Car Audio

Whatever happened to car audio? 20 years ago when I was a teenager, it seemed like a big subset of our generation cared about how the music sounded coming out of your car. Entire sections of big box electronic stores were dedicated to car audio. There were even stand-alone stores dedicated to sub-woofers, amps, decks with removable faces, some of which even came with remote controls. Now, the industry is dead as far as I can tell. Is it because the stock audio incorporated into cars these days is good enough, if not more than sufficient, or is it because everyone is too busy playing on their phones all day with no need or energy to spare thinking about car audio.

All I can say is that among the many industries digital music and smart phones have killed, the car audio industry is often overlooked. Kids these days will never know what my memorable experience was like driving in a friend’s suped-up car thumping two 12-inch subs in the back for the entire neighborhood to hear. Another adolescent pastime down the drain that will be lost forever for today’s kids.

Smart Watches

Almost six years ago I published a post entitled, The Timepiece as Art. I am still into wristwatches and have added to my collection significantly since then (Thanks, Dad!), but I wrote a line in that post that stated that I wanted a watch to feed me information. In addition to the local time, a typical mechanical watch can offer one or more of the day, date, month, world time or other time increments. But there are limits of what information can be offered. All of that is about to change.

Smart watches that link to a user’s phone is not a new concept; fitness trackers and other smart watches have been on the market for many years and have been meaningfully improved recently. But similar to my post below, because of the Apple Watch that was further detailed today in San Francisco by Apple, I am excited at the possibility of what the coming years hold. When the iPhone was announced in 2007, competitors’ phones began improving immediately. The Samsung Note 4 that I use today is a great phone, but is the sum of the successes and failures of prior phones across the global market the last eight years. I would expect a similar trajectory for smart watches.

But here is my conundrum. I still love mechanical watches. Having the time, day, date or other information in my palm or pocket on my phone has not caused me to stop wearing a wristwatch on my left wrist everyday. But when I can get all of that information and more on my left wrist, what do I do then? I don’t think we’re going to see the days where people wear multiple wrist accessories that are intended to do the same thing – for example, no one will be wearing an Apple Watch, FitBit, Rolex, etc. There will be only one winner in this game and the big losers will likely be the Swiss and Japanese watch making industry.

I have yet to join the iOS ecosystem and have been a Google/Android user since 2006. I don’t see myself with an Apple Watch, but I do see myself one day with a smart watch – probably an Android-based device several iterations from what is available today. But that prospect concerns me when I think about my wristwatch collection and what the future holds for it. I know classic watches will never go away or out of style, and I hope the prevailing style is to find a way to use both mechanical and high-tech watches, but I hope I don’t eventually become a wearer of solely a niche item.

Smart Phones

I wrote the below post on this blog in February 2007 and titled the post “Because of the iPhone.”  Now, eight years later, I can say that beyond sleep and work, I probably spend more time with my smart phone than anything else and definitely more than I could have ever imagined at that time, the least of which is actually talking on it in the traditional phone sense. I still don’t have an iPhone (although my wife does), but the technology that I first saw that February morning in New York City has changed our lives and our culture in unforeseen ways.

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February 2007

I’ve been wanting to get a new cell phone for the past several months. The one that I have now has been with me for the past two and a half years and has been a great phone, although the battery life is starting to fade. But I have decided to wait until later this year to get a new cell phone. I have decided to wait not for the iPhone, but because of it.

Yes, I read about the hype when Jobs announced the new phone last month. Yes, the phone looked nice, but it didn’t occur to me to get one. And then, this past Tuesday morning, I arrived early for a meeting at the building on the corner of 59th Street and 5th Avenue – the site of the world’s busiest Apple store. I decided to go in for a few minutes to warm up. While inside, I checked out a demo of the iPhone and its functions and features. I was impressed, to say the least. The iPhone is the direction that phones are heading and I wanted in. Yet, I’m not one of those guys who loves Apple. I have an iPod and enjoy it, but I am loyal to PCs for my computing needs. Once the iPhone (or whatever else it may be called depending on the dispute with Cisco) comes out, it will only be a matter of months before the big cell phone manufacturers come out with something similar available on the major service providers. The price may be steep, but if all of the iPhone’s bells and whistles work as well as they did on that demo I saw, the price may be worth it. I am not the only one to think this, but this phone will revolutionize cell phones as we know it. And once I have more options and lower prices, I will be ready to jump in.

When Music Ruled the World

For anyone who enjoys the music industry, technology or pop culture, you need to subscribe to the Lefsetz Letter. A friend let me know about it over three years ago and I have enjoyed reading his musings, insight and rants in my email inbox since. While most of his letters focus on the music industry and its artists, there are the occasional non-music related discussions that open my eyes to something new or expand my thinking. In a recent letter discussing a song he enjoyed listened to over and over, he wrote the following:

It’s about music! This is something the baby boomers know. Which is why they overpay to see the stars of yore. Ask young ‘uns, and you find out music is disposable, grease for the event, something to laugh at and discard. But for baby boomers, music is life itself. Because they remember when music drove the culture, ruled the earth.

After I read those few sentences, I stopped, and read them again. While I somehow knew this intuitively, it made complete sense to me when I saw it written down. Just think of the Top 40 right now, the YouTube stars and the rise of electronic music – how many of those artists become legendary, cultural icons, or rule the world? These days, it’s hardly about the artist and it is definitely not about the music most of the time. Music is, as Lefsetz writes, solely the “grease for the event,” a facilitator.

Music was still driving the culture in the 1990s, when people still bought CDs (I was still buying plenty of cassette tapes then too), but soon, along came MP3s and streaming music and access to any song any time almost anywhere. What has come along with it is a generation of young adults that may know certain songs, but barely own any music and may never know the enjoyment that comes from following an artist through his or her musical career.

I have kids at home. One of my goals will get them to appreciate the music of yore while still living life to the disposable music of today.

EDM

I posted on my Twitter feed the other day (@soundtosound) the following: Who knew I would see the day when Swedish House Mafia was played on the mainstream radio station. And I’m serious, but I guess not overwhelmingly surprised. I should have seen this coming. Ever since 2009 I have tried to follow the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) scene the best I could from a distance, but it is plainly obvious that EDM is here to stay. Remember thirty years ago when many thought that Rap was a fad and would ultimately fade? Well, it hasn’t, and neither will EDM. Whether it’s trance, progressive, house, dubstep or drum and bass, this is not the techno from the 1990s. The music and technology is much more sophisticated, the audience is young and global and the DJs behind the music are raking in millions. I dare someone to turn on the radio to any pop or Top 40 station today and not find a song that does not include EDM elements – they hardly exist anymore. In fact, Calvin Harris and David Guetta are radio stars these days and attract mainstream radio and media coverage, even though they are only the surface of the entire EDM scene. Just look at the numbers and the audience that Electric Daisy Carnival brings in – and it’s growing every year (see the 2012 EDC trailer here). This is the world’s future generation and perhaps the future of music. Personally, I credit Tritonal’s Air Up There podcast over the past three years as one of the largest reasons why I am into EDM today. Thank you, Chad and Dave, and keep up the good work.

Reminded Again

Five years ago I wrote on this same site that it was eleven years since I had my bone tumor removed. Well, again on December 19, I am reminded of that same event, but now it has been 16 years to the day since I went under the knife and had a bone tumor removed from my upper right humerus bone. I’m glad to report that after all of these years, I am doing just fine other than a rather impressive scar that I have often showed off over the years. One consequence of the surgery was reduced movement and rotation in my right arm and a tendency to get tired faster than my left arm when performing strenuous activity. My nerves up and down my arm also were affected and tingle from time to time, but overall I consider these things as minor in nature and they definitely do not outweigh the benefits received from the removal of a large, overgrown and deformed piece of bone that was growing in my arm. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have the surgery, but I will forever be grateful for the technology and skills that allowed for me to have the surgery. My life is better off than it could have been due to modern medicine.

Left on the Plane

So get this. I uncharacteristicly left my Kindle Fire on a flight from San Francisco to New York. After delays and a late arrival, I rushed off the plane only to realize upon arrival to the hotel that I had left it. I filed a claim online (since that is all that can be done) and was hopeful that I might see it again.

When I checked my personal email the next afternoon, I was shocked to see 40+ emails from Amazon thanking me for my purchases. Except that it wasn’t me. Yes, my password-free Kindle Fire, tied to my Amazon account and credit card, was picked up by another passenger or employee and they started a shopping spree. Thankfully, no tangible products were purchased, only digital items directly for use on the Kindle, which made it easier to mitigate. The purchases ranged from kids music and books, to diet and work-out videos and materials to erotic fantasy novels, clearly a renaissance consumer. I quickly notified my credit card company and Amazon, stopped all purchases, deregistered my device and had Amazon turn off the signal, therefore rendering it useless for anyone else. Goes to show that cheaters never win.

No charges from Amazon ever went through to my credit card (thanks Capital One and Amazon!) and the only real loss to me is the device, which sucks, but is not the end of the world.

Apparently I’m only one of many that have made this mistake, according to a recent WSJ article discussing how many iPads and Kindles each airline collects. 

One day, however, it would be nice to believe that when a fellow person makes a mistake, that those that could benefit would rather do the right thing rather than try to benefit from said mistake. But that’s perhaps too simplistic and naïve. The better idea is to not leave my personal belongings behind ever again.

FB

Say what you want about Facebook, but the recent $50 billion valuation by Goldman Sachs is nothing to laugh about. I joined the site almost four years ago, uploaded some pictures of myself and checked the site only occasionally, as only a handful of my friends were on the site at the time. Today, almost everyone I care to know (and several in which I don’t) are on the site. Contrary to what I initially believed back in 2007, this has been no fad, like Bebo, Friendster or MySpace. And the site had perfect timing as well. If it were not for mobile devices the site would not be as big as it is. Let’s be honest, I only check the desktop version of the ‘Book once a month or so, but since I have my phone with me at all times, it doesn’t hurt to check quickly once or twice a day as I am waiting in line at Costco, waiting for my train or watching a program on TV. What the site has created is incredible because of its sheer numbers. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. More people spent time on Facebook in 2010 than other website in the world. And the company keeps innovating, which is crucial for its survival. It is creating a generation of people, young and old, that are used to living their lives subject to constant scrutiny and comment by anyone they are friends with, including those they don’t know so well. When I joined the site back in 2007, there was no way I would have imagined that I would still be checking the site four years later. I wholeheartedly expected to upload some info into the cloud, only to have it drift away as time went on. But the site is real and has had more staying power than I ever would’ve guessed. Whether you like the company or not at this point, everyone you know is on there and once you join, escaping is futile.

HTC Droid Incredible

The below is the review I just posted on Amazon for my new HTC Droid Incredible:

I echo what so many other reviews have said about this phone – great device in so many ways, not so great battery life. The hardware is nice, great screen and good functional buttons across the bottom. But the hardware is not where this phone distinguishes itself. After spending the last two years with the BlackBerry Storm and RIM’s OS 5.0, moving to Android 2.2 is so satisfying, especially since I am no longer doing battery pulls throughout the day. I finally feel like I arrived at the app party, as the BB App World just wasn’t doing it for me. And while I was sad to leave BB Messenger (the strongest reason to stick with BB for your personal device needs and the only thing that is keeping RIM alive outside of corporate email), I easily found an app that essentially replaces BBM for free. The Android Marketplace is easy to navigate and includes anything you would want, and often multiple versions of it. And while it is true that Android OS makes this phone what it is, users also get the benefit of the HTC user interface. In my mind, the HTC Sense interface is why people love this phone more than anything Motorola puts out. Needless to say, I am extremely happy with my switch and there is little I would change with this phone. I have customized this phone and this will be my can’t-live-without device for at least the next two years. To beat the battery issues, I have taken to bringing my charger with me to work and charging it fully before I leave for the day in addition to charging it over night. Yes it’s a pain, but this is what’s necessary when you must always be connected. When I think back to my first cell phone seven years ago, it is incredible how far we’ve come.

Ball Watch

I have found one of the watches I want. If and when I ever get it is a different matter, but as of today this is what I would choose. It’s not the best known brand (which I like) and it is not the most expensive watch out there, but it is definitely a quality watch, so much so that WristWatch Annual 2011 has placed the Ball Watch I want on its cover, the Ball Engineer Master II World Time. Some think the tritium gas lume function of the Ball Watches is a bit toy-like, but I like it. It is unique and practical. The key now is convincing my wife to let me buy this watch one day.

3.5 Years Later

It was probably inivitable anyway, but it feels good when you’re right. I posted the below two paragraphs on this blog on February 16, 2007 in response to the January 2007 announcement of the iPhone. As I begin to now think about what phone I want early next year, and after playing with the Android-based HTC Droid Incredible the other day, I am happy to see how the iPhone has improved my overall choice and raised the available options to an impressive level in just over three years.

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I’ve been wanting to get a new cell phone for the past several months. The one that I have now has been with me for the past two and a half years and has been a great phone, although the battery life is starting to fade. But I have decided to wait until later this year to get a new cell phone. I have decided to wait not for the iPhone, but because of it.

Yes, I read about the hype when Jobs announced the new phone last month. Yes, the phone looked nice, but it didn’t occur to me to get one. And then, this past Tuesday morning, I arrived early for a meeting at the building on the corner of 59th Street and 5th Avenue – the site of the world’s busiest Apple store. I decided to go in for a few minutes to warm up. While inside, I checked out a demo of the iPhone and its functions and features. I was impressed, to say the least. The iPhone is the direction that phones are heading and I wanted in. Yet, I’m not one of those guys who loves Apple. I have an iPod and enjoy it, but I am loyal to PCs for my computing needs. Once the iPhone (or whatever else it may be called depending on the dispute with Cisco) comes out, it will only be a matter of months before the big cell phone manufacturers come out with something similar available on the major service providers. The price may be steep, but if all of the iPhone’s bells and whistles work as well as they did on that demo I saw, the price may be worth it. I am not the only one to think this, but this phone will revolutionize cell phones as we know it. And once I have more options and lower prices, I will be ready to jump in.

The Future of Books

I must admit that I am a big fan of Amazon.com and have been loyally purchasing products from it since 2001. I don’t buy a lot from Amazon, but I do write a lot reviews and often peruse the treasure chest of customer data when considering potential purchases. But despite how much money I spend on Amazon, the site has been good to me. Amazon has provided conscientious and personalized suggestions of various products as well as free books over the past few years. I am awaiting the free Kindle offer, but don’t expect it to come anytime soon. For someone that loves to read, you would think an e-reader would be ideal. But I still don’t have one even though I have looked at a B&N’s Nook and thought about the Kindle. My biggest problem is that I would then have to buy books, or at least electronic facsimiles of them. And that bothers me, especially since Amazon is already sending me free hard copies of books through its Vine program and the library is near my house. As much as I want a e-reader to easily store and read several books at once, I am not ready to pay for the books I read. Why isn’t there a peer-to-peer transfer system for wireless e-readers to zip books across the ether? What about a website for second hand e-books? These are both unlikely scenarios, not surprisingly, which means that the price of books will continue to stay around $10 at the low end.

But let’s think of where the future of books is headed in light of other forms of media and entertainment. I no longer pay for the music I listen to thanks to Pandora and podcasts. If I switch over to e-books, I don’t want to pay for those either. I know this is unfair to the author or the publisher, but it is no different that what has happened to the music artist and the recording company. Print has changed with respect to newspapers and magazines and those companies holding on to the old world will go the way of the dinosaurs. Refusing to change has nothing to do with holding on to core values or tradition and everything to do with the lack of acknowledging change. More change will come to books as well. You and I can’t stop it. Prices will have to go down with time regardless of how hard Apple, Amazon and the publishers try to maintain a price floor. I mean, how much does it cost to publish an e-book, really? If I could get books for free in exchange for watching an ad every 50 pages or so, I would be purchasing an e-reader as soon as I could choose which model to buy. I think time will prove this view to be correct. Text is no different than music and video. And look at those industries. Do you pay much for those services you use these days? Would you pay more than what you are now? Didn’t think so. Books will soon be the same, just wait and see.

A Decade of Declining Vision

Ten years ago this month I had my eyesight “fixed” by Lasik. The surgery had only been commonly applied in the U.S. for a few years by that time and I was able to get a discount on the surgery thanks to a family friend ophthalmologist. After wearing glasses since the seventh grade I was more than ready to get rid of my glasses for good. The results of the surgery were amazing. I remember my vision the months after the surgery – it was like I had x-ray vision things looked so sharp to me. It truly was 15/20 vision. Needless to say, I was happy with my new self and vision.

Fast forward ten years. College and law school are behind me. I have read thousands of pages of text on computer screens and dimly lit trains and I have watched hours of television and movies. I am proud to say that I still don’t wear glasses. That is, however, except when I do.  I wear glasses these days to drive, often when I watch television or movies and anytime I believe sharper vision would help. I’ve had my glasses for about three years now. The prescription is relatively weak compared to what it was, but a completely glasses-free life did not last through the decade. My hope is that my vision does not get worse. I can live with my current state, but returning to an all-glasses-all-the-time life is not appealing. This has only been the first ten years. Only time will tell what the coming decades bring.

Not Just a Phone

I remember my first cell phone, a small Nokia candy bar phone. It had a small screen and bland ringtones. Back then, a cell phone was just a phone. It made calls – that was its sole purpose. But now, a relatively short time later, my phone is no longer just a phone. It is a device, making calls is just one minor task in its array of talents. My current phone reminds me of important dates, serves as my internet browser, my inbox for three personal emails, it can pinpoint itself anywhere on earth within a few meters, can give me directions, points out places of interests nearby and keeps me connected to anyone I choose. My iPod just sits in a pocket in my commuting bag most of the time because it is so much easier to get my podcasts wirelessly as I charge my phone each night. I bypass my computer and iTunes completely. Each morning, as I walk to the train, I scroll through my new listening options. When I don’t want to listen to a podcast, there is streaming public radio updated each hour or any mix of songs I can think of available free through Pandora. I also don’t need to bring a camera with me anywhere – when I want a picture, I snap a decent photo with my phone and can upload or email it to any number of sites within seconds, available for consumption. We take all of this for granted today, but these are fundamental changes compared to just a few years ago.

To be honest (and not to sound addicted), but I don’t know what I would do without my phone. At home, it usually sits on the fireplace mantle, but it is always there when I need it. The way I interact with others and access information has vitally changed due to Internet, smartphones and the thousands of apps available wirelessly. It is a tremendous shift from even five years ago. So I ask again, what would I do without my phone? I currently have no idea, although much of my life was lived without one. But it’s clear that a phone will never be just a phone again.

Thoughts on the Pad

A few weeks ago I was able to experience the iPad for the first time. It’s an impressive device overall, although I refuse to be an early adopter. Think, though, for a moment about what you might think of this device, its OS and user interface if you weren’t already used to the iPhone. This device would blow your mind. Apple has certainly set the bar high the past few years. And, have you paid attention to the numbers released from Apple last week? The number of iPhones sold in Q1 2010 is amazing when compared to same quarter sales a year ago. Think what the iPhone would do if it was sold across all four networks similar to RIM’s BlackBerry. The phone would dominate, but largely because of the iTunes infrastructure and its ability to distribute content, which Apple has learned to do very well. Everyone else is still trying to catch up.

Which leads me to this: the future of computing is mobile computing. There is no doubt about it. Apple wasn’t the first to come out with a tablet computer, but there wasn’t a significant demand or market for one until the iPad came out a few weeks ago. Now there is a rush for companies to match. Palm, once a leader in mobile devices, is now all but dead with no buyers in sight. Microsoft is trying, but is still playing catch up despite its resources and is straying from its core business which is about to be lost to cloud computing. Hardware companies such as HP and Dell are trying to compete in the new tablet space as well, but their own proprietary OS will never get them too far.

Realistically, the one company positioned to battle Apple on the tablet computing front will be Google. Besides Apple, Android delivers content to its users the best and will continue to get better. And unlike Apple, Google won’t have to worry about creating the hardware as well – that will be outsourced to companies such as HTC or Asus. Google can focus its efforts solely on the OS and will, in my mind, come out on top. Apple has no doubt been revolutionary for the industry, but I will not be buying an iPad. I will be buying a competitor in a few years (it will take that long to convince my wife I need one of these) that runs Android. And I won’t look back.

For the next few years these tablets will remain somewhat of a status item, but by 2015 they will be ubiquitous – it will be the same story as the smartphone market. For those that have them, these devices will know our preferences and will anticipate what we want or think before we know we want or think it. All of my social interaction or communication will to some degree occur through my tablet and increasingly business will be transacted through the device. Cable television and timed programming will become obsolete as wireless streaming video becomes more efficient. Almost everyone will be connected all the time with whoever they choose and the world will consume information in real time like the world has never seen. Whether this is good for us or not is not up to me to say, but this is where we are inevitably heading. As convenient as this might be, the result could be a world that is a much lonelier, anxious and self-absorbed place.

LinkedIn for Life

The latest issue of Fortune magazine profiles the professional networking site LinkedIn (read the full article here). The article states how more and more companies are relying on LinkedIn to recruit new talent and how individuals not yet on the site are disadvantaged in the job market. As I read the article on the train last night I recalled my direct experience with LinkedIn’s networking capabilities.

By the spring of 2008 I was in full-blown job searching mode. Although I had a job at a law firm, I wanted to try something else. I contacted recruiters, I submitted resumes on my own and I was networking as best as I knew how. LinkedIn was just one of many sites that I had my updated credentials displayed publicly. By the summer of 2008, the legal job market had started to slow down and I was having difficulty obtaining quality leads. Until one day when I received a call out of the blue. A recruiter for a Fortune 25 company had found my profile on LinkedIn and contacted me inquiring as to whether I would be willing to relocate. I smiled and told her I was willing and started the process of interviewing with the company. One month and three phone interviews later I found myself in Minneapolis at the company’s corporate headquarters. It was a great experience, but I knew halfway through the day as I was discussing why I was interested in the position that I was full of bull. The opportunity sounded intriguing all along, but by the time the curtain had been pulled back, I saw that it was more of the work that I did not want to do. Fortunately, I had contemporaneously been in discussions with my current firm and concluded as I was sitting in Minneapolis that it was a better opportunity for me in the long run.

The next morning I returned to my office in lower Manhattan early to call my current company’s headquarters in Switzerland and accept the job offer. I still feel that I made the right choice. But I’m also glad I managed my LinkedIn profile. It’s clear that many employers may turn almost exclusively to what the web is telling the world about a potential candidate in making recruiting decisions. Google yourself often and manage your online profile wisely.

On Tablet Computing

So what do I think about the iPad? I think I don’t need one now. When I was asked my thoughts on Tuesday, I responded that I would purchase a competing device in 2012. In my mind, the iPad is no game changer similar to the iPod or iPhone. Just look at the number of tablets released at CES this year.

But make no mistake – the iPad is a sign of things to come. While missing some essential features in my mind, the iPad will improve with time as Apple learns to listen to its fans and gadget lovers and its apps, memory and contents grow. The truth is, I believe that by 2014 most of the people you associate with will carry some form of tablet computing device. It will always be plugged in to your preferences and you will be able to obtain your music, photo and book/periodical library with a few flicks of your finger. New television and podcast episodes will be downloaded automatically while you sleep for the next day’s enjoyment. Thanks to services such as Spotify (when it becomes available in the U.S.), almost any song ever recorded will be available for a small monthly subscription. The response to any question you could dream of within a few minutes reach. Your phone calls will be made through the device via Bluetooth instead of through holding a physical phone to your ear; international calls will be merely pennies through Google Voice or another VOIP provider. And this is just the technology that currently exists. In fact, the above activities are already many people’s reality.

Some people will embrace this future; some people dread it. But, in the end, it’s irrelevant because this future is inevitable. Moore’s law of computing memory and speed will continue into this decade as well and the results will bring dramatic change in the way we interact and spend our time.

The only thing I regret as we move to more personal, wireless, portable, always-connected, multimedia, touchscreen devices is that old media may begin becoming expensive again. After years of obtaining information for free from online news sites, the idea of paying for it is unappealing. It’s good for old media; bad for consumers. But I also believe that information wants to be free and much of it will find a way to break the chains of subscription fees in time. It’s all just a matter of time. Just wait to see what the future will bring.

Tritonal – The Air Up There

Since this past September I have spent hours listening to “The Air Up There” podcast by Tritonal. It’s essentially a two-hour long podcast of progressive trance music. I have been listening to it when I walk to the train in the morning, as I read on the train to and from the City, when I work-out, and just when I want something to listen to. The music may not be for everyone and admittedly is not the best when you just want to relax or try to sleep, but it’s great to keep you moving at a rapid pace. The ambient sounds and great vocals mesh well with the breakbeats and trance music. I have been a fan of electronica for a long time and am glad I found this podcast. I have listened to some of the episodes dozens of times. Thank you, Tritonal, for the great work. 

I dare anyone who believes that electronica does not take talent to create to listen to The Air Up There. You can find it here and on iTunes

A Model Citizen

I fly out to Switzerland again this evening and will be there for the next week. As always, I will do some window shopping and check out the beautiful and exquisite timepieces on display on every corner. Switzerland has built a lasting business on crafting all kinds of chronometers and I have enjoyed learning of the different manufactures of watches and timepieces since I began traveling there on a regular basis. There is no watch like a Swiss-made watch.

With that said, however, I currently do not wear a Swiss-made watch. For over the past three years, I have worn a Japanese-made watch, a Citizen Eco-Drive, as my daily watch. With its perpetual calendar, I have never once needed to reset the date, regardless of the month or year. As an Eco-Drive is powered by all forms of light, I have never even worried about replacing a battery. It has kept time beautifully and has served me well in a wide array of activities, from formal to casual. In time, I will have a Swiss watch that I wear daily, but for now, my Citizen continues to perform exceptionally. While I may admire the watches I see when in Switzerland, I will forever be a fan of Citizen.

Hey Mr. DJ

I was reminded this week of an old ambition of mine – I used to want to be a radio DJ. Not one of the morning talk show DJs or even an afternoon let-me-solve-your-problems DJ, but a late-night, slow-jams-playing, small-audience-listening DJ. The type of DJ not hired for their voice, celebrity appeal or wittiness, but useful only in his ability to choose and play good music. I wanted to play slow-jam R&B and smooth jazz hits for everyone listening at home or on the road after 10:00 pm. Of course, my life has gone in a very different direction. I never did seriously pursue a life of DJing as I guess I didn’t think of it as a stable career path; I ended up in the law instead.

But that doesn’t mean I have never been on the radio. While in Japan several years ago, I found myself spending two months in the mountainous town of Toyooka, near the Japan Sea. In the middle of the largest shopping center in the town was a booth in which the local pop radio station broadcast live. As it turns out, my American companion at the time and I came to know the DJ and were invited to be on the radio during her afternoon program. Her last name was Hashimoto, but her DJ name was Hershey. I will forever remember my on-air conversation in Japanese with Hershey. She asked us about our hometown (Seattle) and what we thought of Japan (liked it) and even allowed us to dedicate a song. I chose a hit song by Utada Hikaru and, after giving a shout-out to all my friends and family back in the States, dedicated the song to all of the Utada lovers out there in Toyooka. It was a fun experience and may be the only time in my life I am actually on live radio. The thoughts of being a DJ have died as I have grown older, but my love for music and choosing music has not.

Music’s Medium Through the Years

I look back at my relatively short life and am amazed at the changes in how I listen to music. I don’t go back to the days of vinyl records or 8-tracks, but I do clearly remember the days of cassette tapes. I remember having several briefcase-like containers that I could insert my tapes in. I bought several tapes as a youth and spent hours mixing and making my own tapes. Many of the boomboxes of the late 1980s and early 1990s had dual cassette tape players meant for people to record whatever songs they wanted on blank tapes. I made tapes for road trips, for working out, for relaxing, and so on. You name the activity and I had a mix tape for it. But of course, CDs had gained in popularity while I was still young and soon tapes became difficult to find. CDs were great because a listener could easily skip to the track they wanted without having to rewind or fast-forward. Options such as ‘repeat’ or ‘random’ became music necessities.

In 1998 as I was moving to Japan, CDs were still popular and, thanks to computers, people had begun to ‘burn’ music they wanted onto blank CDs, much as I did with my tapes. While in Japan I was confronted with mini disc players, or MDs. Although similar to CDs, MDs were smaller and enclosed in a hard case. They were also recordable and I swapped many MDs with friends during my two-year stay in Japan. When I returned to the U.S. I thought I would be at the forefront of technology with my state-of-the-art MD player only to find that the U.S. had skipped MDs all together and had gone straight to MP3s. Napster was still in nascent operation in 2000 (albeit illegally) and I obtained an education in digital file sharing through friends in college. Just for the record, I did not own a computer and did not download files illegally, but did receive burned CDs from friends from their music library.  

While in college I found Internet radio. Tired of listening to the MDs or CDs I owned at the time, I recall plugging in my headphones to a library computer and working for hours on end while listening to various stations online through Live 365 or MSN Radio. It was refreshing to be able to have access to countless genres of non-stop streaming radio whenever I wanted. Later in life, while in law school, I received an iPod and became familiar with iTunes. I copied my entire CD collection onto my iPod and for the first time became familiar with podcasts, then just becoming popular.

Today, I still listen to my iPod almost daily as I commute, but have found that I am generally tired of spending money for music. I doubt I will buy another physical CD ever again. If I want to listen to music these days beyond my iPod, I can access Pandora or Slacker Radio for free on my phone. And in the near future, Spotify will finally be available in the U.S. and will allow anyone to download any song on their computer for free. I can’t imagine how my children will listen to music. Really, what could be next after this? Smaller digital music files? Better quality streaming without any lags? Unlimited skips on free Internet radio sites? Music is here to stay, but the way we listen to it will forever change. My failure to imagine the next possibilities, I guess, is partly why I am not rich.

A Greener Kind of City

I spent a few days earlier this week in San Francisco and for the second time in six months was struck with how much more environmentally friendly of a city it is compared to New York. Sure, New York has its proponents of living a green lifestyle, and it has made strides towards greenliness over the past decade, but San Francisco is noticeably leaps and bounds beyond New York. From my company’s San Francisco office to the Giants/Dodgers game I attended at AT&T Park to the dinner I had in Union Square, San Francisco, its public servants and its citizens are actively doing its part to help the environment. Who knows how much of an impact this will make in the big scheme of things, but such effort is, I believe, a step in the right direction and a model for other urban centers around the country.

Amazon Vine

I have been a fan of Amazon.com since 2001, when I made my first online purchase through Amazon. Back then, Amazon mostly sold books, CDs and DVDs, far from the range of products Amazon offers today. In the spring of 2001 I finished a book I really enjoyed (‘The Brothers K’ by David James Duncan, a splendid book, I might add) and it dawned on me that I should write a public review, which I did. Since that first review, I have written almost 200 more. And now it has really begun to pay off. I was invited to join the Amazon Vine Program, an initiative to have new products tested and publicly reviewed by loyal customers prior to the full product release, knowing how valuable customer and peer reviews are to potential purchasers. In exchange for agreeing to review products after use, I now have access to free products via Amazon. I can occasionally log on to the Vine newsletter and have any item still available shipped to me for free. At some point, I review the product and the cycle continues. This is even better than the library. I’m hooked. Thank you Amazon for rewarding your loyal customers and those reviewers that help make your site so great. You have (re)won over another fan.

A Storm for the Next Two Years

I recently purchased the Blackberry Storm and thought I would post a review on amazon.com of my experience with the touchscreen device. And yes, I am one of those people who probably would have bought the iPhone had it been available on Verizon. But not wanting to change service providers, I did my homework and went with what I thought was the next best thing, especially with RIM’s launch of the App World. As it turns out, Verizon may be getting the iPhone after all. The bottom line of my review is that after some initial disappoint, I am now satisfied with the phone. The full text is below.  

Amazon.com Review

As merely a cell phone, the Storm would be mediocre at best. In fact, my prior LG clamshell phone was a better phone in terms of handling, use and overall experience. But the Storm was not designed to be merely a phone, and I didn’t buy it for that purpose. The Storm is a multimedia device, and after having the phone for three weeks now, I can say that I had my doubts, but am now satisfied and intend to keep the phone. I did my homework on new phones and went with the Storm once the Blackberry App World received glowing reviews within days of its launch on April 1, 2009. There is a learning curve with the Storm, but once you learn how the device works, it can be a useful and functional computer in your pocket. Many reviews complain about how buggy and slow the phone can be (and prior models and OS apparently were), but I have learned that the key to optimum performance for the Storm is managing the application memory. Close all applications properly, do an occasional battery pull (or get a free app to simulate one) and learn a few other tricks and you can have a wide-ranging multimedia device on a network faster than AT&T. Pandora is now available for free through the App World, which, as a music lover, is worth quite a bit to me. Not to mention the ability to take pictures with the Storm’s 3.2 mp camera and upload them on my Flickr account within seconds. Like I said – a multimedia device.

The instruction manual Verizon provides with the phone is virtually useless for anyone vaguely familiar with how a Blackberry works. But with an investment of time online at crackberry.com and a few other sites you too can unleash the Storm’s full potential. This is a strong touchscreen debut for RIM and the Storm will only get better with time (may I suggest a trackball/touchscreen combination).

Capital One

This past weekend we made a big purchase on our Capital One Visa Signature credit card. After consultation at home and later in the store with the sales associate, we finalized what we wanted and I handed over my card. We have a large credit limit and so I knew the total dollar amount was not going to be a problem. She swiped our card and the words “Declined” immediately appeared on the screen. I thought it was odd since I knew that the card and the credit was valid; I had just used the card the day before with no problems. We tried again and again the card was denied. I was about to pick up my phone and call Capital One when my phone started vibrating. After confirming my identity, the caller from Capital One asked whether we were presently trying to purchase what we wanted for the final amount. I assured him that we were and told him that I thought it may be Capital One when my phone starting buzzing. He cleared the transaction and on the next swipe the card was accepted. I am not sure if Capital One does this for each of its card holders or only to its premium Visa Signature holders, but either way, it was comforting to know that there is someone looking out for us. Let’s hope that I never receive a call regarding a purchase that I am not making at that moment. And if I do, let’s hope I can stop it with their security call. Thank you Capital One.