iPhone - Legal Jailbreaking

Check out my iPhone home screen below.  It used to be that you need to hack into your iPhone ("jailbreaking") to enable cool third party applications that were superior to the existing Apple apps. The sucess of the App store combined with a relaxing of Apple's policy has given a rise to the number of approved apps that are awesome.  And guess what, Apple finally realized that it means more money for them! Remember, they get 30% of every App sale.  Combine that with the fact that an (admittenly) small amount of people will buy a phone based on some of these apps, and it's a win - win for all.

Spotify - Music player and discovery engine (see my Spotify post)

Instacast - Podcast player. Features automatic downloading, favoriting, and importing from itunes

Farenheit - Updates the weather right on the home screen - can open it for more details.  Yes, it's 82 degrees at 9 in the morning.

Pandora - Streaming internet radio

Google Voice - Get text transcripts of voice mails

Squarespace - The software I use to power this site. I can make and edit posts, manage comments, and view website stats

Articles - Wikipedia with an easy to use interface

CNN gets live streaming - if you pay for cable

CNN has jumped into the new media game headfirst by allowing live streaming of its TV channel. You can log on anywhere and view CNN on your web browser, iPhone, or iPad. Yes!

The catch? You have to be a paying cable subscriber. Since I'm in Philly, I had to verify my Comcast username and password. The good news is that I'm not tied to my Comcast internet connection - I can view CNN from any wifi access point.

This is a great move by CNN, and I'm sure it's only possible because its restricted to cable subscribers. Still, it doesn't help me to cut the cord, get rid of cable, and stream all of my TV online. Maybe it's just a dream ....

Spotify: You Get What You Pay For

 If you're thinking about Spotify, pony up and pay the $10 / month. You'll get access immediately instead of waiting in the invite queue for the free version.  My (short) adventure with the free version is below.

I have a beta invite to the free version of Spotify, a music streaming service that just debuted in the US. Basically, Spotify lets you stream music from a huge library.  There is also a paid version, but I wanted to give the free version a try.

I downloaded the app on my PC and allowed it to connect to iTunes.  I installed it on my iPhone and I was able to see all my iTunes playlists - cool!  See I can see all of the songs that I've put into playlists, I can stream them, right? Especially since I own them?  Apparently not with the free version.

It turns out that the free version of Spotitfy is only useful for streaming Spotify's catalog on a PC or laptop, or downloading music that you already have onto your iPhone.  The latter is is exactly what you can already do with iTunes, albeit this is a wireless solution.  In other words, the free version is useless.

I upgraded to Spotify premium for $10 a month.  For the price of an album, I can stream from the Spotify catalog on my iPhone, as well as replace iTunes as the syncing device for my purchased music.  The best hard is that the songs queue up quickly over 3G, so much so that it feels like the songs are stored locally on the device instead of Spotify's streaming servers.  

There's also the option to download songs locally if you'll be without internet for a while. This is good if you can predict a bad internet connection - but how often does that happen? My advice is to always keep a core selection of songs on your phone, and use Spotify to access songs that pop into your head during the day. That alone is worth $10 a month.

Bottom line - you should expect to pay for a great service, and Spotify is just that.

Netflix: It's $6, people

I can spend hours on Netflix streaming

Netflix is currently $10 for unlimited streaming of its video library along with one DVD at a time.  However, this price will be increasing in a few months. Starting in September, Netflix will cost $16 for unlimited streaming video along with one DVD at a time.

I don't mind paying an extra $6 a month for a great service that provides what I want. Between Netflix for old TV / movies and iTunes for paying per episode for recent shows, my TV watching habits are satisfied.

Many of the arguments against the change are on a principle level - the fact that allowing a company to boost their prices by 60% is a slippery slope that will give other companies the leeway to raise their prices.  The truth is, Netflix put itself in this position with a low, almost impulse-buy price that I'm sure it realized was not sustainable in the long term. $16 a month is still a bargain, especially considering the amount of server space that Netflix uses to provide streaming content, and the resources required for its DVD service.

I'm sure Netflix will come out of this unharmed, despite the noisy echo chamber currently going on at a lot of the major tech sites.

Launch Drunk: Final Thoughts on the Shuttle Program

(For more photos, click for my albums from pre-launch and Launch day)

I've been in a state of writer's block ever since I saw Atlantis break away for the clouds on Friday morning. Sure, I've been updating Twitter and Google+ like a madman, but I needed some time to write a long form blog post. As a fellow NASA Tweetup attendee taught me, I was "launch drunk!"

Now that I've some rest, I can better reflect on the impact that NASA and the shuttle program has had on my life.

My earliest memory is the aftermath of the Challenger incident. As a six year old, I couldn't put this into the proper historical perspective. However, there was a huge push for space and technology news within my school as well as my favorite media of the time - Highlights for Children and 3-2-1 Contact. I manned my own personal missions with my toy spacecraft, hoping that my impromptu Lego modular design would help against the inevitable alien encounter.

As a preteen, I took an astronomy class at the local community college, where we learned about planetary orbits, plotted constellations, and, of course, talked about the space shuttle. We even took a trip to the National Air and Space museum in DC, which was one of the first times I had been to a museum outside of the New York metro area. As a sign of the times, I also remember the bus stopping at a Dairy Queen on the way back, and playing the Simpsons arcade game with tree other friends as long as we could.

In a few years, I began to read the paper and watch the news on a daily basis. I always made sure to tune in for shuttle launches. There was no NASA TV or YouTube - the only way to experience NASA missions was to tune in live or for a recap. I always felt butterflies watching the coverage.

I felt those same butterflies during my first live launch last Friday, the last one ever.

NASA has big things on the horizon - continued research on the International Space Station, getting humans to Mars, and exploring asteroids - and my hope is that future generations are inspired by this work. I know I was.