Taking the Pulse

Posted: January 31, 2008 in internet, Mac
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Two items called Pulse have caught my eye in recent weeks.

First of all, I’ve been playing around with Plaxo Pulse, which is the recent social networking addition to the popular Plaxo online address book. I joined Plaxo some years ago when it first came out as I liked the idea of having my contacts backed up online somewhere in case the trusty PC blew up. Once I got a Mac, though, I confess I lapsed – as a .Mac subscriber, my contacts were automatically synced and (I stand corrected on this) but I don’t think you could sync Plaxo with the Mac address book back then – and I started ignoring requests from people to update my info.

But recently I’ve been getting a lot more requests from Plaxo members excited about Plaxo 3.0 so I went to take a fresh look – and I liked what I saw. I like the ease with which it now syncs not only with my Mac [see image below] but also with my GMail contacts and my Google calendar. And as the latter now syncs automatically with my Blackberry, I no longer worry that somewhere there is an appointment I’m supposed to be at and, as long as people in my Plaxo network update their info, then my contacts will always be current. Also, having got addicted to Facebook in recent months and got back to blogging, I liked the way I am now able to link all these social sites together through various feeds and posts and access them via desktop or handheld device, yet maintain seprate netwroks for friends, family and business. Best of all, I can now say goodbye to any kind of manual syncing. Plaxo Pulse is free or you can upgrade to the Premium service for $49.95/year which will do things like weed out duplications in your contacts and calendar and sync with LinkedIn.

The other Pulse I’ve been checking is the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe, which is due to ship in March. This amazing device may finally be the breakthrough that pen computing has always promised. As someone who interviews people for a living, I’m thrilled by the prospect of a pen that records your notes digitally as you write them on special paper as well as having a built-in microphone that lets you record and sync audio so you can just tap your notes to hear what was said. If you’ve got kids and are familiar with the clever Leapfrog products, you’ll have an idea of the concept – besides, it was invented by the same guy, Jim Marggraff. The pen comes with a USB docking station and Livescribe promises plenty of other apps and games are in the works. There will two versions – a 1G for $149 which can hold 100 hours of audio and 16,000 pages of notes, and a $199 2GB version with double the capacity. Sadly, there’s no Mac version initially but the company says it is being worked on.

Foxy Signatunes hits a cool note

Posted: January 31, 2008 in internet, music
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If you use the excellent Firefox web browser, you might already be familiar with the free FoxyTunes plug-in. It basically gives you playback control over your music from a variety of sources – like iTunes, Windows Media Player, Rhapsody, Last.fm or Pandora – without leaving your browser. Now they’ve added a nifty little feature called Signatunes which will be part of the forthcoming 3.0 release of FoxyTunes. It adds an icon to any web mail service (like Hotmail), as well MySpace, Facebook and WordPress (home of Breezeblog), that lets you add a link to a song you’re listening to – or any song on your computer – as a signature. As you will see at the foot of this post, the link to a classic track by Elvis Costello will take you to the FoxyTunes Planet where you can listen to the song, check out videos and a whole bunch of other stuff about Elvis. A cool way to introduce your friends to your music.

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Now playing: Elvis Costello – Alison (My Aim Is True)
via FoxyTunes

iTunes store for Bermuda?

Posted: January 31, 2008 in Bermuda, internet, Mac, music
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Could frustrated Bermuda digital music fans finally be able to legitimately buy downloaded music from the iTunes store without having to resort to overseas credit cards and buying up iTunes gift cards when they’re on a trip? Maybe, according to yesterday’s story in the Bermuda Sun by Tim Hall:

Richard Todd, manager of the island’s iStore, is in negotiations with Apple to have the company’s licensing agreements extended to Bermuda.
Apple’s lawyers are looking at the proposal and are expected to make a decision in the first half of this year. It could mean Bermuda getting its own country-specific version of iTunes – the world’s biggest online music store. Such a move could also put pressure on other companies, such as Amazon, to offer digital music and movies to the island.

Meanwhile, Richard says he hopes to reach an agreement with Apple to at least sell the iTunes gift cards in Bermuda. He’s already managed to convince them to let him sell the Apple TV which – ludicrously – is one of the products Apple deemed a “US-only” product and not available in an Island 600 miles away, which it lumps in the Latin American region. This is also why you cannot buy the top-end 2.8 Extreme iMac in Bermuda either. If you want one, check out B&H in New York. They will ship to Bermuda via UPS.

Back to the Sun story: a couple of minor corrections – eMusic is wrongly listed as an illegal download site (it’s a totally legit, if limited, music store) and yours truly is not a Bermudian, despite the Gibbons surname. I am a mere permanent resident, although I do have a Bermudian daughter which will no doubt be confusing to off-rock readers. Welcome to Bermuda!

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