ABBA, The Cardigans, Ace of Base and Roxette to name just a few – there’s no doubt Swedes have always known how to pump out pop music. So, it should not be a wonder that, once again, it took the Swedes to show how to bring music to the masses in the form of Spotify.

However, in a modern home, the other problem with music is that today most people have their music inside their computer – which, more often than, is a laptop instead of a bulky desktop and anyway probably not stationed anywhere near one’s stereo setup. There are many solutions to this problem, Apple has its Airport Express but it only supports playback from iTunes out of the box. So, if you want to stream Spotify from a bigger set of speakers and without cables this is not a good solution.

For a long time, I was looking for such a solution – no additional cables or stuff to just play audio from my Mac to my living room. I did find a bunch, but most of them were complex and riddled with lots of strange limitations (like cost). I was sure that there had to be an easier way to enjoy Spotify further than 2 meters from my laptop. Many A/V manufacturers sidestep the issue by adding a WLAN, Ethernet and/or USB capability to their hardware, so one can play music out of a shared hard drive but this rules all streaming services, like Spotify, out.

Maybe in the future Spotify might be inside our radio tuners and televisions. The latter is possible already in Sweden and Finland, where you can get Spotify on your digital television thanks to the Swedish-Finnish ISP and mobile operator TeliaSonera. Changing my internet and cable operator just for Spotify sounded a bit too complex solution so that wasn’t for me. But it might be a nice setup for one’s parents – if they weren’t just fine with their CDs, probably. Is it really this difficult to just stream arbitrary audio from one’s laptop to speakers wirelessly?

So, more Swedes to the rescue. The good folks at the hi-fi spekaer company Audio Pro have come up with probably one of the simplest and cross-platform solutions with their wireless offering. But, it’s an USB dongle. Aren’t there enough wireless transmitters inside my MacBook Pro to do the job? Well, thanks to yet another Swedish company, Ericsson, and their Bluetooth technology (with AD2P-profile), streaming audio wirelessly should be simple. So, why not just add Bluetooth inside a radio and then things should work with no wires or restrictions, right?

However, this, like many other Bluetooth applications, hasn’t really caught on. Sony has some setups with Bluetooth, but I went with Audio Pro Radio One. Sure, it looks like any Tivoli Audio’s radio and Tivoli Audios are really nice, but the only “modern” one with any connectivity (and radio presets!) is NetWorks and that one costs an arm and a leg – and even that one can’t stream music from a computer in a simple way. Radio One, on the other hand can, because the smart folks at Audio Pro put a Bluetooth receiver in it.

And so, with Radio One, Spotify and a Mac things are quite straightforward. Because the Radio One acts like an ordinary output device which means you can stream any audio to it. No need for Airport Express or Airfoil, things work even simpler than that. Setting up a Windows-machine should be equally easy as long as you have correct Bluetooth-drivers that have the A2DP profile. Connecting your iPhone – or any other mobile phone with BT – to Radio One? Thanks to Bluetooth, really easy. However, because there’s no iPod or USB dock in Radio One, you’d better watch battery usage or use a stereo cable instead.

So, thanks to a bunch of ingenious Swedes, I can finally stream music from my laptop to my living room. The only limits are that Bluetooth’s range is relatively short and it does consume battery. But no artificial limits like with oh so many other solutions. Aren’t standards and simple solutions a fun thing?

A sidenote: Americans and other developing mobile countries take note, Bluetooth does not mean a wireless headset. Bluetooth can do a lot of pretty cool stuff, but unfortunately introduction of cheap mobile broadband and before that Nokia’s and then Apple’s reluctance to actually support any interesting profile (without crippling them beyond any recognition) on their handsets have meant that Bluetooth is not in the spotlight anymore and is mostly in hands-free headsets and wireless keyboards and mice.

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Maybe I’m a case apart, but I have become both a consumer of iTunes Apps and have recently moved between two countries, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Until recently, my account used for consuming iTunes content was Dutch. Now, I decided to switch the payment to a Luxembourg credit card, which required me to change the address in Itunes to Luxembourg as well.

And guess what, when you purchase an app in the Netherlands and then change the residence to Luxembourg, all or most of your content becomes invalid and gets deleted from the device you purchased it for. It doesn’t matter if the app was free or not, it’s just gone, even though your purchase history clearly states that you did pay for that app!

I have written to Apple to report this problem, but in the mean time I worry every time that the apps, in which I also produce content, may get deleted the next time I sync my content.

I’ve previously written about Media being the most “unflat” industry on our planet, but I really wasn’t expecting this to be the case for Software, which I thought was produced by hip, non-conformist guys like you and me, that sell to everyone over the internet and don’t care about national borders.

Can someone, an app developer perhaps, explain to me the reason for having a different license for different countries? I understand currency and language differences, but many apps are just in English and the whole of the EU uses the Euro?

If alternatively, you happen to know of a solution to keeping your apps while changing residence, please let me know!

All that aside, have a great New Year, everyone!

Vincent

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I spent quite a lot of time evaluating smart-phones this last week, including having hands-on time with the Nokia E71, the Blackberry 8900, the iPhone & iPod Touch, with a firm eye on their capabilities as a mobile computer, more so than a mobile phone or a mobile entertainment device.

My conclusion: the iPhone (or respectively iPod Touch) are interesting insofar as interfaces are concerned that either require mouse-like interaction or that require no interaction whatsoever, e.g. listening to music. And it’s pretty consistent with my first post about the iTunes app store, where I wrote that developers should focus on developing games and other visual applications, rather than on typing-intensive apps.

Now I may be perfectly wrong about this and if you’re a long-time iPhone / iPod Touch user and are able to type long messages without a problem, please drop a comment.

There’s no denying that the Apple gadget (whichever version) is h.o.t. But I think it’s a matter of the software-features being over-hyped and people forgetting that the hardware isn’t mature yet.

• First of all: touch-keyboards, really? It just doesn’t seem precise enough for accurate typing.
• Second: 400 dollars/euros for 32GB of space seems way over-priced, more so because it’s also a video-device and increased video-quality also comes with (much) increased file-sizes. Add to this that streaming video from your Mac doesn’t seem possible, unless you employ one hack or the other.
• Thirdly, I think that the web2.0 hype of developing application after application after application has strongly spilled over to the iTunes appstore, which is one of the few digital venues to have some kind of business model, but it totally overshadows any hardware deficiencies the iPod and iPhone may have (and I mean that only in terms of typing and storage, as I think apps for gaming and other entertainment work perfectly fine).

My gut tells me that iPods are mainly for entertainment and not productivity and even so that there’s a better deal to be had waiting for at least another generation beyond this.

Once again, I’m very open to you (trying to) convincing me that I’m am completely and utterly wrong.

Vincent

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Continuing our short(!) screenshot-series on geeky innovations… Thank you, Skitch, for making it so easy!

I was really missing a collection of my Loved Tracks in Last.fm and it looks like the new version delivered. What we need next is a way for ratings in iTunes (and more specifically my iPod) to automatically register as “loved” in Last.fm, and for that to create a TheFilter-like service of creating custom playlists that I like.

*Sigh* why does interoperability of web-to-real-world-to-web have to be so complicated?

Vincent

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This may qualify as the most ridiculous post, I’ve ever written. But it’s a Sunday. And I felt it simply had to be said. Headphones are, to me, a vital part of our society and, at the same time, they are so prone to failure, that it may very well be the biggest pain (read: need for improvement) I’ve ever felt during my life.

I’ve used headphones since I was 14 maybe, back when my first Discman was made out of metal, contained four batteries, and weighed about the same as a satelite-phone (if those still exist). I’m sure if I turned it on today, it would still work. Headphones, however, are a completely different matter.

Headphones have evolved and devolved in my life. I started with the sucker-buys: super-multi-tripple-bass-boosting Sonys. But no matter how many I bought (all earphones), they all broke after a few months, at the latest. That was, on average, a good €20 thrown away every time.

Finally, I got fed up and plunged down to €3 headphones, the kind that lie next to the chewing-gum in your super(tech)market. I figured, why waste money, and instead buy in bulk and replace every few weeks. It worked pretty well for a while… of course the sound is nothing to write home about.

Finally, when I got my first & only iPod, three years ago or so, I discovered the Sennheiser PX200‘s.

The upside:

• Not too expensive; paid €60 on the first purchase, and €25 on the second. I generally don’t think people should spend more than that for what is essentially a perishable good.
• Came in white—matching the iPod.
• STURDY – that’s right. Except for a few design-flaws, these are the most sturdy headphones I’ve ever had, the first pair lasting nearly two years; the second about a year.
• Sound-insulating: that way I enjoy the music for myself, and don’t bother anyone else.
• Stay on when I jog—important, as I jog 4 times a week.
• Great sound.
• Very portable—fold into the size of a pair of sunglasses.

The downside:

• A few design-flaws related to the wiring. If you close it a certain way, it actually cuts into the wiring. Also I just broke my second pair, because the wiring at the base, close to the plug, somehow broke… very annoyed with that, and wires in general.
• Insulates you from the rest of the world. Don’t try biking on a busy street with this sucker.
• Insulates you by making you look like a freak. This picture from 2 years ago in Barcelona says enough (well, actually the gigantic sunglasses don’t help either). Wearing these kinds of headphones really shouts out that you don’t want to talk to someone.

After breaking the second pair, I’m saying good bye to perhaps all headphones. They brought me much wisdom—80% of my iPod consumption is from podcasts with interesting people and on interesting subjects. They made me high—running with them is not only super-comfortable, but the sound is excellent, and helps getting your endorphins pumping. But they also made me anti-social, where I should be saying hello to my neighbours, I put on my headphones when I leave the house, forgetting everything around me.

Maybe, I’ll get another pair, I don’t know. Maybe when the next episode of ‘Stanford’s entrepreneurial thought leaders’ or ‘iInnovate’ comes out and I just have to learn something new. Maybe… and maybe I have to go cold turkey, smell the roses, listen to the wind, smile at the nice people around me, and reserve my sound-consumption for a club or a stereo. I’m sad now; an era is perhaps over.

But maybe, you have discovered the ultimate, never-breaking, super-multi-bassboosting headphones yourself? In which case, SHOUT IT OUT in the comments, as I want in.

Vincent

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A while ago, Apple refreshed its iPod shuffle line by adding a 2GB option and cutting the prices. At 55€ (49$) for the 1 GB model, Shuffle is quite cheap. Yes, you can still get a 1 GB USB memory stick for one tenth of that price, but it won’t play music and isn’t an iPod. For some people, the latter might actually be more important than the first.

I had been looking at the Shuffle for some time already, so as soon as the news of the 79€ 2GB model arrived, I finally decided to order one – having lived just fine without any player. I thought it would make a nice addition to my running gear. I’ve been using it for couple of weeks now and I’m quite pleased with it. One thing about the iPod shuffle is that it is really small. Surprisingly small.

There are many advantages, not only the price, why one might choose an iPod shuffle. The 5 reasons to like and to dislike it still are valid. The thing is, I don’t agree that the Shuffle can be improved in any way. Adding a screen would make it a nano, the device’s identity is that it’s limited – something many people could argue is true for most Apple’s products.

As Jeremy and others have pointed out, the iconic white Apple headphones do not suit the task many people (like me) by it for – running. For most other tasks they are good enough. Anyway, one of the major advantages of iPod shuffle – and the ultimate reason I chose it – is that you can actually use it as it is and you do not need a cover to shield any screens from scratches or to attach to it your clothing. The other good thing is that you can fully use the shuffle even without seeing the device. Other people might wonder why keep touching my chest when I use it through my jacket. The iPod shuffle is a “eyes-free” device. For me, this is what’s so insanely great about this tiny MP3 player it would otherwise would be.

This is why the other specs of shuffle are, to me, irrelevant. Anyway, in my real-world testing, the 2 GB-model holds 1,9GB of music, which for me seems to be something like 350-400 songs and 24-30 hours. (My music library has MP3s and AACs between 128 and 192 kbps, which I think is quite normal.)

While iTunes has the magical AutoFill-feature, which will fill my shuffle with music, I would love to be able to modify the parameters even further. Now, this could be easily done by using a Smart playlist, if one could do more complex search criteria. Now I’d have to do multiple Smart playlists to get the playlist I’m after. The thing is, choosing what goes into your Shuffle is really the crucial point.

One solution is to use something like Tangerine, which can actually make you a playlist for your workout automagically. Otherwise, most of the time, you’ll find yourself using your iPod with shuffle on. Tangerine calculates and uses the BPM (beats per minute) information of your songs to make up surprisingly good playlists for different kinds of workout. This is really good, because simple random playlist will play songs with wildly different tempos, which can be quite distracting when trying to foucs on a workout or when running.

Of course, iPod shuffle isn’t the only alternative. I also had the option to just buy handsfree headphones for my SonyEricsson K610i (and a real MS micro-memory card to replace the tiny 32MB one that was bundled). Price-wise, this would’ve cost me 30€ for the headphones and 20€ for a 2GB MS micro card. Add the frustration from the bad UI for music playing and the hassle of syncing music over Bluetooth (or by buying a data cable at 20€) and I’ve would’ve ended with a not-an-iPod-nano-but-almost at the price of an iPod shuffle without any of the advantages. (Naturally, for some, there’s of course the iPhone.)

Now, if TeliaSonera, my mobile operator, didn’t suck so much, I actually should have the headphones, lowering that cost. Also, most new high-end phones come with real (1-4 GB) memory cards and headphones included. Anyway, no mobile phone comes with the user experience iPod shuffle or any iPod offers.

Even though it is possible to use the Shuffle as a kind of USB memory stick to store files, this is quite limited, because you need the special headphone-to-USB-adapter. True, the other iPods need an adapter too, but you’re more likely to find one of those around than the Shuffle’s adapter. With USB memory stick prices where they are, I don’t see this as an disadvantage. The iPod Shuffle is stripped to the basics, so adding something superficial like USB port would seem really odd.

Otherwise the Shuffle’s buttons are intuitive and do what you expect, but I was at loss when first trying to re-randomize the playlist, trying frantically to do it my pressing Previous Track-button multiple times. All I remembered that some button was to be pressed three times in quick succession. In fact, it is the Play/Pause-button (which, if in playlist-mode, starts the playlist from beginning).

The reason why you might see yourself re-randomizing the playlist quite often is that with 2GB capacity, you might not rotate the files as often as you recharge. The surprise is that when the iPod shuffle syncs with iTunes, it resets your playlist position to the beginning so when you start to listen again, you find yourself listening to the same songs all-over again unless you press the Play-button thrice.

I have for a while wondered how iPod’s sales can continue to grow, even though everyone seems to own one. Then I did a reality-check that I myself haven’t had a music player since a crappy MiniDisc-player. Another point is that in my opinion, iPod shuffle isn’t a “gateway” product, I actually have no need for the more full-featured players. I don’t believe I’m alone with my simple need to have a simple music player that just does just that.

The only thing I can’t understand is why the Shuffle doesn’t have Nike+ integrated.

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