App Review – Flast.FM (Online social music networking)

By now you have already heard of last.fm. It's a free music social networking site, it allows you to listen to and discover new music. I find that this service can’t be beaten.

Anyway, this is about the iPod touch/iPhone app for it.

Price
Since the Application is free there is no need to give it a negative rating, at the end of the day having the application for free is a lot better than paying for it.

Usability
The Application was not designed for socialising on the site, it is more music orientated than it’s PC/Mac counterpart. All you’ll be able to access is the music radios, and search engine. the application does the same as it’s PC/Mac counter part, you can search for artists and start a new station with music by similar artists.

The search engine (as displayed above) works how you would expect it to work. It’s also quite fast, so that’s a plus.

When you have found an artist(s) you can then activate the radio screen, however this is where it starts to slip believe it or not. Crash issues and slow downs are quite common while listening to the radio stations even on a full wireless signal which leads me to believe it is the application itself that is at fault here. This is what might put you off the application in the first place. However, if you can manage to work around the issues with the radio player it’s self then it works great, but take into account that the slow down’s and crash issues will also affect the entire application it’s self.

After selecting an artist the station will be saved to the main home screen, so when you open the application up you can chose the artist station you want to listen to without having to search for the artist(s) again.

 

Overall

Bad points

• Suffers from crashes and slowdowns too often
• No offline mode
• No way of buying/downloading tracks
• No social networking of any kind
• Eventually runs out of music to play on a station
• Lack of ability to comment on an artist

Good Points

• Works exactly the same as the artist radio stations on the PC/Mac Counterparts
• Search engine is easy to use
• Recent stations are automatically saved to main menu
• Whole application is easy to use
• Can save separate songs to a play list.

App score – 6/10
The crash issues and slow downs need to be solved.

News: I’ve become a writer on Duncsweb

I’ve been posting comments on Duncsweb for a while now. I really like getting involved with what people post on there.
Today I was contacted by the owner of the site DuncanM and he asked me if I wanted to start writing on there, I accepted his offer and I am now part of the duncsweb team. I am very happy and honoured to be given this position, and I will continue to produce content for the site.
You can view my profile here.

My advice, is to be involved, you can't expect to be noticed, if you do nothing to get noticed. You have to be in it to win it.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to posting more content both on this blog, and on Duncsweb.

Steam Beta – My thoughts.

I was bored one day, and I thought that I should give the beta version a try, it was free so I wasn’t going to miss out on anything,
and if I didn’t like it. I could just go back to the original steam client.

Thankfully this was not the case.

It seems that the steam beta is a hit or miss kind of deal with some people. Personally I love it, but at the end of the day you either love it
or hate it.

I like the beta as it allows me to organise all of my games into specific lists, and categories of my choosing with ease, in the previous version of steam,
all of my games were unorganised and hard to find, with this new feature included in the beta. It makes my life so much easier.
Also it allows me to see any relevant game updates or releases at a glance, in contrast to the older steam client I had to right click on each game
just to see if there were any updates. It’s a nice user interface. The in game overlay and web browser have also been improved. Simple and easy to use.

Now onto what might push you away from the steam beta.
First of all, your not going to be able to chat to other players using the in game overlay, which I find annoying but not too much of a problem.
Secondly, some games might have a hard time working with the steam beta. This hasn’t been the case for me, but reading around on the internet,
I’ve found that some people have this issue. It is something you might want to take into account when trying the beta out.

My final verdict;

This steam beta is good for those who want to save time, and are looking for a much easier and better looking interface with better organisation.
If your worried about not having the chat and some games work then I would avoid it until the final release.

If you don’t like the beta, you can always revert back to the original steam client. You have to keep in mind that the new steam is in beta and will have the
odd issue from time to time.

 

Thanks for reading.

Blogger in Draft – My thoughts.

As many of you already know, I’ve done a major overhaul of the look and feel of the blog, I was sick of using the old templates.
So I decided to give blogger in draft a try, and use the new template designer, that is supposed to allow you to adjust each aspect
of the blog. It has also given me the option to add “Pages” to the blog, these are not blog posts per se but they allow me to dedicate an
entire page to one subject, instead of getting it mixed up with other unrelated blog posts.

Blow is a screen shot of the new template designer interface

Personally I think it is fantastic that it allows me and many other users to make a professional looking blog, I have yet to find a single fault with it.
I have to say that Blogger has done a fantastic job here. It’s worth checking out if you have the time.

Dock applications - Which one is right for me?

Dock's which one is right for you?


Last night, I made a video giving my opinion on what dock application you might want to use and why.
However I didn't cover all of the Dock applications on Windows. I feel I should cover them here on the blog. (In no specific order)

1. RKLauncher (http://home.cogeco.ca/~rklauncher/) - Personally I do not like this dock application, it's buggy, it's full of glitches and just overall  it is a pain in the arse to work with. It will keep constantly adding icons automatically for no reason which will eat away your CPU and RAM. However if you can get it working correctly it can be a great application.
    
2. Circle Dock (http://circledock.wikidot.com/) - I covered this in a video on YouTube, and I must say it is a very good little application if you don't like the other dock applications out there. It seems to be built off the same engine as rocket dock so it is worth checking out. However, on lower end computers it struggles performance wise, also the dock it's self tends to get in the way of doing normal everyday things on a computer.
   
3. XWindows Dock (http://xwdock.aqua-soft.org/) - I gave this dock a try and it is quite a good dock, it works just as the website says it does. However, performance wise it kept lagging even on my high spec system which can run most games. It leads me to believe that the application it's self is the cause, but it works quite well when it can run smoothly.
   
4. ViGlance (http://lee-soft.com/viglance/) - A very good dock application that emulates the Windows 7 superbar. Works amazingly well on Vista and doesn't do any CPU/RAM damage to the computer. One thing I don't like is on XP the transparency doesn't work which ruins the overall effect it brings to Vista users.

Ultimatly it is up to you to decide which dock application you want to use. If you know of any more Dock applications for Windows don't hesitate to send a link to illage2@googlemail.com.

Thanks for reading.

Some ... small updates to the Blog.

As you probably all know I have updated the blog with new features and so on.

Here is a run down of all the new features.

• Added a small "Video Box" to the right side. To give a small preview of the latest videos.
• Added "Share, Subscribe, Latest videos" to the bottom of the page. I added them so you could subscribe and share, and watch my latest YouTube videos.
• Added "News & Blogs I read" to the right side. So other people can follow the same blogs and news sites that I follow.
• Added "Where you can find me" to the side. I also added some sites that I post on regularly.
• Added "Google Search" So readers can search google without having to leave the page. It is also there to help people search for something specific from the Blog as well.

I am also using Windows Live Writer (When I have access to it) to publish entries to the blog. I like using WLW (Windows live Writer) as it's easy, it's effective and it also makes my blog posts seem a lot more professional.

Freeware Review - RocketDock

As you probably all know by now I've been using objectdock for a while, but before object dock came "RocketDock" which is the one I used to use on a regular basis.

So what is RocketDock? In simple terms it's an emulation of the Mac OSX Dock, but it's for windows. There are many dock applications out there for Windows.

Ok so on with the review.

Usability: RocketDock is very easy to use and set up in a matter of seconds. And it just works.

RAM usage: The RAM it uses is very little compared to other dock programs.

Stability: The software is in fact very stable, I've never had any crash issues with the software.

Support: The support for 32bit Operating systems is ok, however the software can be run on 654bit, and there is also support for Windows 7. So no matter what Windows Version your using you should be able to download and use this software.

Version: I am somewhat disapointed since the site hasn't made a new version since last year, and it would be a shame to see such a project abanonded.

Graphics: The minmise animation is somwhat ... disapointing compared to the minimise animation on ObjectDock. The RocketDock animation isn't as smooth.

Customisation: The large amount of Customisation on this dock will keep you busy for hours on end trying to find themes, icons, and docklets that all work together. It would have been nice to have the ability to package icons, themes and docklets in one installer (much like Objectdock) so it would save time.

Overall: A good dock program to start out with, it has a large comunity making icons and so on for it. However if your looking for something a little better I would go with ObjectDock.