27 April, 2007

(Of course you won’t throw your phone. You spent hundreds of dollars for it, and it also doubles as something you can communicate with, when you’re not using it as an alarm clock, right? :D)

Since I don’t have an alarm clock, save for my phone, I needed something that would be effective when I need a one-time, or a recurring alarm, and it had to be something to make me wake up enough.

I found out about a service called Snoozester, which basically does this for me.

I can be at work, and find out that I need to be at an appointment on a certain day. This is easily handled by simply logging in to Snoozester (since I’m online at work all day), setting up a reminder call with the time and date, and a short message that is read back to me when I do receive the call from the service.
This is all easily achieved, too, since the interface is very light, and very to the point, while making sense.

I can be anywhere, as long as I have my phone, and get this alert, because my phone will start ringing and vibrating, until I answer it.

I’ll get this casual notice from Snoozester, which will read back to me what I left as the short message. This helps out, since an alarm clock is generally tethered to home, and digging through 5 menus just to set up one alarm is not all that fun.

Now, there is a price for this kind of progress, but the price is staggeringly inexpensive.
If you’re like me, and just want a wake up call for each work day, you can easily get by on buying 30 call credits for $5.
If you’re a traveler, and need something a little more elaborate, such as support for a few phone numbers, and more call credits per month, then there are very, very inexpensive monthly plans starting at about $4.

I remember when I first got an internet connection at home.
I paid for it almost in its entirety, from the phone line, to the dial-up package, and the computer itself. The family only helped me out in getting a monitor for that computer, and that was fairly cheap.

I discovered sites like Riffage.com, which would offer a free MP3 CD with much of their music on it to anyone who asked. The music was generally from independent artists, but I liked being able to try out all sorts of different music, to see what I liked.

Shortly after my dad died in 2000, and my aunt moved in, she brought the wonder that is called Cable television. With the cable line, we could also apply for high speed Cable internet. So I wheedled my way into talking her into that. Once I got that high speed connection (and a new computer, since the first one was dated), I started hearing about Napster (again).

I had heard of it while I was on dial-up, but it wasn’t really usable then. I tried getting songs, but it would take an hour or so for a single song to download. That was the beginning of my piracy days.
I gave up for a while in 2000, and in early 2001, when I got on high speed, I jumped on board the Napster train again. Shortly after I jumped on with the [tag]Napster[/tag] train again, it was being killed by the courts. [tag]OpenNap[/tag] was born, I was on board, and it was still going off and on.

I started discovering other ways to download music, to start absorbing more and more illegal music, such as [tag]Piolet[/tag], [tag]KaZaA[/tag], [tag]Morpheus[/tag], and numerous other programs and methods. I did it to feed my hunger for all sorts of new music at an ‘unbeatable price’. I hated the idea of buying a CD then, because I’d buy one, and only like two songs on a 15 song CD, but spend $15 or $20 to buy the disc.

I would fill my hard drive with pirated music, burn an MP3 CD for myself as a way to back it up, and delete that from the hard drive. Then I’d keep downloading. I’d end up with 15, 20, 40 copies of the same song with different tags (which became annoying to me when I switched over to Foobar2000 as a media player, and even more so when I started using [tag]AudioScrobbler[/tag] (now [tag]Last.FM[/tag]) at the end of ‘03, but I’m ahead of myself by a little here).
I didn’t care about the fact that the [tag]RIAA[/tag] wanted people like me to stop pirating then.
I was more upset that people couldn’t use proper tags on their music, and properly attribute their music to the original source.

This, as well as my shipping out to Job Corps at the end of 2002 began my downhill descent from my music piracy high.

When I got out of Job Corps, and got back onto a full connection, I was annoyed that a lot of my old haunts were either no more, or of low quality, or were infested with crap.

So, I started looking into legal ways to buy music.

iTunes was fresh on the block, and Pepsi was running a heavy promotion with them at the time, offering free downloads under most bottle caps.
I was [tag]downloading music[/tag], legally, and happily, and even buying the stuff when I was out of freebies…

And then I met [tag]Digital Rights Management[/tag] ([tag]DRM[/tag]).

I almost wanted to pirate again when I first ran into it, thinking that it’s wrong to be told just what I can listen to my music in or on. Then I found out about various methods to circumvent this ‘protection’ scheme on Windows, and well, I went back to buying my music, but without that layer of nagging permissions.

What annoyed me initially was the fact that though I paid for the music, I couldn’t listen to it in [tag]Foobar2000[/tag]. To listen to the music, I had to stay within the [tag]iTunes[/tag] app, even after paying money for music, just to listen to a few good songs.

What kind of sense did that make? I mean, gee, I paid for it. I wanted to listen to it, along with some of the legit free music I’d found, on an [tag]MP3 CD[/tag] while I was out and about. That wasn’t going to happen.

I eventually heard about AllOfMP3, and tried it out. For a while, I was fooling myself, saying “Well, gee, I’m paying for the music, though under another country’s laws, so I guess these artists are being paid like they’re supposed to.”
I bought much music with AllOfMP3, as well as having discovered worlds of music, sometimes remixed that was given away for free to anyone who came by to request the download.

Eventually, my credits on [tag]AllOfMP3[/tag] dried up as they started blocking payments from the USA, so I let that go with a wet flop.

Then, thanks to PayPerPost, I heard about a site called Amie Street, and fell in love with it.
The music’s got a great price tag on it (inexpensive, but legal, and from anyone trying to get their foot in the door, so to speak), and I’ve found a few pretty good artists there.
That, combined with my listening to [tag]Jamendo[/tag], [tag]Pandora[/tag], [tag]SomaFM[/tag], and [tag]OverClocked Remix[/tag]es, plus a few purchases from Sprint’s Music Store are what comprise my music listening points now.

Imagine my annoyance when I get an email that shows how our government, and how the music industry continues to squat on the faces of people who want to legally listen to music!

I spent two days composing my thoughts here, just to get you over to Save Net Radio. I’d appreciate it if you head over there, and help us save something that keeps me legal.

Thanks.