It’s time for my 15th annual Favorites post. It’s always fun reviewing my old favorites, seeing how the picks have evolved, and realizing how much more verbose I’ve gotten in describing them.
One notable change — I’ve added “Video Game.” This might be ephemeral, as I don’t play video games SUPER often, but this year, there’s definitely one.
OK…let’s get to it!
I’ve been listening to a lot more classical music lately. My wife said recently, “The older I get, the less interested I am in lyrics.”
I wouldn’t go that far, but it is nice to have beautiful, lyric-less music on while you work or read.
The Apple Classical Music app dropped today and I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I’m impressed with it.
I like how it breaks the music down by genre (sub-genre I guess), composer, and mood.
They also have “The Story of Classical,” a 9-part series where you can learn all about the genre. I’m excited to dig into that.
One strange note1 is that it’s only available on the iPhone right now, with an Android app coming soon.
Apple Music’s disjointed experiences continue to be a puzzler, especially when you consider how good Spotify’s overall cross-device, cross-app experience is.
If you want a good first-look review, check out this one on Six Colors.
I’ve hit a bit of a nostalgia kick recently, listening to albums that were on heavy rotation from ages 16-20ish.
I don’t know about you, but music is such a huge part of my daily life. These are really bringing back some great memories.
What’s an album from your formative years you’ve recently rediscovered?
It’s time for my annual Favorites of the Year post. Much like 2012, 2013 was a great year. I saw a dream of mine come true by getting my second book, Responsive Design with WordPress, published by PeachPit/New Riders. They’ve published most of the books that I read to learn about web design/development, so it’s a real honor to have my work published through them. And of-course, there’s all of the tech and media of the year. Here are my favorites.
I’m going to be honest here. 2012 was a pretty great year for me. A lot of amazing things happened in both my personal and professional life; most publicly, I got my first book published, and I hope do the same in 2013. While I don’t have too many traditions on this blog (something I hope to change in 2013), my Favorites of the year post has been a pretty good staple.
What has seemingly become a tradition on this blog is my annual “Favorites of” post, where I recap some of my favorite things of the year. Even though the posts on this blog have slowed in recent months, I would like to keep that tradition, so here they are!
 So it’s been a while and for that I apologize, but I have been writing for a bunch of other blogs. Today I come to you with a quick tip  that came to me just this morning. Over the weekend I ran into an guy who spoke Italian and after talking for a while I decided to resurrect my New Year’s Resolution to learn Italian. While Rosetta Stone can get expensive, there might be a simpler freer way to learn certain languages.
There are tons of CDs to  help you learn languages, so I  went to Spotify and searched, “Learn Italian.”  Low and behold, a bunch of CDs came  up for me including Let’s Learn Italian!. And Italian isn’t the only language that’s there. You can do the same for Spanish, (some) French, and even Chinese.
If you’re not on Spotify, you can sign up for free.
Recently I signed up for online music streaming site Rdio as I was looking to fill the void that lala left after Apple ate them up and never spit them back out. I was using Grooveshark for free, but everything was pretty unorganized. I decided to take the plunge and pay the $5 monthly subscription for Rdio, and justifying the purchase is pretty easy.
Read More “How to Justify the $5 (or $10) for Rdio”
It’s no secret that I love Android as a platform, and I favor Android phones over the iPhone. I did my Master’s Thesis on the G1, bought the Motorola Droid- the first Android phone available on Verizon, and recently upgraded to the HTC Droid Incredible. One of the reasons I like Android so much is because of the openness of the Market Place, and the ability to install non-market apps on your phone. Apps are very powerful for any platform because they make your phone more personal. Today I want to tell you about 10 Android apps that have made my life easier!
(and use it to your advantage instead)
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