For many years I’ve been a Windows (XP) fan-boy. Even though Windows Vista was out, I still kept using XP and I knew lots of ins and outs of the operating system, tweaks and of course dozens of shortcuts. But at the end of 2009, my 6-year old laptop needed to be replaced by a more up-to-date one and after lot doing a lot of research I choose for a 13″ Macbook Pro!
And once I had my MB Pro, I found myself much more productive. This was not only the result of more GHz’s/MHz’s or more RAM, but more on things like Spotlight, Terminal and Quicklook. Mentioning my increased productivity to my employer, having a very positive review and a new colleague (who needed a machine anyway), my employer bought an 21.5″ iMac (and the new colleague got my (old) Windows-machine :)).
So there I was, working both personal and professional on a Mac, I was thinking my next phone could probably be an iPhone. This was pure thinking about it, cause this would’ve been te case over more than 12 months. Mentioning these thoughts to my dad, he’d just bought an iPhone 3GS and wasn’t using his 3G and I had a bargain. For two weeks now, I’ve switched from my Nokia E75 to the iPhone 3G and I like it a lot! Despite not being able to “multitask”, I began to hate my E75 because the synchronisation with my Google Contacts screwed up my contacts birthdays and even more annoying: the mail for exchange integration/synchronization screwed the phones’ agenda and I was unable to do anything with the agenda on my phone. And on the iPhone, the only thing I had to do was fill in my Google credentials et voila! All systems go.
Now I am more and more becoming a shortcut-master in OSX and I feel like writing a blogpost on some of them in the near future. For now, I hope you’re not too shocked! :)
Like so many personal blogs, this one has not seen an update for over 6 months. This doesn’t mean nothing has happened in those months, but let me highlight two things that have happened in the past months.
First of all, last month I finally took the exam for the Zend PHP 5 Certification and guess what? I passed! Today I found the the official certificate in the mail , so as of now I am an “Zend Certified Engineer in PHP5″ or ZCE for short. Yeah! :)
The other thing is, well, euh… I’ve euh… I’ve never thought I’d say this, but, here I go: I’ve gone Apple!
Looking forward I’ve got some interesting events waiting. In May I’ll go for a holiday to Curaçao with some friends from highschool and like last year I will be attending the Dutch PHP Conference on June 11th and 12th.
And like so many other blogs, I will try to update this one a little more frequent! :-)
So I’ve used Spotify now for almost two weeks. My first impression was very positive about the service. The app worked great, the music-quality was great and.. no ads. As of today the app started to show different kinds of banners (vertical and horizontal, fortunately never at the same time) and very soon I got audio commercials between 3 or 4 songs. These tings weren’t the worst thing, I accepted the fact that I was using the free version of the service. By trying the free service, I got so excited, I was more than happy to pay Spotify £ 9,99 for one month to get a Premium account. So I logged into my account and entered my credit-card information… And that’s where the disappointed kicked in: My card was rejected, just because I am from The Netherlands. :(
Although I understand some legal issues involved in royalties, record-companies, local commercials, bla bla.. it’s obvious that the free service is restricted to some countries. But when someone wants to pay, so localized ads aren’t necessary, why should that service be restricted to some countries as well? Is it just the record-companies that are still not thinking of the internet as one place, but still in regions/countries? Wake up Universal, Sony BMG, Warner! It is 2009, not 1999. Or could it be technical limitations (server capacity, network bandwidth) that withholds Spotify on expanding to more countries?
Nevertheless, I put Spotify aside and got a subscription at Last.Fm for € 9,- for 3 months. I’ve always been a fan of Last.Fm (already since August 2006) and the radio features I get with the subscription and listening to my loved tracks is well worth it. The only thing missing is I can’t really specify a track I want to hear, but listening to a tag or artist radio (and recommendations as well) lets you discover all kinds of new artists and music.
Since last week I’ve been using Spotify. Although, if you are in The Netherlands, it is not yet possible to register, but with some little help of “the internet” I got an account already. Until today I did not encounter any problems, besides missing the very new albums and song or songs from The Netherlands (but good old Hazes and even Marianne Weber are already in Spotify). These things have without doubt to do with the record-companies being assholes..
The really problems I encountered today was some searches and/or artists bio’s being unavailable. The sunny side of this problem: the music didn’t stop streaming and I was still able to add songs to the queue.
So after a week I am very enthusiast about Spotify and I think I’ll purchase a premium account as soon as it is available in The Netherlands!
update [05-09]
Today I opened the app again and I got the following message: “Your current location does not match that set in your profile. You may travel with Spotify, but only for 14 days. For unlimited travel upgrade to premium.“ So their is a check in the app itself for the location and I can use my current account for only one more week. After that I’ll have to buy a premium or register a new account :-)
