August 2008 Archives

Yahoo's new location sharing service dubbed Fire Eagle, stores your geographic location so that other websites can access and share that info. You can choose how much info you want to share and who to share it with.

This comes in handy so you can add your location to your blog entries, find interesting things around you, access personalized news relevant to your location, geotag your photos, and much more. Check out everything that you can do.

Fire Eagle just came out of beta so you'll start to see more services and websites start to use the platform and API.

Fire Eagle [yahoo]

Related articles by Zemanta

• Yahoo! Launches Fire Eagle (Yahoo!)
• Yahoo Fire Eagle Geo-Location Service Goes Public
• Fire Eagle ignites geo-aware applications

Hulu is a web-based video player that allows you to watch episodes of your favorite shows. They've got most episodes of Monk, Family Guy, Heroes, and many more. It even has full length movies as well. Stop by and watch the HD gallery too.

Most TV networks are streaming their shows over the net, but the quality is not that great. This seems to take it up a notch.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hulu: The Next Step in TV on the Web
• Hulu Reaches 100 Million Streams, 3.2 Million Uniques; Now, Time To Advertise
• Why Hulu is the best video service on the Web

This neat little service allows you to send an SMS message to any phone at any time in the future. It's a great way to remind you to do things or send messages to anyone else for that matter.

oh, don't forget

Related articles by Zemanta

• SMS and Email Scheduling With the Sendible API

I've used this program quite a bit when I was responding to customer service inquiries and writing the same thing over and over again. It's easy because you can customize it to your liking. I had it setup so that I pressed a letter, then tab, and it will write out a sentence for you.

Very useful, it will work anywhere that you can input text.

Texter via Lifehacker

With everyone being gas-conscious these days, Fuelly allows you to track your gas spending and fuel economy online.

Every time you fill up, just record your mileage, how gallons you put in, and the cost per gallon. When you get home you can enter the info on Fuelly's website and you'll start to see some trending after a while.

It's even easier if you have a mobile phone with web access, so that you can enter everything at the pump. Adjust your driving habits to see the effects over time.

Fuelly

Related articles by Zemanta

• Your gas: It's social
• Fuelly Shares and Compares Your Gas Mileage [Gas]
• Ten ways to get better gas mileage
• How Do You Track Your Car's Fuel MPG?

Remeber that program Gmail Drive that lets you use your Gmail account as an online drive? Dropbox is similar, except they provide you with 2GB of online space which you can share with your friends.

Share a folder with your buddies, and just drop the files in. It looks like a normal folder in your documents and is easy to access. Great for sharing things.

DropBox

Last week I found a fun group on Meetup.com: Dogs & Drinks. It's a neat little gathering of people that bring their toy dogs (under 15 lbs) to get together, romp around, and play nicely. The entry fee included wine and food to keep the parents busy while the lit'luns played.

Ashii, the organizer, started the group with her Chorkie, Remy. She bakes pooch pastries, makes pooch wines, and even dresses her little friend up.

It was definitely a good time to sit back, relax, make new friends, and let the little ones mingle. Cody enjoyed the mixer and even got a little cake on his nose.

Those sneaky phone companies always charge you out the wazoo whenever you go over your minutes. WatchMyCell is a service that will notify you when you're close to going over. That way you can avoid those expensive overages.

WatchMyCell.com

I often create beats, riffs, and samples on the MC-909, but sometimes it's hard to use them in a full composition without having a mouse and a large screen. To accomplish that, I arrange everything in Ableton Live.

You can do that by tranferring either MIDI or Audio.

I use a M-Audio FireWire 410 as my soundcard and all connections. Connect all your audio output cables (SPDIF) from the 909 to your soundcard. Do the same for MIDI in/out.

For MIDI transfer and control, you need to use the 909 as the master sync, go to Menu -> System -> Seq/MIDI, and make sure Sync Mode is set to Master and sync output on.

In Live, go to Options -> Preferences -> MIDI Sync. Under the midi input section, make sure that you turn on Track, Sync, and Remote. This allows the 909 to send MIDI messages to each Live track, as well as sync timing and remote control through the 909.

Create 16 MIDI tracks in Live, one for each 909 MIDI track. Then, find the I/O section under the MIDI track info, set MIDI from to your MIDI source (mine is FW 410 MIDI), and underneath that, set the MIDI channel to 1. Make sure you do this for each track input, 2, 3, 4, etc. And no output (when recording in).

Try experimenting with recording each midi track. To record track 1, simply mute all other tracks on the 909 (Part mute -> Shift and track button 1), arm the track to record in live, click record for the MIDI slot, and play on the 909. Watch the midi notes roll in. Do the same for all the rest.

After you've recorded each midi track, you can turn off the MIDI inputs in Live, and then turn the MIDI out port to each corresponding track. In the 909, goto Menu -> MIDI -> MIDI Rx, and turn Remote Keyobard Switch to OFF. You'll need a blank pattern in the 909 with each patch that you used for sounds. Hit play to wach Live trigger notes on the 909.

So that's how you use Live as the midi source to trigger sounds on the 909. You can then edit and arrage midi on your computer.

To do the same for audio, simply change the source input for each track in Live from MIDI to your audio source such as the 909's SPDIF.

I also like to control Live from the 909. You can enter MIDI map mode by clicking the MIDI button in the top right of Live. Every configurable parameter through MIDI will turn a purple color. Click a sample for example, then a key on the 909, and you just configured it as a trigger. You can try experimenting with any knob that sends MIDI data as a control for Live. Just look in the very top right corner of Live at the MIDI Track In Indicator to see if the 909's knob is sending data.

It may sound complicated, but you've just got to try experimenting on your own to see how it all works together. Good luck!

New tunage for you. A few good ones in here that I like a lot, some of that smooth yet driving sound. I love the original Shadow Movement by Michael Cassette, the Komytea remix gives you a taste of what the original had going. And of course, you can't go wrong with a little Phil Collins.

jTucker - Taste the Mango

1. Mango - Handelskai (Original mix)
2. Komytea - Soldiers Of Karkadu (Original mix)
3. Kosmas Epsilon - Soho (danny alpha remix)
4. Damien J. Carter and Anthony Lee - Filterscope (Original mix)
5. Alex Gold - Give it up (reaction) - (Adam K Soha and Alex Gold remix)
6. Keenan and Anderson - Promises (Faskil remix)
7. Oliver Moldan and Jerome Isma-ae - White Lobster (Original mix)
8. Rowan Blades - Argie Bargie (Original)
9. Michael Cassette - Shadows Movement (Komytea Remix)
   
10. James Zabiela - Perseverance (Original)
11. Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight (Stan Kolev mix)
12. Ben Brown - Calm down (Jerome Isma-ae remix)
13. Tiger Stripes - Beach Buggy (Original)
    

A good friend of mine is aspiring to be a triple threat as a writer, director, and actor in theater. She directed this short film which is a true story about a reunion between her mom and long lost sister whom she never got to know. It's a moving story, a great tribute and first film.

I put this together after going to the Sunday School for Degenerates last spring at the Pawn Shop in Miami, Florida. All the minimal and tech house inspired me. We survived from 8am to 8pm and heard some of the best music around. Mistress Barbara piqued my interest, as well as Steve Bug and Adultnapper. Oh, and don't forget about Dollz at Play.

Right click and save as: jTucker - Minimalistec

1. marcel_wave-27_holton
2. Rodriguez jr. - Soledad
3. gregor tresher - a thousand nights (great stuff)
4. Gui Boratto & Martin Eyerer - The Island
5. sebastien san - rising sun (c2 edit) b1_rising sun (c2 edit)
6. Djuma Soundsystem, Def Jaguar, Flip - This Sound
7. Friendly People - Music is improper (Martin Buttrich remix)
8. solaris_heights-no_trace_(popof_remix)
9. Europa - Original Mix
10. Nails - Original Mix
11. John Acquaviva pre. Swen Weber - First Stroke (Original mix)
12. paul_ritch-ultimate_(beatport_exclusive_mix)
13. Sebo K - Far_Out_Original_Mix
14. Marc Romboy and Stephan Bodzin - Callisto
15. guy_j_-_shiver_(original_mix)
16. Dan Berkson, Adultnapper - Inner_Ear_Original_Mix
17. julien_jeweil-air_conditionne
18. Kabale und Liebe - Mumbling Yeah (Loco Dice Remix)
19. Les Schmitz vs. Amo and Navas - Positive

As the ubiquity of the internet increases, so does the usefulness of applications in every day situations.

Imagine you are driving down the road on a beautiful saturday afternoon. You car speaks the happy hour specials at Houlihan's restaurant as you pass by. You hear that Fry's electronics is having a sale on Terabyte hard drives. Even when you're at the mall, you can look browse through the local ads at your discretion on your location aware phone.

This future is now becoming reality as location aware devices are becoming more prevalent. Withg the advent of the iPhone 3G, the built in GPS can send your location coordiantes to any application. This means that your phone knows where you are at all times. Applications can request this information and send back to databases on the internet and make your life easier. Kind of scary if someone or some organization was able to access that info.

Here is just a taste of some of the applications already available:

• Shake your iPhone and Urbanspoon will pick a restaurant in your area
• Social network with other people at the mall or wherever you are using Brightkite
• Geotag your photos so you know where they were taken
• Forget where you parked? Bookmark it with G-Park
• Exchange contact info with someone nearby by shaking your iPhone: Friend Book

Cool stuff is happening today. It's going to be exciting to see what else will transpire with this technology.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stalking your friends could be big business. $3.3 billion location-based social network economy by 2013?
• Here I Am Sends a Google Map Link to Your Location [Featured IPhone Download]
• Whrrl and the Attraction to Location Based Social Networks (video)
• iPhone GPS, Yelp and local mobile
• Taking Advantage of Iphone Geo-marketing

I'm just learning how to mix with my Roland MC-909 and Ableton Live. This is my first attempt at a semblance of some of my favorite tracks. Nothing spectacular here, but worth a listen.

You probably want to right-click and then save as:
jTucker - Spling Fring.mp3

Tracklisting as follows:

1. Gareth_emery_pres._runaway - outrageous

I agree that we need protection and safety from terrorism, but Americans are giving up too much privacy in the name of anti-terrorism. How far should we really take this?

The Department of Homeland Security can take laptops indefinitely (without suspicion), search all your electronic devices, and is thinking about requiring shock bracelets as passports.

Some airports are now using full-body scanners which can reveal the gender of a person as if they were not wearing any clothes. Talk about invasion of personal privacy!

After the attacks, the president implemented a warrentless surveillance system through the telco's. Now, they are granted immunity from any illegal activity. Mcain even supports warrantless wiretapping.

And it's not just in the states:

Swedish lawmakers just passed legislation that allows them to monitor every single phone call and email passing through their networks.

The UK is planning a large database to collect the details of every phone call, email, and time spent on the net in the name of safety and anti-terrorism.

The Orwellian future is becoming today's reality.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Airport Feds can now take your laptop [Your Privacy Is An Illusion]
• Dear America. Please fix your country so I can visit it again.
• Avoid Laptop Seizure On International Trips [Privacy]