Tag: music
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Pi MusicBox
Pi MusicBox: Make Raspberry Pi stream — With Pi MusicBox, you can create a cheap (Sonos-like) standalone streaming music player for Spotify, Google Music, SoundCloud, Webradio, Podcasts and other music from the cloud. Or from your own collection from a device in your network. It won’t drain the battery of your phone when playing. The music won’t stop if you play a game on your phone.
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Taylor Swift on Apple Music
This is not about me. Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows. This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs. (Source: To Apple, Love Taylor)
Taylor Swift’s love letter to Apple Music’s free 3 month trial. Apple’s Eddy Cue responded to her letter, and Apple will change the policy on the trial period. Interesting.
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Inside Beats by Dre
What’s inside Beats by Dre? With $199 retail price, there must be something inside.
Lots of optimizations are to be expected in a product manufactured in the millions of units: snaps and glue are used for assembly rather than screws (which require lots of human manipulation) and almost every part is injection molded plastic (which is essentially free at high volumes). (Source: Medium: How It’s Made Series: Beats By Dre)
After I had my Nokia N9 early this month, I setup my Twitter account first — after some basic phone settings, of course. Everything worked. The application is probably not the best, but it works.
Is it problem-free app? I thought so, until I got a problem: I can’t connect to Twitter using this app. I was not sure when the problem occurred for the first time. I did played with my phone (installing apps, downloading musics, adjusting settings, and including working from the command line). When an update was available, I also upgraded.
Added later: I was not sure what caused this problem. When I signed-in for the first time, everything worked without any issues. I deleted my Twitter account from the app, and tried to add it again. I forgot when I did this for sure, before or after installing the firmware update. It was optional, but I decided to upgrade.
At first, I was not sure about the problem. Is it my phone, or the internet connection I was using. I switched to some different connections, but it didn’t solve my problem. When I tapped the “Sign In” button, it said: “Can’t connect to Twitter”.
So, I searched for a solution. And, I got one. It’s probably something too technical, but the instruction is easy to understand. According to the forum thread, here are some steps to fix the problem — I’m using Software Version: PR1.1 (20.2011.40-2_PR_005):
- Activate “Developer mode” by going to: Settings > Security > Developer mode. It’s OFF by default. Turn it ON.
- After having it activated, you will find a “Terminal” app button under application menu.
- Open it and you need to execute these commands (one command per line):
gconftool --recursive-unset /system/http_proxygconftool --recursive-unset /system/proxygconftool --recursive-unset /system/osso
You may close your Terminal.
Those commands will wipe your active connection settings (bluetooth and internet data). But, it’s not a problem as I can add/manage connection settings easily. Problem fixed. Great.
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My Nokia N9: Personal Review
I have been using Nokia N9 for about a week, and I would like to share a bit more about this phone. In my previous post, I posted about the unboxing photos. In short, I think this phone works for me and I’m comfortable with the features, speed, and more importantly to keep myself ‘connected’ to the internet world.
The design
When I opened the box, it was like love at the first sight. I got the black Nokia N9. I think Nokia N9 has a beautiful product design. Here’s why.
I have been using some Nokia phone in the last few years with various phone designs. My first Nokia phone was Nokia 3110. That’s right, that big phone. After that, I switched to Nokia 5510, Nokia 3230, Nokia N78, and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. I also tried Nokia E72 (with the QWERTY keyboard). The latest Nokia phone I have is Nokia N8 which I’m using right now.
Lots of phone companies put their efforts creating products that are not only about the technical aspects like hardware specifications, but also the design. “This [put the product name] is beautiful!” is a very common expression. And I think Nokia N9 got this expression.
Large screen is another features. Lots of phones has bigger screen these days. But still, people will use their hand to operate. I like phone with big screen, but not too big. I was not sure whether Nokia N9 has ‘big enough’ or ‘too big’ screen area. Can I hold and work with it only with my right hand? It’s taller than Nokia N9, and iPhone 4.
Can I reach whole screen area using my thumb? I can. For me, this is something important.
I look at the design, and I could not find any buttons at the front. I’ve heard that it’s all about ‘swipe’. The only buttons/keys are only on the right side: volume/zoom and power/lock keys. It took few minutes to explore how the swipes work. And, it’s not difficult at all. It’s easy. I will write about swiping on Nokia N9 later.
About the SIM card, I need to have the micro SIM card. There are two options: buying it from my desired provider, or make it by cutting the regular SIM card. I went with the second option.
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iTunes 10.5, iCloud, and iOS 5
I’m waiting for iOS 5! It should be arrived today and I can’t wait to download it. When I watched Apple Special Event (October 2011) last week, there were many information about iOS features that I want to have. It is said that there are more than 200 new features in this release.
From the video, you can see some icons there about the top features. It will have Notification Center, iMessage (chat between iOS users), Newsstand, Reminders, Twitter deep intergration, Camera improvement, Photos , Game Center, Safari, and also PC Free.
And, if you want get the most from the release, you should check your iTunes. The latest version of iTunes (Version 10.5) is already available now. It will also support iTunes in the Cloud.
What’s new?
- iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes now stores your music and TV purchases in iCloud and makes them available on your devices anywhere, any time, at no additional cost.
- Automatic Downloads. Purchase music from any device or computer and automatically download a copy to your Mac and iOS devices.
- Download Previous Purchases. Download your past music, TV, app, and book purchases again, at no additional cost. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer on the iTunes Store.
- Sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 5.
- Wi-Fi Syncing. Automatically sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes any time they’re both on the same Wi-Fi network.
I have been using Gravity for more than a year and so far, I find that this is the best Twitter client for Symbian. I have it installed on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and N8. Using Gravity, it’s easy to share photos directly to some photo sharing providers like Twitpic, yfrog, img.ly, or even Flickr. Sound good? Yes.
But, it’s only when your mobile internet provider works without any issues. Until today, I only use two mobile internet service: Telkomsel and XL Axiata. Using Telkomsel, I almost found no problems. Everything is working. Well, not 100% great, but it’s still acceptable. Right now, I use XL internet service. I just want to try its service. Both offer the similar price for its data plan. XL has more offers when purchasing the mobile internet package.
The problem is — again, this is related to Gravity application — everytime I upload a photo, I always got Error: HTTP 401. Telkomsel didn’t give this kind of error. So, is it an issue from XL’s side? Maybe.
Wikipedia says:
401 Unauthorized
Similar to 403 Forbidden, but specifically for use when authentication is possible but has failed or not yet been provided.The response must include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource. See Basic access authentication and Digest access authentication.
Not good.
When I tweeted this problem, my friend Andrayogi also shared a same experience. So far, I’m happy with the internet performance by XL. Yes, I have been using XL service for almost 10 years. And this is the first time I use its ‘unlimited’ data plan. If this problem remains unsolved, I think I will be switching back to Telkomsel.
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Nokia Funaholic Icon Search
Following Nokia Indonesia’s Eksismeter campaign, there is now Nokia Funaholic Icon Search. This is all about finding an icon for Nokia E5. This Funaholic Icon Search will find three real person that represents three characters: Antonio (the super exist), Daisy (the music lover) and Kareem (the super busy guy). The mechanism is similar with the previous campaign: it’s all about being online presence, and everyone can join.
Right now, there are nine icon candidates. Visitors (you!) can vote your favorite candidates and you can get a chance to win one of these gifts from Nokia Indonesia: Nokia C3, Nokia X5 and Nokia E5!
How those characters — if you’re also one of them — take advantages from Nokia E5 device? Let’s look at some cool features for them.
For those who want to get online everytime (connected to many social network services, chats, and also email), Nokia E5 offers features that work for this purposes:
- Messaging — Email is one of the important thing that people should have. Fromt this device, you can acess up to 10 personal email accounts. Does it only support Ovi Mail? No. You can check your Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. I have tried this, and I find it useful. I use the messaging office to check my office email, Yahoo! Mail, Google Apps for domain email, and also Gmail. Until today, I find nothing but good features. Ovi Mail offers 1 GB of storage, and I think it also offers a short and cool domain name.
- I want to chat also to make real time conversation with my friends. Using Nokia Messaging IM application, I can directly connect to some service like Yahoo! Messenger, and also Google Talk. And, to make the whole communication experience better, Nokia E5 also equipped with full QWERTY keyboard.
- Nokia E5 also supports 3G and Wi-Fi connection. Free Wi-Fi can be found easily here in Indonesia when going to the mall, coffee shop, and some other public places. Great deal!
- The home screen can be very useful because you can make access to your favorite menus. Also, you can also customize the home screen to create the a personal look that really “you”.
- Camera — The camera features are not disappointing I guess. You have 5 MP camera, digital zoom up to 3x and also LED flash. It should be suitable for on-the-go photography. Does it also support video recording? Yes, with .mp4 or .3gp file formats.
All Nokia E5 features can be found at Nokia E5 product info page.
Back to Nokia Funaholic Icon Search I mentioned above, you can get a chance to get this Nokia E5 only by giving your vote. Now, you can start voting and may the best win :D
The first thing I did after having Nokia N8 (product details in Bahasa Indonesia) in my hands last week was taking photos. I have been following this phone for months, and feel so lucky because I now have chance to try it myself. First impression: Love it! Nokia N8 offers a great improvements on its camera. Now, it has 12 MP camera, equipped with Carl Zeiss lens and also Xenon flash.
I like taking photos (go to Flickr photostream for photos), but since I live in Jakarta right now (and I didn’t bring my DSLR camera), this phone should be a good companion for me. Better quality photos (using phone camera) is one of the features offered besides entertainment, music, business-related features, and also video. For this post, I will write more about the word ‘photo’. Anyway, you can explore full specification and features by going to Nokia N8 product page (or, go to Nokia Indonesia for details in Bahasa Indonesia).
In the last few days, I took some pictures in some different condition (day light, night, low-light). I have to admit that I’m really impressed by the final results. Each photo has around 1 MB in size. If needed, I can adjust some settings like “Scene Mode” (Automatic, User defines, Close-up, Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night, and Night portrati), Color Tone (Normal, Sepia, Black and White, and Vivid), White Balance (Automatic, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, and Fluorescent), Light sensitivity, Contrast, Sharpness and also Exposure. But, the “Automatic” mode should just work when you only need to point and shoot.
After photos were taken, I can also make some basic editing actions like cropping, resizing, or color adjustment. Photo dimension taken using Nokia N8 is 4000×2248 pixels. For a landscape photo, it will not be a problem. But, when taking portrait photo I feel that it’s “too tall”.
Seeing is believing, right? So, here are some photos taken using my Nokia N8. All photos are displayed without any editing.
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Gambang Keromong
Gambang Kromong is the Chinese originated Indonesian music born in the suburbs of Jakarta. It is also one of Indonesia’s most vivid and off the wall musical styles. The music’s name comes from the instruments, the gambang (xylophone) and the kromong (gong) played together with various flutes, and rebab (violin).
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New wave 2009: Sandhy Sondoro
From myspace.com/sandhysondoro
Sandhy Sondoro, was born on the island of Java, Indonesia. Came from a musical family, where the house provide the likes of American pop, folk, Jazz and blues tunes coming from his Mother’s or father’s guitar everyday. Those were the joy that shaped his talents . It is not traditional Indonesian music that influenced him but rather soul and blues.
His first experience as a street musician was gained in Biberach on the Riss in Baden Wurttemberg in 1996. The international flair of Berlin attracted him and inspired him. In 1998 he moved back to Berlin and started his career as Sondoro singing and playing the guitar in bars, clubs and in the metro. His famous song Down on the streets was inspired by the experience gained in Berlins metro.
On April 25, 2008 he published his debut Album with the title “Why Dont We” his sophistication for love, peace, and harmony. The album was very well responded around central europe although distributed through indie networking.
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Capture and Share from Mobile Devices
Now, I want to introduce another Posterous-powered blog. This time, there are more than one author — well, only two anyway. It’s called Capture and Share. I created this blog as a place to put my — and Lala — mobile streams. All posts in this blog are created using mobile devices (Nokia N78 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic). But, not all of them are directly uploaded from the devices. Why? Well, we’re not using unlimited internet package for our devices. :)
Why Posterous? Because it just works. Sending photos, videos, screenshots from email is our option. And, Posterous handles this perfectly. Here are few things about the setup:
- We use custom domain feature. It’s mobile.orangescale.com
- Some theme modifications. Yes, we use custom theme, only adding few lines in the stylesheet
- Created this Posterous blog as/with Group Profile
Of course, I will not leave my own Posterous page. So, meet Capture and Share at http://mobile.orangescale.com.
Two days ago, I gave Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta a try on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This application will help Nokia users to keep update with the social media services — in this case Facebook and Twitter. Of course, it’s still in beta so I should not expect too much.
The installation process was easy and I didn’t have any problems. Everything was smooth. This early preview is available on the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5530, Nokia 5800, and the Nokia X6 devices. Go to messaging.nokia.com if you want to see applications from Nokia Messenging for your device.
After having this application installed, I used it right away. When running the application for the first time, I got this welcome screen:
I use Twitter more than Facebook. First, I use the Twitter feature. Here’s the login sreen:
Yesterday, on my way home to Jogja from Jakarta, my Nokia 5800 didn’t work at all. Last time I checked before boarding — it was in Soekarno Hatta airport — it worked without any issue. I just switched to “Offline” mode. Few minutes after that, I only had blank white screen with the Nokia logo. Something was wrong, and I decided to switch off my phone. I waited after I touched Jogjakarta.
When I was in the airport in Jogjakarta, I tried to switch it on hoping that it’s back to normal. It gave me the same error. Nothing I could do. Damn! When I got home, I tried to find the solution, and I used these solutions.
Your memory card is corrupted.
Firstly hard reset your device without inserting the memory card. And after hard resetting just insert back your memory card.
If still the problem persits just attach your device to your PC in Mass Storage mode and right click your memorycard and select properties and select tools and select check now..i.e. scan disk your memory card for errors… (source)
This is what I did:
- Switch off the phone and pull out the memory card.
- Switch on the phone without memory card. It’s back to normal now.
- Switch it off again and insert its memory card back, and turn it off.
- It’s working again.
I was worried that the only solution was formatting my memory card. At least, next time I get this kind of problem, I should know what I must try. Is there any other solution to solve this kind of error?