Idlemind - nickcoster.com
Future gazing from a quiet corner of cyberspace.

I was just looking back on my previous post about Facebook. The little sparks of contact and inspiration that came from the discovery of new friends and old, quickly turned into a nuisance. Although I still check in on my own profile every now and then I barely use it at all. One of my big concerns has been around the constant need to share private information with every application developer that wanted me to use their app.

I should be able to see exactly what data is being shared and be able to limit it and control its use. Until this happens I am unlikely to signup to too many more applications on Facebook.

It is fascinating watching how the “gen y” crowd is using this and other social networking services. They are totally fearless about sharing every last detail about their lives. It makes me feel like an old fart to say so but the way that they these services is completely different to my own. They practically live in these worlds; or rather they co-exist in both the online and offline worlds.

For me though these worlds are still quite separate and the world of Facebook has taken a noticeable back seat to the rest of the non-Facebook universe.

I am finally in a plane headed to Melbourne and lucky to be here at all. I missed my flight at 8:30pm for 2 reasons.

1. When I looked at my boarding pass I confused my seat number (5D) with the departure gate. Stupid.
2. While I was patiently waiting for the (now overdue) boarding call I was listening to a ranting podcast, completely unaware that the plane was infarct leaving on time and was trying desperately to call for me.

Still unaware of my error I proceeded to board the plane from the wrong gate with everyone else in the lounge. As I scanned my boarding pass, there was suddenly a problem. My pass was returning the wrong name. Do they ask for id? No. Do they try and resolve the problem? No, they direct me onto the plane anyway.

Thinking that at last I could relax and be on my way I sit down and stow my bags. A moment later there is another problem. Someone else has my seat number. I am just about to get grumpy now, when the hostess mentions that this flight is headed for Coolangatta and not Melbourne.

Oh. Dear.

Once out of the plane the Qantas staff were very helpful in getting me back on track, although the next available flight was at 10:20pm. It certainly gave me an opportunity to reflect on my attention while traveling.

On the ‘Apple Matters’ blog today Chris Howard discusses the success of the iPod and the decline of the physical media that music is delivered on. Although this is significant I think that Apple has done more and less to drive this trend.

As Chris states they were not the first to launch a flash or hard drive based music player. Around five years ago I have mixed memories of shelling out AUD$700 or AUD$800 for a Creative Nomad 6GB Jukebox hard drive based player. This ‘little’ baby was basically a 3.5in hard drive repackaged into a portable CD player form factor.

From a technical perspective this gave me everything that the iPod Mini provides. This was happening during Napsters heyday so there was no shortage of easily (if not legally) obtained music, it supported playlists that could be managed via the device and on the synchronised PC. But it never really took off. Why?

• It was still quite big and bulky. Bulkier than even the CD players of the day.
• The interface was awkward and required concentration to navigate through.
• The process for loading up songs and managing playlists was a learning experience.

These are exactly the areas that apple have addressed with the iPod, in all it’s incarnations to date. They created a pocket sized device, with a simple tactile user interface and developed software that for both Mac and PC that was easy to use.

On top of all of this, apple then made it cool to geeks and non-geeks alike. With fun iconic advertising and the white headphone wires they made their devices visible even when they were stuffed in the oversized fashion jeans pockets of their owners.

So where to from here? Well with digital formats the device IS the media. It is the thing that you carry with you. What is changing is how you use it and what you put on it. iTunes is influencing this with their track by track downloads. Podcasting has the potential to listening habits by consuming peoples listening time with non record label content.

The big step in bringing portable digital music to the masses has been made by apple and I thank them for it. The next battle however is for the time you spend listening to it. Do you just randomly shuffle you 60GB of music files? You may never listen to the same track twice! I have practically left the CD loaded music behind, as I listen to a backing up stream of podcast content.

So what will you be listening to today?

It is gone. I found my proof of purchase and packaged up my little silver mini iPod, carefully following all of the instructions that were provided. Now I wait.

Will apple make my iPod experience a good one? or will they shaft me and say that is just too bad. I just don’t think that getting 2 hours out of a battery recharge is good enough, when you can’t replace the battery without incurring fees from apple.

Will I learn from this experience? Probably not. There is a new iPod in town called the nano. I am in techno lust all over again. The weekend before last we were walking past an apple store in Chatswood and they were on display. At the time I barely resisted the urge to bring one home. Now I wish that I hadn’t been so ’strong’. The fact is that I will buy one, but now they are out of stock - everywhere!!

I have one on order now though. It should be available on Friday. Now I just have to work out how to get to it when it arrives. The battery life is rated at 16 hours but I will remain sceptical until I have used it for myself.

Since we started our business over a year ago I have been trying to work out how to manage file across multiple computers without a formal file server. This is important since the concept of the office network is a fairly fluid affair, using a laptops and wireless networks both at the office and at home.

Until now this has resulted in three separate PC’s with shared file access, but no single location of file storage that I could backup easily. It also meant that files were getting duplicated on the different machines since the transient nature of the network meant that I couldn’t know for sure that I could access a network share when I needed a particular file.

Yesterday I loaded up ‘FolderShare’ that goes a long way to resolving this issue. It creates a complete copy of all of the files in the shared folder on each system that needs to have access to it. Although this uses 3 times the storage space it provides a fantastic level of redundancy as well. It then synchronises all of the changes to these files in real time whenever the systems can access each other. This may be locally within the network or remotely over the Internet.

Finally for backups I then just have to back up one location to have the latest copy of all 3 PC’s data. Very impressive and perfect for our current setup. It is great to stumble across a solution that perfectly meets your requirements and quietly exceeds them as well.

Will I upgrade from the 5 day trial and pay USD$50.00 for this service? Well I very rarely pay cash for software, since there is almost always a free solution out there, but this one looks like a winner. There will need to be a major deal breaker to prevent me from making that small investment.

Thanks for finding this goes to Rafe Needleman from ZDNet.