http://www.podserve.co.uk/index.htmpodServe Hot News!enjeff.underwood@gmail.comCopyright 2009 Jeff Underwood2010-09-03T18:12:06+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:14:48 +0100jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-09-03T18:12:06+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/03169001c5c83d7c8a83d5e7ce2bcb3d-33.html#unique-entry-id-33http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/03169001c5c83d7c8a83d5e7ce2bcb3d-33.html#unique-entry-id-33One of the interesting aspects of the Apple announcements on Tuesday was an iTunes social network facility called Ping. Speaking as someone who doesn’t really “get” Twitter I thought I might be more on Ping’s wavelength. Until I read this in todays Digital Music News newsletter:-

Ping's Top 10 Problems...

Ping has incredible potential, but early adopters are trudging through a number of frustrations.  Ultimately, this feels a bit more like v0.1 than 1.0.  Here are ten complaints that top the list...

(1) Band pages are extremely limited, and most artists are currently excluded.

Apple has indicated that artists must be invited, and the selection is insanely slim at launch.  If your world revolves around Katy Perry, Diddy, and Lady Gaga, you're set - otherwise, this was launched too early.  Meanwhile, profiles are geared towards individuals, not groups.  So why not tie artist profiles to those present on the iTunes Store - that is, at launch?

(2) No Facebook connectivity.

Maybe Apple and Facebook will eventually make the handshake, but the paint is still drying on this one - and that means...

(3) This is a ghost town.

Sure, you can join hands with Jason Bentley, Rick Rubin, and Ted Cohen.  But most of your friends are still coming on board - and probably unaware of the walled-in Ping.

(4) And, not much musical connectivity outside the iTunes walls, for that matter.

Increasingly, musical lives are spread across important properties like Pandora, YouTube, MySpace Music, and Facebook.  Certainly, a sizable chunk of the 160 million-plus iTunes users have expressed musical preferences on at least one of these outside services.  So why not build the bridge?

(5) Users can only check three favorite genres for their profiles.

Most music fans criss-cross over lots of different genres, and loathe over-categorization.  The iPod collection helped to blur genre buckets, so why reinforce them here?

(6) No usage-based favorites or other listening activity streams.

What are you listening to right now?  5 minutes ago?  5 days ago?  What are your top-rated iTunes tracks - purchased or not?

(7) No Beatles.

Does a Beatles song define your musical identity?  Well, not on Ping, as favorite songs must be sold in the iTunes Store.

(8) Spam.

Already, fake accounts are proliferating (ie, Ben Folds), and Ping could become a giant sandbox for shady characters.  That includes fake accounts, phishing attacks, and other niceties that confront networks like Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis.  Hopefully, Apple isn't learning on the job.

(9) Where's my Twitter connectivity?

Or, is a tie-in buried somewhere?  Seems like status updates and favorites should cross-pollinate.

(10) No Facebook Integration.

Oh, sorry, that was #2.
]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-08-12T22:17:06+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/0b706ba9bcb0bfafbc03b49e671ae576-32.html#unique-entry-id-32http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/0b706ba9bcb0bfafbc03b49e671ae576-32.html#unique-entry-id-32CD ripping to a NAS? Very fashionable just now, technology drops in price, greater features, massive advertising - so why not? No reason at all, but don’t make the mistake of only seeing half the picture. Let me be blunt, the only thing you can guarantee about a hard drive is that it will fail.

Sure, we may be talking years hence, but then we may be talking just a few months down the track. Given how many CDs you may have ripped, can you really afford not to have your data backed up? What would happen if your NAS drive failed today?

First, remember that if you have an iPod that may have a complete copy of your music database which can be recovered. You will need specialised software (we use Xplay 3) to get the music off the iPod and onto your PC, but it could be there. Just don’t simply plug your iPod into your PC if the drive fails, you will probably lose the contents of your iPod if you do.

Second, look at getting hold of another drive (or renting backup space on one of these cloud computing services). We’ve seen even 1TB drives rapidly fall in price, using one of these as a backup could be a great investment.

Third, why not explore a RAID option in your NAS unit? This would deliver a second drive housed inside the NAS unit which would hold a copy of your precious music. Backup is automatic, peace of mind - priceless.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-08-07T10:27:22+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/b89ebed0bbe40e00e1597aa2e84d171d-31.html#unique-entry-id-31http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/b89ebed0bbe40e00e1597aa2e84d171d-31.html#unique-entry-id-31CD to iPod transfer is what we’re about, so we have lots of computers and a few miles (or so it seems) of white cables. So as an investor in copper I was interested to see the latest speculation about the upcoming updates to the iPod range.

If you’ve followed the iPhone launch and the TV ads you’ll have seen a feature called Facetime. It’s pretty much what you get when you hook up a webcam to Skype, video conferencing. Well there’s now speculation that the upcoming iPods will offer this feature. So I wondered how?

My camera is built into my MacBook, my wife’s PC has one perched on her screen and connected via a USB cable. My MacBook is online wirelessly, my wife’s PC is connected via an ethernet cable into our router.

How would Facetime work on an iPod? Well, ideally it would be wireless, nobody loves tripping over cables. If it were wireless you could use it out and about, say over the free wifi in MacDonalds. Hang on, doesn’t that make an iPod and iPhone?

CD to iPod, to iPhone. That sounds good.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-07-15T23:04:27+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/fbed55de4e93399cfb3f71e781f24cd1-30.html#unique-entry-id-30http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/fbed55de4e93399cfb3f71e781f24cd1-30.html#unique-entry-id-30Got a panic email from a client (using Vista Business), seeing this error message -

Apple synch notifier exe is missing

Core file missing.

Did some digging and found this comes about due to a clash with Apple’s MobileMe software. You can fix the problem by uninstalling MobileMe from your Control Panel.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-07-10T08:51:10+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/cf3d11bbe300609add7d37194ad65e3a-29.html#unique-entry-id-29http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/cf3d11bbe300609add7d37194ad65e3a-29.html#unique-entry-id-29Spent a merry few hours on Friday sitting in front of a clients music library, yes, we’re the CD ripping service that does house calls. What a mess - virtually every track was there twice and many three times. Our brief was simply to reduce this mess to a sensible order. Remove the duplicates. If that hits you, what can you do?

Well, first, look at where the tracks are stored (Get Info). If you’re lucky the music will be in multiple locations which means you can delete the entire contents of the library then reload it from a single source. Hey presto, the duplicated tracks are no longer in the library. I was out of luck.

iTunes gives you some help, there’s a command to Show Duplicates. Compare the total number of tracks with the number of duplicated tracks and you’ll know where you stand, doing this showed me I had a lot of work to do on Friday.

Once you’ve bottomed out the scope of the task I’m afraid there’s no option but to go through the duplicates, one by one, removing exact copies. There’s a video here on RemoveDuplicates" rel="external">removing duplicates to help.

One thing you do need to decide on is what is a duplicate. For me the track name, the artist, the track length and the album all need to match. However this means if you have several compilation CDs when you play music by artist you will here the same track multiple times.

If you just want to ensure you only have a single copy of each track ignore the album name.

Benefits? A better quality library, reduced space which can be critical on your iPod, longer battery life. And you can sleep easier at night.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-06-23T21:34:39+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/306e89d6915f610d53048a3390ef46aa-28.html#unique-entry-id-28http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/306e89d6915f610d53048a3390ef46aa-28.html#unique-entry-id-28The sleek Sonos stereo system already comes packaged with a great controller, but one toy isn't always enough. Out-of-the-box, buyers can elegantly manage music in different rooms (or zones) throughout the house.  But starting late August, Sonos users will be able to download an iPad app to do the trick.

That follows a similar app for the iPhone, though the bigger-screened iPad seems a bit more practical.  Actually, the bigger surface may also offer enhanced functionality over the stock controller.  A bigger pane allows greater visibility over different rooms, playlists, and album art.  It also allows dragging-and-dropping, enough to seriously impress friends - and the owner too, of course.

What else?  The iPad has now sold three million units, according to word from Apple on Tuesday]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-06-19T13:51:33+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/d9e24f10b04c74e0f256dc11e1c38d14-27.html#unique-entry-id-27http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/d9e24f10b04c74e0f256dc11e1c38d14-27.html#unique-entry-id-27This has been and odd week, don’t touch a music server for ages then two crop up together. This week we played with a Systemline 160 and an iMerge MusicM8. Of the two the MusicM8 has been the more interesting.

Here’s a rundown. It’s a single box, in black, pretty much the size of a desktop PC. Not surprising as in effect that’s what it is. It has a terrabyte of disc storage and a CD drive. You connect it to your network where it will store and serve up your music. But there’s more, this unit will rip your CDs too. All for around £800. Tempted?

Good points first. For a massive amount of hard drive and a CD unit its an OK size. If you put a CD in it will rip it for you then spit it out. Along the way it adds album art too. Then you can play your music around the house. I was very impressed to find the CDs I ripped instantly appeared in every iTunes library on our network. No additional set up required, it was just there. Click play and away it goes, instant music even though the data is coming from a Belkin dumb router out in the Hutch (back end of our garden) connected to an Airport Express up to the spare bedroom where the Apple Airport main wireless router live, then back wirelessly to my MacBook.

Bad points. It’s £800 - in Tescos I can get a pretty decent PC, USB disc, including a screen and keyboard for that sort of money. My Mac Mini with a cheap screen and keyboard was I think less than that. Noise - gee it makes some noise when its ripping a CD. Slow - CD ripping on this doesn’t stand comparison with a modest PC which will rip your discs much faster.

Don’t think its MuscicM8 or a PC, no, you need both. So to be truly effective that’s £800 PLUS the cost of a PC or laptop if you’re starting from scratch.

Then there’s the interface. Gee, its awful. Once you’re past the fancy html page that greets you when you log on you’re into a clunky 1980s Unix file browser. This surprises me, this unit is meant to appeal to a non-technical user, they’ll just love this reminder of the way things were.

There’s more. First CD I tried it with it got wrong. Typical classical CD error putting the composers name in the artist field. Not inspiring for free, at £800? It did get the albumart - but stores it in another folder. This means the art doesn’t show up in iTunes and of course it won’t download onto an ipod.

But here’s my main concern not just about this unit but others in the same vein and NAS drives too. Music ripping to a 1Tb drive - we’ve loaded 900 CDs onto this one - exposes you to a massive risk. You have a single drive with all that music and the only thing you can guarantee is that at some point the drive will fail. How responsible is that?

If you’re tempted by the MusicM8 ask the salesman about RAID. One day you’ll be glad you did.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-06-15T07:49:07+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/c74bd507c75d7854d209b7cbe9d0be0e-26.html#unique-entry-id-26http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/c74bd507c75d7854d209b7cbe9d0be0e-26.html#unique-entry-id-26Just went to check on the Apple store - it’s down. Why? Usually when there’s a new product being launched. This could be web real estate for the iPad or maybe some new goodies. How about a revamp of the Mac Mini range, now getting long in the tooth. Or 101 other brilliant things Apple could be sliding in.

But back to what I was going to say. We went to the Apple store in Bluewater and had a demo of the iPad. Great machine, despite its shortcomings, but my wife asked the obvious question, how much will this be next year? An item in the month’s (US) Wired noted the original iPod launched back in 2001 cost $400 and stored 1,000 tracks. At an optimistic exchange rate that would have translated into around £200.

In US terms that’s $0.4 per track or 20p in sterling. You got poor battery life, a slow machine and a widdly mono display. It just played music plus a couple of other minor features. Today, on Amazon UK, for £175 (12.5% less in absolute terms) you can get a sleek, colour screen, video playing, iPod Classic with a 160 Gb drive capable of storing 40,000 songs. That’s down to 0.4p per track. Loads more features along with it.

So where will we be when the store comes back online, who knows. But in a years time my guess is we’ll be playing a tad less for an iPad, it will be thinner, lighter and using the same display technology as the newest iPhone.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-06-12T11:41:44+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/0860ae8a782cb4076fca2fb545f8662b-25.html#unique-entry-id-25http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/0860ae8a782cb4076fca2fb545f8662b-25.html#unique-entry-id-25Still getting cries for help from people suffering with the iPod service module error. The symptoms are that iPods suddenly fail to sync, even when they were working fine previously. It only hits Windows users and searching standard help sources turns up little.

On another blog we posted this and regularly get emails from people who say its solved their problem. Here’s that post in full.

We had the exact same problem for months and found that it was an empty device driver. So check that before you read on ... Right click on your Computer, go to manage, then highlight Device Manager. If there is nothing listed, try the following options. The first possibilities are offered by MS but did not work in my circumstance as we had not recently updated to MS SP 3.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311504
and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953791/en-us

Then I found an old posting printed below from JAZZ that was originally from Annoyances.com, AND IT WORKED! You may want to uninstall ALL iTunes related software, then reinstall.

Good Luck
CBGRI

From : http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/15653-device-manager-blank.html

re: Empty Device Manager

"The issue is security permissions in the registry. I cannot tell how they are lost
but I can tell you how to fix it short of having to re-install Windows!

You must use regedt32.exe in Windows 2000/XP (as I have not seen this problem posted
for any other operating system). Be very carefull making changes in the regisrty!

You must be logged on as a local administrator to perform this task:

1. Go to "Start", "Run", and enter "regedt32"
2. Maximize the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" window.
3. Scroll down to "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum"
4. With "Enum" selected click the "Security", "Permissions" menu.

Note: At this point you will probably notice there are no permissions on this key.

5. Click "Add".
6. Add the group "Everyone" and the user "SYSTEM".
7. Select "Everyone" and check "Read" ONLY!
8. Select "SYSTEM" and check "Full Control".
9. Click the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the window.
10. On the Advanced window check "Reset permissions on all child objects..."
11. Click "OK"
12. On the warning window click "Yes"
13. Close REGEDT32

You should now be able to see everything in Device Manager, Network Places Properties,
and Printers."

My thanks to CGBRI, wish I knew more about you so I could credit you properly.

]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-06-09T23:00:15+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/9e9d78e3a655d0fa7c9ce38ed24ddc62-24.html#unique-entry-id-24http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/9e9d78e3a655d0fa7c9ce38ed24ddc62-24.html#unique-entry-id-24Not unusual for us to be told that the CDs for ripping have been left out for us to collect. We are after all the CD ripping service that collects. Usually our client adds I’ll be back - but not in this case, our client has gone back to Manhattan.

So we rip his CDs and we’re left with nearly 30 Gb of data to send Stateside. A while ago we were exchanging DVDs with a company in New York and I can tell you that sort of media takes ages to get through US customs. Uploading large volumes of data is fraught with issues so that’s really a non-starter. What’s the alternative?

A USB thumb drive. We’ve used them in-house to move data files but they’ve fallen out of favour because portable drives have become so cheap. I went to eBay and boy, are these units cheap. Got a high capacity USB drive for very little money and just over a week later got news that it’s arrived safely in Manhattan.

This has caused us to look again at how we interchange data with our CD ripping service clients. I see a bigger role for these humble devices.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-05-28T08:22:26+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/61afb58af8d9103e9aa6e2ad59229e8e-23.html#unique-entry-id-23http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/61afb58af8d9103e9aa6e2ad59229e8e-23.html#unique-entry-id-23We have a client who has a significant issue trying to get photos to sync with his Apple TV - it doesn’t. It did under Windows XP but it doesn’t now, since the upgrade to Windows 7. We share his frustration.

We’ve been trying to help out and get this resolved but still it will not sync. We face something of a stonewall from Apple, they won’t apply support resources to this as they simply say Windows 7 is an unsupported operating system as fas as Apple TV is concerned.

At the moment the advice has to be if you have Apple TV with photos, and you’re thinking of going to Windows 7, just don’t. Wait until 7 is added to the Apple TV support page.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-05-06T07:54:18+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/d26562a29b385474ea635b7ab099cecd-22.html#unique-entry-id-22http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/d26562a29b385474ea635b7ab099cecd-22.html#unique-entry-id-22Driving back yesterday from collecting a batch of CDs I was thinking how much CD ripping has changed over the last seven years.

I picked up around 300 CDs, the first trial batch I had was just over 50. In the past year we’ve regularly done stacks of over 1,000 CDs. Volumes have just rocketed.

This batch will be ripped as Apple Lossless, and they’ll all go on my client’s iPod. The first iPod I had was just 5 Gb. High capacity drives have transformed what we do, making much higher quality music possible and portable. We’ll return this music library on a USB connected hard drive which is now becoming standard.

This is a collection skewed towards classical and a key factor in using podServe for many people is our data grooming service. This simple ides has helped so many people to enjoy their music better because they can find it without the distractions of conflicting composer names, out of sequence CDs, mixed up “Best of” or “Greatest Hits”.

One thing hasn’t changed, the traffic’s still a nightmare along the Mile End Road.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-05-02T10:38:23+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/ef5e2b115a7f32b13ab715fa2f6559fa-21.html#unique-entry-id-21http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/ef5e2b115a7f32b13ab715fa2f6559fa-21.html#unique-entry-id-21I love streaming music, and so do thousands of other people. Take Sonos, Logitech, the extension of iTunes via Airport, all stream music around your home.

We are a CD ripping service, delivering content intended for portable devices such as the Apple iPod but increasingly our clients want the best sound quality because they are investing in streaming technology. They want to be able to listen to their music in the kitchen, the living room, the study, the bedroom or the shower without having to carry a portable device and set of headphones.

Apple bought Lala and have announced it will be shut at the end of this month. If you haven’t heard Lala is a music streaming service and the talk is that shortly Apple will incorporate a streaming service into a forthcoming version of iTunes. This could give you access to your music first anywhere in the house, delivered via the internet rather than specialist music streaming boxes (bad news for Sonos), and your music anywhere else in the world when you log onto the internet.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-04-29T08:12:35+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/dd485b16ac32f82fdc12cbc2cef6789f-20.html#unique-entry-id-20http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/dd485b16ac32f82fdc12cbc2cef6789f-20.html#unique-entry-id-20One of our earliest CD ripping clients moved on to install an Apple TV unit. He has a B&O TV system with great speakers so the first asset was hearing his music streamed into his lounge area. Next was watching Youtube clips and seeing photos of his lovely family in big screen clarity.

Then the photos wouldn’t sync.

I think the start of the sync problem was when he upgraded his PC to a new unit with Windows 7. So I was called in to fix the issue.

First thing I did was see if iTunes needed to be upgraded, and sure enough an upgrade came down the line. I again configured the photo sync but although the computer thought iTunes was syncing it was clear nothing was happening. I reset the Apple TV, still no improvement. I reset to factory defaults, re-installed Apple TV, updated its software, still no photo sync.

Trying to force things along by opening / closing iTunes I noticed and error message saying Corefoundation.dll was missing. Quick Google search suggested this caused a problem with iTunes sync server program which would be fixed by uninstalling Windows then downloading a fresh version to install.

I did this using the download function on the iTunes page of the Apple website. A few minutes later I got a message saying this version would not install under 64bit Windows 7. I searched Apple’s website and found yes, there is a 64bit version of iTunes so I dug around and found it. This version has 64 in its name, so I downloaded that and the install went ahead OK.

Back to Apple TV - things were worse than when I arrived, Youtube was OK but no music, no photos. Went back to PC (on the otherside of the apartment) checked settings a couple of times and eventually music was syncing and could be heard. But no photo sync.

Three hours after arriving we were no further forward than when I arrived, except for a long list of things that don’t get iTunes on Windows 7 to sync with Apple TV. I’m left with thinking this is an Apple or Microsoft issue, but I’ll keep digging.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-04-28T08:07:08+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/c03239a0ee07d0b132989735dd8fac68-19.html#unique-entry-id-19http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/c03239a0ee07d0b132989735dd8fac68-19.html#unique-entry-id-19CD ripping is a very dull occupation so I often open up Spotify and enjoy music from their service, often new music, tracks I would be unlikely to buy. You don’t get to keep the music, much like a radio it is streamed to your computer. It works fine for me.

Spotify have trailed a major upgrade to their service enabling users to share music and playlists via services such as Facebook. I’ll be keen to give it a try but this does seem to me to be yet another nail in the coffin of owning music. I’d be intrigued to hear another snappy term to emerge to describe long-term rental of music. I’m suggesting “play-lease” in the hope it would get shortened to “pleeease”.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-04-27T08:00:07+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/4d54e293a64c477aadd39dec7384adee-18.html#unique-entry-id-18http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/4d54e293a64c477aadd39dec7384adee-18.html#unique-entry-id-18We get calls from people asking for help, no problem, we do what we can and its a good marketing investment as many turn into clients.

Often the answer to a question demonstrates our detailed knowledge of all things iPod and iTunes. But sometimes what we say stretches their credulity - take yesterday for example. A call from a lady who’d bought an iPod Touch and just wanted to download her music. She’d done the right thing in connecting the iPod but for 30 minutes her computer failed to initiate the sync. Hence the call.

My answer was just wait, not fiddle under the hood with some obscure settings, just wait. You could hear the lack of faith coming over the line. Trust me, just wait. I explained that it can take a long time to charge an iPod and it needs a level of charge just to be recognised. I did manage to convince the caller to wait and I’m pleased to say she rang back an hour later to say all her music was safely downloaded to the new iPod. Much more confidence coming over the line, maybe even a future client - who knows.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-04-22T17:30:06+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/4b4849187d3a53702ccd1d981d80891e-17.html#unique-entry-id-17http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/4b4849187d3a53702ccd1d981d80891e-17.html#unique-entry-id-17We’re often asked to recommend a docking station for iPod lovers. I know from our clients experience that the unit most people end up investing in the Bose. Why?

Well, they sound pretty good. The sound can also be ramped up without significant distortion while sounding good at low volumes. Bose has a good name and if you’re a bit of a techie their adverts make great play of some voodoo around how their speakers work. And its a safe choice, the big kids in the playground won’t beat you up when they’ve bought the same box.

These thoughts were in my mind a couple of weeks ago as I stood in John Lewis in Bluewater to decide which iPod docking system I should buy. Of course the Bose unit was there and I was tempted. But I browsed around and found the Pure Avanti Flow, which is how I invested my pocket money. How is it in practice?

First, the sound is great. It has a deep, rounded sound, good detail and it will go very loud. As does the Bose you say. But ... the Pure has a digital radio built in, it will access the internet (brilliant for me, I love internet radio) plus you can stream music from your Mac / PC onto the Pure.

I’ve been very happy with the Pure and I’d recommend it to anyone. A week ago we went to Swaffham in Norfolk for the weekend and found the radio in the room was made by Bose. My opinion was reinforced, the Bose is really good but I think the Pure Avanti is better.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-04-17T10:44:26+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/411b0ac3eb2fc91b5bf4111c5319c26f-16.html#unique-entry-id-16http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/411b0ac3eb2fc91b5bf4111c5319c26f-16.html#unique-entry-id-16Simple answer - yes, you can uninstall iTunes without losing your music on your computer; that applies to both PCs and Mac. So if iTunes is playing up you can safely uninstall then download iTunes afresh and that may correct the issue.

Keep in mind if you do you’ll probably lose your playlists along with those low level stats like number of times a track is played, most recently played etc.

There is a compromise step you might want to try. When you go through the uninstall process on a PC you’ll get to a point where you’re given the option to rebuild iTunes. That’s worth trying as it doesn’t destroy all that other data. You can also check for updates to iTunes - if an update is available that’s the same in effect as re-installing but again you keep all that incidental data.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-04-05T11:03:29+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/033dc2bc679097cad565660081026be8-15.html#unique-entry-id-15http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/033dc2bc679097cad565660081026be8-15.html#unique-entry-id-15Sometimes I get asked - what’s your music set up? OK, on this dull Bank Holiday Monday here’s how I listen.

First - Spotify
Just love it. It’s here on my laptop, background music, reasonable range of tracks, I can shut it down if the phone rings or someone comes on Skype.

Second - iTunes
We have all our CDs in iTunes so assuming the “house” PC is running I can access any of that. Of course this is what goes onto our iPods but I am listening less to my iPod these days. It’s down to making fewer train trips into London, nothing more than that.

Third - radio
If Laura’s here with me she enjoys a lot of current music and radio is a quick solution to that. So we listen to XFM over DAB on a Pure radio in The Hutch (that’s podServe’s global HQ). We also listen to Absolute but that’s mainly because it serves up tracks from my youth. Beyond that I find it terribly staid for a supposedly modern media station.

To be honest I frequently don’t listen to music, so BBC’s Radio 7 delivers various plays and comedy slots we enjoy for a change.

Four - Your Music
Yes, we do listen to your CDs. Partly its down to quality control but often its just to hear what someone else is enjoying. This is particularly true for classical music where there are so many options for different conductors, orchestras, soloists. These days without the range of High Street music stores where you can sample a classical album before you shell out £15 or £20 buying a classical CD on the strength of a 10 second sample in iTunes is crazy.

How’s it piped?
I can pretty much listen to any music, anywhere. For flexibility Spotify is hard to beat as it lives on my MacBook and the Mac Mini I use if I’m in the production unit. The mac Mini has a reasonable pair of powered speakers, OK for pop, acceptable at best for classical, and more than good for spoken voice.

In network terms each PC is linked wirelessly to the Apple Airport router, that takes care of most functions we need.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-03-17T08:16:41+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/fdb964dc49a20a838b18928fe5db1349-14.html#unique-entry-id-14http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/fdb964dc49a20a838b18928fe5db1349-14.html#unique-entry-id-14Having ripped thousands of CDs over the last seven years I think we’ve got the hang of it, except that every so often Apple via iTunes or the iPod lob something in to muddy the waters. Just such a bouncing bomb is the facility Automatically Add to iTunes.

You may have noticed a new folder gets created called Automatically Add to iTunes, right in the folder where you previously had you music living in disciplined peace. The idea is that this is a “drop box” feature, you can just slot tracks in there and next time iTunes opens bingo, your music is sucked into you library. As if by magic. Except we’ve been finding it disrupts the otherwise smooth running of the Add Folder to Library command.

I’m trying to get us into the habit of deleting this folder each time we try to import music, which can be 5 or 6 times a day. Unfortunately you can’t get rid of it forever, a new one pops up each time you start iTunes, but at least we escape temporary confusion. Next time Apple, take pity on a humble CD ripping service, if you lob in another confusion factor please flag it up.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-02-08T09:00:18+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/35eac6fb2d9b31c56e5f79777984f1e8-13.html#unique-entry-id-13http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/35eac6fb2d9b31c56e5f79777984f1e8-13.html#unique-entry-id-13Hard to believe we’ve been ripping CDs for seven years and along the way helping people with iPod and iTunes problems. Over the years iPods have gone from being ground breaking technology to one of those staple devices hardly any of us can live without. Surely the whole iPod thing now works without fault?

You’d think so. Good proven technology so I was surprised when a client rang and said he couldn’t get his iPod or Apple TV to sync. He had tried everything but nothing would overcome the problem. So I went over to see him on Friday afternoon. Sure enough, all the right bits seemed in place but nothing. I opened and then closed iTunes, planning to download the latest version, when the issue became clear - a neat column of greyed out exclamation marks down the left side of the iTunes window. Nothing could be played in iTunes, no digital music files could be found. I loaded a few test tracks and the PC was fine, for some reason iTunes had “lost” all its music.

The next few minutes was spent in My Computer playing hunt the music - all to no avail. So I pulled the PC out from under the built-in desk and found the LaCie hard drive the music should have been living on. It was stone cold, no sign of life, Toggled the on/off switch, nothing. Fiddled with the mains switch, current there, looked at the LaCie cable only to find that the two-pin connector from the mains into the transformer had melted. I suppose he was lucky not to have caused a fire. I’ve taken the old drive away and now face the fiddly task of stripping out the drive, sticking it in one of our PCs and recovering the music from that.

At nothing had really gone wrong in iTunes or on the iPod, all down to a basic hardware failure; and that will be the last call we ever get with an iPod problem. Somehow I doubt it.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-01-20T21:18:46+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/82b00eebed178962d812d5cd54766b1b-12.html#unique-entry-id-12http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/82b00eebed178962d812d5cd54766b1b-12.html#unique-entry-id-12Laptops seem to have been one of the big Christmas presents judging by the number of calls we’ve been receiving. When you upgrade to a new PC or laptop you have to move your music onto your new box.

Apple have now implemented a feature which allows you to bring back music you have purchased from iTunes Music Store from your iPod and into the music library on your new machine. However, before this will work, you need to link the PC with your Music Store details (user name and password). To do this go to the Store command in the main iTunes window and fill in the details from the authorise this PC command. If all you have on your iPod is purchased tracks then you will be OK.

If you have ripped music you will either need to move your music library across using, say, a USB hard drive or by taking all of your music off your iPod. You will need additional software to do this, we use and recommend XPlay which you can get from mediafour.com. This bypasses iTunes and turns your iPod into a hard drive. You will be given the option of opening your music files on the iPod, copying them, and saving them onto your new computer.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2010-01-05T08:00:51+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/c94189e406c4653bbac1de5e95a5dd05-11.html#unique-entry-id-11http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/c94189e406c4653bbac1de5e95a5dd05-11.html#unique-entry-id-11I think a small gremlin has crept into the iPod community and it’s randomly attacking iPods. We’ve had two calls from iPod users (one with a Classic, the other a Nano) who swear that for some unknown reason a lock has suddenly appeared on their iPods.

When they try to use their iPod a screen appears requesting a code before they go any further. As they assure me they didn’t add the password in the first place they have no idea what the magic code should be. How can this be fixed?

Well, it’s quite easy but will take some time. The easiest way is to connect the iPod to the computer holding its main library. For most people that’s no problem as its typically their only computer. In the case of one of our clients they were trying to move from one PC to another when the lock appeared so for them the mother computer is the “old” PC not the “new” one.

Even if the iPod is locked when connected to the PC, via iTunes, you will be able to access the standard iPod control menu. This will give you the option to reset your iPod to factory settings. Take that route, and in a few minutes you’ll have an unlocked iPod. You are half way to a solution, the lock will have gone but your iPod will have no music on it. You need to re-synch the iPod so all its music is restored, that’s why I say this process can take some time. When fully synched you’ll be back to where you were before.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-12-07T08:05:15+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/a75e1c0a42bffdcef9e12eca2289950f-10.html#unique-entry-id-10http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/a75e1c0a42bffdcef9e12eca2289950f-10.html#unique-entry-id-10So, Apple have bought a music streaming service called LaLa. Is this the end for CD ripping services such as podServe?

First, for those of you unfamiliar with streaming music let me explain what Apple may have in mind. You pay a fee (probably monthly) for which you get access to music. You’d be able to listen to that music over the internet and probably download it to your iPod but you don’t actually “own” the music. When your subscription lapses you lose the right to hear that music again. If this become iTunes Music Streaming why bother with having your CDs ripped?

Sure, for some people it will work. But judging by the pathway littered with failed music streaming services it doesn’t suit many people. Even massive companies such as Nokia have struggled to get traction with music streaming. Here are some reasons why ripping your CDs (yourself, or through a service) will continue to make sense.

• You like the music, why else would you have bought those CDs?
• You’ve made the investment, a bit more time / money and your library comes to life.
• Money - no monthly fee.
• No hassle - no big brother snooping on what you can or can’t listen to. No intrusive software.

After the initial euphoria of being given access to so many millions of tracks previous streaming services rapidly induce fatigue.

• Most new music is somewhere between poor and awful.
• There will be gaping holes. Some labels won’t play, classical music will be neglected.
• Negative press. Some users will pay but experience problems, so they’ll complain long and loud.
• Artists hate it as too much revenue goes to the label and not them.
• Licensing bodies hate it as they find it hard to track individual plays.

There will be scandal. Some teenage nerd hacker in a garage in Scandinavia will figure out a way of bypassing the copy control system. Apple will shriek, the lables will wail, Lily Allen will have a fit. More software heading your way. If you want a streaming music service just buy a radio.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-11-25T20:12:36+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/91704fdb88a2ad3ec953352348966a70-9.html#unique-entry-id-9http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/91704fdb88a2ad3ec953352348966a70-9.html#unique-entry-id-9Earlier today we had a call about a problem with iTunes running on Vista. The young lady could neither install or uninstall iTunes. I was baffled, in my experience installing an application (even “over” a program) gets you safely back to a safe starting point.

In this instance the program (iTunes) could neither be installed nor uninstalled, in both cases the error message was:-

The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.

I was even more puzzled as the computer in question is a standalone laptop. Anyway, I did some digging and found this problem reported by several users, some troubled with iTunes, others with Photoshop. The suggested solution is to run Microsoft’s Windows Installer Clean-up Utility, which you can find via Google or from this link.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-11-21T15:07:50+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/f913603ad4fec11087bb697e55c43f71-8.html#unique-entry-id-8http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/f913603ad4fec11087bb697e55c43f71-8.html#unique-entry-id-8One of our CD ripping clients emailed me. He's upgraded to some high quality head phones and now notices a short hiss on certain tracks just before the music starts. Is this usual?

Our client is much younger than me and its a fact your hearing gets less precise as you get older so I'm not surprised that try as I might I can'r hear it on my music, either through headphones or decent speakers. So the best I could do is suggest a way round this if the hiss is becoming intrusive.

If you highlight the offending track, then right click (Get Info) then you to the tab Options, part way down you'll see a box for Start Time. The blank box shows minutes and seconds. If you put an entry here iTunes will miss out that part of the music file. The setting can be changed or removed safely - but you can use it to edit out anything at the beginning of the track that you don't want to hear.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-11-18T17:39:06+00:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/b70957ea593bf5edeceb54b40030f72d-7.html#unique-entry-id-7http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/b70957ea593bf5edeceb54b40030f72d-7.html#unique-entry-id-7
Except all his CDs loaded onto his iPod.

So we made up a certificate entitling him to having all his CDs loaded onto his iPod by us. Husband was duly pleased with his present, a few days later we collected his CDs and early in the New Year happy Xmas husband had all his CDs on his iPod.

It's an idea we've run with every year since, and we're doing it again this year. More details on our Christmas gift page.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-10-09T22:38:12+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/bd27bf121725742d50d444edac653234-6.html#unique-entry-id-6http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/bd27bf121725742d50d444edac653234-6.html#unique-entry-id-6
See what I mean? Isn't it big, and , er ... clunky? Sure it holds tons of music, videos, photos and other vital stuff, but its big. Why not do the obvious and put the nano on steroids?

Well maybe I now understand why they can't. It isn't that they don't want to, I'm sure even their bad designers are smarter than me on this, its just that they can't. they can't do it for the most simple of reasons - ther aren't enough suitable memory chips on the market.

Apple has hoovered them all up, and still they can't make enough Nanos. So my non-rotating drive Classic must be on hold. Until you read about a major new plant being built to double or treble peoduction. Then watch out.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-09-23T08:04:09+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/2b65fe17c7ec9b8a2c801e29599ed679-5.html#unique-entry-id-5http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/2b65fe17c7ec9b8a2c801e29599ed679-5.html#unique-entry-id-5
When the project was over and all the furniture moved back into the house, half the Sonos system stopped working. Obviously the network had failed to reach through the new fixtures and fittings. To address this a network repeater was installed. While this improved computer network access through the house it did nothing for the Sonos silence. I was asked why?

Easy - Sonos runs on its own network and won't piggyback on a traditional home network. Solution - install a new zone player midway to boost the signal, or relocate an existing player closer its neighbour; or buy one of the new small zone units. That will do the trick.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-09-09T07:43:51+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/a5f8e14438782382f77375acf48ee010-4.html#unique-entry-id-4http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/a5f8e14438782382f77375acf48ee010-4.html#unique-entry-id-4
Looking at some of the rumour mill sites last night it's surprising how people are back tracking on what might be unveiled. The shopping list at the moment looks like iPods with cameras (lifted from the iPhone), a new version of iTunes to support Blu-ray media, and - well - that's it.

People are back tracking on The Beatles link. Indeed the event tag line "It's only rock and roll" is lifted from a Rolling Stones track. No more suggestions on a flash based Classic replacement.

My question is, is it all worth it if that's just the sum total of the announcement? We'll see in a few hours time.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-09-07T21:08:05+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/0003504e07176a9f20f575a0e9338c16-3.html#unique-entry-id-3http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/0003504e07176a9f20f575a0e9338c16-3.html#unique-entry-id-3
Could it be a coincidence? Well, there have been long running rumours that having settled the long running legal dispute over the use of the term "Apple" in a musical context, that The Beatles would appear in iTunes Music Store. You'll remember the special U2 iPod (which didn't actually have any music on it, you had to download it from Music Store) so maybe there will be a Beatles iPod. Nice.

Nice enough to justify a whole launch event? I doubt it, further rumours suggest that iPod boxes are not being replenished in Apple's retail centres which suggests a revamp of the product line. My feeling is that the hard drive version of the iPod will go in favour of a flash memory based unit. This would offer substantial capacity, maybe a sleeker form factor, and better battery life.

A camera? Much as I love photography I can't see there being too much demand for snapping while you bop. I can see that having a web-cam device in an iPod would be great, and a camera-as-scanner to interact with albums could be useful - to acquire album art for tracks that aren't in iTunes Music Store.

Well - in about 48 hours all will be clear. But if you just happen to be reading this Steve, and it's not too late, can you please shoot that silly iPod Shuffle thing.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-09-03T18:57:56+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/5699e7db8d7c7c089ba49c08b1551478-2.html#unique-entry-id-2http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/5699e7db8d7c7c089ba49c08b1551478-2.html#unique-entry-id-2
Knowledgable sources have scorned suggestions that this event will include upgrades to Apple TV, so what will be there? For some time it's seemed sensible to extend the iPod line so that from iPod Shuffle right up to Classic you have flash memory based units. So maybe this is goodbye to rotating hard drives.

There's also speculation that iTunes will also be able to ship ring tones. Not a great improvement, but what about a DVD ripping function built into iTunes?]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comNone2009-07-18T10:38:24+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/iPod%20Error%20-48.html#unique-entry-id-1http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/iPod%20Error%20-48.html#unique-entry-id-1
I’m not aware of any official list of what various odd iPod / iTunes error messages actually mean. In this instance I think what your little device is trying to tell you is that it has found some corruption on the iPod hard drive. Looking at suggested fixes for the problem the hard drive seems to be the culprit.

In cases such as this my first suggestion would be to reset your iPod to factory settings. If you’ve never done this before it sounds drastic but really it’s straightforward. Just connect your iPod, then when iTunes recognises the unit from the main iPod management screen in iTunes select the option to restore to factory settings. This will take a few minutes and a couple of do-yo-really-want-to boxes and then the iPod will be wiped and a new operating system installed. Some more waiting and the flash memory will be refreshed and away you go. The final step should be an automatic re-sync of music, photos, contacts etc. It may take an hour but when done you should be back to a functioning iPod, problem solved.

Looking at other iPod users experiences (and these are mainly Windows rather than Apple Mac OS X) you can go a long way by using My Computer to locate the iPod and right clicking, then running the standard disc check facility. Many people have reported that this works for them and may be quicker than a full restore as it leaves the music etc on the iPod.

Personally the restore route is more attractive to me as it stays within the iPod / iTunes family, and that is developed by the people responsible for your portable music package.

What happens if the fault repeats? If this were my iPod and it was still within warranty I’d be inclined to lob the unit back to Apple. They’ll send you a new unit as a replacement and it might just be that your original iPod was the one bad apple in that days barrel.]]>jeff.underwood@gmail.comHome2009-07-07T09:14:11+01:00http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/617469b361e33ba715792c7db47d0a56-0.html#unique-entry-id-0http://www.podserve.co.uk/page20/files/617469b361e33ba715792c7db47d0a56-0.html#unique-entry-id-0
You’ll be aware of the massive similarities between the iPhone and the iPod Touch, so in many ways its strange that the Touch lacks the camera of its big brother. In the last few days posts have appeared showing samples of new cases for the iPod Touch, they clearly show a new aperture in the back of the cases just where the lens of a camera might appear. So we’ve all jumped to the obvious conclusion - the next variant of the ipod Touch will have a camera.

So what?

Well, why not? The cost and technology overhead of adding this must by now be minute. It might make individual component costs come down as Apple would be sourcing even more lenses. The software has been developed for the iPhone and I’d imagine porting that to the Touch would cost very little.

Increasingly pictures are being taken for granted. Just try and buy a mobile phone without a camera. So you can take snapshots - post them online (boosting Apple’s MobileMe?) and print them (another Apple service). You could shoot movies which in all probability you’d like to edit - perhaps leveraging you to buy an integrated Mac computer rather a Windows box.

Video conferencing via chat? Better location finding? And what about Skype for video chat from the local wi-fi hotspot. For a small additional cost (whether passed on to the consumer or not) Apple could add a major new boost to an already successful product. My fingers are crossed.]]>