Twitter #Music brings iTunes, Rdio and Spotify together

It is called critical mass.

When you have critical mass you can pull off just about anything.

Who would have thought that competing music platforms like Apple iTunes would be playing nicely (no pun intended) with (streaming / digital music) newbies Spotify and Rdio?

Twitter‘s new service #music  – https://music.twitter.com – just pulled off something many industry watchers didn’t even dare dream about in their best recording-studio-high moment.

How Twitter #Music works:

1. Users can  listen to a few seconds of the (Popular, Emerging, Suggested, Now Playing, Me) music through iTunes Preview

2. To play full tracks users can select Spotify or Rdio and link it to their Twitter #Music account.

After allowing Twitter to access your information, you go through the dialogue to sign into your Spotify [Premium] or Rdio account.

I think Rdio is going to emerge the winner out of this collaboration because unlike Spotify, you don’t require a premium account with Rdio to run your Twitter #Music application.

How does Twitter make money in this? Twitter users like us will now stay longer #scratchhair

Where does this leave Pandora?

Enjoy the visuals!

A Vision of Leap Motion + OUYA

I remember pre-ordering the Leap Motion almost a year ago and recently the OUYA console.

Since then I’ve been fantasizing about connecting my Leap Motion to my OUYA.

I think it is a match made in heaven and hope some developer somewhere is tweaking his codes to make this happen. Come on, OUYA is open source!

Or a game publishing house is working on their input device code to allow the Leap Motion to work with that exclusive OUYA game title.

What are the odds?

 

 

 

Images: Leap Motion & OUYA official images

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is only for right hand use

I’ve been using the new Kindle Paperwhite for close to a month now. It seems to be a good replacement for my 3 year old Kindle 3 (with keyboard)  which died on me one cold winter night – just when I needed it the most.

The ability to read without any lights on in the room at night is what makes the Kindle Paperwhite amazing. I’d pay for that any day. Thanks Amazon!

It is an upgrade in some ways and not so much in other ways. Actually, it is a retrogression in some ways.

It’s super responsive touch screen interface is a winner and I love the virtual keyboard.

However, nothing prepared me for the fact that I couldn’t listen to MP3s or play audiobooks on the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. I miss that about the Kindle 3.

The fact that I can’t plug my earphone into my Kindle Paperwhite is a no, no.

Today I discovered another issue about the Kindle Paperwhite while  on my way from school – the Paperwhite is best suited for holding [and reading] using the right hand.

I had moved the Kindle from my right hand to my left hand to read but realized that in order to tap the [the right side of the] screen to move forward/ progress through the ebook, I had to stretch my left thumb all across the screen to tap there. Or I had to m0ve my Kindle into my right hand just to easily tap the screen to progress.

Once again the Kindle Paperwhite is beaten by the Kindle 3 because it offers the convenience to progress through an ebook whether it is being held in the right hand or the left hand.

 

Facebook Home Ad – Spot Ghanaian moment

I was watching the new Facebook Home ad on YouTube and spotted a Ghanaian moment.

You know, the Ghanaian handshake [and snap].

That snap of fingers that makes the Ghanaian handshake unique….was captured accurately in the ad.

I’m wondering who, in Facebook’s creative department or their Ad agency team, pulled this off?

I bet this shot was taken in Ghana!

Bibliophilia or Bibliomania – Hoarding of a different kind

Cover via Amazon

My love for my Kindle is quite known amongst my friends. Well, I don’t love the Amazon Kindle for its sake. I love my books. I love the fantasy and sci-fi, horror and mystery genres. But then again I think I love the Kindle for how it makes it easy for me to carry my books.

But ever since I got my Kindle, I’ve been in the habit of loading up e-books on it. Many e-books. Too many e-books that sometimes I just page through my collection and never manage to settle on one to read. There are always so many books I want to read and so little time and so many books read to different percentages and shelved.

Blaming Project Gutenberg for having so many English classics on the web in many formats free to download is what I’ve been doing and by extension it is the reason I’ve only read bit and pieces of the books that I’ve read.

CLASSIC CASE OF HOARDING

Stepping back, I realized I have been obsessively and unhealthily ‘collecting’ e-books that I might not read and blaming the availability of free/ cheap e-books for this new habit I have formed. I just caught myself right on the borderline of becoming an e-book hoarder.

So my plan to stop myself from hoarding is to:

1. Only keep on my Kindle e-books I can finish reading within a 2/3 months time frame

2. At any time I should have read more than 50% of the e-books on my Kindle and

3. Archive e-books after I have read them or

4. Only read paperbacks and hardcovers

Will one be called a bibliophile or bibliomaniac for hoarding e-books?

Do you have more than 50 e-books on  your e-reader with about 75% of them unread?

Can one love e-books?

Please no ringback music….just give me a ringback tone

Ring back music or caller tunez by MTN were all the rave when they were introduced to the Ghanaian mobile telecommunication market. For a brief while I was hooked (never activated any on my phone); eager to listen to what nice song will be played whiles I wait for the person to pick the call.

Recently however, my reaction towards ringback music has changed drastically. I usually grimace or involuntarily pull the phone from my ear when some song or the other starts blaring through my phone’s speaker. When I think about it, I suspect it is because I am getting more impatient and don’t want to mix business calls with some party music like the one in the Vodafone advert featuring EAZZY.

Ironically, my reaction is the exact opposite of that of the young man in the Vodafone advert; I actually heave a sigh of relief when my calls are picked up, escaping further auditory attack from the harsh tunes that hit my eardrum when my calls connect.

I fear I consider someone unprofessional and inconsiderate when they have caller tunes playing simply because most of the songs are too loud and inappropriate for any kind of business and most caller tunes users do not know what songs play when people call them.

Please just give me a standard ringback tone…..nothing fanciful for me, no sire! no ma’am!