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Great, I like Ma.gnolia! I was thinking of setting up an account with the new Delicious but this announcement will have me hold off doing that. Also Microsoft recently said they will offer a social bookmarking service too, I'll wait on that too.

And whatever happened to Yahoo's Web 2.0 social bookmarking site? It seems to be around still but no one seems to use it or even mention it anymore that Yahoo bought Delicious.

Anyway check out my Ma.gnolia profile here .

WMP decent for playing DVDs

Aug 22, 2008
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I am not a big fan of Microsoft's Windows Media Player (WMP) but it does a pretty good job at playing DVDs.

I do not like or use proprietary file formats like Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Video (WMV). For audio I use ogg vorbis and FLAC. I have never ripped a music CD into WMA and I don't ever intend to either. Furthermore WMP's GUI and navigation are horrible. It was a pain just to find a few online radio stations to bookmark.

Anyway when I rented The Grand recently I thought that I would give WMP a try for DVDs and I was pleasantly surprised. WMP is easy to use. You double click on the movie to get full screen and when you leave the mouse alone the player's controls automatically disappear. Of course when you move the mouse they reappear and hitting the 'ESC' key takes you out of full screen mode.

I don't know about you but that's just about all I need for DVD play-back so I'll probably continue to use WMP for DVDs.

Roger Waters 'Amused to Death' - CD Review

Aug 19, 2008
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Amused_to_Death

How did I miss this CD by former Pink Floyd band member Roger Waters? The ideas in this concept album are as important today as when the CD was first released in 1992. Oh, and the music is pretty good too.

While I am a bit of a fan of Pink Floyd and Roger Waters I somehow missed the release of this album. I doubt that I heard this CD and then and forgot about it because it's so powerful. Anyway a few weeks ago Adam Curry mentioned it in his podcast The Daily Source Code so I added it to my wanted list at Swap A CD and shortly thereafter it was being mailed to me. Technology is great when it works, isn't it?

The basic idea of this concept album is that a small group of powerful people are using the mass media and religion to placate and distract people while they line their pockets and fill their bank accounts at the expense of society and the planet. Reality, what a concept!

A few songs really drive this idea home. In What God Wants (Parts 1, 2 & 3) God wants a whole host of unholy things from various currencies, gold and silver to television, war and crack. And from It's A Miracle :

Miraculous you call it babe
You ain't seen nothing yet
They've got Pepsi in the Andes
McDonalds in Tibet

However a few bits of harsh reality do get through the opiate of mass media. From Watching TV :

We were watching TV
In Tiananmen Square
Lost my baby there
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes

But ultimately in the final track, Amused to Death, the future doesn't look good.

We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
. . . This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death

Musically if you like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall then you will probably like this CD as well. The catchiest song is What God Wants. The refrain (sung by a few female back-up singers) "What God wants, God gets, God help us all" has been stuck in my head for days now. Also guitarist Jeff Beck contributes some very nice melodic solos throughout the album. Who needs David Gilmour, right Roger?

Sadly I don't think things are any different today, the internet has not changed a thing. Today people can be more informed than ever before but seem to choose mindless escapism above all else almost exclusively. People know more about Brad and Angelina's twins than what their governments and businesses are doing in their name in the far reaches of the world. I'm afraid we are still amusing ourselves to death.

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Note: cross posted to my Newsvine column .

Week in Review - Aug. 17, 2008

Aug 17, 2008
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The 'Best of' all my online stuff, August 9 to August 16, 2008.

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Rob Riggle [Redacted] in China

Twitter in Plain English
Video introduction about the micro-blogging service. Follow me on Twitter.

George W. Bush, F.B.I.
Female Body Inspector (photo)

Going Back to Philly
A funny music video from the people at It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

- - Click here for all of Tumblr posts - -

Newsvine
Olympics: US men's and women's soccer teams look to make quarterfinals

hmm . . . Slow week for me on Newsvine, that will change next week.

Magnolia
Take Back the Filter
Help persuade Clorox to recycle Brita water filters in the US.

The Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites
Chances are you haven't heard of a few of these.

Face Your Manga
The current rage on Twitter.

Profileomat
Similar to Retaggr but more of a web page for your online profile than a widget. Check out my Retaggr Profile Card .

The Best-ever Freeware Utilities List
I don't know about 'best ever' but it is a very good list of free software.

- - Click here for all my Magnolia links - -

Vox
Ogg Vorbis and FLAC preferred over MP3
Ogg and FLAC are free open source music file types and sound better than MP3.

- - My Vox blog is here - -

My Retagger Profile Card Embedded in Vox

Aug 15, 2008
1 comment

Michael Sautter's Retaggr Profile Card

For more about Retaggr check out my Vox post Retaggr Unites Your Online Contacts (includes video).

Ogg Vorbis and FLAC preferred over MP3

Aug 15, 2008
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Both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) are audio files that have better sound quality than MP3. Furthermore Ogg Vorbis, while a compresed file like MP3, requires less memory per given song than MP3. FLAC's superior sound quality comes a price, it produces much larger files than Ogg or MP3.

Earlier this week I got Roger Waters' CD Amused to Death (CD review coming Monday) and I used the occasion to finally set up my Windows Vista PC to rip and play Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files. This was not hard to do at all. The latest version WinAmp natively rips and plays FLAC. It also plays Ogg Vorbis and a plug-in allows WinAmp to rip CDs into Ogg Vorbis. The plug-in, Ogg-Vorbis encoder v1-1, is available from the WinAmp web site and I had no problem installing it or the WinAmp app itself on Vista (32 bit, SP1).

Is Sound Quality Really Better Than MP3s?
I'm no audiophile but to me MP3s have always sounded tinny and less full-sounding than CDs. Ogg Vorbis sounds better than MP3 and FLAC sounds great to me.

File Sizes Compared
I ripped the Roger Waters CD into Ogg and FLAC using the default sound quality settings in WinAmp, here are the file sizes: 75 MB in Ogg Vorbis and 354 MB in FLAC.

If I remember correctly then MP3s are a little over 1 MB per minute. The CD is approximately 72 minutes long so Ogg Vorbis is right around that rate. However FLAC is almost 5 times as big as the Ogg rip.

Streaming Ogg
I have always been more of a steamer of online music rather than a ripper and downloader of music. Unfortunately few online radio stations stream in Ogg Vorbis. Virgin Radio UK plays today's hits and classic tracks, it also streams in Ogg (Virgin ogg stream). For classical music there is WCPE (ogg stream). The Icecast Directory has a number of internet radio stations which stream in Ogg. Now if Radio Paradise, one of my favorite online radio stations, would just stream in Ogg.

Downloading Ogg and FLAC
Jamendo has free Ogg downloads in a number of musical styles. Several recording artists sell at least some of their music in FLAC including Nine Inch Nails, the Eagles and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Portable Players for Ogg & FLAC
A few portable music players from iRiver, Yepp and SanDisk play Ogg Vorbis, here's a list to check out. For FLAC SourceForge has a hardware list .

Why MP3s?
First mover advantage and inertia. Over a decade ago in the days before broadband and huge hard drives, WinAmp and Napster helped establish MP3s as the defacto standard for digital music. Today most people are used to MP3 and have acquired a large collection of music in MP3 so they are reluctant to change.

So is it Ogg or FLAC for me?
Both! I will probably rip most of my CDs into Ogg Vorbis however my classical CDs I will most likely rip into FLAC. Also I will download in Ogg from web sites that offer Ogg (for free) and if I buy any music online then I will prefer FLAC. I still have not found any web sites selling music in Ogg Vorbis. FLAC files may be big but hard drives have gotten even bigger. I still have hundreds of gigabytes of space on my PC and I can easily add an eSATA hard drive if I need more space. MP3s still have a place for me since most podcasts are in MP3 and for some reason a lot of people still seem to like paying MP3 royalty fees rather than use Ogg Vorbis, which is totally free.

The rest of the world may like MP3s but I'll use Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, thank you very much.

Week in Review

Aug 9, 2008
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The 'Best of' all my online stuff. August 2 to August 8, 2008.

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John McCain Launches His Humble Campaign
Daily Show video

Best Deal in Las Vegas
and only $2, picture

Lito Sheppad's Contract
YouTube video, glad I'm not the only one who thinks Drew Rosenhaus mispronounced LeeToe's name.

Fox News Busted
What? It's not fair and balanced?

- - Click Here for my Tumblr micro-blog - -

Newsvine
Norway defeats US women's Olympic soccer team

US men's soccer team gets by Japan in first match

Eagles Pre-Season Game 1
preview of first Philadelphia Eagle's pre-season game

- - Click Here for my Newsvine column - -

Magnolia
Twitter: The User Manual You Can’t Find
How to use Twitter. Tweets, replies and direct messages (like IMs). Also how to build a following on Twitter. by PC Mech.

- - My Magnolia bookmarks - -

Vox
Pondering a few things wireless

Tomatoes and Thai chili Peppers Ripen
garden update

Retaggr unites your online contacts
includes embedded video

- - My Vox blog - -

Retaggr unites your online contacts

Aug 8, 2008
2 comments

Retaggr is a web page and widget that lets you bring together all of your internet profiles, blogs, contacts, etc. and gives you a Profile Card to let others find you more easily.

- - Check out my Retaggr Profile Card - -

Enough of me trying to explain Retaggr, here's a screencast introduction:

Retaggr Intro Screencast