First Week With the Apple iPad

Updated April 21, 2010.

The world probably doesn't really need another iPad review, does it?

There's a glut out of them out there.

And I'm not a tech reviewer. I'm a gadget nut, so feel free to discount my enthusiasm by the appropriate percentage. After all, I did pre-order this thing sight unseen so it could be delivered on Day One.

So this post will be impressionistic, just some notes on my first week with the device.

First: It's fast. Snappy. It makes the iPhone and the iPod Touch seem slow. It makes a Macbook seem slow.

Second: The battery life is amazing. You don't even think about the battery. I plug it it in every night, and have used it heavily many days. It has never dropped below 50 percent.

Remarkable for an Apple product: It doesn't get hot -- unlike my Macbook Air, or my iPhone, which can get uncomfortable to the touch and sluggish with heavy use. I have often thought that Steve Jobs was trying to brand me with his products. No more. A negative: At a pound a half, it's kind of heavy. Not as heavy as a MacBook Air or a Thomas Pynchon hardback, but heavier than a Kindle. The answer to this problem is the Apple case. I like it. It's simple and functional. You can hold it like a book. You can prop it at an angle. You can stand it up like a little TV, a far better experience than watching movies on a laptop or a desktop computer.

Another negative: In bright daylight, reflections can be distracting if you're trying to read or watch something. And it shows every fingerprint. I don't imagine using it in sunlight all that much.

Something I didn't expect: The photo frame function is great. I put thousands of pictures on the iPad. Then I just prop it up on the mantle and let it shuffle through them. I've never enjoyed having everyone crowd around the computer to look at pictures, and showing them on the TV involves too much rigmarole. This is more akin to paging through hard-copy photo albums.

Not entirely Apple's fault: Some apps are crashy or lack obvious features. You can't turn off Twitterrific's bird noises. Tweetdeck's beta won't let you click on links in tweets. What! (Update: This may have been fixed in recent days.) The ABC app crashed, but seems better after an update. That one has a touch of evil. You can pause and fast-forward/rewind programs, but not the commercials. I flash back to pre-TiVo days, plan my bathroom trips around them. Still, it's not as crashy as the original iPhone was after third-party apps started showing up.

Public use: I remember when I first got an iPhone, and a Kindle. I felt self-conscious taking them out on the subway. For one thing, while crime is down, you have to be a little nervous riding underground with a $700 piece of hardware. It's a bit nerve-racking to think about taking it out, feeling eyes on me. That's not my thing. I like to be left alone in public. I can't wait until everyone has one of these things, or something like it. And they will.

Mostly I expect to use this at home and on long trips. For that reason, I didn't really need the 3G version, and the lack of connectivity outside WiFi-enabled locations has not been a problem. In New York, WiFi is rarely far away.

Something else I didn't expect: I didn't think I would listen to music on the iPad, but I've surprised myself. First of all, the speaker is great, so it makes a nice little radio. I can play things for my wife without using the computer or the stereo or the Apple TV, and I'm not isolated by my headphones. So it's a great way to share NPR or Pandora or whatever I have on the device. I also listen to music or podcasts on the headphones while web surfing. It's a lot easier than juggling a second device, an iPod or an iPhone, for the music. But the lack of multitasking is a negative here: I'd like to be able to see what's playing at a glance, or pause it, without exiting my app.

About some apps: My employer's app, Editor's Choice [iTunes link], is beautiful, but it should allow link sharing through Facebook or Twitter and have more content. But reading the paper on Safari for iPad is great, so it doesn't really matter, I guess. And I do give credit to Apple for having the Amazon Kindle app on the iPad from day one. All my Kindle books, many of them untouched since my Kindle died, are there. I keep it next to the iBooks app. Amazon has the better selection and prices, and you can make notes in the app. The iBooks app and store has some cooler flourishes and feels better designed (the page-turning illusion is cool). E-book reading was my main reason for getting the iPad now as opposed to waiting for a future model.

The good news is that many iPhone apps, like iChess, work and look just fine with the pixel-doubling function.

Money grab?: It's annoying that some developers have decided to charge a second time for the iPad versions of apps I own for the iPhone. If you make a good one, I'll buy your other apps. Or give me a free trial version at least. And Time magazine -- $4.99 for a single issue, in an app that only works once? Give me a break. Another magazine app, Zinio, has a free selection, but it's a bit awkward to navigate.

An annoyance: I don't know if it's a bug or not, but I get tired of entering my iTunes password every time I open the iBooks app or the iTunes store. Other people don't report this problem, so maybe it's just me. The whole iTunes tethering business has been criticized in many reviews. Why do you need to hook the iPad up to a computer to get it started? Seems like a ploy to get iTunes downloaded onto PCs or to sell Macs. And why can't I just move documents and other user files directly from my computer or network without ramping up iTunes? (Yes, I know, there are apps for that -- I like Readdledocs, which just released an iPad version.)

A third thing I didn't expect: YouTube is back in my life. I was never one to surf around the site. I usually only go there with a link. The iPhone app was cool, but it crashed a lot, and the video was too small. The iPad is the perfect device for YouTube. The videos are just the right size. It's not as crashy as the phone. I spent an evening lost in the site. In general, it's a great device for video.

I've spent a lot of time streaming Netflix and watching TV. I've watched three shows on the ABC app, and skimmed comics on several of the comic applications. It's a cool experience, but I don't think I'll buy many comics this way. It's not the same as owning the art.

Bottom line: Is this a laptop replacement? Definitely not. Even if I get the keyboard stand or the bluetooth keyboard, it is hard to imagine writing long memos, blog posts or articles on this, or editing them. Perhaps I might get used to it, but from what I hear I expect it will be odd to have to use the screen as a touch-mouse while editing with an external keyboard. I still prefer the visibility of a larger screen for actual work.

I also like the ability to switch between a photo app, files and the document I'm writing. Even when multitasking is added in the fall with the new operating system, it is hard to imagine that being satisfactory except when I'm on the run. Having to sync Keynote or text documents through iTunes also seems like a hassle. Yes, I know there are ways to do some wireless document sharing, printing and storage on the cloud. But it seems complicated for big projects and day to day use.

Is this a phone replacement? No, it's too big, and I didn't get the 3G. There are apps that will let you make calls over the Internet, and I could imagine this as a Skype device, but there's no camera, front-facing or otherwise.

Is this a Kindle replacement? Yes. Reading on it is superior, and you don't need a booklight.

What I'm finding is that I am migrating certain functions to the iPad. Some things are simply not all that comfortable on a laptop -- watching video, playing casual games. My daughter loves the Phineas and Ferb game for the iPad, above.

It's fun to curl up on a couch or in bed with this thing. I've done that with a laptop, which is a bit awkward, and with my phone, which is a squinting experience much of the time.

I wish my laptop did email the way the mail app on the iPad does it. It's a better interface, and I don't see why it wouldn't work on a computer.

The iPad is better for using Twitter than either a laptop or a phone -- the touch interface and the size of the screen makes it an immersed experience.

The third-party developers just need to fix their apps; once Tweetdeck has links, this will be my main device for using Twitter. The large, touch-based experience is superior to the computer and the iPhone.

Ultimately, though, it's a toy, not a work device, at least for me. Do you need one? That's a bit like asking, do you need a flat-screen TV? No, you don't need a flat-screen TV, or any TV. Do you need to buy books? No, not really. You don't have to read newspapers or surf the Internet, either. And there are plenty of ways to do all of those things without owning an iPad.

But sooner or later, I suspect, you will see an iPad (or a device like it) doing something you love in a better way than you are doing it now. And it will be cheaper than it is now.

Direct From Panama Carmen Estate

IMG_0184I haven't had much time to find new coffees lately. It has been a rather busy few weeks, with a trip to Cleveland related to "After Voices," my wife's new poetry chapbook from Burning River, a local press. We've also had illness in her family, grim news in the journalism world, birthday gatherings and more happenings than I can count. On the Cleveland trip, we hit the highlights, with readings and a visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We also stopped in at the local indie coffee chain, Phoenix Coffee, which also roasts its own beans. I'm kicking myself for not picking some up on the way out of town. Luckily, I still had this (shrinking) bag of beans from Stumptown.

Name Panama Carmen Estate

Origin 1700-1850 meters above sea level at the estate, caturra and typica varieties

Roasted: Sept. 24 by Stumptown Coffee.

Purchased: Sept. 28 at Stumptown in the Ace Hotel at 18 West 29th Street and Broadway, Manhattan.

Description "Extremely floral in the fragrance, sweet milk chocolate, notes of meyer lemon, mandarin orange and blackberry."

In the Cup Again with the meyer lemon, which is apparently a favorite descriptive term of Stumptown's tasters. For a couple of weeks, this bean has been my steeze. Whatever that means. Here are more details from Stumptown:

Carlos Aguilera’s Carmen Estate is a perennial top 5 finisher at the Best of Panama cupping event held each year to showcase the absolute finest coffees from around the country. His focus on perfect cherry selection, cleanliness in his mill and even drying sets his coffee at the top of the pack. This year’s lot comes from isolated areas of Carmen Estate that range between 1700 and 1850 meters above sea level. It is a 50/50 split of Caturra and Typica varietals which combine to form a sweet and complex varietal blend.

I've mainly had it as an espresso. I've seen a reference online to this coffee as "crisp and clean, like blackberries steeped in water." It was the favorite of my much more sophisticated fellow coffee-blogger at Man Seeking Coffee. (His description: "light, floral, chocolate, lime.") As anyone who bothers to read my coffee ramblings knows, it's the notes of chocolate, the nuts, the richness, that draw me in, and while I'm not a big fan of overpowering floral and fruit notes, I like them just fine when they are well-balanced. That is the case with this coffee.

Day after day, I have been downing shots of this without complaint. A sweet cup. It is light, goes down easy, dances on the tongue. Am I in love? Ah, not entirely, but it's good coffee, and I'd try it again. This is the fourth Stumptown coffee I've sampled since the shop opened in Midtown -- Montes de Oro, Blue Batak and Finca el Injerto were the others. So now I'm definitely a believer in the church of Stumptown. If I had a choice I'd still take the Montes de Oro, but this is a close second.

By the way, I heartily recommend this GQ article on the best coffees in the country, which features some familiar names for anyone who has been following my quest here: not only Stumptown, but Ninth Street Espresso, Ritual Roasters and Intelligentsia, among others. It is easy to imagine a coffee quest across America.

Late Night, With Wondo Harfusa

IMG_0737These days, I seem to be on a musical nostalgia tour. A couple of weeks ago, it was The Dead. Then last night, my wife and I found ourselves in the crowd for They MIght Be Giants at Le Poisson Rouge, on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. The crowd of people in button-downed shirts and khaki was enthusiastic. But it did not have the same energy we recalled from the late 1990s, when the band could fill the Bowery Ballroom, and nerdy fans sat in circles in the line outside singing angst-ridden lyrics they knew by heart. That was long before the band transformed itself a Grammy-winning act for children known for TV and movie theme songs. Anyway, the last thing I did before leaving the apartment was to pull another shot of this coffee, from the Yerga Cheffe region of Ethiopia. It kept me bouncing. Name: Wondo Harfusa

Origin: Yerga Cheffe, Ethiopia.

Roasted: May 18 by Verve Coffee Roasters, Santa Cruz, Ca.

Purchased: May 25 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description: One account: "begins with a hibiscus aroma followed by ripe red fruit flavors of raspberry, red currant and cherry finishing with notes of black tea."

In the cup: In this ongoing inquiry, I've been intrigued by the coffees from this region (notably Wondo Worko). And I know I'm in for a treat whenever I see the Verve Roasters bag at Grumpy.

I tend to be suspicious of "fruit flavors" in coffee descriptions, but these tend to be just traces. In most cases, the underlying flavor is coffee, a category unto itself. That said, I personally think fruit and flower notes can sometimes overpower a coffee, making for a tasting experience that is unpleasant. I can happily report that is not the case with Wondo Harfusa. You can definitely find the ripe cherry and raspberry under the coffee, but it works with the whole. More and more I find I enjoy tasting for these secondary flavors more than I ever expected when I started learning about culinary coffee. Before long, this will probably turn me into the worst sort of coffee snob.

But for now, I'm enjoying my third shot of espresso of the morning and early afternoon, having been up a little too late (after the opener by Mixel Pixel and the somewhat short TMBG set, we headed over to another place in the Village, Cafe Vivaldi, for some more music, and drinks). I thought about finding a way to segue back to the show, maybe with some coffee-related lyrics. Something about getting older, and holding onto the moment, and all that. (I didn't even mention the helicopters overhead and the motorcade tying up traffic. Barack and Michelle Obama were also having a date that started with dinner in the neighborhood.)

For now I'm content to just let the coffee do its job: Wake me up.

Shots of Alphabet City, the Espresso

img_0621It was a busy week of catching up at work after vacation, then a busier weekend that included a children's birthday party by the Hudson River, with volunteer activities to benefit the Children for Children Foundation. Then last night it was off to Madison Square Garden for The Dead. It was a great show, musically. There were certainly some aging hippies in the crowd, but most of the audience had a middle-aged suburban feel to it. A lot of people who might have been dancing in the hallways and aisles 20 years ago seemed content to sit in their seats and suck on plastic bottles of Budweiser.

Toward the end of the night, I was thinking more about bedtime than the music never stopping, despite a couple of quick shots of this Intelligentsia espresso blend before the show. I've been drinking it all week.

Let's resume the coffee quest.

Name: Alphabet City Blend

Origin: Direct trade from Brazil

Roasted: April 6 or 9 Intelligentsia.

Purchased: April 13 at Ninth Street Espresso, Chelsea Market, 75 Ninth Avenue, between 15th and 16th Streets.

Description: "This classic, syrupy espresso features flavors of toasted almond and milk chocolate and a gentle citrus flourish in the finish."

In the Cup: Ninth Street Espresso switched to this coffee as its espresso blend in March. The name refers to the shop's main location -- the neighborhood with avenues named by letter (Avenues A, B and C) on the East Side of Manhattan that is sometimes described these days as part of the East Village or the Lower East Side.

Back in the 1980s, when I briefly fancied myself a Deadhead, Alphabet City referred to a scary, rundown area of junkies and crime. Now it's place of condos, indie bars and little shops, and a cute name for coffee. So it goes.

img_0623The coffee is described as a mix of Acaia, Icatu, Catuai, Rubi, Tupi, and Catucai beans grown at 950 to 1350 meters above sea level. Ninth Street's owner, Kenneth Nye, told The Times that Alphabet City Blend is a riff on Intelligentsia’s benchmark espresso, Black Cat, but that the blend would be adjusted soon. Here things get tricky, as there appears to be no single Black Cat espresso, and the blend is continually being adjusted. (See Ken's comment below; he says this blend is all Brazilian).

I don't think it's stretching a metaphor to compare this arcane world to that of Deadheads who used to argue about every variation of songs and set lists back in the old days. Trying to find information online about the relationship of these espresso blends was difficult.

The Black Cat project is related to Intelligentsia, but it has its own site and explains its mission here:

The Black Cat Project™ is by design a pursuit of something we’ll never catch: the perfect espresso in all of its manifestations. But that doesn’t mean we’ll ever stop chasing it. This project is rooted in our belief that espresso brewing is still coffee brewing and that only the best coffees can make the best espressos. We want to push the boundaries on flavor. We want you to experience amazing single origin, Micro-Lot and seasonal espressos with truly distinct flavor profiles that reach far beyond “chocolate” or “caramel”.

If this is close to Black Cat Classic, then this blog post explains the origins of that blend, at least as it stood in October, when this bag was roasted.

The blogger at Black Cat appears to be Kyle Glanville, director of espresso for Intelligentsia, and he explains that blend's origins here:

Brazil, Fazenda Santa Alina (Pulped natural yellow bourbon). Grown in the Grama Valley just outside Pocos de Caldas on the border of Minas Gerais and Sao Paolo state. The Grama Valley is blessed with volcanic soil, solid altitude, and a tremendous amount of sweet, yellow bourbon coffees.

El Salvador, El Borbollon (washed bourbon). This coffee was purchased as part of our “Los Inmortales” project and proves to be a ridiculously perfect compliment to the buttery caramel character of the Santa Alina, dropping in some fresh coffee cherry, citrus, and a floral, heady aroma.

You can expect the Cat to taste a little amped up recently due to the arrival of the new crop Brazil. Deep chocolate, caramel, cherries and citrus. Complete and sweet, just the way I like it.

So, to the Alphabet City tasting. Syrupy, check. Toasted almond, yeah, maybe. Milk chocolate, definitely. Citrus flourish at the finish, I guess so. Someone has been up to some interesting alchemy here, and it may be worth a trip to NInth Street to see how the fresher stuff tastes now, if the formula has been jiggered. It's a great espresso. The greatest espresso ever? This juror is not ready to vote on that. It is certainly the kind of thick, sweet cup, without distracting floral and citrus oddities, that I like as a regular shot. And it's better than 99 percent of what most people accept as good espresso at corporate chains.

What My Smart Playlists Showed Me (3)

Name of iTunes Playlist: The Older Faves Rules: Rating is greater than *** (3 stars). Last played is in the last 12 months. Last played is not in the last 6 months. Date added is in the last 24 months. Play count is greater than 5 times. Skip count is zero. [See all lists.]

Top 10 From the List

1. "Sirena" by Calexico on "Convict Pool" Playcount: 8.

2. "Summersong" by The Decemberists on "The Crane Wife." Playcount: 8.

3. "Story of an Artist" performed by M. Ward on "The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered." Playcount: 8. 4. "Yawny At the Apocalypse" by Andrew Bird on "Armchair Apocrypha." Playcount: 7.

5. "Modern Age" by Eric Hutchinson on "...Before I Sold Out." Playcount: 7. 6. "Carballo" by The Essex Green on "Everything Is Green." Playcount: 7.

7. "Leisure Suite" by Feist on "Let It Die." Playcount: 7.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2N72kXHppE&hl=en&fs=1]

8. "The Angels Hung Around" by Rilo Kiley on "Under the Blacklight." Playcount: 7.

9. "My Body Is a Cage" by Arcade Fire on "Neon Bible." Playcount: 6.

10. "Click Click Click Click" by Bishop Allen on "The Broken String." Playcount: 6.

Annotation

The purpose of this list is to identify newish songs that were in heavy rotation on my musical devices about six to eight months ago, but which I no longer play -- songs that I might want to reconsider. I was still in the heart of a Calexico phase, apparently, but it's a different album than has popped up on other lists. This track has a lilting country Grateful Dead-like feel, with a haunting chorus of women singing in Spanish near the end, followed by the inevitable end in the Greek myth of the sirens:

To save this sad, tragic soul Sorrow's worse than the tide's pull Sinking deeper, gasping for love Till desire navigates you Into the arms of sirena... Caught in the rip tide, smashed on the reef Joining the mass of bones underneath

Follow that up with The Decemberists, and phrases like "..slip into a watery grave," and I have to wonder what's up with the morbid nautical theme. "...swallowed by a wave." I was thinking about heading to the beach last spring. Whatever the words, both of these songs sound beautiful. A lot of Decemberist tunes are too otherworldly for repeated listening, but this is one of the exceptions, with some interesting instruments in the background. No idea what they are, but I like them.

I went through a serious M. Ward phase in 2006, bleeding into 2007. I bought everything I could find. No. 3 was a cover tune off a Daniel Johnston tribute album. Back in 1997 or 1998, I saw the schizophrenic Johnston perform live twice in Manhattan in separate clubs. For the second show, about 10 of us were in a circle around him about two feet away. He was obviously a painfully disturbed man. It was hard to watch, and while he writes beautiful songs, I have a hard time listening to him. Ward teases the beauty out of Johnston's song and his pain in this cover, the best on the album of covers. I recommend the 2005 documentary on Johnston, who, despite the title of this tribute, is still alive. And I also recommend you buy anything M. Ward does.

The Andrew Bird track is an instrumental off his followup to 2005's "The Mysterious Production of Eggs," and I am surprised to see it here. It's a great song, though, haunting and mysterious.

I don't know much about Eric Hutchinson. I think I downloaded his album on impulse one night on iTunes. There were songs I liked more than this one, but there's no arguing with the list. The track is live and ends with some chatter at the audience that grows old with repeated listens. His lyrics are a little political and funny:

How did we every get by before data was sent? I can’t believe I got around without electrical cars

The Essex Green, a Brooklyn-based neo-psychedelic pop band, has a sweet sound, and I like a lot of their songs, including this one. I would recommend the album "Cannibal Sea" over this one, but they're all great.

Feist, of course, had a breakout moment when her song "1 2 3 4" was featured in iPod ads in 2007. I had a few of her songs from somewhere before that, and I downloaded more after that. I like this earlier album from 2005 more than her breakout, and while I thought liked other songs on it, like "Mushaboom," I guess there's no arguing with the playlist.

I bought a bunch of Rilo Kiley albums in 2006 and 2007, and bought "Under the Blacklight" hoping it would be as good, but I'm not sure it was. Still, this was a pretty good song. Watch the video. Jenny Lewis is definitely the talented half of the duo, though her first solo effort struck me as a wee too precious.

Arcade Fire is another band that I started listening to a few years ago in my Canadian music phase, having no idea what they were about or who followed them. They had a breakout moment with "Neon Bible," which is indeed an awesome album. If you asked me to name a favorite track, I would say "No Cars Go," but the list thinks I like the far more emo "My Body Is a Cage." So be it. My body is a cage that keeps me dancing with the one I love? Untrue, but moving. I still remember what that used to feel like, to be so out of place:

I'm living in an age That calls darkness light Though my language is dead Still the shapes fill my head

I'm living in an age Whose name I don't know Though the fear keeps me moving Still my heart beats so slow

Oh, young Arcade Fire fans, your pain will never again be this sweet. But the old people might prefer "Funeral" (2004).

Bishop Allen first came to my attention in the so-called mumblecore films of Andrew Bujalski, "Funny Ha Ha" and "Mutual Appreciation."

Rent them now. Watch them. I'll wait. Then read the latest N+1. Harvard was cool for 20 minutes around the turn of the decade, so what? It's already over.

I saw "Mutual Appreciation" with my friends Teresa and Brett in a small theater in the Village. Bujalski was there and answered questions from the audience about the kind of film stock he used and how he got non-actors (including his Harvard pals like Justin Rice, the lead singer of Bishop Allen).

Fast forward to August 2007. Teresa, Brett and I were on our way to a show featuring a number of bands including Bishop Allen, which was touring to promote "The Broken String." We had spent the afternoon at a barbecue. My boss called me about a fire at the the former Deutsche Bank Building downtown. Brett and Teresa went on to the show, as I stepped out of the cab in Times Square and walked to work and worked on live-blog coverage of the fire, which killed two firefighters.

By 11 p.m., we had put the first print edition to bed and there was nothing more to say on the blog. I hopped into a cab and reached the club just as Bishop Allen was taking the stage at midnight. It was a good show. I flipped a switch in my head and felt nothing about the sad story I had just been covered, because that is what I have learned to do.

The rest of the list after #10 is dominated by Bishop Allen tracks from the monthly EPs they were putting out in 2007, songs from Radiohead's "In Rainbows," (I paid $5 to download it) and more from the Decemberists and Feist albums, a snapshot of a year that now seems distant, another era.

The only anomaly lower on the list is R.E.M.'s 1987 hit "The End of the World as We Know It," which I listened to several times as I turned it into a ringtone on my then-new iPhone. It is the song that plays as my wake-up alarm. It is the song that plays when the newsroom calls. The choice is sardonic. This was only one day in my career that felt like the world ending, and nobody called. I just went.

Podcast Zeitgeist, Dec. 12

I'm mixing it up a little this week, adding some new podcasts from the iTunes Best of 2008 lists [iTunes Store Link], including a few with video under 10 minutes.

  • "Grammar Girl Video: Irony" Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips are usually audio, but this six minutes of video is worth watching for its excellent explanation of the frequently misused words "irony" and "ironic," using to good effect the infamous Sarah Palin turkey-pardon video. Here's the gist: Irony is all about incongruity and always in the eye of the beholder. Palin and her critics both might have thought the event was ironic, but for different and legitimate reasons. Writing that something is "ironic" says more about you, the observer, than the events themselves, and it is open to misinterpretation. Watch, understand, then use these words properly, or not at all, especially if you are a journalist trying to be fair. Length: 6:29 minutes. Released: Dec. 5.

  • "60-Second Earth: I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas (Tree)" From Scientific American, another short gem (though longer than 60 seconds). When it comes to Christmas trees, which is more green, wood or plastic? The answer is complicated, but seems to be a live tree in a pot. The strategy in our mixed unfaith household: Thirty years ago, my aunt made a porcelain Christmas tree that stands about a foot tall. We put it on an end table at a respectable distance from the menorah. This represents our own ambiguous connection to a holiday that my wife only observed as an outsider and a religion I no longer observe. The kid is probably confused. So be it. Length: 1 minute, 29 seconds. Released: Dec. 4, 2008.
  • "Keith and the Girl 860: Turn It Down" This podcast by a Queens couple is consistently rated among the top 10 comedy podcasts at Podcast Alley. Keith Malley was raised Catholic. The "girl" (Chemda Kallili) is Jewish. The schedule is erratic but frequent. This is one of the shorter episodes, and not as funny as the previous, "Get Over Yerself." They do nearly 10 minutes on religion, the holidays and their families. The new Guns N Roses record. The strange gay humor on "Three's Company." The end of Polaroid film. They dream of making millions and moving to Manhattan, which they call, quaintly, "The City." And more. Length: 59:23 minutes. Released: Dec. 8.
  • "This Week in Tech: Zunegate"http://twit.tv/172 Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. This is the podcast that first got me thinking too much about Twitter this week. It is also the podcast that got me to join Twitter way back in April 2007, mostly as a lurker. Leo Laporte is joined by John C. Dvorak, Bwana McCall, and Julio Ojeda-Zapata, author of a book on using Twitter for business. Dvorak likes Twitter but says it has problems. His comments lead me to think these tech celebrities with thousands of followers have a different experience than people with mutual followers in the dozens or hundreds. They are more like performers or broadcasters than members of the community. They toss out a question and hundreds of fans answer. Sometimes, Dvorak says, they keep answering long after he wishes they would stop. Claims are made that Twitter skews to an older crowd, that it's lazy blogging, that younger people prefer Facebook and IM on Skype. The rest of the tech talk feels recycled: Mac viruses, Obama's Zune, Leo's story (told on last week's MacBreak Weekly) about getting irritated at a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Then they plug their stuff. Length: 1 hour, 33 minutes. Released: Dec. 7.
  • "Uhh Yeah Dude, Episode 144" Intro is Stereolab. Outro is Lorn. The episode gets off to a meandering start but picks up. The show's T-shirts are late. Libraries and video stores ripping off Netflix. More brocabulary. More obscure fast food. A riff on the 9-year-old pickup artist. "Comb your hair, and don't wear sweats... Just say hi." Top Yahoo search terms. When Seth met search term No. 1. Crazy science: A killer fungus reproduces sexually in your nose and the babies record podcasts. Riffing on the money-saving tips of Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes," who steals dinner rolls from restaurants, mixes gasoline of different octanes, complains about paying $1.50 for a cup of coffee etc. (Rooney has a podcast, too.) A Rastafarian, Bobby Brown, is suing Jiffy Lube for discrimination. Seth recounts how he nearly killed himself and Jonathan with a gas leak in his furnace. Seth claims to be dating the oldest person in the world, a woman they visited at the nursing home in an earlier episode. Removing bear gall bladders. Dreading the holidays. (Seth and Jonathan have done a new interview. ) Length: 1 hour, 3 minutes. Released: Dec. 8.
  • Attack of the Show's Daily Video Podcast: "The Wired Holiday Store" An iTunes 2008 pick. I actually watched a couple of episodes, which were short and well-produced, seemingly excerpts from the TV show on the obscure G4 cable network. The first one featured a tour of the temporary brick-and-mortar store version of the print magazine that ought to be just a Web site. Lots of gadgets flash by. The store's at 15 West 18th Street through Dec. 28. I'll have to check it out in person. The episode after this, "Batman's New Voice-Over Career," riffs on the terrible raspy Batman voice from the "Dark Knight" movie, which is, not coincidentally, out on DVD. Entertaining, but it has the main drawback of video: You can't enjoy it while walking to work, or you'll run into people. Length: 2:25 minutes to 3:26 minutes. Released: Dec. 10 and 11.
  • "Buzz Out Loud: Baba-Boo! Scareware!" C-Net's "podcast of indeterminate length." This show starts out with fast talking and sound effects by Molly Wood, Tom Merritt and Jason Howell. Some chatter about Playstation Home and Amazon's Unboxed service. Praise for TiVo, the service/hardware with a terrible business model that everyone loves. Merritt disagrees with Corey Doctorow's views on copyright right of first sale. "There's no such thing as 'used' in the digital world." Gratuitous reference to the Brooklyn musician Jonathan Coulton. Learned something: The term for the propensity of people to find faces in things like toast and the moon is paradolia. A couple of the hosts have apparently never heard of Tumblr (or was that a joke?). It is one of the few companies doing well in these troubled times. Howell does not understand the phrase, "throwing the baby out with the bathwater," pleads youth. A Web-based no-hack copy-and-paste method for the iPhone between Safari and Mail. A good idea that calls attention to a continuing, pathetic Apple lapse. Vast expansion of Google Street View. The blank areas seem to be mountains. Now go listen to "All My Internet Friends" by Amanda French, a musical tip that earns this podcast major points. Length: 37:38 minutes. Released: Dec. 11.
  • "You Look Nice Today: Nickelpuss It's back to the original three hosts. Secular bands. Nerd jokes about Unix command lines. Merlin Mann's childhood room. A lengthy discussion of automobile horns. Youthful ninja fascinations and experiences by Adam Lisagor. How has this movie not been made? Good question. Discussing his teenage musical career in a church band and his secular band, Scott Simpson reveals he grew up near York, Pa., where I worked for eight years, and mentions the nearly forgotten York band Live. Still popular in Europe and parts of New Zealand! True story of the early Web of the mid-90s: I once hand-coded a Live fan page for the local newspaper's pioneering Web site. Ooh, frames -- lovely. It got dozens of hits, which we deemed a success. The site itself was born in a 1996 blizzard that stopped the newspaper delivery trucks. It's hard to remember how primitive the Web was just 12 years ago. This was in a time when people predicted that average readers would never have computers at home and certainly not read news on them at home. Which is kind of true: Now they mostly click around the Web at the office when they should be working. Podcasts were barely imagined. Video was unthinkable on dialup. Twitter? Forget about it. Email was hard enough. Anyway, it's great to see these fellows back on track with their jazzy, meandering nostalgic conversations, much of it about that weird, lost dawn-of-the-Web past. I'll leave it there. Length: 38:48 minutes. Released: Dec. 10.
  • "Macbreak Weekly 118: Macs in the Mist" Leo Laporte with his regulars, Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne, Andy Ihnatko. Perhaps Leo watched Grammar Girl's podcast this week (see above) because he asked Bourne if it was ironic that he ate a freshly slain turkey at a Thanksgiving dinner with his fellow bird-watching photographers at a bird refuge. "You don't see any irony in that.. " Bourne: "I do not." Later, Leo: "It's ironic that all four of us are camera bugs..." Ok, maybe he didn't watch Grammar Girl. After about 10 minutes, down to business. Any truth to the rumor that Apple will remove DRM from iTunes for the holidays with unlimited downloads in Europe? Consensus is no. What about $99 iPhones at Wal-Mart? Consensus is no. Discussion of DRM: Only hurts honest people, doesn't deter thieves. True. A five-minute ad for Drobo, ends at 24:20. Big vendors dropping out of MacWorld Expo. Are convention expenses worth it, especially in a layoff environment? More discussion of pulled Apple advisory on antivirus software. Do Mac users need the software? Consensus is no. Santa Claus iPhone app gets run over by a reindeer. Brief discussion of Information Week's Top 10 Apple Stories of 2008. Consensus: Bad list. "We lost interest at the same time the author lost interest." Around item 3 or 4. Ouch. Six-minute conversation/ad about Audible.com ends at 1:01 mark. Then it's time for the picks. Length: 1 hour, 27:56 minutes. Released: Dec. 9. Update added 12/13.

    • It was a busy week, so I missed a few favorites (in the case of This Week in Media, the Skype interference was so bad in some cases, I couldn't stand to listen. Reportedly, the problem has been fixed and the episode was reposted). [See earlier roundups.]

    What My Smart Playlists Showed Me (2)

    Name of iTunes Playlist: Forgotten Favorites Rules: Rating is ***** (5 stars). Play count is greater than 5. Skip count is less than 4. Last played is not in the last 24 months. Date added is not in the last 24 months. [See all lists.]

    Top 10 From the List

    1. "Dreams" by TV on the Radio ("Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes"). Play Count: 22. Last played: Sept. 18, 2006.

    2. "The Good Times Are Killing Me" by Modest Mouse ("Good News for People Who Love Bad News"). Play Count: 21. Last played: July 30, 2006.

    3. "Keep on Breathing" by The Delgados ("Universal Audio"). Play Count: 20. Last Played: Aug. 27, 2006. 4. "Last Broadcast" by Doves ("The Last Broadcast"). Play Count: 20. Last Played: May 30, 2006.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRy8N1P1EUI&hl=en&fs=1]

    5. "Dreaming of You" by The Coral ("The Coral"). Play Count: 19. Last Played: March 26, 2006.

    6. "Silverscreen" by Jesca Hoop ("Silverscreen Demos"). Play Count: 18. Last Played: Aug. 27, 2006.

    7. "Dear Catastrophe Waitress," by Belle & Sebastian ("Dear Catastrophe Waitress"). Play count: 17. Last Played: Sept. 18, 2006.

    8. "There's Too Much Love," by Belle & Sebastian ("Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant"). Play Count: 16. Last Played: Aug. 16, 2005.

    9. "The Wrong Girl," by Belle & Sebastian ("Fold Your Hands etc."). Play Count: 15. Last Played: Sept. 18, 2006.

    10. "At the Bottom of Everything," by Bright Eyes ("I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning"). Play Count: 13. Last Played: May 28, 2005.

    Annotation: Some favorite songs stay in rotation through the years, but others are forgotten for one reason or another. This smart playlist is intended to remind me of songs that I played heavily then forgot. Some were simply played out, overplayed. Or whatever drew me to them is no longer there, for one reason or another.

    Some strike me as embarrassing: Modest Mouse?

    Others surprise me: Is it really two years since I played the excellent "Dreams" by TV on the Radio? I'll play it right now, and restore it to the list of favorites I still play. I still remember the Delgados and Doves cuts as if they were yesterday, I'll probably play them now. What a pleasant surprise to see them again.

    I am still fond of the Glasgow ensemble Belle & Sebastian, love their lyrics and their sound, but after burning through that oeuvre at warp speed I no longer play them obsessively, trying to figure out what they're getting at in those enigmatic lyrics about love and books and tragedy and disappointment. It was more clearly a phase, I guess. They were already pretty well established before they came to my attention, and most of their best stuff seems to have been written in the mid-90s. This title song is not the best of the cuts on "Catastrophe Waitress," so it's no surprise I haven't listened in a while, but "Wrong Girl" still resonates. I feel no need to play it, though. There is more, too much more, Belle and Sebastan further down the list, after #10, with a few brief infatuations like "Stacy's Mom" from Fountains of Wayne.

    The Coral was a brief fling. I remember buying the CD at Tower Records on the Upper West Side, knowing nothing about them except what I could glean from the listening post setup in the store with their terrible headsets. It may have been the last time I was in that store, or any big record store, years ago now.

    The Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes album "Wide Awake etc." is his best -- the histrionics and goofy digressions are kept to a minimum -- but this is not actually one of the better songs on that record. I still play some of the others, but this one dropped out of rotation. I remember it having a Buddhist flavor. It's starts with a monologue about a plane crash that gets old after a while.

    I'm glad to see some strong female vocalists on here -- Jesca Hoop and half of The Delgados. Lower on the list (not shown here), some Rilo Kiley. I first heard Hoop on KCRW, a demo track, and it took some detective work to hunt it down.

    The Delgados reached a high mark with "Universal Audio." The song "Keep on Breathing" has a meditative quality, and it can still give me chills. It also must have had some resonance that year, as I recovered from massive blood clots that nearly destroyed my lungs.

    Am I still the person who listened to this music so much a couple of years ago? I am not sure, but I have kept breathing, at least.

    See other playlists and related posts.

    What My Smart Playlists Showed Me (1)

    Name of iTunes Playlist: Emerging FavoritesRules: Rating is ***** (5 stars). Last played is in the last 2 months. Play count is in the range 3 to 5. Date added is in the last 12 months. Skip count is less than 4. [See all lists.]

    Top 10 From the List

    1. "Boy With a Coin" by Iron & Wine ("The Shepherd's Dog," 2007.) Play count: 6. Sample lyric: "A boy with a coin he found in the weeds, with bullets and pages of trade magazines."

    2. "Fake Empire," by The National ("Boxer," 2007.) Play count: 6. Lyric: "It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky, we're half-awake in a fake empire."

    3. "Candy Jail," by The Silver Jews ("Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea," 2008). Play count: 5. Lyric: "Pain works on a sliding scale." [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjtTGdhgjZY&hl=en&fs=1]4. "Oxygen" by Willy Mason ("Where the Humans Eat," 2006). Play Count: 5. Lyric: "I want to speak louder than Ritalin, for all the children who think that they've got a disease. I want to be cooler than TV, for all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be."

    5. "The News About William," by Calexico ("Carried to Dust," 2008). Play Count: 5. Lyric: "As her words fail and the sky grew dim, recalled how close to that exit l've been."

    6. "Bend to the Road," by Calexico ("Carried to Dust," 2008). Play Count: 4. Lyric: "Holding back your tears, letting go of your heart... Until it all spills out on the side of the road."

    7. "Wait Till You See Him (De-Phazz Remix)," by Ella Fitzgerald ("Verve Remixed," 2002). Play Count: 4. Lyric: "Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half."

    8. "Sly," by The Cat Empire, ("Two Shoes," 2007). Play count: 4. Lyric: "It's a pleasure to meetcha, you look like one incredible creature."

    9. "Pieces of You," by Islands ("Arm's Way," 2008). Play count: 4. Lyric: "It's madness."

    10. "Papillon," by the Airborne Toxic Event ("Does This Mean You're Moving On?" EP, 2007) Play count: 4. Lyric: "And I wish I had the guts to scream. You know, things aren't always what they seem..."

    Annotation: There are the songs you think are your favorites, and there are the songs that iTunes says you play the most. The iTunes smart playlists are valuable tools that can pull out a lot of trends about your listening habits.

    This Emerging Favorites list is aimed at figuring out the fresh songs that could be come future favorites -- songs I have bought recently, listened to more than a few times and given a high rating.

    I seem to be deep into a melancholy singer phase. Paradoxically, that means I'm in a pretty good mood. It's a more heavily male selection than usual, although the list could have just as easily included Rilo Kiley, Feist, Aimee Mann, Nina Simone or others among my recent purchases.

    This list is also heavily "alternative" or "indie," what a friend of mine calls NPR music, songs by artists who were probably interviewed on public radio or are played in heavy rotation on KCRW in Los Angeles. And that's fine.

    All of these songs are relatively recent releases. I don't listen to much music at all from the 60s, 70s and 80s, the oldies favored by many people in their 40s. I've always tried to stay current with music, and I think this decade has produced some of the best independent/alternative music I've heard in my life.

    See other smart playlist posts..

    From iPhones to the Stars, Ocarina Melodies

    img_0005 {Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.]

    For 99 cents I downloaded Ocarina, an app from Smule that turns an iPhone into a version of that ancient flute-like instrument. You press glowing "finger holes" on the touchscreen and blow into the microphone to play [Video].

    That's fun, but Ocarina does more than that. The app also uses the location software and a Google-Earth style globe to let you rotate the earth and listen to others play on their phones around the world. As they play one by one, visual images of the notes stream upward, as you watch from space. Around the globe, patches of glowing white show what are apparently concentrations of signals, particularly on the coasts of the United States and in Europe. One soloist sent a lonely tune up from an island of Hawaii. It seems the perfect instrument for the job. Halting, ghostly renditions of "Amazing Grace," "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen," "Happy Birthday," and "Ode to Joy," reach for the stars one by one. You can click a heart to show your appreciation for the particularly talented ones. It's just cool. You feel connected with other musical beings on the planet. GPS broadcasting! Imagine what else could be broadcast through those mikes.

    The Smule site advises, "For best results, blow softly, as if you're blowing kisses." It insists on calling the iPhone "your ocarina."

    My daughter and I each gave it a shot. Our efforts sounded more like free-form jazz. Somehow I missed this app when it first came out earlier this month, and my older-generation iPhone apparently required the 2.2 firmware update first. But it's one of those apps that is sure to wow a friend, divert a fidgety kid or pass the time. I am sure some talented musicians will find ways to amaze us. I recently added it to my list of favorite third-party iPhone apps.