technology – Page 2

FiiO X1 MP3 Player Review

February 3, 2015Music, Shopping, Technology3 Comments

A few months ago, I left my beloved iPod Classic on the subway. I then waited way too long to buy a new one and the classics were now discountinued. This left me with not much option in terms of iPods. Spending $300 for an iPod Touch didn’t seem to make much sense since I had an iPhone, while the lower ones lacked enough space to hold my entire library. I then turned to the internet to research affordable high-end mp3 players and concluded that my best choice would be the FiiO X1 player at $99.

I bought it in gold (silver is the other option). You can watch me unbox the thing here:

Inside the tiny packaging, there were a ton of accessories that I didn’t expect it to come with: 3 screen protectors (1 of which is already on the screen); a silicone case; 2 sets of decorational stickers. Oddly enough it does not come with earphones. You also have to purchase a micro-sd in order to use it as there is no internal storage. It supports cards up to 120GB.

The player looks a lot more expensive than it’s $99 price tag. There aren’t that many instructions that come with the machine, but it’s fairly easy to use. Here are two tips for future FiiO owners:

– You must go into the system settings and hit “Storage Formatting” on your new SD card if you wish to use your own SD card reader instead of the cable to transfer songs.
– Every time you transfer songs going to “Update Media Library” in the system settings is recommended as it refreshes all the album information. Otherwise, songs only shows up in the list of all your mp3s.

Besides the above, everything is basically drag and drop. You can drag your entire iTunes library (or whatever library you use) onto the SD card and leave all folders in tact. It plays FLAC, APE, ALAC, WAV, WMA, MP3, AAC and OGG files, with up to 192-kHz/24-bit resolution. I can definitely hear the sound difference. Everything is more crisp, clear and loud sounds don’t clip. I also hear a certain warmness of each artist’s recording setting that I didn’t pay much attention to before.

Album covers display, but only if they’ve been part of the original mp3 meta data. What this means is that if you did the “Get Album Artwork” thing in iTunes, it probably didn’t embed itself in the metadata, but elsewhere.

The battery lasts very long (12 hours I think) and the system preserves it well. The screen automatically turns off after a certain time and it also turns itself off. The buttons take time to learn but really once you understand how to hit enter (centre button) and go back (top right), the rest don’t really matter. $99 is totally a steal for this thing!

My Thoughts on the Google+ Integration on Youtube

November 18, 2013Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

There has been a lot of chatter about the recent Google + integration with Youtube. Personally, I’ve been using the social network on and off ever since it first went beta. Right now, it is mostly auto-publishing feeds from my personal blog and Youtube channel.

In contrast, I haven’t actually been an active Youtube user until recently. Obviously I have watched countless videos on Youtube but since I wasn’t an active contributor I didn’t find it that necessary to leave comments. I did find however that I started to comment more after the Youtube name-change to connect ourselves with our Google+ identities. Maybe I wanted more followers on a network I had an iffy relationship with.

There’s a lot not to like about the integration though. For one, if you have separate Youtube pages for different things, you have to manage different Google + profiles. In my case, Ride the Tempo has a channel for occasional live videos. However, I find that the general music fan or listener isn’t highly active on Google+ (as I’ve tried managing a page in the past) so I wish that it could also be connected to my personal page, which people seem to follow. I do believe that there are plenty of users on Google+, as I am in more than 300 users’ circles. That’s more than the followers most people have on Twitter.

Another issue is the publishing of comment to the poster’s Google + feed. Although this can be an asset for users (as their content gets shared), it is somewhat of a nuisance when I want to leave a quick comment on something I don’t want to necessarily share (or share again if it’s my second comment on the same video). Since, it is Google+ based there is no longer a character limit on comments. As a new Vlogger, this seems quite intimidating and scary. Troll heaven. Or right now Bob and his stupid tanks world.

Instead of forcing Google+ on us, Google should have done a much better job explaining what it is for in the first place. It has some snazzy features (hangouts, photo editors) but the original marketing as a better Facebook or Twitter when those existed is comparable to Microsoft’s attempt to sell us the Zune.

I Met Chris Pirillo!

November 12, 2013November 12, 2013Entertainment, Social Media, Technology, Vlogs1 Comment

This weekend was Buffer Festival in Toronto, the city’s first ever Youtube film festival. Personally, I haven’t participated in the Youtube scene until recently, but when I found out Chris Pirillo would be in Toronto I jumped on the chance to meet him.

I actually found Chris originally on Twitter in the social network’s early days. He was a recommended follow (and he followed me back!). I checked out his social feeds and was enticed by his wacky personality and had been watching his videos ever since.

His Buffer Festival panel, which took place inside the CN Tower’s Maple Leaf Theatre, was about tech on Youtube. The main point to take away was that tech is an enabler, not a destination. He also did a Youtube livestream review of the new iPad Air right in front of us. It was cool to see how the whole process worked and how reading comments could be rather addictive.

After the panel, we met in the meetup room at the Metro Convention Centre and he signed my GoPro. I figured that would be the most appropriate since he was the one who had influenced me to vlog in the first place. The real fun started when the planned meetup was over and a few of us gathered together to have lunch with Chris! We all had different stories of how we discovered his videos. It was fascinating to learn how his videos had touched all of our lives in some way. He actually shared this in his vlog (life goal achieved)!

Through Chris I learnt that when creating content (Youtube or elsewhere), to always be myself. He’s made a living through just being himself and I hope that’s something I can achieve too, to just do what I love.

Of course, here’s my vlog of the day:

Why You Should Have An Online Presence

September 17, 2013Social Media, Technology1 Comment

I was having a chat with someone the other day about social media and I tried explain to an anti-social media person why it was important to have an online footprint professionally. I think nowadays social media is so accessible (with privacy statements continuously changing and all) that there really isn’t a line between what you can consider professional versus personal. The reasons are the same. This makes it even more important to own your online presence.

1. To control what others find online. At bare minimum, it’s good to have a website that has a good headshot of your face, a mini biography about what you do and perhaps some work samples. A Linkedin or an About.me page is fine. This way you can provide an URL to your employers (or people you meet) for a first impression beyond your resume. Your employers are also probably going to Google your name so having a headshot is important to distinguish yourself from the other Joe Shmoe shotgunning a beer in a Youtube video. If you’re lucky enough to register the web domain with your actual name, go for it.

2. Open yourself to new opportunities. I never went to school for social media. It was something I learnt by experimenting, while managing multiple websites. I was an early adopter of Twitter. Through it, I’ve met some of the most interesting and like-minded people who are now some great friends offline. I’ve also had the opportunity to do things I never thought I’d do (like meet Phoenix or dance on stage with Girl Talk). I also worked places I never thought I’d end up. I never applied to work at Exclaim. Despite not being a journalism grad, the director of operations actually found me online after meeting me at a show and sent me a Facebook message. There’s a lot of fish in that sea but you have to have some sort of bait to hook them!

3. To be ready for what the future might hold. Maybe one day in the future, you might want to start your own business, write a book or even just raise money for that marathon you suddenly feel like running. Having a dedicated following on Twitter or Facebook (or whatever social networks you choose to use) takes time to build. However, a strong community can really aid to kick start that new project.

Youtube Helped Me Fix It

May 8, 2013Technology1 Comment

The dusty insides of the front of my laptop

I have a 4 year old Dell Studio 1555 laptop. It is still running perfectly smoothly. However, whoever designed this thing didn’t think about longevity and stupidly put the power button on the screen’s hinge. The most moved part on the entire computer.

Anyways, a few weeks ago I dropped my laptop and everything seemed fine except for the lost connection in the power button. It would take me 3-4 attempts to turn the computer back on and I avoided turning it off since then. The past few days I was bringing the laptop outside to work and today on my way out bumped the battery and it turned off. It wouldn’t turn back on after about 100 attempts at fidgeting with the hinge. My warranty has been up for almost a year and I knew a repair was going to be costly for something that probably took 10 minutes.

So I Youtubed my problem, took my laptop apart and 10 minutes later I am writing this blog post to you about it. It’s amazing how much of our life problems can be Googled, and how much you can learn from Youtube. No need to “call the guy” when you can “be the guy”.

The Curse Of The Spermagotchi

April 22, 2013April 22, 2013iOS, Technology, Video GamesLeave a Comment

As a kid growing up in the 90s, I was really excited when the Tamagotchi L.i.f.e app came out. I had a million virtual pets when I was little including the nano sumo fighters, babies, pikachu pet and of course the original Tamagotchi.

When I first got the app, I had all the notifications turned on and took care of the virtual pet’s every need. I even played games instead of feeding it candy to increase its happiness. I ended up with this guy:

The infamous Spermagotchi. My least favourite one of the pets. So I killed him.

This time I opted for a more neglectful approach. I fed him candy instead of played games and did not heed to it right away.

I GOT THIS GUY IN ANOTHER COLOUR. I killed it again.

The third time I had no strategy, but I switched it over to classic mode.

I deleted the app.

Trying Out Fiverr

January 29, 2013Social Media, Technology1 Comment

Yesterday I was bored and ended up on Fiverr.com, a site where you can sell services for $5. I decided to make a few of my own gigs for pure entertainment. I will retouch 3 of your photos for $5 or draw you as a cute stick person for $5. I doubt either will get any traction but I thought it was an interesting experiment.

Retouching photos includes any of the following things:
-removing an object from background
-adding filters to image
-removing imperfections
-changing colours

Windows 8 Is Not That Scary

January 21, 2013Technology2 Comments

I bit the bullet and upgraded my Windows 7 laptop to Windows 8. It is the first operating system I have ever purchased. In the past they usually just came pre-installed on my computer or from other people’s borrowed CD-R disks.

I have been using it for a couple of days now and I have to wonder why people are so frightened by Windows 8. The colour screen with the updating tiles can be thought of as a glorified smartbar with apps. Otherwise, it is a noticeably faster and smoother running version of Windows 7 with some new features. People are weird, they criticize Microsoft for not doing anything innovative to Windows and when they finally do something that looks different from Windows 95, it is the end of the world.

What I really like about it is that you can replace the Desktop versions of software with the app versions that use less CPU. The app versions also “snap” nicely to the side of the screen so you can chat while working without the window disappearing.

As an avid Windows user all my life, there was a bit of a learning curve. The first few minutes on the system I did have my panic attack moments. HOW THE HELL DO I CLOSE THIS APP?! and WHERE THE HELL IS MY PROGRAMS? were among the many questions I asked myself.

However, through experimenting and looking up a dummy sheet on the internet I am quite integrated with the new system. I actually found myself quite productive on what is supposedly Blue Monday morning. So far, I love the new Windows 8 system.