I love to listen to music on my various gadgets, and I have a bunch, including some Android gadgets.  So once I got my invitation I was excited to try the new Google Music Beta.  It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I am fed up with iTunes.  I am a Windows pc user and iTunes on Windows pcs just isn’t that great, in my humble, two-cents worth, opinion, which is another long story for another day.  I have used iPods and iTunes since 2003 and owned a half dozen iPods, so I have plenty of experience to speak from.  iTunes sucks.  So did I like Google Music?  Would I recommend it to others? Will it replace my iPod/iTunes solution that I have lived with for 8 years?  Let’s find out.

After using my Google account to log into Google Music I installed the Google Music Manager utility on my computer.  The music manager gives you the options of specifying which folders of music on your computer you want to upload, or you can let it grab all your music in iTunes to upload.  I keep all my music in iTunes, so that is the option I choose.  Also, you can’t upload music through the browser, you have to use the Music Manager to do that.  Some good news is that you can set the Music Manager to automatically upload any music that is added to those folders that you specify, or schedule it to upload every hour, etc.  So in my case, if I ever add any music to iTunes, it will automatically upload to Google Music, which is a nice touch.  Also, you can pick and choose which songs to upload, so I picked only the songs and playlists that I wanted to upload.  The Music Manager runs in the background and uploads while you do other things.  I did notice my computer slow down somewhat during that process, so it isn’t as ‘behind the scenes’ as some people will like.

Here is a screenshot of the Music Manager main screen:

To listen to your music, delete your music, manage your playlists (which it thankfully grabbed from my iTunes playlists), edit song information, etc, you use the Music Player which is entirely browser based.  So that means you must have an internet connection to do so.  Which I guess is the whole point.  There is a downside of course to that, because if you don’t have an internet connection, you are sunk.   You have a search feature in the Player to quickly search for any song you have, which of course I would expect being a Google product.  You can also sort the view of your music by playlists, artists, albums, songs, etc.

Before I tell you any more good stuff, let me get the bad stuff out of the way.

After I uploaded all my music I then downloaded the Android app from the Market and fired it up.  And I guess this is where my frustration began with Google Music.  The Android app is truly Beta. It needs updating, like now.  Compared to the Amazon Cloud Music player app, this app is just pitiful in my opinion.  First of all, the app combed my Android phone for music files to see if it could add any files.  It found all sorts of sound files on my phone that are associated with apps installed on my phone.  So there are tons of 1 and 2 second sound files from game apps on my phone that are now sitting inside my Google Music app.  That is just not cool.

In addition, the app wouldn’t show me the songs from my Google Music collection that is now sitting inside Google Music. After poking around the sparse help files (which I guess is to be expected at this point) I found out that you have to set up your phone to ‘auto-sync’ to be able to see your music.   After the app ‘syncs’ and you can see your music, you can turn off auto-sync.  But if I add more music to Google Music I assume that I’ll have to turn auto-sync back on before the app can see the new music.  Again, not cool.  I shouldn’t have to turn on ‘auto-sync’ (which is a better drain) to see my music, the app should be able to communicate with Google Music and see my music. The Amazon Cloud Player doesn’t make me do that so why does Google Music?  Google, you should have told me somewhere (preferably in the app on my phone) that I needed to do this instead of making me search around the help files to find the answer.  It would have saved me alot of frustration. Or maybe I just don’t get it, which is possible.

Another huge item that is missing with Google Music is that there is no iTunes equivalent software for Google Music on your pc.  It is all based in the cloud and you use your browser to listen to your music, edit song information, add them to playlists, purchase more songs online, etc.  So when it comes to managing the music on my pc, I still have to use a piece of software like iTunes, or something else, and that is a bummer.   The Music Manager that I mentioned before simply uploads music to the service, and that’s it. Have I mentioned how much I hate iTunes? Looks like I am stuck using it a bit longer till Google comes out with some software, which I hope they will.

It takes a long time to upload music.  I have over 2,600 songs in my library and it took me over 6 hours to upload the songs using my enterprise-level, high speed network here at work.  It just crawled.  When I was at home on my DSL connection to see how long it would take to upload the entire collection, my home connection was going to take over 30 hours to upload.  Maybe I am spoiled with the speed of internet services that we now enjoy in the mainstream, but that just seems too slow to me.

Having said all that, I guess you are expecting me to now tell you that I simply don’t like Google Music, and you would be wrong.

I love it.  Even with the issues that it has, I love it.

I have loved Pandora for a long time, because it gives me access to music anywhere I go on my phone that I have with me 24/7.  But I can’t pick the songs I want to hear on Pandora.  Sometimes I just want to listen to a song that I know I have in my collection.  Google Music allows me to do just that.  This is a fulfillment of the promises of cloud computing I think.  As long as Verizon doesn’t lock me down in the future with metered data plans, I can happily live with this.  Google Music, and Amazon Cloud Music as well, are only going to get better and I greatly prefer them over any of the music management apps that are currently available to get music from your pc onto your phone.  I gave up on those type of apps because it just turned out to be a hassle, especially when switching phones.  Cloud music is where it’s at.  Do I recommend it to others?  Oh yes.  Will it replace my iPod/iTunes setup? Oh yes, at some point.

Now, Google needs to get busy updating that app, like now, and making software for my pc to manage my music.  Are you listening Google? Don’t keep this in Beta for 3 years like you do everything else.  You have a legion of people like me who are ready and willing to break up with Apple.

UPDATE:  I was made aware of the fact that even though you can have Google music on multiple devices, you can’t listen to your music at the same time on multiple devices.  That takes some of the shine off the product for me, but hey, I guess you can’t have it all.

Filed in categories: Android related, Musical Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Android, Cloud, Google Music

Google Music Beta Review… The Promise & the Peril originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 11, 2011 at 1:19 pm.

The ScanSnap Color Scanner from Fujitsu is one of those products that surprised me when I first used it. It surprised me because it works so well. The scanning was surprisingly fast and the scanned images were a perfect copy.  I had to stop myself from scanning any picture and document I could get my hands on. Well, almost…

The ScanSnap from Fujitsu is their portable scanner in a line of  their larger models the S1300 and the s1500.

This model is the mobile version of the three. Without the need of a power adapter, the included USB cable is the only cable needed to power up the S1100 which makes this convenient to have in your bag, luggage or briefcase. As slim as the ScanSnap is it can probably fit into a large purse with no problem. This is perfect for the business person or traveler waiting in the airport that is sitting in one of those small round table tops in a cafe with only enough room for the sugar packets and ketchup but needs to scan a document or picture and send to a colleague, family member or whomever. It’s perfect for those tight small areas.

This feature alone makes it worthwhile to construct your mobile office anywhere.

The ScanSnap scans images to a PDF file, a searchable PDF (through ScanSnap Manager), and JPEG files.  It also has a few special features.  One of the features that ScanSnap has is the CardMinder. It can scan business cards and extract and export contact information from the scanned business card. There is also the ability to convert a document into an editable Word or Excel file. And for those cloud users, the ScanSnap allows direct scanning to Google Docs and Evernote. The CardMinder was a big plus for me since I have accumulated tons of business cards that I started filing them in a business card book. I will take the time to scan those business cards and digitize them so I can archive them and free up some room on my desk. The ScanSnap can also scan plastic cards and embossed cards up to 0.76 mm thick.

The ScanSnap has an included software that allows for different choices after scanning such as scanning to email, scan to print or scan to Word and more.

With a touch of the Scan button an average scan time takes around 7 seconds from start of page to end of page. This was pretty accurate when I tested it. The S1100 can accommodate documents as long as 34 inches and allows for Continuous Document Feeding so you can scan documents one right after the other. Documents and images are scanned at 300 dpi and can go up to 600 dpi.

The ScanSnap weighs in at around 12 ounces and its dimensions are 10.74 x 1.87 x 1.33.

The ScanSnap has two doors or trays that flip open. The front/bottom tray is where the user initially feeds the document and then exits out the back of the unit. The back/top tray is more of a convenience if you have little or no room behind the ScanSnap for the document to feed out. This tray directs the document to exit out the top of the unit. It’s very handy if you have objects or a wall directly behind the ScanSnap  that will impede the document to exit. However, if you are scanning something that is hard stock  such as a postcard, or a business card or plastic card then this is not ideal to do so. The cards will simply not accommodate the bend in the tray to exit. So you’ll have to keep the top door closed so the card can exit smoothly.

I scanned a couple of 35mm pictures and noticed that the resulting scan was a tiny bit soft but not by much. It could have been the pictures to start with anyways but it was still an impressive scan. I then scanned a colored flyer and noticed it was sharper. But that could have been the difference between a photograph picture and a flyer with blocky letters.  Naturally, it seems that a document with hard edges will appear sharper in contrast to a picture with more organic and softer lines. Either way, both provided a substantial clear and proper scan.

One thing I found helpful was the fact that you can open the ScanSnap in case of a paper jam or to clean the camera and rollers since it can accumulate dust and debris over time.

So if you are looking for  an ultra portable scanner that can fit in tight spaces, save images to a searchable PDF file, and can scan at high speeds and can than look to the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100. You’ll find that using this scanner is a pleasant delight that takes little room and scans documents with a speedy quickness.

The ScanSnap comes with a DVD (driver and softwares),  USB cable, manual, and EZ set-up guide.  It is both Mac and PC compatible.

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear, Laptops and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Cloud, Copier, Evernote, Fujitsu, Mobile, PDF, portable, Scanner, USB

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 Portable Color Scanner Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 23, 2011 at 10:30 am.

Pogoplug has added a new version of the Pogoplug, available today. We have covered the Pogoplug updates in the past as they added printer support and a wireless adaptor, and added the Pogoplug Biz. This appears to update and replace the Pogoplug, with the following features:

• Built-in wireless capabilities
• All-Black
• Same $99 retail place as the Pogoplug

I recently bought a pogoplug, and will post a review soon. I liked it so much, I’ve already bought a second. I think the built-in wireless is a great add, and I couldn’t stand the pink, so I am a fan of the all black design.

Full text of the press release after the jump

Pogoplug Unveils Latest Version of Award-Winning Product Pogoplug Pro is Available in Best Buy Stores Today

San Francisco, CA, October 11, 2010 – Cloud Engines, Inc, today announced Pogoplug Pro, the latest version of the company’s award-winning multimedia sharing device. The Pogoplug Pro delivers even more flexibility to store, access, and share personal content from anywhere on the Internet.
Pogoplug allows users to easily and securely access, share, and stream their personal content from anywhere, without uploading.  Content remains safely on USB hard drives connected to the Pogoplug device in their home or office, and is available from any Internet enabled device, including apps for the iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry, and Palm.

“Pogoplug is a great option for those who want to quickly and securely share personal files over the Internet,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis at The NPD Group.
The Pogoplug Pro includes all of the popular features of the second generation Pogoplug, including the ability to connect up to four USB drives and to print from any mobile device. In addition, Pogoplug Pro adds built-in wireless connectivity.  Owners can place the device anywhere in their home without having to physically connect it to their router.

Pogoplug Pro is available today in Best Buy stores and online for $99 (MSRP).

About Best Buy

With operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, China, Mexico and Turkey, Best Buy is a multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products and services with a commitment to growth and innovation. The Best Buy family of brands and partnerships collectively generates more than $49 billion in annual revenue. Approximately 180,000 employees apply their talents to help bring the benefits of these brands to life for customers through retail locations, multiple call centers and Web sites, in-home solutions, product delivery and activities in our communities. For more information about Best Buy, visit www.bestbuy.com.

About Pogoplug Pro

The Pogoplug is a device that connects up to 4 external hard drives to the Internet wirelessly. It is designed for consumers who have an external hard drive and have high speed Internet. Consumers can securely access and share all of their content [Files, Photos, and Video] from any Web browser or enabled mobile device with no additional monthly fees.

About Cloud engines, Inc.
Founded in 2007 by experienced entrepreneurs from the digital media and security industries, Cloud Engines is located in San Francisco, California. The company was formed with a mission to change the way personal content is stored and distributed over the Internet. The Cloud Engines philosophy is that by making a product simple, open and affordable, the community will participate in making it better. For more information, please visit, www.cloudengines.com and www.pogoplug.com

Filed in categories: Gear, News

Tagged: Cloud, pogoplug, Storage, Wireless

Pogoplug Pro Available originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 11, 2010 at 12:01 pm.

Pogoplug is taking pre-order for the Pogoplug Biz. This is a newer, more expensive version of the Pogoplug Janet posted about earlier. They announced the new product on their Blog back at the end of July.

The basic Pogoplug is $99, the Pogoplug Biz will be $299. There are no fees for using the service, and you can connect multiple USB drives to them.

Besides going business black instead of the old hot pink, the new Biz features include (from their post):

• Usage Statistics and Auditing: quickly access a summary of how many times a file or folder has been viewed, streamed or downloaded. Keep track of the number of views, streams, and downloads.
• Customization: customize the look and feel of the Pogoplug interface, including the color, logo, domain name and background image. Customize the look and feel of emails that are sent when you share files.
• Custom Email Addresses: claim your own custom email addresses and let your clients email files to your Pogoplug. Create an unlimited number of custom upload folders and give them each a unique email address to share with your clients.
• Cloud/Mobile Printing: print from any mobile device, including the iPhone and iPad. Print to any printer connected to Pogoplug, from anywhere.
• Web View-Only Sharing: share viewable files over the web while preventing them from being downloaded. Web View is perfect for creative professionals and photographers who want to show clients previews of work but not allow them to download the files.
• Multiple Users: allows an administrator to set access levels and storage quotas for individual users.
• Remote backup: continuously mirror all or part of your Pogoplug storage to a second Pogoplug in a remote location.

It’s an intriguing product. As an independent consultant, I am attracted to the ability to customize the look and feel, user management options and other tools that would allow me to share data securely with multiple clients. As my extended family’s unofficial tech consultant, the ability to mirror to Pogoplugs in multiple locations is interesting as well.

Filed in categories: Gear, Miscellaneous

Tagged: Cloud, Storage

Pogoplug enhanced with a Biz Version originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 26, 2010 at 3:45 pm.

This is the last post about the Motorola Droid before I post my final review. I want to spend some time in the post to discuss the Android OS and it’s relationship to the cloud.

Based on some of the comments I received, I think it would be helpful to explain some of the philosophy behind the OS that makes it a little different than other Smartphones. I think it is helpful to understand this to make sense of the capabilities and limitations of this phone.

To understand Android, you need to understand the philosophy behind Android. They wanted to create on open platform for smartphones to access the web. They developed the OS around the Internet, not a desktop OS.

Windows Mobile was designed as an extension of the Windows Operating system. Certainly the ability of accessing Exchange on a mobile network is important, but the ActiveSync software was also designed to synchronize files between your Windows PC and your phone. Same with the iPhone. It is an extension of Mac OS. You use iTunes to synchronize your music, your apps and other things on your Mac PC like pictures and contacts. In marketing you would call this a brand extension.

Android started from scratch. Android ignores your PC. It’s all about your data in the big puffy white cloud. Don’t get me wrong, this is another brand extension; it is just extending from the Internet. Also there are certainly programs that will allow you sync to your PC (Mac/Win/Linux) but they are third-party apps mostly, and not central to Android.

I think a great example of this is the very helpful application Google Calendar Sync. It was created by Google to synchronize your Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar. I have used this the last year to keep my Google calendar (that I access from my G1) synced with my Exchange calendar. It works wonderfully, but here is the thing. It doesn’t sync your calendar on your PC to the Phone, it syncs it to your Google Calendar out on the cloud which then syncs to your phone. It’s a difference of focus.

One of the exciting things about the Motorola Droid is its out-of-box ability to access my Exchange mail, calendar and contacts. It is one of the core new features that attracts me. I need no PC to get my information, the Droid can go right to the source.

Here is the weakness of this approach. You can only access the information that Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync provides you. In the post Day 1: Verizon’s Droid and Account Maintenance the issue of syncing your Outlook Notes came up. In the comments Dave Lister helped us all out by sharing a link to the Overview of Exchange ActiveSync on Microsoft’s TechNet. The key note is this:

Exchange ActiveSync can synchronize e-mail messages, calendar items, contacts, and tasks. You cannot use Exchange ActiveSync to synchronize notes in Microsoft Outlook.

I am pretty sure there will be third-party applications to fill this hole. A quick google search yielded mark/space’s Missing Sync for Android. It is not out yet, and lists Notes sync as coming later in the year. I assume this will “tether” your phone to a PC, but if you need those features, the option will be there.

This is where I will apply what I have asserted as Android’s philosophy and make the prediction that there will be no PC-based solution from Android. If ActiveSync adds the ability to sync notes, I would assume that it would find it’s way into the OS, but I noticed that they do not include Tasks, so who knows.

My point is that you need to know what you are buying with the Android. You are getting an extension to the Internet, not an extension to your PC. I like this philosophy, it is a powerful paradigm shift in my opinion, but it is not without its shortcomings.

This philosophy really pays off when your moving phones. I was stunned how easy it was to set up a new phone. The new phone automatically had my e-mail and contacts when I logged in with my Gmail account.

I would love to hear some folks chime in on this. I look forward to the discussion. Next Motorola Droid post will close the series and give you my final review. Thanks to everyone who contributed comments; your comments were very valuable to me, and hopefully to other readers.

Filed in categories: Android related

Tagged: Android, Cloud, verizon

Android: Living on a Cloud originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 5, 2009 at 8:00 am.

At the beginning of this year I began my journey into cloud computing by moving my server based IMAP gadgeteer email to Gmail for domains. The process was relatively painless and it left me asking myself why the heck I hadn’t done it sooner. My favorite features have been the awesome spam filtering, searching and labeling.

Not long after I converted my email, I did the same thing with my calendar and contacts. I exported the data out of iCal and the Mac Address Book apps and imported them into Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts. Again, the process was painless. Yay! The next logical step for me was to discontinue syncing whichever phone I happened to be using with my desktop PIM apps. Syncing my Mac based PIM data with Windows Mobile and Palm phones had been a thorn in my side for years, but I found a solution and its name is Google Sync.

Over the years I’ve tried several different syncing applications such as MissingSync from MarkSpace, PocketMac, Sugar Sync, and others. MissingSync worked the best for me out of the ones I’ve mentioned, but buying a 3rd party program to sync PIM data to my phone was always some what of a hassle. Especially when I use so many different phones. Most of these syncing applications are not free and require a different version for each platform, like iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, etc. For those reasons, I was so happy to discover Google Sync.

Google Sync is compatible with a wide variety of smart phones and I’ve personally used it with my first generation iPhone, Nokia N85, Pantech Matrix Pro and now the iPhone 3GS.

Setup on the iPhone is really simple. You just go into the settings for Mail, Contacts and Calendars and tap the Add Account option.

Then you click the Microsoft Exchange option. It’s kind of funny if you think about it… I’m using a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol to sync Google PIM data to my Apple iPhone

All you do next is fill in the email address you use for your Google account (as you can see here, mine is the-gadgeteer.com since I’m using google for domains), along with the password and the server of m.google.com. That’s pretty much it.

You can decide if you want to sync both contacts and calendar data. Just be aware that the first time you sync your phone, all the PIM data will be deleted and the data from Google will take its place in the built-in phone applications. But, after the initial sync, any changes you make on the phone or through Google will update on both. Syncing is done automatically in the background. The syncing happens pretty quickly too. I just did a test where I changed the picture for one of my contacts. I then went to Google through my browser on my iMac and checked for the update. It wasn’t there, so I refreshed and tried again and boom there it was, less than 5 minutes later. Going the opposite direction is even faster. I updated an image on Google and when I looked on my iPhone, it was already there. Nice!

At this time, Google Sync is missing a few features though. For example, Tasks aren’t part of the data that is synced from Google and Contacts doesn’t support contact groups. But so far, those are the only features that I’ve noticed. All in all, I’ve been really happy syncing with the cloud. It’s free, it’s easy and it’s automatic. It also seems to be the way that newer phones like the Android G1 and Palm Pre are going. Both of these phones only sync with online services (Google). So, unlike the length of time that it took me to move over to Gmail, this time I”m actually ahead of the curve

Filed in categories: iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: Cloud, iPhone, Syncing

Who needs a desktop PC – Sync your phone with Google originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 20, 2009 at 8:41 am.

Yay, my favorite cloud app is getting some new features. I just read on the Gmail blog that instead of having a collapsible label list, that labels are now moving under the Inbox. Don’t worry though, you can hide the labels you don’t use that often. Which is great if you’re like me and have 100′s of labels. We’re also now able to color code labels and drag and drop messages from the message list pane to the folder (I mean label…) name under the Inbox. Now if only we had the ability to rearrange the message list order in the inbox… I’m never satisfied am I?

I don’t have this new Gmail feature yet, do you?

Filed in categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Cloud, Gear Diary, Gmail

Gmail labels are now more like folders originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 1, 2009 at 12:55 pm.