About a month and a half ago a friend turned me onto a music site that I had heard of before, but never visited called Lala.com.  The site offered a sort of music rental service where you paid money to have songs made available to you via the Lala website.  While I am not really interested in purchasing digital copies of music online, Lala offered another service that was completely fantastic.  Using an application that you downloaded from the site, Lala would scan the music files on your computer, match up the song files with songs in its database, and make those songs available to you via Lala.com!  Awesome!  Now it didn’t matter if I forgot to bring my iPod to work.  I could just login to Lala.com and bam! Music like magic.  I spread the word about Lala to friends of mine who I thought would appreciate having access to their home music libraries elsewhere.  The response was resoundingly positive and we were all so pleased until I checked my email May 1, 2010 and found this:

WHY???!??!?!?!? Weren’t we happy? Didn’t we still laugh? All this time you had been seeing Apple behind my back . . . treacherous snake of a Lala.com!

Well, no one was really sneaking around I suppose.  In December 2009 Apple purchased Lala.com, though it didn’t really give a solid reason why.  Apple did say that it was interested in Lala.com’s engineering talent and technology, though no further comments were made by either company regarding plans for the future.  Rumors circulated claiming that Apple was ready to pursue alternative methods of music delivery (a method other than downloading) or that it was looking to join the cloud-based services effort.  Both of those reasons seem . . . reasonable.

Truth be told, it was only a matter of time before Lala got the axe.  Other music streaming sites like Rhapsody and Napster offer less complicated, but essentially the same services, for a price.  Both Rhapsody and Napster offer monthly fee-based plans that provide the subscriber with unlimited access to a specific number of songs (in the millions) and also the opportunity to purchase authorized copies of songs they want for keepsies.  Users on Lala enjoyed access to their matched music collections without paying anything, which is a pretty good deal.  Lala also lets you listen to any album once.  I am listening to Casino Twilight Dogs by Youth Group for the first time right now, as I type this to you.  What a wonderful way to decide if an album is worth some dollars.  Let’s face it though, if I am going to put any money toward this record it’s either going to be through Amazon or at one of the few remaining record stores in my neighborhood, not renting it on Lala.  I guess that makes me part of the problem :-/

With or without Lala.com there still seems to be interest in streaming music.  In the AppStore there are several streaming music applications to choose from.  The Pandora app works just like Pandora.com, but there are other apps that stream directly from your computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch like StreamToMe (OSX only!) and Dot.Tunes which offers additional features like remote-control abilities.  While these applications focus primarily on mobile devices, they still have a personal-collection focus, which is what was initially attractive to me about Lala.com.

Regardless of what is available now, I am still interested in what the future holds for streaming music and media.  I think it’s fair to guess that Apple might adopt a similar plan to those of Rhapsody and Napster, except Apple has the iTunes element which could really make things interesting.  Would I pay $10 a month to have 9 million songs available to me online on Rhapsody?  Mostly likely not.  But how much would I pay each month to have Apple stream my iTunes library into the internets?

Living in the age of pervasive social-networking, I take a small amount of personal pride in still living a relatively detached life.  Sure, I’ve got a Facebook, I’ve got a Myspace (but who uses that anymore?), a LinkedIn, and a Tumblr, upon none of which I am particularly active.

I understand the appeal of social-networking sites and services.  It is fun to hop online and waste 5 hours reading every mundane thought that my friends post on Facebook.  But try as I might (and I do try), I just can’t seem to sink my teeth into it.  I miss the mystery that comes with catching up with an old friend.  It feels like these days there is less and less reason to ask someone what they’ve been up to or how their weekend was.  I already know.  I read about it on Facebook.

Going against almost everything I just said, I have taken to the iPhone/iPod app Foursquare with reckless abandon.  All the application does is broadcast your location to your Foursquare friends, your Twitter, your Facebook, or to no one if you like.  The purpose of the application is to let your friends know where you are, and serves as an implied invitation to come and join the fun!

The application is organized by city and uses GPS to identify your location in order to list “venues” nearby.  Once you find the listing for the venue you’re at, check-in!  Checking-in sends an alert to your Foursquare friends letting them know your location.  There is also a point system and badges to earn, which makes the application feel like a game.  Bonus!

The reason that I really enjoy Foursquare is that it ultimately works to facilitate face-to-face interaction.  Enjoying the company of friends in real-life is always better than hanging out online.

Does it feel a little bit like stalking? Yes.  Knowing when and where my friends go for their morning coffee is a strange topic for an alert.  You take the boring with the fun though.  Those same coffee-loving friends check into more exciting places, too.

Because it seems I don’t have a choice about being in constant contact with my friends and family, I have decided to at least adopt a method of connectivity that leads me to their presence, rather than their persona.

As a full time student and a part-time gapper, I find sometimes that I get TIRED. As a means of keeping my brain up and running into the wee hours of the morn I (probably against the advice of my doctor) consume copious amounts of delicious coffee when my school/work schedule demands it. 

Here at gap intelligence we have a small, but growing number of coffee drinkers.  With the somewhat recent addition of Josh and Erin, we have two new members of the G-telligence Coffee Brethren, worshiping our 12-cup maker of goodness.  People keep late hours here. 

It was however recently brought to my attention that some people are not as lucky as we, and do not have caffeine-juice at their finger tips all the time at work.  My roommate is forced to drink instant coffee *gasp* made from the newly purchased hot water dispenser at the retail store she works at.  She uses the new Starbucks Via instant coffee, which I have not tried but has been reviewed as “Alright” by people I know.  In an even more desperate grasp for a liquid reminiscent of coffee, my boyfriend, at his coffee-apathetic office, tried combining Via with a Diedrich Coffee Pod.  He claims the combination  is <i>drinkable</i> but is it enjoyable?  I have no reason to ever find out for myself.  To my dear friends I offer but one word: Melitta.

Now with the popularity of energy drinks though, people can enjoy an expanded variety of energy-upping beverages to choose from if they dislike the taste of coffee.  I was pointed in the direction of the Energy Drink Museum  and was blown away at the recognition of over 1100 different types of energy drinks!  What selection!

Of course there are other ways to treat sleepiness . . . like driving with the windows down while playing loud music (Just kidding, DMV!), or actually sleeping, but that report isn’t going to write itself.  Whether you’re drinking coffee for its caffeine component or simply for its delicious qualities, raise your mugs high and let it be known, Coffee! I love you!

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Nicholas Nickleby movie Today while scrolling through an extremely back-logged Digg Technology feed in my Google Reader, I saw an article about a seller on Etsy.com who makes bars of soap in the shape of the Palm Pre.

I had trouble keeping my laughter at a respectable level.

For those of you who don’t know, Etsy is kind of like Ebay, except that the items sold on the online auction site are handmade by the sellers. The article that pointed out the phone-shaped bar of soap noted that the seller also made iPhone and Blackberry shaped soaps.

So, naturally, this got me thinking about my cell phone and everyone else’s cell phone and all the ways that they have worked themselves into daily life.  As I continued through my Reader, I eventually, I came to the conclusion that despite the inevitable servitude that comes with having a cell phone, I can’t help but thank my lucky stars for being granted such a kind and generous master (a Samsung SGH-A737).

To fully express my appreciation for cell phones, I have written a series of poems:

-I don’t know what format these are-

Samsung call my mother quick
The rain is coming, my car is sick
I cannot walk the way so long
Please answer, hear your Sony’s song

Mine is green and yours is orange
We are sisters! We love porridge!
Text me if you’re feeling blue
I’ll send a puppy pic to you

-Haiku-

Cell phone you I love
Carry me through daily life
Keep you safe and dry

-Sonnet-

What time is it should peaceful silence break?
A light is shone in darkness so serene
The morning calls, alarmed now in my wake
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, in its screen
And for the day my pocket you shall ride
To sound a tone when by my mother called
Text messages in class received I hide
Dropped in the toilet to the stars I bawled
To live without you, pain I could not bear
Lost are photos, ringtones, contact info
Return my treasure else a frown to wear
Quickly fix, don’t forget texting argot
Back to the store, I swap you out for free
I am no fool, I bought the warranty

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Honestly, how long is this presentation going to last?

This is the sentiment conjured when I hear the word “projector.”  Sitting in a community college (required) public speaking class listening to my fellow pupils stumble through their powerpoint about the virtues of the kettle drum or why I should only buy organic fruits and vegetables.  Not the most exciting of settings, and unfortunately, the projector is at its epicenter.

All that has changed.

I have experienced The Home Video Projector Scenario!  I recently acquired a used projector, for the purpose of home movie watching.  While the rest of my home lacks the wall space required for the viewing of a large image, my trapezoid shaped room turned out to be a remarkably fitting venue for such an activity. There were a few hurdles, however.

First, I needed a high, stable place to set the projector and adjust its angle (which happened to be right next to the best seats in the house, er, room).  Such a location called for the (somewhat precarious) stacking of a moving box and a few textbooks. Second: Audio.  I played the movie through a laptop hooked up to the projector, but the laptop speakers were not loud enough to overpower the whirring of the projector.  To solve this problem I plugged the laptop into my guitar amp and viola! Essentially a giant television in my teeny tiny room!

Now, in real life, there is a more organized way to construct such a set up. On eHow.com there are a number of tutorials regarding the best way to set up your projector-home theater system and NONE of them involve old moving boxes, calculus books, or guitar amps.  The point though, is that it was as

easy as plugging in a second monitor to your computer (easy, right?), but way more awesome because when the movie ended I put the projector back in its bubble wrap and tucked it away on a bookshelf.

A projector may not be the answer to replacing home televisions.  One must consider that the room has to be sufficiently dark to see the image well, which wouldn’t do for Saturday morning cartoons or Days of Our Lives.  However, projectors certainly ARE the answer to super-summer-nighttime-outdoor-movie-watching-fun, which is exactly the future lined up for the cute little ViewSonic parrots printed on the front of the projector on my bookcase.  I hope they like The Running Man . . .

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