Five Internet Services for Music Lovers

The internet has done some incredible things for the music industry (and also some not so incredible things). Music has never been as accessible as it is now, giving music lovers easy access to their old favorites and to new artists they might never have heard of. In this blog I wanted to highlight five websites and services that are changing the way that people listen to and discover music.


1) Pandora: This website has been around for years, providing personalized radio stations designed to only play the music that you want to listen to now. For those who haven't used it, the idea is that you go onto Pandora and enter an artist, track, or genre that you are in the mood to listen to, and it will play similar songs. For example, if you enter "The Beatles," Pandora will play tracks by The Beatles, their solo projects, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, and other similar artists. There are occasional ads, but it's a small price to pay for a free service that streams endless music without repeating. You can also pay a small subscription fee if you want to get rid of the ads and have a little more control. Pandora is great if you work on a computer all day and are allowed to listen to music.

2) Spotify: Spotify is another free (ad supported) music streaming service, but rather than playing random music based on your initial input, you can choose the songs or albums that you want to listen to, much like you would in iTunes or other music players. All that you need to do is to head over to spotify.com, register a free account (or a paid one if you want the perks, like no ads), download and install the Spotify player, and start listening. Music is acquired by Spofity through deals with record companies, so you can support the musicians by listening to their albums (although you can surely give them more support by actually buying their albums and seeing them live). There is a surprisingly huge library to choose from including new releases by chart-topping artists as well as more obscure musicians. I find that it's a great way to "try before you buy." Rather than wasting money on an album you might not even like, you can give it a listen or two to make your decision, saving you money and hard drive space.

3) Last.fm: This website is probably a little less well-known than the previous two, but is a great resource for music-lovers who like to keep track of what they're listening to. By signing up for a free account and installing a small piece of software, Last.fm tracks every song you listen to in your music player of choice (including Spotify!) on your computer, building a profile so that you can see your compatibility with other users and find out about similar artists who you might not know. Sometimes I like to look at my stats or the stats of my friends to see who we have been listening to the most in the last week/month/year. It also tells you if an artist you might be interested is playing near you, saving you from having to look up tour dates or hear about it by chance. Last.fm provides a very similar service to Pandora, letting you make radio stations for artists or genres that you are interested in, or even recommended music that you have not listened to. This is definitely a really fun service if you are interested in exploring new musical worlds.

4) Discogs: WARNING: serious music nerds only. Discogs is a site where people can create an account and keep track of their entire music collection, down to which format you own it in or which pressing of vinyl it is. Those who are less obsessive can use it as a resource to learn about every release an artist has ever been a part of, even if it was a production credit or backing vocals on a deep-cut from some obscure album. I like to use Discogs to see if I am missing anything by my favorite artists, or to learn about some details that most other websites don't typically care about. Again, this site isn't for everyone, but it might be interesting to check out if you are really passionate about certain artists or albums.

5) Cloud Services: The traditional methods of obtaining music (going to a store, purchasing a physical artifact, and listening to it) is certainly becoming less popular in favor of buying digital music to store on a hard drive, but even that "new" way of listening to music is being threatened. There are quite a few new services emerging that will store your music "in the cloud," meaning that your music will be stored online so that you can access it anywhere you have an internet connection. The benefit of this is that you can free up space on your devices and that you don't have to have your computer with you to be able to play your music. Amazon has been offering its Cloud Player service for accessing your music and data on your computer or Andriod device. Google has a Music Beta service which is currently invite only that supports computers and Android devices as well. Apple also has its iCloud service for iOS devices and PCs, as well as iTunes Match (scroll to the bottom of this link for more info), which should be released very soon. All of these services have different price rates and some slightly different features, so if this is something you are interested in I highly recommend you do more investigating into which would be right for you.


Needless to say, this is an exciting time to be a music fan. As the internet has in some cases hurt the music industry because of piracy, it has also given new artists ways to get their music out there to the public who probably never would have heard of them otherwise. With the five websites and services that I have highlighted above, you will be able to listen to your favorite music almost anywhere you want and discover new sounds that you might not have heard from the radio or by shuffling your iTunes library.

Specialist Appt

VA Urology was able to get me in the very next day to see Dr. Timothy Bradford.  VA Urology sat me up with online registration so that I wouldn't have to waste a lot of time in the waiting room. 

I went through a similar process as with my GP.  There were samples, needles, and comments of "this could be nothing, this could be something."  I already knew the laundry list of potential causes. 

We ended the visit with a brief discussion that a CT scan was warranted. 

I sat with the scheduler, Nicole and made an appointment for the scan.  I only had to wait two days. 

Little did I know that Dr. Bradford and Nicole would become close colleagues of mine in the near future. 

Five Time-Saving Google Search Operators

You  might think that all Google searches are the same. Just type in the subject that you're looking for and click "Search." Here's the thing, though: all searches are not created equal. You can search smarter by taking advantage of Google's built-in search operators. Using these search operators will make your searches more accurate, bringing the most relevant information to the top so you don't have to waste time wading through results that do not meet your criteria. While the average Google search is usually pretty helpful, it's sort of like having a Swiss Army Knife but only using the little scissors. Sometimes searching with the little corkscrew will be of more help...I think I'm mixing my metaphors, so without further ado, here's my five favorite search operators: 

1) Quotes: This one is probably the most commonly used. If you want to find results that match your search terms exactly, simply place the words in quotation marks so that the entire phrase is treated as one search term, not a bunch of individual words. This is particularly useful when trying to find things like the name of the song based on a line or two of the lyrics or the author of a certain quote.

2) Minus: Sometimes you want to exclude a word from your search because the results are all off-topic. By placing a minus sign before the word or words you wish to exclude you are removing all pages that had those words from your results. For example, if you were interested in finding out more about the squirrels that live in Richmond, your first instinct might be to search [Richmond squirrels]. Pretty quickly you realize that all of the results are about the minor league baseball team. By searching [Richmond squirrels -flying -baseball], most of the results are actually about the pesky animals that live in your yard.

3) Asterisk: The wildcard operator is used by typing an asterisk in the place of a word that you either can't remember or are trying to find. Using this trick is basically like having Google fill in the blank for you. You might use this if you quickly want to find what some people's favorite movies are, as [* is my favorite movie] is much more to the point that [is my favorite movie]. You could also use the wildcard if you are trying to remember a word from a quote or a part of the title of a book.

4) Define: It isn't terribly difficult to use a dictionary online, but you could save yourself some time with this tip. Just type "define:" before the troublesome word and the first result that Google brings will be a definition, part of speech, and pronunciation with links to several dictionaries for more information.

5) Site: Sometimes you might read an article on a website and have trouble finding it later, or you just might want to see what a particular site had to say about some subject. Exploring the site to find it might take a long time, and searching the website's name along with the subject still might not give you what you're looking for. For instance, if you wanted to find what we've had to say about Google in the past you could search [google 127tech.com] which gives you a few results from this site, but most of the results are irrelevant, showing all instances where the words "Google" and "127TECH" appeared on the same page. Searching [google site:127tech.com] shows only results from this site, making it much easier to find what you were looking for.


Now that you know a few more search tips you can save time by not having to go through pages and pages of search results to find what you were looking for. Taking advantage of these built-in search operators can make you a master-Googler so that you can now impress your friends and family with how quickly you are able to come up with information from the web.

Not again!

I had no more "sangria" incidents after those two times that night.  I chalked this up to either the beet juice dye or vigorous exercise.  Who was I kidding?  It wasn't an Ironman Triathlon, but I really wanted to believe that I wasn't sick. 

It happened again.  Tuesday morning.  Crud.  I am slightly concerned.  Not a happy camper.  Fortunately I was able to get in to my Dr (thanks, Dr. Morgan!) pretty quickly. 

I explained to him what happened, and he had me pee in a cup (that's always fun!) and they drew some blood for testing.  The results from the urine sample showed some bacteria and blood. 

He recommended that I make an appointment right away at Virginia Urology.  "It could be nothing, or it could be something."  The last time someone in the medical profession told me to do something right away I was rushed to the hospital with appendicitis.  I should have known. 

My appt was the next day. 

WTF?

I was camping, an activity that I don't thoroughly enjoy to start with. 

At least we were with good friends and in a cabin. 

There was a great birthday dinner for a dear friend.  We had steak, wine, cupcakes, some board games.  We were all feeling a bit tired because we had spent the day outside and had walked the trails.  Actually, I even ran for a good amount of time since my dog, Noel, was feeling quite frisky and wanted to tear down the trails as only she could. 

It was only 10 o'clock, but since we were tired, we were all turning in one after one.  I cleaned up, brushed my teeth, and went to the bathroom.  I was unprepared and in complete shock to see my urine gush out with a sangria color. 

I didn't want to alarm anyone, but my mind was in freak out mode.  There are all sorts of analogies that I could make regarding this experience, but I'll just leave it that I have never seen anything like this and was unable to process this situation.  

Did I say that we were camping?  Did I mention that I was "off the grid" and had practically no cellular signal?  As a geek, that in and of itself was stressful enough, but now I really had some information that I needed to seek out!

I let my wife, Lissa, know what happened and I attempted to gracefully excuse myself to step outside.  If I help my phone at the right angle outside, I could get enough signal to start Googling and get some information.  After quite a bit of time, I had a small list of potential causes. 

• Kidney stones
• Infections of the urinary tract (UTIs) or genitals
• Blockage of the urinary tract, usually the urethra: by a stone, a tumor, a narrowing of the opening (stricture), or a compression from surrounding structures
• Cancer of the kidney, bladder, or prostate
• Kidney disease
• Blood-clotting disorders
• Injury to the upper or lower urinary tract, as in a car accident or a bad fall (especially falls onto your back)
• Medications: antibiotics (for example, rifampin [Rifadin]), analgesics such as aspirin, anticoagulants (blood thinners such as warfarin, [Coumadin]), phenytoin (Dilantin), quinine (Quinerva, Quinite, QM-260)
• Benign (noncancerous) enlargement of the prostate known as benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH), a common condition in older men
• Chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and sickle cell anemia
• Viral infections
• Inflammation of the kidney, usually of unknown cause
• Strenuous exercise, especially running, results from repeated jarring of the bladder. In one study, 24% of runners who competed in an ultra-long-distance marathon had hematuria after the race. The hematuria disappeared within seven days. A 20% incidence has been found in marathon runners.
• Foods: beets, berries, and rhubarb in large amounts
• Food colorings

I was able to quickly eliminate a few from the list.  I needed to calm myself down and was very hopeful after reading the last three potential causes.  I had experienced strenuous exercise, more than I had in a long time.  I had also had a red velvet cupcake from a gourmet shop.  Lissa shared with me that they likely used a high concentration of beet juice dye to make the chocolate cake turn red. 

That was enough to allow me to sleep.  I was deathly afraid of needing to go to the bathroom again ...

50 is the new 7

Not too long ago, computers had hard drives of 80Gb or less.  My first computer that came with a hard drive installed had a whopping 400Mb of storage.  Storage was expensive and difficult to upgrade for the average user.  Lately, Cloud Storage has shifted people's thoughts from storing their data on their own PC to storing it "somewhere else."  Online Storage was originally expensive, slow and small, even in Gmail.  The first Gmail users had "virtually unlimited" storage within their email accounts of up to 1Gb that could be accessed anywhere.  It really wasn't meant to store your data, but it could do in a pinch.  Gmail slowly inched up to 7Gb and stayed there.  Many users figured out ways to use this storage for files, music and more.   

Today, 50 is the new 7.  Box.net announced last week that any iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) users that logged in to their account or created a new account in the 50 days starting October 12 would receive a free lifetime 50Gb account!  That is enough storage to hold a decent sized music library, or a heck of a lot of spreadsheets and word documents!  

Dropbox also gives 2 Gb of online storage for free and has a great interface allowing you to use it just like another drive on your computer.  You can gradually increase your free storage amount up to 16 Gb.  I use Dropbox for all of my important "current" work.  Anything that I need today or in the near future is stored there.  

But what about all of your music?  You have thousands upon thousands of songs.  How about Google Music?  It can store up to 20,000 songs which you can play form any device.  It automatically syncs your "My Music" folder with the cloud!  You can store your music here and your important documents in Google Docs!  

I just taught my daughter how to back up her homework in Google Docs last week.  There will be no excuse such as "my computer crashed" for not turning in her papers.  It also helps lower her stress level because she knows that her work is safe.  

Is there any better reason to kick the hard drive habit today?  Do you really need to use that thumb drive that you keep misplacing? 

Check these services out: 

Box.net

Dropbox

Google Music

Google Docs

Five Things To Do Before Calling Tech Support

"It was fine just a minute ago, and now I can't get it to work!"

        - Everyone

Anyone who has used a computer for longer than five minutes has run into some frustrating, unexpected problem that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Sometimes it can be a serious problem, like a hardware malfunction, and sometimes it can be a tiny little glitch that can be easily fixed. It's definitely scary when the thought "Oh no, have I lost everything?" pops into your head, and that fear may cause you to pick up your phone and call tech support right away. While that's certainly a valid response, you have other options to consider before dialing tech support or calling the IT guy to your home or office (not that there's anything wrong with some of us IT guys!). Below are five easy things for you to do on your own before calling in for backup.

1) Is everything plugged in? This might sound ridiculous, but it's surprising how often this can be the root of your problems. If your keyboard or printer isn't responding, or maybe you cannot connect to the internet, check the connections on your computer or router. Maybe you nudged your computer to the side when you were vacuuming and a cable came loose, or maybe the cat pawed at a USB cable and jiggled it the wrong way. If it seems to be a problem with an external device (like a monitor, printer,  keyboard, router, etc.) try making sure everything is plugged in securely. Surely it will save you from some embarrassment if you end up calling someone over for help.

2) Have you tried turning it off and on again? This one is so common that it became a recurring gag on the British sitcom, The IT Crowd. For one reason or another, this often fixes many small issues, from not being able to connect to the internet, to programs not opening up properly, to computers that seem to hang while performing tasks that should not be very memory intensive. Giving the computer a fresh start will often clear up whatever issue there was, and should be done at least a couple of times a week anyway to keep your computer running at its best.

3) Check help contents: If you are experiencing a common issue with your software or are maybe accidentally using the wrong settings, it is quite possible that the Help menu will actually live up to its title. Most programs will have some kind of help contents which you can search using keywords that describe your problem. Searches for information like "saving a template" or "viewing previous contacts" could come up with the information you are looking for. Taking a few minutes to search within the program's help contents is a great way of finding solutions for simple issues.

4) Google it: I'll let you in on a little secret: this is how IT people solve most unfamiliar problems. Chances are you are not the first one to have this problem, and a quick Google search of the error message or a brief description of the problem along with the name of the program will often produce multiple results of other people with the same problem and solutions suggested by others. If you know how to search for your issue and how to pick out the useful results from the not useful ones, searching on Google for a few minutes and following someone's instructions will probably give you a solution to at least 90% of your problems.

5) Gather all appropriate information: If all else fails sometimes you have to call for help. To make the process as painless as possible (or as painless as listening to a 30 second clip of smooth jazz over and over again for 20 minutes can be) make sure you have all relevant information at your disposal. Write down the exact error message and any error codes it gives you, and give them the name of the program giving you the problem, your computer's operating system, and exactly what you were doing when the problem occurred. Having this information at your disposal will make tech support's job easier and will save time in coming up with a solution.


Now you are basically a pro at fixing your own computer problems, or at the very least you have a basic understanding of the process that the tech support or IT people typically go through when trying to help you out. Of course there are some more difficult problems that should be left to professionals, but for most minor issues you now have the knowledge needed to approach a problem on your own time and without having to pay anyone. Usually the first things that tech support will have you do is to check that everything is plugged in securly and to restart your computer. Now you can tell them that you have already done this, and you can move onto more advanced solutions. Hopefully you will not run into computer problems anytime soon, but if you do we hope you remember this quick guideline!