Simplify Media (also) shutting down

Service Termination

Apple has bought and killed Lala, and now Google has bought and killed my other favorite music-streaming and -sharing service, Simplify Media. I wrote about Simplify and Lala a couple of years ago, and while it was kind of clunky, I love Simplify greatly for letting me play my entire music collection on my iPhone, over 3G even.

Ah, well. I miss these for now, but I remain hopeful, buoyed by rumors and the nerd news, that the two behemoths are going to introduce their own amazing, fantastic, mind-blowing — and affordable — services to let me listen to all of my music, anywhere, anytime.

Fall is the rumor. Now would be better.

Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

How do I work everywhere?

APC wrote:

I do some word processing on a laptop at home, and then need to do work on some of the same documents on my computer at work. So far, this has led to a jumble of back-and-forth emails and disorganized files. What’s the solution?

My favorite word of the year: Dropbox! Go to Dropbox.com, download the software on both computers. Create an account from one of the computers, and then sign into that same account on the other computer. Anything you put in the folder called Dropbox that’s now in your home folder on your Mac (or in My Documents on a PC), will appear in your Dropbox on alllllll your other computers — and iPhones, and iPads, or Android phones, and pretty much anything that can see m.dropbox.com. 

For what it’s worth, there are other services like Dropbox out there, including but not limited to SugarSync and Box.net, but through sheer simplicity and elegance, Dropbox has so far garnered most of the love. The iPad app is off. The. Hook.

Thanks for inspiring a blog post!

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Gruber on new AT&T data plan

http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/good_and_bad_regarding_att_data_plans

Apropos of the iPad vs. Mifi discussion I’m having with a lot of people. Tethering on the iPhone or iPad could solve a lot of headache, including one’s landline Internet being down. We’re gonna pay for it, but it should be worth it. I’m quite hoping tethering is not a contractual subscription. Month-to-month I can swallow.

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Grabbing DVD and Flash video

RT wrote:

“We would like to integrate more forms of media (DVD, Youtube etc.) into our keynote presentations.”

Out of curiosity, have you yet familiarized yourself with tools such as Handbrake and the various YouTube video downloaders?

http://handbrake.fr/

TubeTV is an example of a downloader. Of course I recommend to starr with freeware:
http://www.chimoosoft.com/products/tubetv/

Haven’t tested this one, but it’s the basis of apps like that:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070420014456930

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Cash for your gadgets

http://www.gazelle.com/

Enter your gadget model (e.g. “iphone 3gs 16gb”), tell ’em what condition it’s in and whether you have the original cables (e.g. “good, makes calls, no to A/C & cables”), and they’ll tell you what they’re gonna pay you ($190 in the previous case). You say “Great!”, they send you a box, you send them the gadget, they send you a check.

If you’re a non-profit organization, Gazelle will give you a page through which donors can send their gadgets, and Gazelle will give the money to the non-profit.

Stellar.

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