just go on the service and retrieve the tracks that I previously purchased. They still have record of my purchases, I can go back in time through my order history and see the purchases. One small catch… even though they used to allow 3 downloads total; they have changed their service and now only allow a single download – once and done. You are “encouraged” to burn your tracks to CD or back them up in other ways. One problem with this recommendation… their old files are DRM-locked files and couldn’t be backed up any other way (legally). So you have your one-time burn, no files laying around on the computer and you can’t download again.

I feel like I’ve been robbed. When I buy music – whether it’s a music CD or otherwise, I’m not buying the delivery mechanism per-se. I don’t care about the shiny object that is used to deliver the music to me. I only care about the music. I should have full use of this, and, if I’ve downloaded the tracks, I should be able to do so as long as you can prove that I purchased the tracks. It is absolutely no wonder that the music industry is struggling. Should I really have to pay again for music that I downloaded and put on CD and the CD got damaged?

I have an extensive music collection (over 4000 CDs and digital albums) and it is 100% legal. Even with this, I am assumed to be a criminal and can’t be trusted with additional copies of stuff that I own. DRM has obviously been a complete failure. It has frustrated and alienated those who try to be legal and I doubt that it has slowed any piracy efforts.

It’s safe to say that I will NEVER be a paying Rhapsody customer again. I applaud the Amazons and others who are going to DRM-free downloading and purchasing. There is still much to be done; however, since $10 for a CD-worth of music is still expensive. Especially when you consider how much of that $10 goes to the artist.