Dropbox has launched their Dropquest 2012 Internet scavenger hunt, with loads of prizes (mostly virtual: free space on Dropbox). You have to solve a series of puzzles, and you’ll get a free 1 GB of Dropbox space if you finish. First place is 100 GB for life, plus some Dropbox swag.
Don’t have a Dropbox account yet? Get a free account with 2 GB storage, and go try your hand at Dropquest.
Available from Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Amazon FR
As a music lover, and especially as a reviewer for MusicWeb International, I am confronted with a number of different types of optical discs. CDs and DVDs are, of course, the most common, and have been around for a long time. But in the past couple of years, Blu-Ray discs have come into the market, and they are especially desirable for recordings of classical music concerts or operas.
But even CDs offer a variety of formats. In addition to regular CDs – which follow the “Red Book” standard – there are SACDs, and these come in two types: either in stereo or with multi-channel sound, and they are at a much higher resolution than standard CDs. While most SACDs sold today are hybrid – featuring a CD layer and an SACD layer – there are still some that are not. In addition to offering more channels or higher resolution, SACDs also offer much greater capacity, potentially providing a playing time that exceeds CDs.
Another format is the HDCD standard, which is not widely used. However, I have dozens of HDCD discs, because one of my favorite rock bands, Grateful Dead, issues all their recordings in this format. HDCD claims to offer better resolution than standard CDs, yet these discs are compatible with standard CD players.
There is one last form of “hybrid” disc: the DVD-A, or DVD-audio disc. This is a DVD, just like one used for a movie, but where there is little or no video. (There are generally only menus and/or still images.) The advantage of using DVD-A is longer playing time – up to several hours – and higher resolution files in stereo or multi-track.
When it comes to DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, there are also audio formats that need to be decoded, such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
So, with all these formats of optical discs, it can be very useful to have a device that can play them all. This is the case with the Cambridge Audio 651BD, which handles all of the above formats, including 3D Blu-Ray discs.
I hadn’t owned a CD player in a long time, having digitized all of my music so I can stream it to my stereo. As for movies, I previously had a standard, consumer-grade DVD player, not really thinking that there would be that much of a difference. I wasn’t that concerned about SACD or HDCD – even though I have dozens of the latter discs, playing them as standard CDs is fine with me. However, after Cambridge Audio sent me a 651BD, I changed the way I look at all of these pieces of plastic.
First, I had long thought that there wasn’t much of a difference between the video playback of an average DVD player compared to better devices. My last DVD player was a Sony that cost about €100 when I bought it a few years ago. (Similar players seem to run about €75 today, though you can get others much cheaper.) However, when I started watching movies, concerts, operas and TV series with the 651BD I was very surprised by the quality of the image. It is much sharper, and much more fluid, especially when there is rapid movement. I don’t pretend to know much about video (I’m an audio guy), but I’m pretty sure this has to do with what Cambridge Audio calls “motion adaptive noise reduction.” Not only do fast-moving films look better, but I noticed much cleaner video when watching older TV series on the 651BD, those shot in 4:3, with much lower quality than today’s techniques. One series in particular that I had been watching on my Sony DVD player had interlacing artifacts which, on the 651BD, were imperceptible.
But what about the sound? If you’re going to spend this much for a disc player, you probably want to play both movies and music. This player uses a Cirrus Logic CS4382A 8-channel, 24-bit, 192 kHz DAC to provide excellent sound; the device outputs both stereo and multi-channel, up to 7.1. As I said earlier, all of my music is digitized, but with the 651BD, I’ve been finding myself listening to CDs anew. The sound is richer with this device than my previous DVD player (which had, let’s be honest, mediocre sound), and the act of listening to a CD has become enjoyable again. I should add that I got this player shortly after getting a new pair of Focal Chorus 806v speakers, so my sound system overall has improved, but when I added the 651BD, before changing the speakers, there was a clear increase in CD playback quality.
I don’t do multi-channel; I really don’t see the need to spend what it costs to have the full 5.1 or 7.1 setup with decent speakers, so I only listen to stereo with the 651BD, and can’t judge its multi-channel playback. (It’s worth noting that since the 651BD does all the necessary audio and video decoding, it may allow you to play discs that your AV receiver might not be able to decode, if it is not recent enough.)
As far as usability is concerned, the 651BD has everything I need: two HDMI outputs, 7.1 RCA outputs, as well as SPDIF coaxial and Toslink optical digital outputs. (It also offers component video and composite video for those with older TVs.) It starts up very quickly – some Blu-Ray players can take a long time to get ready to play a disc – and is very quiet. The remote control included with the 651BD can take some getting used to; there are a lot of buttons, and I find that not all of them are in what I would consider logical locations. Also, if you’re watching a movie in an otherwise dark room, and forget which buttons pause, skip tracks or fast-forward, it’s hard to tell from looking at the remote. I got used to it, but not after making mistakes for a few weeks.
When you play audio discs, the 651BD sends a video signal to your TV, which contains a simple background screen, but also shows the current track number, time (elapsed and total) and the format of the disc (CD, SACD or HDCD). When playing SACDs, there is also text displaying showing the artist, title and track name. (I don’t have many SACDs, so I don’t know if this is available on all of them.) You probably won’t want to leave this on, but if you’d rather navigate by looking at this screen instead of the small LED display on the device, it can be practical to turn the TV on and off when needed.
This is not a cheap player: it goes for $800 in the US, £500 in the UK, and around €900 in France, where I live – but if you compare what it offers with other devices, it stands up well. The only comparable players that can handle all these formats – notably SACD and HDCD – seem to be Oppo’s players, such as their BDP-93, which costs about the same. One non-negligible advantage to the Oppo is its availability as a multi-zone player, which the 651BD does not offer. If you buy discs from regions other than your own, this could be a deciding factor. The 651BD lets you play back some digital files, if you connect a hard drive or USB thumb drive to a port on the front of the device, but it doesn’t support as many formats as the Oppo. (And USB devices must be formatted as FAT, FAT32 or NTFS, which means that storage devices formatted for Macs won’t work.)
Interestingly, the documentation and specs for the 651BD don’t say that you can stream audio and video files over a network – if you connect the player via Ethernet – but this is possible. The interface for selecting files is a bit clunky, and the device takes a while to buffer video, but it is possible to do this. (I have another video player connected to my TV which starts playback of files on a server immediately.) While the documentation says that the 651BD supports many formats – MPEG2, MPEG2 HD, MPEG4, MPEG4 AVC, VC-1, XviD, VCD, AVCHD, MPEG ISO, AVI, VOB, MKV (4.1), JPEG, JPEG HD – I found some files that it wouldn’t play, which my other video player handles with no problems. It can also play some music files. It plays MP3s with no problem, and, while it recognizes FLAC files, when I try to play them they don’t play; the interface shows me that they are playing, but they just remain at 0:00. The device does not, however, even recognize AAC files, which is unfortunate.
Ideally, I’d like to see the 651BD offer the ability to play audio streamed using Apple’s AirPlay protocol; that would make it a perfect device for all of my listening. (The Oppo players don’t do AirPlay streaming either.) But since I can stream to an AppleTV, this isn’t a deal-breaker. Its network playback should be more explicit, and it should be able to play more files. It would just be nice to have full convergence of all the audio and video that I use in one device.
The Cambridge Audio 651BD is, for me, nearly perfect. I’d like multi-region playback and better streamed audio and video playback, but I can live without these. The capabilities of this player, the quality of the sound and video, and its flexibility make this an excellent choice if you want to move up from a standard CD and/or Blu-Ray player. And if, like me, you want to play every format of optical disc you have, then the 651BD is for you.
I use Time Machine to perform hourly backups of my home folder on my Mac, and I like the way it is transparent. I don’t back up the entire system, because I prefer making manual clones, which are easier to restore. I don’t often need to access my Time Machine backups, but occasionally I have to go into them to get an old copy of a file that I have deleted, or replace a corrupted file. Each time I do this I am amazed at how terrible this interface is.
First of all, there’s the stars in the background. Not only can these make me dizzy as they move slowly through space, but the CPU time used to display these animations is astounding. If I leave the Time Machine interface visible for a long time on my Mac mini, the fan goes on.
Next is the astoundingly illogical interface. Look at the screenshot below. The Cancel button is way off to the left, and the Restore button all the way over to the right. The two arrows to go forward and back “in time” are hard to make out against the background, and the right-hand column, with days and times of backups, is almost the same color as the background itself.
There is nothing even remotely Apple-like in this interface, other than the background which is similar to the default desktop background. The buttons are nothing like any other Mac applications, the arrows look like they were made by an intern, and the navigation column to the right is incredibly difficult to navigate. Add to that the fact that Time Machine is somewhat slow – whether this has to do with the actual Time Machine software or the fact that it accesses volumes with lots of files isn’t clear – and it’s hard to find anything good about Time Machine.
I like the idea; however, there needs to be a better interface. This gadgety interface which is very hard to navigate makes for nice eye candy, but it is the least user-friendly interface of any feature in OS X.
Please, Apple, take a look at Time Machine and make it more usable.
It’d been years since I had seen Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky’s excellent science fiction film, and I watched it last night. For a science fiction movie, Stalker is certainly an oddity. Released in 1979, loosely based on the short novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and directed by Tarkovsky, the masterful Russian director who lived too short a life, it tells the tale of a part of Russia that has been visited by an odd event. It may have been a meteorite that fell, or it may have been an alien visitation. But the event created the Zone, a dangerous area which was cordoned off by the police, and where few could go.
A Stalker – a sort of guide who takes people through the traps in the Zone – meets up with two men who want to visit the Room, a place where wishes come true. One is a Professor, a man of reason, and the other a writer, a man of inspiration. The Stalker is a man of belief. Very little happens in the movie, which lasts more than 2 1/2 hours, except for their trip to the Room, and their discovery of what they want from it.
Stalker is science fiction only in its premise; there are no aliens, no magic, nothing that would be noticed as science fiction. It is a slow movie; very little happens, and some of the shots are several minutes long. It’s a science fiction movie as it would have been written by Samuel Beckett. Yet it’s a brilliant existential examination of the desires of men and women.
At first, the film begins in sepia-toned black-and-white, but once the three characters reach the Zone, the film changes to color. Just as Oz was in color, so was the Zone. The Zone is located outside an industrialized city, and is full of the detritus of modernity. Yet Tarkovsky films these banal, cast-off items with the plastic beauty that he showed in all his films. Some of the shots are breathtakingly haunting, yet there is nothing special in them.
In a prescient shot, near the end of the movie, the Stalker can be seen returning to his home with his wife and daughter, and, across the river, a nuclear power plant is seen. The Zone could be the area surrounding Chernobyl. There is no devastation, simply signs of nature taking over some human artefacts.
According to an interview with the production designer, the film took two years to shoot. The first year’s footage was lost, apparently because it was an experimental film stock that couldn’t be developed. (Though that suggests that it was only sent for development after the entire film was shot, which seems at odds with the way movies were created at the time.) Tarkovsky then started over, reshooting the entire movie, over another year.
The DVD is decently produced, though the English subtitles are a bit clunky. It contains the original mono soundtrack, and also a recent 5.1 mix, which, in my opinion, ruins the movie. It is merely the mono soundtrack with added environmental sounds, trying to create “atmosphere,” yet Tarkovsky used a lot of silence in this film, and the surround mix is never quiet.
I first saw Stalker in the early 1980s at a retrospective of movies by Wim Wenders in New York. Wenders had made a selection of films to be shown with his movies, and, preceding his Kings of the Road (In the Course of Time), was Stalker and John Ford’s The Searchers. All three of these movies are quests, searches for people or ideas, and the very long program that day (more than 7 hours) was an extraordinary example of three different approaches to the quest movie. Since then, it has been one of my favorite films. It’s an odd movie, more like a Beckett play than science fiction, yet it is unforgettable.
If you’ve never seen Stalker, and this review makes it sound interesting, you should be all means watch it. It is a truly unforgettable movie by one of the great directors of the 20th century. His life and career were too short, but his films are all masterpieces.
Update: Author Geoff Dyer has written an entire book about Stalker called Zona. I haven’t read this book yet, but I plan to.
iLounge is reporting on new iPhone specs which include two major changes: a different aspect ratio, and a new dock connector. This seem surprising for two reasons.
First, changing the aspect ratio would mean that all apps have to be updated. Unless the additional space is something like the Dock in OS X; a list of icons for the most recently used apps, or those you wish to always have just a tap away. Instead of pressing the home button to change apps, you could tap one of the apps on that Dock. The downside to this is that it would be ugly. Imagine if you’re watching a video or playing a game; will that Dock disappear? I’m not convinced that this would be a good choice.
The second thing that would surprise me is a change in the dock connector. There is a huge ecosystem of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch accessories that depend on the current 30-pin dock connector. Rendering all of these accessories unusable with new models would be a severe change that would annoy millions of users. (Class action suit anyone?)
Also, changing the aspect ratio – and the size – would once again mean that your iPhone case doesn’t fit. Many cases work with both the iPhone 4 and 4S, and it’s fair to assume that a case won’t be compatible for a very long time, but Apple should try to maintain the usability of accessories as long as possible.
I think these specs are not authentic especially regarding the dock connector, which has millions, of not tens of millions of currently used devices, which would no longer function. The way the dock connector works in, say, docking stations with speakers, means that it’s not easy to add an adapter. Some devices might be able to use one, but most that I’ve seen wouldn’t work with an adaptor.
Also, if enough rumors come out that there will be a new dock connector, accessory manufacturers will have trouble selling their existing devices. I think that if Apple is definitely not planning to change the dock connector, they should make this clear, so both vendors and users can be sure that accessories will continue to work with future iOS devices.
I don’t take a lot of pictures, but when Dropbox offered a beta of their software that automatically downloaded (and uploaded) photos, I tried it out. (I wrote about it in February.) When you connect a compatible device – digital camera, iPhone, etc. – Dropbox detects it and asks if you want to upload photos automatically. It creates a Camera Uploads folder in your Dropbox folder, downloads the photos (and videos) from your device, then uploads them to the Dropbox server. The photos are then synced to any other devices you have.
This is quick and practical, and for many people will be a good way to get all their photos onto their computer – and synced to other computers – with little hassle. Once they’ve been copied, you can go through the folder and see what you want to save, what you want to add to iPhoto, and what is good for deletion.
Personally, I use this for screenshots when I write articles about iOS software. Instead of hassling to get screenshots from my iPhone or iPad onto my Mac, I just connect the device to my Mac, and the files are there almost immediately.
If you don’t have a Dropbox account, you can get a free account with 2 GB storage that you can sync across computers and access from mobile devices. To get an account, click this link. In addition, if you sign up through my link, I’ll get some additional free space as well: 250 MB per user.
People occasionally ask me what tools I use in my work; which programs I use to write blog posts and articles, and to tweak my website. While I regularly use a number of text tools – depending on my needs, and who I’m working for, I may use Word, Pages, Scrivener or a text editor on my iPad – but the one I use most is Bare Bones’ BBEdit.
Jason Snell has written an article for Macworld wishing a happy 20th birthday to BBEdit, and he, too, uses it as his main text processing tool. When you think about it, 20 years is a long time. It dates back to System 7 – many of you current Mac users weren’t around back then – which was what my first Mac ran. (My first Mac was a PowerBook 100, purchased shortly after it was released in 2001.)
For me, BBEdit is the text tool that I open first when I start up my Mac. In fact, I have, apparently, an odd way of using it. (At least that’s what my fellow Take Control author Glenn Fleishmann – author of Take Control of BBEdit told me.) I have several “scratch” files, which I keep open in the program at all times. One is for general writing – it may be for my blog, for Macworld articles or for other texts that I write during the day – one is for a specific client, another is for texts I write or edit for the Mac OS X Hints website, and, when necessary, I transfer my writings from these files into individual files to save them. Yet I keep everything I write in these files, allowing me to search at any time for specific things I’ve penned. At the end of the year, I archive these files and create new ones. I can quickly switch from one file to another, depending on what I need to work on.
BBEdit is fast and flexible, with a gazillion preferences, and its HTML tools help me format complex texts such as lists and tables with a single keystroke. There are hundreds of features I will never use, and many that I don’t even know about, but as someone who generates text for a living, BBEdit is the best investment I have ever made in any software.
Spotify announced today the availability of a widget that people can use to “embed” music on their blogs and websites. When I first read about this, my initial thoughts were, “brilliant idea; now lots of people will discover Spotify, and different types of music.”
But I forgot how stupid Spotify can be.
If you go to the Spotify Classical Playlists blog, you’ll see that the blog owner has embedded some music in his posts. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:
And when you click on a triangle to sample some music, here’s what happens:
Oops! Sorry, non-Spotify user, you either pony up or move along. These embedded widgets serve no purpose other than advertising for Spotify (other than for those users who are already subscribers or have limited free accounts). So people who embed these widgets on their blogs are essentially giving free advertising to Spotify, but the company is offering nothing in exchange. It’s a lose/lose deal.
To be fair, Spotify is probably under the yoke of the recording industry, and this is why they can’t even let users listen to a song once; not ever get a 90-second, or even 30-second preview. But as long as Spotify depends on the ass-backwards nature of the recording industry’s reaction to new methods of music distribution, they will fail. While I’m not a fan of streaming services (yet), I don’t think Spotify is ever going to succeed, unless the recording industry starts taking enlightenment pills. You can embed YouTube videos and other types of content using widgets; just think how much exposure some music could get if you could do the same thing? This widget isn’t about the music; it’s all about Spotify promoting itself.
The worst thing of all is that the many blogs and websites are giving a lot of space to Spotify with free ads. I guess it’s worth it for Spotify to get all of that free promotion, but in the long run, I think this new gimmick just looks stupid.
Kirk McElhearn writes about Macs, iPods, iPads, iTunes, books, music and more. He's written a dozen books, is a Senior Contributor to Macworld, where he is The iTunes Guy, and editor of the Mac OS X Hints web site, and also writes for several other web sites and magazines. He reviews classical CDs for MusicWeb and audiobooks for Audiofile, and is a French-English translator.
Become an iTunes expert with Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ, Second Edition.
Also, discover the word processor for writers, Scrivener, in Take Control of Scrivener 2.