I had a blast during my stay in the states, visiting various places and seeing sights that are hardly available in Toronto. Plus, the Winter was much milder, making the trip that much better. Unfortunately, that meant having hardly anytime to use all those services that piqued my Canadian interests! Luckily, this evening I had a chance to take a quick look at Pandora – which I must admit, is very similar to Last.fm. Thank goodness that’s still available to us.

Pandora loads very quickly, and it guides you through the whole experience very closely. The only difference between Pandora and Last.fm so far as I can see is that Last.fm needs to be downloaded onto the computer to enjoy the total experience, whereas Pandora is fine just on the internet. Basically, all you need to do is input a beloved artist and out comes the results – some new music to explore, as well as probably some of your old favourites.

Pandora’s GUI is great! It’s very user-friendly and it’s a lot more flexible than Last.fm – no need to register, no need to download the client. I’m sure that if I registered, a lot more features would have been available to me; sadly, I don’t think it’d be very realistic to sign up for a service I’m going to lose access to by tomorrow.

Being the picky listener I am, I already found one thing to whine about – the skipping limit! It was a real pain in the behind to know that I wan’t allowed to skip as many songs as I wanted to, due to some “restrictions”. Last.fm actually didn’t have this problem last time I checked. I realized I had used my quota and I gave up Pandora that instant. Might’ve been a hasty decision, but I didn’t have much of a choice anyway – I’m leaving for Canada tomorrow.

It’s probably a bit overrated by Canadians, as Pandora isn’t really that much better to use than Last.fm – in fact, they’re arguably at around the same calibur I daresay. However, I must also emphasize that I haven’t used Pandora to it’s potential yet and this is just a very quick judgment – I can be proven wrong, but it’s just a bummer to realize how restricted it is to an unregistered user. I’m still glad I had this eye-opening experience though – looks like we still can survive without Pandora. And we might have to for a while, because the RIAA hasn’t invaded Canada yet.

For the past demi-year, Hulu has been officially open as a beta to consumers. But as part of the Canadian public, I’ve lacked the opportunity to try such a service as it was unfortunately unavailable in my region at this time. Either way, I’ve finally arrived south of the border, and I’m dying to try this service out. Luckily, I was able to access the service – if I weren’t, I might’ve died.

Hulu has a wide variety of shows, which all seem to appeal to me. They are all hits on TV, and they are all widely available on the internet – something that Hulu is trying to discourage by officially offering a medium to watch such shows. However, I must object – when you are trying to discourage piracy, please try to include the rest of the world – just something to take into consideration.

A spectrum of features are made available – in fact, something to the most minute detail like changing the background colour is available for the comfort of your eyes. The overall GUI is pretty and goes well with the whole glass look of the new Web, as well as Vista. They also go so far as to offer summaries and user opinions of the shows they offer.

The most important feature of a video site has to be the playback – which I must admit, disappointed me a bit. I must mention that I am using wi-fi, so I might not be getting as strong a signal as I could be, but I still think that streaming a video should be much smoother. I had to wait a while for the video to load, as it was quite choppy at first. Also, it’s resolution isn’t as nice as something like Veoh’s, so I think it wasn’t really worth the hype. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still above Youtube par, but I was certainly expecting more.

Hulu looks very promising at the moment, and if it progresses then it should be a feasible alternative to piracy. However, I’m begging Hulu creators to please make the service more widely available, and to make the videos load faster as well as in higher quality. If you’re still in Canada right now, then you’re really missing out.

Paramount is about to make internet and movie history with a move that ordinary consumers like us would never have considered. I’m sure that the ability to stream movies on the internet is no news to you – either through legitimate means or shadier sites such as the notorious Peekvid. However, have you been able to watch a movie premier online, officially? I would think not – something like this has never actually been done. The movie to remedy this is Jackass, and you might think of me as one for bearing such bizarre news.

Jackass 2.5 is basically a collection of clips featuring arguably hilarious attempts at ridiculous (did I mention hilarious?) stunts – somewhat similar to an ordinary episode of Jackass. Thus, we can also safely assume that the budget would be somewhat similar to the production of an ordinary episode (make that three) of the show. A perfect candidate to test out how well this method of distribution works (due to its low budget, in case you didn’t get the hint).

To mark such an occasion, Paramount is offering – dig this – two weeks of free streaming of Jackass 2.5. After the two weeks, the movie will be available for download through Amazon and iTunes and made available in a variety of other formats, I would assume.  Um, as for how they will be able to stream such a volume of video at high quality, I’m left out of the loop.  And as for the funds, I’m guessing there will be a couple (hopefully just a couple) of advertising banners on the actual window where the video will be located.  And…commercials will be a definite turnoff.

After taking step back, I realized how huge a move this is for the entire industry – it could signify the coming of one of two sad realities: one – movies will never be successful if they are directly released to the internet, or two being cinemas and theatres will be made obsolete by the success of such a new medium.  I like the new convenience, but I’m hoping that cinemas will be able to survive such a migration (if one is made), as they’ve been taking hits over the few years with the increase in piracy, price increases, and whatnot.

The future of the world as we know it is at stake here – pretty literally.  The decision could change our lives forever.  Will movies be able to be released in high quality to the internet, or will the cinemas still be the way to go?  Discover the outcome after the premiere of Jackass 2.5.

Looks like a strong Canadian dollar is finally making it’s mark.  Talks of outrageous prices have finally been heard by the retailers, and although it took a few weeks to stabilize, there is certainly a price drop.  This doesn’t happen to affect all goods and services yet, but it’s affected a very important good that’s near and dear to our hearts.  I’m talking about video games.  I received a phone call from a friend of mine yesterday alerting me of this piece of news.  Great news for the Wii and the pocket.

Seems obvious to start off with a chart-topper, so as this report from National Post mentions, Wal-Mart started it’s new system with the highly anticipated Halo 3.  Apparently, Wal-Mart’s also been able to use the strong dollar to “Rollback” a lot of its prices – alas, I’m not running a business blog (yet), so we’ll have to move on.  Actually, there’s not much to be said.

With price parity, games will only become more demanded.  However, I hope the dollar really stabilizes enough to make this pricing more of a permanent feature as opposed to a seemingly temporary one.  And why aren’t those prices on iPods dropping yet? 

So ya heard of the iTunes Plus price cut, right? In case you didn’t, Apple announced that iTunes Plus prices would be dropping from its previously outrageous $1.39 to a more reasonable $0.99 (probably due to upcoming competition from both Amazon and the coalition of record companies). Initially, I was quite joyous that this announcement was made, but I was curious to know if it applied only to the United States. Even with the Canadian dollar being so strong, sometimes I just can’t figure these things out.

Interestingly enough, I was not able to access iTunes Plus store for the last couple of days (as soon as I heard the announcement actually, I tried, but was unable to connect). So when I finally got to connect today, I was eager to see whether the price hikes were applied to Canada too. To my delight, the costs were actually lowered by $0.40, making iTunes Plus prices equivalent to those of regular DRM-protected iTunes.

To be honest, I was expecting this for a while – even though iTunes Plus had DRM-free music, it just didn’t provide enough incentive nor selection to make the transition smooth. Not that the transition’s smooth – it still costs $0.40 to upgrade a song from DRM-protected to iTunes Plus – which intrigues me. Nonetheless, I’m still happy as a customer that this has happened. I love competition!

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, I’m pretty sure you’ll know what Joost is. In case you have been hiding under those rocks, Joost is a piece of software intended to bring the television to the computer via P2P networks. So the words “television” and “computer” perked your ears and you’re keen to learn more, right? Great, because you can download the program right after this (it was previously invitation-only).

What I first noticed was its change in navigation. Moving from the boring old list to the more graphic-oriented TV-like guide, I was definitely impressed. However, I’m not sure if this was the reason why my computer lagged – it was literally hell and it took me a couple of hours to get where I wanted. I’m not sure if it’s the major demand for Joost that’s burdening the networks, or if it’s just my computer (which was and still is running fine at the moment – lots of “not responding” dialogs when it came to Joost though). Also, the new organization allows for your personal selection of how much results you want to display (reminiscient of Live search).

There’s a much wider variety of shows and you now have the opportunity to create your own channel and choose the shows you want to watch – which didn’t really work for me as I never got that far (again with the “not responding”). Joost’s playback was pretty seamless when my mouse was idle – in fact, I think it was better than the prior versions of Joost.

Last but not least, the graphics changed! The icon still sports the “multicolour” feel, but it’s much more organized and contained within the television (download it and you’ll see what I mean – I know, I sound like a madman, right?).

Joost’s revision looks great, but its performance is definitely not up to par (at least not on my computer – Core 2 Duo with two gigs of ram, basically a well-oiled machine). Perhaps it’s just the initial rush that’s putting the networks to their limits, but I’m hoping that the kinks get worked out. Fast. So I can go back to watching Kanye West vs. 50 Cent (a bit old, I know).

You can download Joost here: http://www.joost.com/download/

Don’t have a digital audio player? Want to share your music? Just recorded your garage band’s new single and want to get it out to the world? Look no further – Imeem would be of perfect service.

Imeem’s also got a pretty decent-looking interface – mainly flash-based, it’s very animated and has graphics that are very aesthetically satisfying. There are various premade themes to choose from, and even more HTML coded themes that you can copy and paste from its users.

Imeem is another one of those social music networks – albeit one of the more convenient social music networks. Unlike Last.fm, Imeem allows its users to upload their own songs – if the artists allow it to be broadcasted it will be made available at full-length. Otherwise, it’s just a thirty-second preview (a decent sacrifice for a greater good).

This means you can add the track someone else uploaded to your own playlist, and then you can have access to your playlist wherever you can get on the internet.

A last but certainly not least feature is its music discovery ability – want to listen to that song you just heard on the radio? Just type it into the search bar – usually, it’ll be available (if not in full-length, then you’ll get a preview).

Imeem’s certainly something that I value using, as I don’t have to suck out my iPod’s batteries while still being able to enjoy my music. And it’s GUI isn’t even half bad (well I guess nothing can succeed with a lame GUI, but still).

Sorry, but it took a while to get these pictures. I had no camera with me, sadly.

Big news! You don’t need iTunes to upload songs to your iPod anymore; you can do it straight from My Computer with your iPod as a removable disc!

The song list – yeah, I got Graduation.

The Gameboy capabilities built-in to the firmware – which means any .gb or .gbc ROMs you have are playable! Mind you, the only legal way you can have them on your computer or iPod is if you have the real game. I’ve got both Pokemon Red and Silver – and I’ve got the cartridges to back that statement up with!

Now that I have your attention, I’d like to tell you about practically the only true legal way to get free music.

Wait a minute, how is this possible? If they’re not making money from selling the songs, then how will the green giant (I’m referring to the site’s colours, haha) be able to pay the artists and labels for the music?

Through advertising, of course! There are various ads placed around the site, and all you have to do is surf around while your song downloads through their download manager (more on this later in the article). The revenue made from the advertisements then go to the artists and recording labels – and that is basically how Spiral Frog works in a nutshell.

Of course, there is much more to it – you are required to renew your account every thirty days (around once a month). Renewing is an easy process – answer a few questions (a survey of around three short pages) and you’re practically done. Why the surveying? Well, due to the importance of the advertising, they have to choose and target the audiences carefully. The questions are straight-forward and are strictly opinion-based, so no worries. It’s not an IQ-test or anything.

The only cons I see; first, the songs don’t work with the IPOD. Now this is horrible news for around half the population; seeing as how the iPod is the most commercially-successful digital audio player, the majority of the users of digital audio players will not be able to listen to the Spiral Frog songs (which are in .wma format). Secondly, the jailing DRM – the song can only be downloaded once on a pc and put onto two digital audio players. And the DRM expires after sixty days, so the file won’t work if you don’t renew your account after sixty days. Horrible. But hey, you’re getting your money’s worth.

Bad news for the audiophiles; the files are encoded at 128kbps. Not the greatest quality – but comparable to iTunes songs (ignore iTunes plus for now)! In fact, Spiral Frog’s files are quite similar to iTunes – they are both heavily guarded by DRM and are encoded at 128kbps. Nothing for iTunes to be proud of; 99 cents per track as opposed to free – it’s yours to choose (it’s not a difficult decision, believe me…unless you have an iPod, haha).

Downloading the track itself is easy – Spiral Frog’s got a huge collection of popular mainstream music and has contracts with both EMI Music and Universal; two of the big four labels, not bad at all. Enjoy the rocky noises of Bon Jovi or the hardcore rap of Bone Thugs n Harmony! The only weird part is the download manager – which only ensures you don’t download more than one track at a time, as far as I can see (so you view more ads, which is kind of like paying for the music – seems fair). The downloaded song appears in the folder selected by Spiral Frog during the installation (default is the My Music folder). The only pain in the neck – Vista uses a folder called Music, as opposed to My Music – so due to my carelessness I took a while to find the songs.

Spiral Frog is a great concept – and even if it does not succeed (no matter how unlikely that sounds), I think that music companies can learn from the idea of free music. I just wish that the formats were iPod-compatible – and that the DRM wasn’t so darn strong. But I can’t complain; it’s a free service, and if I don’t like it, I should just buzz off (same goes for you, haha).

Actually, it was unfortunate for the lady. Very fortunate for the man, though. Wish I could get a free iPhone with all the trimmings!

Actually, you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You will now!

http://www.myfoxdfw.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=66434CA6FE6500D6A04B9F946D779145?contentId=3641729&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1