Practical Technology

I’ve been using Google Music since it was in beta. At first, it didn’t interest me that much. Yet another way to save my music to the cloud? How much good really was that? Well, after using it for several months, and now that Google Music is open for everyone in the US to use, [...]

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Linux and Apple’s iPhones, iPods, and iPads usually get along about as well as cats and dogs. Oh sure, you can root a jailbroken iPhone to boot Linux, but that’s just a stunt. And, if you don’t mind living dangerously, you can use the popular Linux music application Banshee to manage your music collection on [...]

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When Banshee, the popular Mono-based open-source media player was first included by default in the next version of Ubuntu Linux , Banshee’s developers thought this was great news. But, then Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company decided that they wanted 75% of any revenue from Banshee’s built-in connection to the Amazon music store-revenue that Banshee was already [...]

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The Apple iPad is going to face serious competition from Android Linux-powered tablets, but the first mass-market, low-priced tablet to arrive, the Augen GenTouch78 isn’t it. The tablet does have some good things going for it. While it’s made from black plastic, it has a solid feel. Better still, it comes with a form-fitting, faux-leather [...]

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Apple will tell you that iTunes 8.2.1 fixes bugs and, in particular, improves interoperability with iPhones and iPod Touches running iPhone 3.0 Software. But, it really it only has one ‘feature:’ It blocks the Palm Pre’s iTunes compatibility. KDE thinks there’s another way. But, just to get this out of the way, I’m now running [...]

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