iProng Magazine #38: Cali Lewis of GeekBrief and more

iProng Magazine’s 38th issue features a cover story interview with Cali Lewis of GeekBrief. This issue also features musician interviews with Saving Abel and Ingrid Michaelson – along with reviews of iPhone and iPod hardware accessories and software apps.

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iProng Magazine issue #38: Cali Lewis of GeekBrief, Saving Abel and more

iProng Magazine #37: hands-on with the new iPod shuffle and more

iProng Magazine’s 37th issue features a hands-on look at the tiny new iPod shuffle along with a preview of the iPhone 3.0 software. In issue #37 we also feature interviews with musician Curtis Peoples as well as Gary Vaynerchuk of the Wine Library TV podcast – along with reviews of iPhone and iPod hardware accessories and software apps.

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iProng Magazine issue #37: hands-on with the new iPod shuffle and more!

iProng Magazine issue #36: Graham Nash interview and more

iProng Magazine presents its Spring 2009 Double Issue featuring a cover story interview with Graham Nash of Crosby Stills & Nash. In issue #36 we also feature interviews with musician Michelle Featherstone and the Being Healthy podcast – along with reviews of iPhone and iPod hardware accessories and software apps.

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Kindle for iPhone review

The Kindle 2 seems to be an amazing device, but not everyone has the luxury of actually affording one. However, Amazon decided that they would extend the privilege of the Kindle platform to the owners of the next convenient ebook reader: the iPhone and iPod Touch, which made its debut March 3, 2009.

Even though the Kindle for iPhone app is a way to read Kindle books on Apple’s iPhone OS, it is far from being a Kindle itself. E-ink, annotation, and text-to-speech are the main features that won’t magically appear just because of the iPhone app. Despite these features, the Kindle for iPhone app is still a great way to get introduced to the Kindle platform or even use it as a companion to your Kindle 2.

The main thing about the Kindle for iPhone app or the Kindle device is that books will be delivered directly to the device after purchasing Kindle format books from Amazon. When buying books from Amazon’s site, you’ll have the option to choose what device to sync it to, as long as you’ve already input your login information on a Kindle, or iPhone or iPod Touch. These digital books will be delivered wirelessly to the chosen device in about sixty seconds.



If you own a Kindle device, the Whispersync technology will be able to detect where you last left off on a device, and sync the bookmark with another device if you choose to switch between a Kindle and an iPhone or iPod Touch. For example, if you leave a bookmark on your Kindle 2 and then decide to switch to your iPhone, Whispersync technology will detect your account and then a message will pop up asking if you want to jump forward to the latest bookmark in the e-book. This allows seamless transitioning from multiple devices and reduces hassle of finding that spot you left off at.

Even if you do not own a Kindle, the iPhone app serves fine as a standalone e-book reader as well. The home screen will show you all of your Kindle books that you have bought and downloaded from Amazon’s Kindle bookstore and you can sort them by Most Recent, Title, or Author. In addition to having your entire collection of Kindle books, you can choose to delete any ones you’ve finished or just don’t want anymore via the Edit button. It is not possible to browse and purchase for new books within the app itself yet, however, so you would have to visit the Amazon Kindle Store via a web browser or even from Mobile Safari.

When viewing a book, you can quickly access various checkpoints throughout the book such as the Cover, Table of Contents, Beginning, or even pick a page to jump to with Location. Tap the screen to bring up the menu bars or dismiss them. Swipes of the finger left or right will go to previous page or to the next page, rather than physical buttons like the actual Kindle. There are also five font sizes to choose from, so you can pick the best size that suits your eyes.

The interface is not as fancy as other iPhone e-book readers, but this is a good option for a free book reader on the iPhone. It’s easy and simple to use, and in the end, isn’t that all that really matters?

The Kindle for iPhone app is versatile either way as a Kindle companion or a standalone iPhone/iPod Touch e-book reader even if it lacks cool features like the real thing. Perhaps annotation and text-to-speech would be possible in the future depending on software updates and also Apple for the technology of copy & paste for marking annotations. But for a 1.0, it really is not a bad app at all. We can only look forward to great improvements in the future for the Kindle iPhone app.

For the price tag of free, there is no loss here, so consider giving Amazon’s Kindle a chance on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

BeingHealthy.tv interview

What in your own background led you to start a podcast about health?



It all started with my parents. They instilled in me that exercise was a core part of life.  It was like eating, drinking, sleeping or breathing.  You had to do it.  But it was more than that, it was also something you enjoyed. Because of my passion of exercise, I went to school to become a physical therapist. It’s a great job that lets me help people who are injured to heal and to return to doing all the things they enjoy.

While treating patients, I see that a lot of them want more than just rehabilitation and education about injury prevention and exercise.  A good portion of them have a lot of questions about diet, nutrition and other general health topics.  Unfortunately, I just can’t answer the questions as thoroughly as I would like during their sessions because I have to focus on rehabilitating their injuries. So, I decided that I wanted a place that I could address all the questions and concerns that people were having. Podcasting and blogging seemed like the perfect way to do that. It gave me someplace that I could send my patients where I could give them the answers that I didn’t have the time to cover or the time to research during their appointments.  Plus, anyone in the world with an internet connection could get that same information allowing me to reach so many more people.

What does a typical episode of the podcast consist of?


A typical episode is around 15-20 minutes long. It consists of a main topic related to general health. It could be concerning exercise, nutrition, injury prevention, stress management, etc. Basically the main topic will explain an aspect of health in a straightforward manner and give some tips or tricks towards how to be healthier in relation to that aspect. I focus on making the content quick and easy to understand with several actions to take so that there will be something that even the busiest person can do to make themselves just a little bit healthier. And at the end of the show I answer questions that are sent to me via email, voicemail, blog comments or Twitter.

What can readers gain from the separate blog entries you post on your site?


I created the separate blog entries mainly because I wanted to keep the podcasts relatively short and focused on one topic that I wanted to go into in more depth. The blog entries are where you can go to get some even quicker health tips. It’s great for someone who has less than 5 minutes and is sitting in front of a computer screen. The topics are different than what I cover on the podcast but, for the podcast listeners, I mention the topics of the blog posts during the podcast. That way, they can go to BeingHealthy.tv and check them out if they are interested.

Can you give us a couple quick tips for improving our overall health?


Make your health a priority. All too often, people put everything else first. By the time they get to the end of the day, they’re too tired to exercise or even make a healthy meal. Despite what people say, there is time for us to build being healthy into all of our busy schedules. I know, I’m about as busy as you can get with a job, a one year old son, housework, my blog, my podcast and the video podcast I’m working on.  We just need to plan ahead and prioritize what we do.

There are two key things you need to start with. Make sure you have healthy food on hand to eat for when you get really busy and put your exercise into your schedule in pen. Eating healthy and exercising is every bit as important as every other thing that you have to do in your schedule. Since it keeps you healthy and able to do all the other things, I’d argue that it might actually be even more important in most cases.

What else do we need to know about you?


Well, right now I’m putting together a video podcast. That will be in addition to the blog posts and the audio podcast, so those won’t be going anywhere.  The video podcast will be dedicated to covering health topics that have a visual component that is hard to bring across in audio. I’m planning to have the episodes run about 5-7 minutes long on average. So, they’ll be about a third the length of the audio podcast. Hopefully, the first episode will come out in about a couple months. I’ll definitely have more details about that on the blog and on the podcast as we get closer and the date becomes a little firmer.

Facebook revamp

It seems like each time Facebook gets called out on an embarrassing misstep, they atone for it by giving us a new feature we’ve long been wanting. Screw-ups (such as the time they publicly announced on my Facebook page that I had just booked a flight through Travelocity) have each soon led to concessions ranging from the ability to read a full Facebook message via email without having to visit the Facebook site to view it, along with the mother of all Facebook user requests, the ability to post a status update that doesn’t include the word “is” directly after your name. Facebook’s latest screw-up came in the form of changing their user policy to basically state that they own anything you post to the site, something draconian along the lines of if you upload a photo of your dog to your Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg himself reserves the right to come to your house and seize your dog if he so chooses.



Okay, so it wasn’t quite that bad, but the upshot is that it’s once again Atonement Time. The true long-term payoff this time around may have been Facebook’s adoption of OpenID (which up to this point had been almost completely irrelevant due to the fact that Facebook hadn’t adopted it), but the more immediate news out of Facebook is that its “fan pages” are in the process of being modified into something that looks less like, well, a fan page, and will instead more closely resemble the profile page of an individual user. In addition to being a “fan” of several different pages on Facebook myself, this new announcement caught my attention because iProng Magazine itself has a fan page on Facebook. And an iProng Facebook group. And I have my own personal profile. And from my standpoint, it all makes just a little more sense now. Back in the day, Facebook groups were where all the action was. Not that any of us were ever quite sure what to do with them. In most instances someone who had a vital interest in the group would invite you to become a member, you’d go ahead and join simply because you knew the person, and that would pretty much be the end of it. Of course this was back when the typical Facebook group was entitled “I secretly want to punch slow-walking people in the back of the head” (yes, that was actual group name), and of course this was long before Facebook was viewed as a legitimate commercial promotional tool.



As time went on more Facebook groups popped up that were aimed at specifically promoting or uniting something, such as iProng’s own long-running Facebook group which we use to announce and showcase each new issue. Eventually, Facebook launched fan pages, which were more explicitly geared toward allowing a person, a band, or a company (or a publication) to seek out existing and potential fans. So we created the iProng Magazine fan page, but quite honestly, there wasn’t much to the fan pages that wasn’t already do-able through the old groups. To that end, we’ve generally only been updating our fan page about as often as our group (each time a new issue is released), in effect making the group and the fan page facsimiles of each other that just happen to be laid out differently.



But that all changes as of now. While we’ve hedged our bets by keeping both of our Facebook properties active, the fact that the “Facebook” link on our home page leads to our fan page and not the group tells you what you need to know about which of the two I suspected represented the future of Facebook’s promotional and community opportunities. And it looks like that has turned out to be the case, because my latest visit this week to the iProng Magazine page on Facebook clued me in to the fact that the company is about to convert each fan page into what is essentially a plain old user account – with a few extras of course. In other words, “iProng Magazine” will now be an individual entity on Facebook much in the same way that “Bill Palmer” is.



Although the official changeover isn’t coming until a little later, I went ahead and opted our page into the new format today so we could get a jump on the new way of doing things. Sure enough, “iProng Magazine” on Facebook now has a profile picture, a wall, and even a status update option – just like a regular Facebook profile. Not that the page didn’t have some of those options before, but the fact that they’re now arranged almost exactly like an individual profile just seems to work better. The left sidebar includes the things that make a fan page distinct, such as the “founded” date, the displaying of six random fans instead of friends, and so on. But make no mistake, a Facebook fan page is now essentially just another user profile. And I think that’s the way it should be.



Any why not? For us, as an entity, the motif works well. The status update bar allows us to communicate with our fans much in the same way they’re already used to being communicated with on Facebook. And really, we want our readers who are on Facebook to think of iProng Magazine as just another Facebook friend. One of the things I’ve learned from new media over the past few years is that the more humanized your entity is able to present itself to folks in the new media space, the better chance is has of legitimately connecting with those people. Few are likely capable of considering a huge corporation as an actual friend, which is why such entities have little chance of succeeding in social media no matter how they approach it. But I’d like to think that iProng is deep enough into the social media trenches that the people who enjoy us can think of the magazine as an actual “friend” on Facebook (if we do it right). I guess we’ll find out going forward. Now that Facebook has turned our fan page into something interactive instead of just being a glorified Facebook group, we’ll see what we’re capable of.



I suspect this changeover is even better for public figures. Let’s say you’re a musician with both a Facebook fan page and your own personal Facebook profile. Maybe you’re not looking to let every one of your fans so deep into your social life that you want to let them see those old photos of you from high school that your old pals are so fond of tagging you in, but up until now the only real way to deeply interact with your fans on Facebook has been to let them become friends with your profile; a musician’s Facebook fan page until now hasn’t been much more than a professional bio page. But now, fans of your music can feel like they’ve legitimately connected with you on Facebook by becoming a fan of your fan page; which for a musician will act as a second, more public-oriented profile page.



As with all things, we’ll see. Although all our efforts going forward will be with iProng’s fan page, we’ll still continue to update the iProng group. We’ll reach you however you want to be reached, and some users still clearly prefer the group motif. But I know where our efforts will be going forward. By the way, you can visit our fan page by clicking here.

Michelle Featherstone interview

I consider myself lucky to have been witness to the flowering of a very talented singer songwriter. I was there when Michelle Featherstone played her keyboard and sang a couple of original songs for the first time at a small party, simply for kicks. It was at that time that she realized the possibility of doing this for a living, and a few years later, she has done just that. I had an opportunity to have a phone interview with Michelle as she was getting ready to release her latest album Blue Bike.

Blue Bike, this is your sophomore album correct?

Yes, it is technically my sophomore album, people who are die hard Michelle Featherstone fans… …would know that there are two albums that preceded these two that are up on itunes, which I used to make out of my house and sell them via pay pal. I had a lot of placements over the last few years, and when I first started out there was no iTunes, and no way to find out who’s song was on what TV show, but somehow people were finding me. And I found the desire and the need to start sort of compiling CD’s together. The first one was sort of an amalgamation of a couple of songs that had been on TV and a couple on new ones that’d just come out of the studio doing and I sold that. Then, I got a few more placements and they were mostly piano vocals so I ended up doing a second album that was just piano vocals, which I’m sure just bored the pants of of everybody (laughs) but it was basically to supply the demand, and believe it or not people bought them! That was pretty cool. Then Fallen Down which was my first album that I did within a studio and got it up on iTunes. That was my first attempt at getting out into the world, having a lot more exposure and not having to make the CDs myself. That came out in 2006.



I started work on another album in 2007, but during that time I left my publishing company and we decided that the best thing to do was to start off completely fresh. If I was going to go out independently again, then I might as well own everything from scratch. So, I spent the last part of 2007 and basically all of 2008,writing and getting the material just right, and spending some time co-writing, which is a fairly new thing for me. So the product is Blue Bike, the majority of work that I wrote through the latter part of 2007 and early 2008.


What is the major difference between the prior albums and this one?

I think the major difference is that I set out to make a cohesive album. The previous albums had been compilations of music that I’d written over time, so some of those songs hadn’t even been written anywhere near each other in terms of months and some had been written years prior, so we just sort of compiled my catalogue of material and put on the songs that sounded good or had been placed on TV. This was the first time I sat down and really wrote everything, in some ways chronologically, and that goes for the emotions too. I did go through another break-up, which was incredibly difficult for me to get through and I’m very lucky as a musician, I do have an outlet, and a vehicle to express myself but, I didn’t want to make up an entire album of just break-up songs so (laughs)… I hope I haven’t done that again! I know there’s several on there….BUT some of them mean different things some of them have different aspects of the break-up. Silverlake is about moving, moving back to an environment that was comfort to me, that I’ve lived before, that I was familiar with. 10 stories down has that sort of feeling that, I wanted to shut out, being this sort of kind of person that was constantly sad and miserable. I wanted to turn the television up so no one could hear it, so nobody could see it. There was a hibernation aspect. It was the idea of just wanting to sleep through this pain and get through it. I wanted to have the album feel like a process, because that was exactly what I was going through as I was writing it, and as I was recording it. I think by the time you get to good to be alive at the very end, hopefully it feels like that. I remember writing that song so well. I had moved. I’d been writing all this dark music. And there was a moment of it being a beautiful day. I took a walk around the reservoir and I came back and I felt like I got to see it again. I got see the world again, without looking through a glass shield of pain or sadness or heartbreak or worry or anything else. I definitely got to see a positive side, like, o.k, here’s moving on. So I think that’s what makes the album different. I really sat down with the intention to write a cohesive album from start to finish.

Did you find that process enjoyable, of making a deliberate cohesive album, or did you find that you lost a bit of spontaneity?

Yes, I found it enjoyable. I feel that most of 2007 and 2008 I was very prolific as a song writer because I had left my publishing deal and because they owned my catalogue up to that point, to that last song, I had to make sure that I had a lot more material coming in if I was going to hope of getting another publishing deal. So, I just spent a lot of time writing. The process allowed me to exacerbate all ideas that were coming out of me that were personal that were about my journey and my process and also because I was co-writing with different people, I was still getting to write in a different style and write in a different way. It didn’t feel like I was writing one song to the next to the next to the next, there were definitely several that were all by the end, some that stood out to me, that represented who I was and who I am as a musician right now. So the process didn’t’ lack spontaneity at all rather I was just more methodical. I made sure that I wrote in a consistent, daily, weekly basis. Then, once that I had done enough, that I had a consistent catalogue of work again, I could then go back and say, this ones are clearly ones for me as an artist and these ones are for this cool boy band, you know, whatever…(chuckle)

Did you get what you wanted to from this album?

Oh it’s a long road from start to finish. You think, I’ll start it in August, I’ll be done in September, it’ll be up on iTunes by the end of September and it’s February and it will be March before it will be up on iTunes…I think I got everything that I needed out of this, yes. I think it’s a ‘good’ sophomore attempt at my record. I show growth as a professional songwriter and hopefully, musician and singer. I certainly don’t feel done yet. I definitely want to explore more creative ideas, develop my songwriting even more, work with different people. I have to say that at this very moment, it’s sort of exhausting. It’s done, but there are so many little bits and pieces that you have to think about as an independent artist from, finding and aggregator to be the middle man between you and iTunes, to finding and online store to, getting the aggregator to pay the publisher rather than you, having to work out the accounting, to graphic design to, set list, track list, set order, I mean it never ends. It’s a never ending process really. Then, there’s promotion, distribution, then there’s gigs, then there’s support for that, and paying musicians and tours and the list goes on and on and on. I think that I’m lucky that from the process for this album in particular I’ve had to learn how to do everything. And I have a great team of people who work with me, a manager and a lawyer. You hope to add to those people, like a booking agent, a placement agent, hopefully this, hopefully that…but you know it has been an interesting process so, I have gotten out of it all that I wanted from this process and a hell of a lot more.

Do you want to get signed? or would you prefer being an independent artist?

Well I think the right answer is…of course I want to get signed! I’ve been able to work in this business for the last few years, so I’m well aware of how the business has changed. I think I’m going to be my own worst enemy because I know too much about how the business works. Unless the deal is particularly good for me, I’m not sure that I would give up my control and the ownership I have over the masters and at least 50% of the publishing. I don’t think I’d give that up for a random deal. It would have to be with someone who I’d know could take me to a level that I couldn’t get to by myself, and that is becoming more and more difficult, as labels are loosing, struggling to find a way to keep up with what’s happening with iTunes and the digital revolution.

As a musician what avenues do you have for making money?

Apart from the income that comes from CD sales I license music to photographers, who want to use wedding songs or happy songs, I do have happy songs amazingly enough… (laughs)


I know it’s shocking. I have a wedding song that was featured on One Tree Hill and the Rachel Ray Show, it’s called Man and Wife. It got a lot of exposure because it was on One Tree Hill and I actually got flown out to play that song on the show. So that song got a lot of attention and photographers started using it for their wedding sites. There was another song that was on a TV show called Inconceivable, which was basically about a fertility clinic, and that was called Sweet Baby. That song got a lot of attention based on the promo for that show. The show itself didn’t go past two episodes, but same thing, people thought that song was great to use for compiling DVDs of pictures together, and they license those songs from a company that uses me on their page.

The royalties from songs on TV shows have been consistent. The placements have been consistent. A couple of ones have been good, others have not been too great but if they are consistent you can survive. I had a commercial last year that ran in Canada last year, also using the Man and Wife song. I was lucky that I have a few songs that have a sort of ‘commercial’ sound, and that has sort of assisted me in driving my career forward. I’m constantly working. I think the biggest misconception is that as a musician you kinda just get to sit around and just play your guitar and your piano for a little while, and that’s all you do, but that isn’t. I work on looking up MySpace, connecting with people on Facebook, going to MTV Soundtrack, going to American Song Space, looking up on Craig’s List, on any kind of tool that I can find, musicians union. I work with people who are guitar players for this band and that band, I offer my services as a demo singer or demo player. You just get really creative, and think it comes literally from a desire to NEVER WORK AS A WAITRESS EVER AGAIN (laughs).

Honestly, that is where my motivation comes. If I have to go back to the service industry, if somebody asks me for a refill of iced tea I will stick a fork in their eyeball. There’s no way I could get out of that, and I would go to jail. I would be in jail for stabbing somebody with a fork and I wouldn’t mean to. It would just be a natural response!

I try to make all these decisions for myself and my life. At this stage I won’t be doing this anymore. It didn’t always go that way but the more I realized I’d found this niche in television, I really wanted to work that. I wanted to provide good songs of the same quality as any other song on the radio. It would just give the music supervisor a cheaper option, because I didn’t have a label saying, you are going to pay us forty grand to use this song. I was like, what do you guys have in the budget? and they would tell me the budget and then they would say but we can only pay you an eighth of that cause you’re an independent. So, yea. That’s that.

Do you ever feel like you would rather NOT let TV shows use your music?

No, I never feel like that, not ever, because it’s a kind of exposure that I couldn’t pay for. There are people watching that TV show in every state in the United States and pretty much a lot of different countries in Europe, Scandinavia, and even Japan and China, and there’s no way I could get out to all those places. I can’t afford to just tour around, hire musicians, get a bus and tour all over the united states. I just can’t afford that at this point. I’m hoping to do that with this record, but it’s difficult to do that because you have rent to pay and responsibilities to take care of and it’s hard to just get in a van and head off in the open road to play gigs for 14 people. TV has offered me a kind of exposure that I never would have had. To do this independently, there’s absolutely no chance in hell that I would have gotten out as much as I have. Ultimately that drives TV sales, it gets people interested in who you are, it gets people coming back and listening to more music that you’ve done, and hopefully checking you out when you have another album. Yea, I would never turn anything down. You know there was a moment where I had to sort of swallow and just say, yeah alright, that was many years ago and I still reap the benefits from it even if it was viewers paying for CDs afterwards.

Read part two of iProng Magazine’s Michelle Featherstone interview in our next issue – Michelle talks more about her new album and shares her favorite iPhone apps!

MobileMix for iPhone

Do you like to beatbox or just make a simple tune? And want it to loop infinitely without any hassle? Or just make a silly clip of yourself in what seems like multiple versions of you arguing with each other? If you said yes to any of these, then MobileMix may be for you.

The simplicity of the app is very user friendly and not complicated looking unlike some other apps in the market with the same main purpose. When you start a new song/recording, you will automatically see the first track that you can add to the project, and with a simple tap, a countdown will begin and then you can start recording whatever it is you want to capture (voice, singing, instruments, etc). Tap it again to stop recording.

The magic comes in that once you finish recording the first track, you can tap ‘Add New Track” and you will be given another record button, so it becomes lather-rinse-repeat process. Keep doing this until you gather all the necessary track recordings you need for your project. From this recording screen you can also hit the Play button at the corner and sample what the complete compilation sounds like. The tracks loop infinitely; to stop it just tap the button again.

On the main screen (you can go back here by tapping the ‘All Songs’ button when in the recording page) you will see a list of all the songs you have compiled on the bottom half of the screen. The top half will be taken up by an image of a CD jewel case. This little case can be customized by adding a photo that will go with your project by hitting the small ‘i’ at the corner. You’ll also be presented with options for editing the song title, and whether it’s Clean or Explicit with the Parental Advisory option.



You can also download the recorded tracks to your computer via a wi-fi connection. For Mac users, you will download via Bonjour. The only bad thing is that you will be shown all the tracks that you recorded to compile the entire ’song’ but you will have to download each separately.

The downloading on the computer is not the best method to me, personally. I was hoping that I was able to download the entire mixed song onto the computer rather than each individual track. It sorta defeated the purpose; you would still have to put the clips together in some sort of audio program then. Perhaps if time could be invested in making a desktop application that is made for the purpose of syncing the entire mix track to the desktop, the desktop syncing could be better. But so far this is a weak link in the app.

Overall, this is a pretty fun app. The UI is clean and simple all while being user friendly. Just a simple recording app for recording multiple tunes and beats into one track. Only drawback is the downloading to the computer.

U2’s New Horizon

Famous bands generally follow one of two career paths: break up while still at their peak, leaving fans wondering what might have been – or stick around long enough to eventually become a tribute band to their former selves. And then there’s U2, who’ve been famous for three decades and yet the entire world still stops and pays attention each time they release a new album. Maybe it’s because they’ve known when to disappear for awhile and then come back with a whole new identity. Or maybe it’s because they’ve known when they needed to come back to their roots.



But no matter what U2’s secret recipe might be, they’ve pulled it off again. After disappearing for nearly five years for committing the sin of making two albums in a row that sounded “too much” like U2, the band now reemerges from the shadows with No Line On the Horizon, an album which while still recalling memories of the band’s earlier work, manages to go to a lot of places U2 has never previously visited. As such it’s not an instantly accessible album; the first time I listened to it all the way through I’m not even sure I was enjoying the experience. But at the same time, I knew I’d like it more each successive time I listened to it. It’s sort of like shopping in a new grocery store for the first time and not really being able to find things where you’d expect them to be, but appreciating the store enough to know that you’ll enjoy shopping there in the future. It’s a weird analogy, but it’s a weird album.



If you’re expecting the first single “Get On Your Boots” to tell you much about the musical direction of the album, think again. The song is placed halfway through the record, and within the context of the full album it feels less like a centerpiece and more like a goofy halftime break. The only real clue you’ll get from the single is that it’s new and different while brushing up against previous decades of U2 in such a vague manner that you’re not even sure which of U2’s decades is being tapped on the shoulder. Take the second song on the album, which would have been absurdly out of place on 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, yet still makes you feel like you’re in that era (perhaps the first time U2 has pulled that off in the six albums they’ve released since then). But then again, the opening title track feels like just maybe it could have been the lead single that 1993’s Zooropa never really did have.



In fact Zooropa could be a metaphor for this entire album, conceptually if not sonically. The fact that half the U2 fans reading this have no idea that Zooropa exists tells you about how inaccessible that particular album proved to be, but then the band wasn’t even trying to promote that album, were they? And yet here they are going for the jugular this time around, performing at the Presidential Inauguration, then the Grammys, then a full week on Letterman. Next week they’ll probably be performing on top of the Goodyear blimp. So this album had better have a little more substance than the nonchalant walk in the park that was Zooropa. And indeed, this album does. It just might take you a little bit to get there with it.



“Unknown Caller” is a nice bit of balladry, at least until you hit the lyric “Force quit and move to trash” and you begin to wonder if perhaps Bono was penciling in lines while sitting at his Mac laptop and forgot to replace them with real lyrics later. But about the fourth time around, the lyrics almost become soothing in their absurdness. And then there’s the sweeping “Moment of Surrender” which might or might not do anything for you the first time around but you’ll probably wake up the next day (as I did) with the chorus of the song stuck in your head.



For each song that recalls earlier U2, there’s another that sounds like nothing they’ve ever done. “Fez: Being Born” manages to plant a Moroccan-influenced trance-like song into the middle of the album, and sample “Get On Your Boots” at the same time, while somehow not throwing off the flow of the album. The mid-tempo “Breathe” is way too good to be the next-to-last song on the record, and it’s also one of those songs that’ll probably never quite sound right live (as evidenced by U2’s first night on Letterman), yet that won’t stop the band from spending the next decade trying to do just that while on tour.



And maybe that’s what allows U2 to remain as vital today as they were in the 80’s or 90’s – even when the band creates an indisputable masterpiece like The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby, there’s always the sense that they’ve still not quite yet reached perfection, that there’s still some room for growth in there. Each time they release a new album there’s always the tease that there might be something even better coming on the one after that. When a band has to compete against its own thirty-year-long cherished back-catalog, they’re not supposed to be able to make new music that can hold a candle to anything in that catalog. And yet U2 continues to prove to be the exception to that rule.



I can’t tell you whether or not you’ll like No Line On The Horizon. Comments I’ve heard from fellow U2 fans have ranged from “it’s a brilliant album” to “they’re trying to sound like Pink Floyd and it’s not working.” But I can tell you that while I’m a life-long fan of the band, not every one of their albums has worked for me (POP never did grow on me despite all the time I spent trying, and I think I’ve listened to Zooropa all the way through maybe twice in fifteen years; I knew it wasn’t going to grow on me either). But despite taking a few tries, this new album really works for me. Maybe it’s because I was so hungry for U2 to branch out into new territory (and have it actually work) for the first time since Achtung Baby.



There are questions that still need answers. Why did the preliminary artwork feature an equal sign on the horizon, which disappeared on the official release? And why is Bono suddenly wearing eyeliner in a manner that makes him look like he’s just been beaten up?



In any case, No Line On The Horizon is all I want to listen to right now. I made myself go back and listen to The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby in full today just to see how the new record stacks up. Neither of those classics is in danger of being toppled, but Horizon does manage hold its own. At least that’s how I feel about it as of today. Ask me again after a few dozen more listens.

I Love Katamari for iPhone

“I Love Katamari” is a fun and addictive puzzle game created by Namco. It can also be found on various gaming platforms, but the version for the iPhone and iPod touch brings you an experience you can’t find anywhere else.

As the story goes, “The King of All Cosmos has accidentally knocked all the stars out of the sky during a crazy night out. It is up to the pint-sized Prince to put the twinkle back in the heavens.” You play the role of the young prince who’s undying wish is to please his father. The King of All Cosmos sends the young prince to Earth to bring back his requested object.

The object of the game is to roll a katamari (a very adhesive ball) around various locations to collect interesting objects such as pencils, push pins, sushi, and more! Larger objects can be rolled up in your katamari as its diameter increases. I know this sounds very weird, but it’s also highly addictive and you’ll find yourself tiling your iPhone/iPod touch in all directions.

Keep in mind that rolling the desired object is the goal and not rolling everything in sight. The game features a few play modes: Story Mode (find and roll-up the King’s requested object), Time Attack Mode (roll up as much as possible in a limited time), Exact Size Challenge Mode (match exactly a requested katamari size), and Eternal Mode (roll at your own pace without any time or size limit). Finishing the challenge in Story Modes opens up new adventures for you though.

The graphics of the game are fun and the music is entertaining. My only concern is the speed of the animation, but hopefully that will be fixed in the next update. Try out “I Love Katamari Lite” to get the feel of the game, which includes the first level.

Westone 3 earphones

My job allows me to try out earbuds all across the spectrum in terms of price, design and quality. And while I admit that the majority of music I listen to on my iPhone comes through earbuds that cost $100 or more, I’d like to think I’m not a snob – if a decently balanced set of $25 earbuds or even the iPhone’s own bundled earbuds happen to be all that’s available to me on a given day, I still consider it an enjoyable listening experience.



That having been said, there’s no question that some earbuds sound day-and-night better than others. Earbuds that protrude into your ear canal (as opposed to simply sitting next to it) can offer you a whole new level of listening experience. And even among those in-ear earbuds, the audio quality can vary drastically from one product to the next. Sometimes price is a good indicator of what you’re getting, while in other instances you’re merely paying for a brand name.



So what to make of Westone’s simply titled “3” earbuds, whose retail price tag is a stunning four hundred dollars? Seeing as how the iPhone, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle don’t cost that much COMBINED, the Westone 3 had better sound so stunningly fantastic that they make you suddenly want to take your existing less-expensive earbuds and throw them in a river. Well, after spending a week with the Westone 3, I can confirm first-hand two things: they sound significantly better than I thought earbuds were physically capable or sounding, an I do in fact now want to throw all my other earbuds into a river – they all suck now in comparison.



The most straightforward way in which I can describe the Westone 3 is they don’t sound like earbuds; they sound like full-on cup-shaped headphones. In other words, the audio you’re hearing isn’t just of a higher quality than cheaper earbuds, it’s also more expansive (I almost just typed “expensive” by mistake, which I guess in this case would also be accurate). But what I’m getting at is that it feels like you’re hearing the music not only all the way through your head but also expanding in both directions outside your ears. You feel as if you can hear every individual note coming from every instrument in its own separate space.



Sure, various earbuds in the $100-$200 range can do this to a certain extent, but this is a whole new ballgame. I’ve gone back and listened to favorite songs of mine, songs that I thought I knew pretty well, that now sound so different through the Westone 3 earbuds that it literally sends chills down my spine.



Westone’s website says that the product is called “3” because “Its balanced armature drivers and three-way crossover network add incredible realism and punch to your listening experiences.” I don’t even really know what that means, nor do I much care. Bottom line is that these earbuds make me never want to listen to music through any other earbuds again, and despite the impressive collection of great-sounding earbuds I’ve amassed, this is the first time I’ve ever tested out one pair that made me suddenly find all of the others to be incompetent in comparison.

And that’s actually not a good thing in my case. You see, despite the various iPods I keep around for testing purposes, I’m an iPhone user, not an iPod user. And as an iPhone user I’ve grown used to, and come to expect that, any earbuds I use with my iPhone will have built-in microphone and a play/pause button so I can take phone calls and control the music without having to dig the iPhone out of my pocket. Those features have been a part of the iPhone experience from day one, and at this point I find them indispensable. As a result, I’ve refused to use any earbuds that don’t have those iPhone-specific features for anything other than testing purposes. For example, while I consider the Future Sonics Atrio earbuds to sound better than the Etymotic hf2 or the v-moda vibe ii earbuds, it’s the latter two that I use from day to day and not the former – for the simple reason that the Atrio doesn’t have a mic or play/pause button, and it doesn’t sound that much better than the other two. The problem here, of course, is that the Westone 3 does sound that much better than anything else I’ve been using. Except that the idea of having to dig my iPhone out of my pocket when it rings, then hurriedly take an earbud out of one ear before I answer, and hold the iPhone up to my ear for the duration of any phone call I receive is just not something I’m interested in doing. So that leaves me in a quandary, as the Westone 3 simply isn’t designed to be iPhone-specific in nature.


Which is a shame, because so much about them is well-done, and not just the overwhelmingly strong audio quality. The twisted double-rope design is extremely thin and light, even by thin and light standards, meaning that even though the earbuds mechanisms themselves are larger than with most other earbuds, but overall product is decidedly in the non-bulky category. And the bundled buds include a wide assortment of different-sized black and clear rubber buds, squishable foam buds, triple-flanged buds. I wouldn’t expect any user to have trouble finding at least one size/type of buds that works well for them. And for those users who want to use their earbuds with a traditional stereo system (not out of the question, since the Westone 3 is clearly a viable candidate to replace your over-the-ear headphones), an adapter to fit larger quarter-inch headphone ports is also included.



The final bundled item left me both excited and a bit frustrated. An attachable cable add-on offers you the ability to control the music’s volume via a a small volume wheel. I find the inclusion of the volume control exciting because, frankly, all quality earbuds should come with this feature (in reality, very few do). But I also find it frustrating because the Westone 3’s volume control apparatus is about twice as bulky as the one included on another set of earbuds I’m currently testing, the $80 z.buds from Zagg. At five times the price, I would have thought the Westone volume control would be less bulky, not more. It appears Westone has hedged their bets by making the volume control apparatus an optional snap-on than can be left off for those who don’t want the extra bulk, but this only serves to make them even a little bulkier since there’s now an extra plug involved. But in fairness, since most earbuds don’t come with in-line volume control of any kind, I can’t detract from the Westone 3’s star rating for the imperfect implementation of the volume control; if it hadn’t been included at all, these would still be five star earbuds.


That leaves the fact that the Westone 3 works just fine with an iPhone but doesn’t include the iPhone-specific features I mentioned earlier. I’ve asked Westone privately to bring out an iPhone-specific version of the 3, and now I’m doing so publicly. As iPod users continue to gradually replace their iPod with an iPhone, it would seem to be a no-brainer to me. But of course I’m biased; I haven’t really been an iPod user since 2007.



I tried using the Westone 3 out and about town with my iPhone while conducting my testing, but eventually the phone rang and I had to go through hoops to answer it, or someone wanted to speak to me and I had to not only pull an earbud out of my ear but also yank the cable out of the iPhone’s headphone jack to get the music to stop playing. And that just doesn’t work for me. So while I’ll keep the Westone 3 around for home use, particularly when I’m listening to a new album for the first time, I’m left with no choice but to continue using lesser but iPhone-specific earbuds from other companies when I’m out of the house. Except that before I tested out the Westone 3, I found those other earbuds to be perfectly acceptable in terms of audio quality, and now I no longer do.



I’ll get off my soapbox now and make it clear that for iPhone users who don’t care about the mic or play/pause button, the Westone 3 is an ideal product (assuming of course that $399 is within your budget), and for iPod users the Westone 3 is a no-brainer if you can afford it. They really do sound so amazing that you’ll be so convinced you’re wearing headphones, and not earbuds, that you shouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself trying to remove them by reaching for headphone cups that aren’t there.



Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m walking down to a diner for dinner, so it’s time to put the Westone 3 earbuds away and head out the door with some other pair of really good iPhone-specific earbuds that sound like crap in comparison.

The Hollywood Podcast

What first led you into the world of podcasting?

I’m not even sure exactly how I heard about podcasting. I think it may have been an NPR news piece. I just remember driving around on my scooter listening to Adam Curry’s “Daily Source Code”.

And it wasn’t that I loved his show so much. It was his enthusiasm. He was recording in his car. He was pushing the technology forward. He was excited and it was contagious.

From there it was a no-brainer.

My Dad worked in Boston radio for years. I grew up around radio. The thought of having my own show was thrilling. Especially after having a few years in Los Angeles under my belt. I love Los Angeles but prior to this DIY revolution, or whatever you want to call it, all the power rested in very few hands. I didn’t have a voice unless someone decided I should have a voice.

I needed something that was mine, something creative that I didn’t need permission or approval to do.

After months of thought and research I finally launched my first show on March 27, 2005.

Why do a podcast about Hollywood itself?

My original idea was sort of a “This American Life meets Hollywood” concept. As a struggling actor, I was in the trenches of Hollywood and I knew that there were a lot of interesting stories that weren’t being told.

I also knew that these mainstream big media guys were stuck in the publicist/press junket vortex. They interviewed the big names and I couldn’t compete with that. My strength was that I could bring the stories from the trenches to whoever was interested.

They could interview Gwyneth Paltrow and I would interview the paparazzi photographers that chase her. And that’s exactly what I did for my first show. It was called “Chasing Gwyneth”. The show was a collection of sound bites and interviews from a weekend I spent riding along with a paparazzi photographer as he chased Gwyneth Paltrow.

There are tons of stories here that haven’t been told. I’m a one-man operation so I’m not able to capture them all but I’m doing my best.

What does a typical episode of The Hollywood Podcast consist of?

There’s no such thing.

About a year into my show I started doing these episodes called “Unkempt”. It was a crazy time in my life. I was single, driving a scooter, sleeping on a pilates mat in a kitchen, and my career was going nowhere. I was really hurting and I needed to talk about it. I needed to express myself.

I was also getting tired of all the hours I was spending editing audio. I just wanted to turn on the mic and talk about my life. No editing. Just send it out. That’s where the “Unkempt” title came from. I was unkempt. My life was unkempt. And these shows reflected that.

That’s a long way of saying that my show is essentially two shows in one – one side interviews and the other side “Unkempt” stories about my life.

That’s the beauty of podcasting. It’s challenging and maybe frustrating for potential new listeners but it’s my show and I can do whatever I want.

Who are some of the more interesting people you’ve interviewed on the show?

There’s a few that come to mind. The paparazzi photographers in “Chasing Gwyneth” reminded me that things aren’t always black and white. Think what you want about the paparazzi but each one of them has a unique story to tell.

I’ve interviewed a hand model, Pamela Anderson’s “Baywatch” body double, a former Mouseketeer, but the most controversial interview was with James Bulliard, who went from the lead in an ABC primetime drama to a depressed, bankrupt and out-of-work actor. He was brutally honest and open with me and it elicited a very interesting and passionate response from my listeners.

Strangely though, I think my “Unkempt” episodes have been the most interesting to my listeners.

How has being a podcaster influenced your acting aspirations and vice versa?

My podcast has expanded my aspirations. The response I’ve gotten from my listeners has given me the confidence to tell stories on stage, to write essays and screenplays, to think of myself as a true artist and not “just another actor in LA”. Also, my “Unkempt” series has forced me to pay attention to my life and to get out of my apartment and take some chances.

I’m not as young as I’d like to be but I think things are just getting started for me as an artist and I owe that to my podcast.

What motivated you to take over the reins of LA Podcasters?

Those early LA Podcaster meet-ups were thrilling – Dan Klass, Larry Winfield, Cush, the Tres Jefes guys, the Dr. Floyd guys, Lance Anderson, and several others. It was just a bunch of guys from different walks of life, all wanting to express their art in some way. It was really cool.
Lance has been running it since day one and he was looking to hand it off to someone. It’s a lot of work and I think Lance just needed a break. I thought it was really important that he hand it off to someone who was there from the beginning and had respect for the passion and energy that he put into it.

What can we look forward to from LA Podcasters going forward?

My goals with the group are humble. Really, I just want to bring it back to what Lance started back in 2005. There’s a bunch of new media, social media, video, social networking groups sprouting up around town and they’re great but I think all these groups made us think that we needed to grow and expand our reach. I want to keep LA Podcasters simple and focussed. If you’re a podcaster or you’re interested in podcasting then an LA Podcaster Meet-Up is the place to go.

Griffin AirCurve for iPhone

The Griffin Aircurve is a simple idea: an inexpensive way to amplify the sound of your iPhone’s speakers to make listening to music easier. What’s interesting behind this simple idea is that there is no need for power to this particular unit. That’s right; no batteries, no A/C adapter, nothing. Instead, the Aircurve is a clear piece of plastic with a footprint smaller than most iPod/iPhone speaker systems that has a curved chamber that moves in a spiral from the iPhone dock to the front face where it opens, acting as an amplifier for the speaker on an iPhone (and presumably the 2nd Gen iPod Touch, although the packaging does not display this, nor does it come with a dock adapter for an iPod Touch).

The question regarding something as distinctive and novel as the Aircurve is always going to be “how well does it work?” and the answer is: pretty well. Griffin claims that the Aircurve amplifies the sound of the iPhone’s built-in speaker by 10 decibels and, while I had no way of measuring the actual decibel level of the sound, it does come out noticeably louder when the iPhone is docked in the Aircurve. Just how much louder? Well, Aircurve is not going to substitute for a full-blown stereo, nor will a $300 iPhone docking speaker system be replaced by it, but it will make it easier to listen to music, particularly while on-the-go. The footprint of the Aircurve is small enough that it could fit fairly easily into a bag and I can definitely see the use while traveling if you want to listen to your music in, say, a hotel room.



But again, keep in mind that Aircurve is not a substitute for larger speaker systems. It relies on the iPhone’s speaker, which means that even though it is louder, the sound quality itself is pretty much the same. There is little bass and the sound can be occasionally tinny. Again, not necessarily a flaw in the Aircurve so much as in the little speaker in the iPhone itself, but a side effect one should be aware of.

The nice thing about the Aircurve is that it requires no electric power of any kind (no batteries to change out or charge and A/C adapter) but it does support iPhone charging via a pass through hole in the iPhone dock. This, however, leads to some problems. Griffin claims on their website that Aircurve will accept Griffin’s dock cable or the dock cable that came with your iPhone, but this is true only to an extent. Like Apple, Griffin has gotten rid of the spring-release mechanism on their dock cables, meaning you only need a sharp tug to unplug it from the iPhone; however, the size of their dock connector cable is still the same as the old iPod cables, whereas Apple has slimmed down the actual dock connector on their cable.



Since I don’t have a Griffin branded cable, I used my iPhone’s cable with the Aircurve and was met with a frustration: in order to make both types of cables fit, Griffin left the space where the dock connector cable sits in the dock (so you can just drop your phone in and have it start charging) too big to accommodate the Apple cable easily. If you only have the cable that came with your iPhone, don’t expect to easily drop your phone in the dock and have it connect; it will require some fidgeting and possibly pulling a little of the cable through and manually plugging it in before pulling it back through the bottom so the iPhone can rest in the dock correctly. This can be frustrating, especially since Apple’s cable is not exactly the longest cable out there so if you don’t want to buy a second cable, be sure to leave some room where you can tug on the cable a little bit, or just forego charging through the Aircurve.

Overall, the Aircurve is a quaint idea that works mostly as advertised, but is obviously limited by the iPhone itself. You won’t necessarily be able to host a rocking house party with it, but a small dinner party perhaps– or at the very least it can make a nice travel system (or in my case, an alarm clock. I found that putting the Aircurve on my nightstand makes it much easier to hear the alarm from my phone in the morning). However, those who don’t wish to spend extra money on a Griffin branded dock cable should keep in mind possible frustrations when charging with the Apple cable.

Company of Thieves interview

Company of Thieves is a three-piece band from Chicago. Recently, iProng’s Matt Saye spoke with lead singer Genevieve Schatz…

Matt: I just saw that recently you were on Carson Daly’s show and that was your first tv appearance. What was that like?

Genevieve: It was very surreal. The anticipation was just a whole bunch of nerves. But then as the day went on we realized it was just like playing a show, it just happened to be filmed and I think we had the time of our lives to be honest.



It looked like you were having fun.

Yeah, we were. And the entire staff there was very welcoming and very accommodating. Nobody had a weird ego; everybody was so easy to deal with.

So how does that compare to something like “Live from Daryl’s House” with Daryl from Hall and Oates?

Well, the atmosphere at Daryl’s house is more relaxed because he invited us into his actual home. But I guess the difference is that instead of waiting backstage the entire day before you come out and play two songs you are thrown into the mix from the get-go at Daryl’s house. You have cameras and a microphone on you from the second you walk in. Everything you do is being recorded and filmed so you have to adapt. On the Carson Daly show there’s less transition time from being backstage to being onstage with an entire audience.

I haven’t had the chance to see you live yet, but I was looking at reviews and they say your shows are lots of fun. I’ve seen shows where musicians are only there to play their music. What are your thoughts on playing a live show?

I think it’s the most important thing for a band. It’s where you can connect directly with your audience. We have elements that are heavily influenced by pop songs but we make discoveries all the time on stage when we play shows. And we like our audience to be a part of that experience. We like to make them feel like they’re just hanging out with us.

Do you do anything in particular to interact with the crowd?

Just be ourselves and act like we’re hanging out with a group of friends. We definitely put a lot of weight into our performance because when people go out to see a show it is just that: a show. I want them to get a great performance.

Your song “Oscar Wilde” was the Discovery Download in iTunes not too long ago. What was that like? How did that happen?

We got lucky enough to have someone from iTunes catch a show from us at CMJ in October and she really took to the music and took the suggestion back to iTunes headquarters. Imagine being almost completely unknown and then overnight you have hundreds of thousands of people downloading your songs and hearing the name of your band. The word of mouth is like viral marketing. Overnight we were opened up to the digital world and that made us really nervous because we’d never had so much feedback before but also it was a beautiful thing. That’s the goal– to share your music with as many people as possible.

I know many artists seem to be nervous about digital downloading but it seems like you had a positive experience with it. Do you have anything else to add about it?

It was cool to see people coming out of the woodwork to write reviews or blog posts. That’s the beauty of the digital world is everybody gets a voice. Whether or not it’s positive or negative it makes them feel special and they get to be part of something up and coming and they get to be a part of the music. I think it’s very special.

Since we’re on the subject of “Oscar Wilde” it seems to be picking up a lot of steam. Not only is that song on the album but also the album’s title is from a quote of his. I take it you’re fans?

Oscar Wilde was someone who called his own shots and that’s very admirable. This is our way of saying this may not be the exact band that we’re going to be or want to be, of course it isn’t; we’re going to grow. But we want to have a foundation at least so we can’t be molded into something that we don’t want to be. In general, [Wilde] is an artist who was embraced for his professional career and his passions and was welcomed into society for his writings but was shunned for his personal life. I can’t think of anything more heart wrenching than that for an artist. It seems to happen everywhere to artists – they are loved because they are like decorations in people’s lives. I feel like it’s wrong to lionize a human being like that because they’re people just like everybody else. They are entitled to their own lives too.

Are there any other literary or other figures you draw inspiration from?

Thom Yorke, M.C. Escher, there’s so many. But both of them because they are so imaginative.

You’re based out of Chicago and you mention that one of your influences is [the Chicago-based group] Wilco. Do you have any other major influences?

Genre-wise we’re all across the board. Stuff comes from Blues and Jazz to folk and Rock n’ Roll. Of course the Beatles, that’s a given, but it even goes from Aretha Franklin and Billy Holliday to current artists like Broken Social Scene. Especially people now that are forward-thinking. Which is why Radiohead is a huge influence too even though you might not directly hear it.

Speaking of forward thinking, you have a quote on your website that says “there’s a new, gutsy energy coming out right now, almost a generational thing. Today’s youth, and to some extent their parents, are really wanting a change, and there’s a feeling that we’re at the edge of big change right now.” Your music doesn’t come off as political as, say, Rage Against the Machine, but do you feel like you have those elements in your music?

Yeah, we do. But we don’t like to preach. At the same time you don’t want to make passive art. It’s not over the top; it just comes out naturally. I don’t sit down and think “oh I’m going to put this down there because someone’s going to catch on.”

You also mention on your site that you’re not “just a chick singer with a backing group.” Does that play into how you write songs and lyrics?

As far as that goes it is a big collaborative effort. I write the lyrics and I am an open book to the band. They ask me questions but we all have a voice and input. I would never want to be up there and be representing something they felt strongly against. I know they would do the same for me.

Finally, do you have anything you would say to aspiring musicians?

Make it a point to be true to yourself and play what you want to play. Don’t play for other people. Take as many opportunities as you can get out there and get your music heard. And collaborate with as many people as possible so you can grow and get new perspectives. It’s like being in school– be part of a group discussion. And don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. 


•••••

Company of Thieves’ single “Oscar Wilde” and the full album Ordinary Riches are both available in iTunes and retail stores. They are currently on tour in support of their debut album.

iHome iHM77 speakers

Why review a $49 speaker system like the iHome iHM77 when it’s not even iPhone/iPod-specific? That’s a good question, and one that deserves an answer before I dive into the review:



While most of the speaker systems we review here at iProng are in the $100-$300 price range, those users with no budget (or perhaps no appreciation for audio quality) can easily run down to the local discount electronics store and grab a generic-looking, oversized, pair of crappy-sounding speakers for ten or fifteen bucks and connect them to their iPhone or iPod. While we promise never to waste your time with the latter, there are in fact a number of speaker systems that manage to split the difference by sounding decent without breaking the bank. And out of respect for the current economic climate, we’re going to highlight the best products that fall in that category.



Last month I wrote about Altec Lansing’s comparatively diminutive Orbit M speaker, but now I’ve found that’s even smaller and sounds better: iHome’s iHM77 “capsule” speaker system. The name comes from the shape the iHM77 takes out of the box, but you soon find that the capsule splits in half to form a pair of tiny speakers, each of which can be twisted such that they pop up on a spring to stand about twice as tall. At about two inches in diameter and about two inches tall each, these speakers initially look like they’re too tiny to possibly sound any good – but that turns out to be the beauty of the product.

The iHM77 (the product really needs a more marketable name than that) speakers don’t sound great, mind you, but they do sound good, easily outclassing those $10-$15 “WalMart Special” generic speaker systems that can often be literally ten times as large as these tiny speakers are. And when I say that the iHM77 doesn’t provide as much bass as I’d like, that’s actually a compliment; speakers of this size don’t typically put out any bass at all.



To pin it down further, the iHM77 speakers sound embarrassingly better than the tiny speaker built into the iPhone itself, and easily sound better than the built-in speakers in any Mac or PC laptop, yet don’t measure up to the sound quality of iHome’s own iP27 portable iPhone/iPod alarm clock system. In other words, you’re not going to get the same audio quality as if you were to buy a full-fledged dockable iPhone/iPod speaker system, but for your $49 you’ll get your money’s worth.



The iHM77 does turn out to have one fundamental flaw in its design, which I confirmed with iHome: if the speakers are turned on while charging via USB, you’ll hear a low-level static hum which easily gets washed out by the audio coming out of the speakers – if in fact there is any audio coming out of the speakers. Let’s say you’ve got the speakers connected to your laptop for both audio and charging purposes, but you’re not listening to any music and the speakers are merely attached so you can hear your email chime or calendar alarm. That scenario doesn’t work because you’ll have to put up with the static filling the silences. While at first dismayed by this, I eventually concluded that it’s a non-issue for use with iPhone or iPod (since it’s unlikely you’d be using the speakers to listen to your iPhone while simultaneously charging them via your computer), and a minor hassle for use with your computer, as you essentially have to leave the speakers turned off while they’re charging. Not such a big deal, as I found that through moderate use the iHM77’s need to be charged about once a week and can be done overnight. And the way they condense into a single capsule for travel purposes is priceless.


iProngMobile launches

iProng Magazine is pleased to launch a new mobile version of iProng.com for iPhone and iPod touch users.

iProng Magazine’s Spring Double Issue featuring Graham Nash and more

FollowUp for iPhone

Everyone lives a busy life, filled with tasks to be completed each day. One of the common types of tasks though, is to call someone back over the phone. But what if you have a lot of calls to make, and need some help with keeping track of who to call and what you’re calling for? Say hello to FollowUp, the app that keeps track of all your contacts and conversations.

The purpose of the app is to help you keep organized with conversations that you must follow-up on in the near future. Great for businessmen, salespeople, or just anyone that needs to make important calls back to someone.

When the app is first opened, you will be presented with a button to add a new contact to the FollowUp list, and then once a contact is added, you can begin to add ‘conversations’ which is simply a subject (summarize what you need to talk about) and add a note (which describes a bit more in detail of what you need to talk about), and a date to follow-up on that particular conversation.

When you’ve added a few contacts and conversations, the main screen will show all the added contacts via alphabetical order, and below that it will show how many conversations you’ve had with them, enabling you to keep track of everything that has been passed between you and that one person. If you put any due dates for followups on conversations, they will appear in the very noticeable category named “Past Due” with the red exclamation mark that does its job of catching your attention.

This app is a great way to keep organized if a lot of your todo’s involve making calls to people. It’s a great todo app itself, if you’re just going to make phone calls. But it’s a pretty good companion to other GTD apps such as Appigo’s Todo or Cultured Code’s Things. I would highly recommend this app if you want something to help you get organized with phone calls.

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