Archives: Lifestyle
Rdio App For iPad Awaits Approval
Rdio, which is a music subscription service, is all set to release an app for iPad very soon. They have submitted their big screen friendly app to Apple for the very crucial approval from Apple. Rdio says that it will soon add an app for iPad to its platform including web, Mac, window clients. The news has leaked about the existence of the app but Rdio doesn’t know when the app will be officially available and users will be able download it. Like all other Rdio app this app is also full of the Rdio features like: social aspects, offline caching, charts, playlists, recommendations, radio stations, etc. Once the user subscribes for Rdio unlimited for $9.99 per month, they will get access to 9 million songs on the iPad.
After exclusive hands-on on the new app the impressions formed about it are:
- Except for one or two crash experienced in the initial log-in process, the app is stable
- When you move from music navigation to screen to the playback screen, the Rdio app puts the art of the album front and centre. The album art is high resolution and is a beautiful experience while you are jamming.
- The interface is very intuitive. No learning curves are required in using this app.
- The interface has a gun metal look and the things are laid out in a very easy and accessible way.
There are a number of on demand contenders. Among them Rdio is one of the few who have developed an app for the iPad.
Google gets going with Disco and Pool party!
It has been more than 3 months, since Disco, the group messaging app was made by the Slide team within Google. It is , although, quite surprising how google still has not talked about it. In the hoopla of Google Plus, Disco is not getting its share of limelight! Nonetheless, work still continues Now we have version 3 of the app! And it is just getting better!
Disco was updated to version 2.0 about a month ago, with Push Notifications. And now it brings a range of alot of new features. The major one is photo sharing, This feature is now a must-have for all group messaging apps. You can also chat 1-to-1, now. But the most important additions being done are that Slide/Google is trying hard to differentiate Disco from the rest of the apps. Google has made an amalgamation of Twitter and Yelp!
And this gives it altogether, interesting features . Using the new “Star” commands, you can choose to follow any Twitter feed within a Disco group and see all the updates from that account within the app. You can also call up Yelp recommendations and reviews right from within the app with the new feature . And then, you can also create a poll for everyone in the group using the Star options.
Disco also has this nice little bonus for it users and non users. If your friends are not yet using Disco, you can still network with them via SMS within the app. And the app will allow you to do this with up to five friends and this will be absolutely free of charge to you.
The team has also been working on other apps. Pool party, is one such app. It is a group picture sharing app. It is good and if the two apps, were combined by the team it could become quite an exquisite app.
Lets see how these apps do, with competition coming from Google plus. It really does seem Google would hit the jackpot, this time! You can download the app here!
Now you can Track your LinkedIn Connection’s Career Move
LinkedIn has passed Myspace and has become the second largest social network in the US. Since it went public in May the traffic to LinkedIn soared high and reached the peak in June with 33.9 million unique visitors. To use this growth of the professional social networking to advantage Roger Lee (cofounder of PaperG) has built a new service called Job Change Notifier.
As the name suggests the service lets you know when any of your LinkedIn contact changes job. One can keep a track on people of their interest and know when they resign or get fired or hired. You can know when one of your colleagues gets promoted or when one of your connections joins your competitor. Roger employed LinkedIn’s API to develop the service but the service is in no way affiliated to LinkedIn. After the launch of the new service many of the LinkedIn employees contacted Roger and showed their interest in the service.
The set up is very easy. To start with this new service you just need to enter your email address, choose your LinkedIn connections whom you wish to track, and in a jiffy you will be all set to track your targets career moves. It has been only a few days since the Job Change Notifier was launched but it is already tracking about 300,000 profiles and huge numbers of profiles are being added every day. Currently the notifications are available only via mails but Lee says that as the traffic increases more channels more notification might be added. Lees says he has already received offers from LinkedIn to work with them but he has no intentions to leave PaperG. The site has already gained popularity among all strata of professionals, like, startups, sales and biz dev executives, recruiters, and, unsurprisingly, LinkedIn employees.
Flingo to Merge Television and Web into one Platform
Flingo was founded by Ashwin Navin and David Harrison, the former BitTorrent employees in the year 2008 and is now sailing up high to build up a smart TV app that will lead to some great partnerships. Co-founder unveils the idea of merging Flingo to the IntoNow for the television sets at your homes but there is a lot more technology hidden there which we can’t wait to see that will enable its users to have better engagement between their televisions and the web. New Smart TV is a streaming box or a Flingo enabled BlueRay player which is an only thing one needs to have Flingo on his television set. This technology have been under steady work since two years and there are about half of the television sets of the country that have Flingo in them.
Companies like LG, Samsung, Western Digital and Vizio Insignia are all on the charts for Flingo to set it on their TV hardware which means big! The road ultimately goes for merging TV and web which also opens opportunities for media partners like Showtimes, Etsy ad Fox to create apps that go well with this technology of integration. To better support larger TV set and monitors, various monitor stands and TV panel are set to ride on consumer market ! Apart from this, there is another features coming up for you which is Fling that will allow its users to push or fling the content from the browser to the TV screens and even mobile phones using Bookmarklet by Flingo.
The co founder, Ashwin Navin is pretty excited about the huge potential these new technologies have and wonders how much business they can get for them. The company is looking forward to some new developers and sponsors that could bring great revenue to the company’s account and raise the charts to new zeniths.
Play the Rock with your Acoustic Guitar
Have you heard a cowboy singing and playing plain music between the fields with a guitar in his hands! That is the instrument whose music fills up the valley and souls of everybody who passes by. An acoustic guitar is a simple type of guitar that uses acoustic (audio) methods only to project the sound created by the vibrations of the strings. Though it is just a guitar, it got “Acoustic” ahead its name after the advent of the electric guitars. The body of this type of guitar is hollow with a resonant cavity and the strings are fastened over it. As the strings vibrate, the sound is produced from both front and rear faces of the guitar. The sound travels and rebounds from within the cavity and what we hear is the complex blend of musical harmonics. For amplification of vibrations, magnetic pickups are escalated in the sound hole.
Electric Guitar: the Jazz Musician’s Beloved
Electric guitar converts the vibrations of the metallic strings to electrical audio signals using the principle of electromagnetic induction. The increasing demand by jazz musicians to amplify their music led to invention of electric guitar in 1931.Electric Guitar was first used in 1932 by a musician named Gage Brewer who performed on an electrically amplified Hawaiian guitar. After six years, in 1938, a jazz guitarist George Barnes made the first recording on a Spanish instrument having magnetic pick-ups. The Electronic guitar emerged as a popular instrument when 23 year old guitarist Charlie Christian united with Benny Goodman to play the sensational Gibson ES-150. The demand for electric guitar had grown in the big band era when orchestras were growing in size and guitars had to face tough competition with large brass sections. Nowadays these electric guitars are used as a rhythm guitar for providing progressions and beats or as a lead guitar which produces melodious notes.
Right String for your Guitar
Ascertaining the right string for your guitar can be a difficult task. Electric guitars make use of the steel strings in their G string. The electric strings can either be Nickel Plated, Pure Nickel or of Stainless Steel. Nickel Plated string is made of nickel plated wraps of steel surrounding a steel core. The steel has an advantage of a better pull therefore giving a larger volume in electronic terms, whereas steel is prevented from corrosion by making use of nickel. Nickel Plated strings are the most common electric strings. Pure Nickel strings are mainly consisted of steel core surrounded by nickel wraps. Pure nickel makes the string produce a softer tone and also gives lesser output in electronic terms. Pure nickel is said to give what is popularly called the “vintage sound”. Stainless steel has a decent volume in electronic terms. Although it lacks the smoothness which the touch of nickel gives since it is a hard material but by far this material is the brightest for electronic guitars.
You can change your guitar sound by simply changing guitar picks. Heavy picks (up to 2mm) thicken the sound and are thus preferred by guitarists. Thinner picks produce a brighter sound but with lesser depth. String gauge can affect you instrument’s tone, adjustments and playing capability. Larger the gauge more will be the tension on the instrument. Thus rendering larger volume and hence a focussed sound. Buzzing is decreased in high tension strings. Thus you should make the required adjustments to tweak your guitar as you like.
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