A web-based music service subscription offers listeners immediate access to a service’s entire music library.  Examples of this type of service would include Rhapsody and Napster.

According to Steve Jobs, head of Apple, “I think you could make the Second Coming available in a subscription model and it might not be successful.”

He also said, “The Subscription Model of buying music is bankrupt.” I beg to differ.

We’ve had the Napster service at our house for a couple of years now. All I have is praise for this service- imagine having access to all the music you’d ever want to listen to. Instant gratification.

Now granted, there aren’t songs by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath (well, there’s a couple), AC/CD, Radiohead, some obscure music, and a lot of independent labels’ music available for streaming. But that isn’t the fault of Napster- it is the fault of the bands, record labels and/or their music publishers. There is enough out there to keep the most die-hard music fans very happy. And if you’re missing these bands, surely you have a CD or two you could rip by them.

I just upgraded to the “Napster-to-Go” service and got an MP3 player for my wife. It’s the Creative Zen V, and it was a delight to set up, even on Vista. It works so easily, and you can download up to 1GB of music onto it from Napster. That’s about 500 songs, according to Creative Zen.

I also have an iPod Touch. If I could do the same thing with that delightful device- rather than only downloading songs I have bought or ripped onto my hard drive- in my opinion, the web-based music service wars would be over. Combine the power and ubiquity of the iPod and the awesomeness of the iTunes store with the subscription-based music model, and people everywhere could download as much music as they want from whatever bands they want for a low monthly price. Even AC/DC would have to get on board.

There are rumors of that happening coming from the Apple camp- despite the Jobs quotes above. We’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I will be very satisfied with Napster, and plan on getting a Creative Zen V player for myself and possibly my daughter. It’s great!

Spammers, what will they think of next?

I’ve started to see a new spam phenomenon- Calendar Spam.

It seems to work like this: you receive a spam email with an “event invitation”- it could be for Google Calendar or Outlook. Surprise, surprise, this “event” also gets set up in your calendar- in my case Google Calendar.

I found an easy way to combat this for Google Calendar. In “Settings”, under “General”, towards the bottom there’s an entry that says:

Automatically add invitations to my calendar:

Yes

No, only show invitations to which I have responded

Just make sure that “No” is the one selected.

I recently got spammed by Google itself on April Fool’s Day (April 1st). They added a “I’m Feeling Lucky” button in “Google Calendar”, similar to the button that’s displayed in the Google home page. I added an event and clicked that button just for fun. It didn’t look like it did anything.

My wife has access to my calendar and saw an entry titled “Date with Pamela Anderson”. Fortunately, she had a laugh over it, but when she asked me about it, I had no idea it was there! Google got me.

I was restarting my PC today and my 6 year old saw the icon for Firefox on the desktop. “Firefox is my favorite browser,” he said. “Why?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he replied, “it’s just cool.”  Too true!

My sister got my family the coolest Christmas present this year: an Excalibur Micro Chopper.

No, I didn’t make this video, but you can get an idea what the thing is like.

We have kind of a low ceiling, so it’s OK at home, but I have it here at my office today, which has really high ceilings. It’s much better with a high ceiling. I’m driving everyone crazy.

My kids are young, so the thing has taken a beating. It’s needed a little repair, but is back in business.

A fun gift idea, thanks, Sis!

Here’s some fun palindromes. A palindrome is a sentence that is the same backwards and forwards.

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

Do geese see god?

Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog!

Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam!

Curiously, there’s several that have to do with Satan himself:

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Ah, Satan, shall a devil deliver Hannah? Reviled lived Allah’s Natasha!

Here’s an incredible list of palindromes:
http://www.jps.at/palindromes/english/EA.html

Can you make up a palindrome?

Since the iPod Touch came out, I’ve been counting down the days till my birthday (November 14th).

The iPod Touch. Image from Apple.com

I’m getting one that day, whether someone gets me one or if I have to get it myself.

I’m kind of behind on the iPod thing. I got a Dell MP3 player last year, but it wouldn’t play music that I uploaded to it in the order I wanted it to, so I sent it back. They’ve since discontinued the model, I can’t even remember what it was called.

In preparation of the day, I downloaded the iTunes music store software from Apple.com, and I’m very impressed. I’ve uploaded some CDs to it, and the process couldn’t be more simple. I’m continually blown away by the fact that I can download TV shows for $1.99 and pretty much any song I’ve ever wanted for $.99. It’s incredible- this society of immediate gratification that we’ve created for ourselves.

Hey, I’m the first to admit it, even though I probably shouldn’t on my own web site!

I’m no designer. I’m a programmer. I use other people’s designs.

I’ve come across some nice designer pages lately. I’ve personally contacted some of them and they seem like really cool folks:

Mary Walton - I met Mary’s husband through his site, www.churchtechmatters.com. He gave all the credit to his wife for the design. Check out the logo. It blows me away. Would like to see more of her work.

Gabe Taviano - Gabe’s skills seem to be in Flash, which I love. Nice stuff. Check out his podcast, GodsMac.com, for the latest Apple news and reviews, and interviews with tech folks. I hope to be on the podcast one day soon to promote my site, www.BibleMemory.us.

Godspeed - The people behind eBible.com and other excellent sites.

http://timoni.org/portfolio - Timoni did a beautiful job on this site: www.kampkinship.org.

www.lockdata.com - I work with the owner of this company almost every day. A great guy. His design dude, Brian, is a total wiz.

Challies.com - Not only is Tim Challies the world’s most popular Christian blogger, he’s a great designer as well.

These folks have more design talent in their pinkie than I do in my whole body. What a blessing to be so artistically creative. I hope they’re giving credit to whom credit is due- God, the original artist and creative master is the one who gives these gifts.

Have any favorite designers you’d like to share with me?

Don’t you just hate passwords? I do. I feel like I’ve been looking all my life for a solution for all the passwords I have scribbled around on different pieces of paper, sticky notes, etc.

I think I’ve found it at www.clipperz.com. To me, this is one of the greatest thing since sliced bread.

This site acts as a repository for all your passwords, secret codes, basically anything you want to store away safely on the web. It encrypts your data on your browser, then sends it encrypted to their servers. They claim that they couldn’t figure out your stored information if they wanted to!

I’m not ready to put in credit cards and bank information, but I think it’s great for those tons of logins that I’ve racked up visiting sites that make you sign up for an account or something before you can get in (so annoying!).

Someone wrote in their forums asking if they would make their solution available for purchase so people could store their own data on their own servers. If they ever do that, I think big things would be in store for the clipperz.com team.

I wish them well in this practical, excellent endeavor.

Check them out! www.clipperz.com

Here’s a new dessert at Domino’s Pizza- Oreo Pizza. What do you think? Would you eat it? (Image found at www.dominos.com)