Hi, I'm Ryan Boswell.
This is my home on the internet, welcome.
Custom iTunes Genres
One of the features that iTunes has had for a while now is the genre view. I haven’t used it a whole lot since I get to most of my media directly by searching for it, not by browsing. But in the last week I’ve taken it upon myself to clean up my movie and tv show collection (largely ripped from DVDs, hence why some meta data is missing in the first place), and I’ve found that my genres are a mess. I’ve got about 300 genres of music, no genres for my movies (ouch, that’s going to take some time to fill out), and most of my TV shows were uncategorized as well.
Since my TV show collection was the smallest, I started with that today. It took me about three hours to label everything correctly (mainly because it took forever for iTunes to finish processing each batch of seasons once I applied the changes). I then noticed that some of my genres didn’t have custom artwork provided by iTunes (for those that don’t know, iTunes comes with a few artwork clippings for major genres like Comedy, Drama, and Sci-Fi). It also didn’t help that a lot of my genres are sub-genres of larger ones (ie. Crime Drama, Medical Drama, and Political Drama), and so it wasn’t quite enough to just lump them all together, but it annoyed me that the appearance wasn’t uniform. Also, because of the way iTunes matches genres, some sub-genres were given the same artwork as its’ parent (see the screenshot to the right).
But I remembered a few years ago when iTunes first started using these genre artwork clippings that there was a way to customize the existing ones and add new ones. A quick Google search brought me to an article on just how to do this from candescence.org. I won’t duplicate the instructions here, just pop on over there and take a look for yourself.
The next part would be choosing the artwork to add or replace. The first comment on that article solved this problem, there is a Flickr group just for iTunes Genres. As of right now there are almost 1000 of them, mostly music genres (this trick works for all genres of media, whether it’s music, movies, tv shows, etc…), but if you look there are plenty for movies and TV shows. I pulled out a few of my favorites, which I’ll be using myself, and here they are below (click through for the full sizes):
Oh, and something worth noting, for Books and Podcasts, instead of genres they’re called categories, not really sure why, but it’s the same thing.
Twilio and OpenVBX
Earlier this week I heard about OpenVBX when my hosting provider, DreamHost, enabled it for a one-click install. Reading about it in their monthly newsletter, I got curious about it and decided to check it out. Loyal readers will remember my obsession with Google Voice and it’s potential as a phone system for large groups. OpenVBX, with Twilio, is just that, a self-hosted Google Voice for businesses and organizations.
Twilio is the under-lying service, much like a standard Google Voice. What makes it really powerful is the ability to use its API to control what happens to incoming calls and SMS. Google Voice is great for consumers, especially since it’s mostly free (intl. calls cost $). But for people or groups that want an easy to use and powerful phone system, Twilio paired with OpenVBX is the answer, at least until Google finally gets around to adding Voice to their Apps offerings.
I downloaded and installed OpenVBX on my own servers to test out. Twilio offers trial accounts that come with $30 in credit and a sandbox phone number to test out your applications before you decide to upgrade and start paying for your own number. OpenVBX is just a web application that accesses the Twilio API and provides a drop-dead-simple interface for configuring what happens when people call or text your number.
Through OpenVBX, you can setup different user-accounts for everyone in your business or organization, and they can add their own numbers into the system to use as forwarding phones. Administrators can then add users to different groups (Sales, Support, etc.). Each user also has an inbox that stores any SMS or Voicemail messages that are available to them (either personally or through a group they are in).
In the call flow editor you can add endpoints to call a specific person or group, and the system rings all of the associated phones until someone picks up. You can further customize and app various applets to the call flow through a very simple, drag-and-drop interface. There is a SMS flow counterpart to handle incoming text messages to your number.
The one drawback I see so far in OpenVBX, is that there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to integrate any kind of dynamic information into the call flow, such as a listing of groups in the company. But there is very likely a way to do this through a plugin to OpenVBX. There is a plugin directory on the OpenVBX website, and while it is small now, I imagine that in a few months there will be dozens of plugins to provide integration and more features to the base system.
In addition to plugins, OpenVBX also supports themes, which allows for custom branding and design, so you can further integrate OpenVBX with whatever other internal systems your business or organization may have.
Twilio, as a service, is remarkably well-done. It’s a very simple, but powerful service. And best of all, it’s relatively cheap for small to medium businesses and organizations. It costs you $1 per month for each local phone number and $.03 per minute for outbound calls and SMS (inbound or outbound). If you want to use a toll free number it’s $2 per month and $.05 per minute. International calls cost a little bit more, but still not expensive for the most part.
Update: One thing I can’t believe I didn’t mention about Twilio is that they also offer voicemail transcription for $.05 per minute. In my testing and usage so far, it’s about on par with Google Voice’s transcription service. It gets most everything right, but there’s still a few mixups. Obviously, voice-to-text technology is still in it’s relative infancy, and even within the next few months it will no doubt improve dramatically.
Disclaimer: After posting this writeup, one of the Twilio employees offered me a $100 service credit as thanks for my praise of the service (see the first comment below). Since I had no connection to Twilio before writing this, I accepted the offer. And this also doesn’t mean that if I find problems that I won’t not talk about them (and I’m sure they would love to hear about things they could improve anyway).
iOS 4.0
So I made the jump to upgrade to iOS 4.0 on my 3GS. Initially I was hesitant because of what happened the last few times I upgraded the software on my iPhone (iTunes crashed half way through, and I spent half a day trying to restore my iPhone because the upgrade was corrupt), but I had the whole day to play, so I decided to just jump in.
Fortunately everything went smoothly, even if the whole process to an hour and a half (from upgrading iTunes to the latest version all the way through to the post-upgrade sync).
One of my favorite features of the new OS is folders. I absolutely love them. One of the first things I did was consolidate all of my apps onto one screen, deleting about 5-6 unused apps in the process. Now, all of my apps are 2-3 taps away.
Wallpapers are nice, but it’s not like the feature is any reason to scoff at.
Multitasking is still something I have yet to really use, I don’t really have any apps that are really ‘multitaskable’, I’ve never had the desire to be able to do it. But I do like the app switcher/media control. Previously if you double-tapped the home button you’d just get iPod controls (something a lot of people I know never knew about until I showed them, it also works when the screen is locked), now you get that and the ability to quickly switch to a recently-used app, all in one interface, kinda useful I guess.
One thing that I don’t remember hearing about anywhere, is that the iPod app now makes use of folders that you have in iTunes. Previously, whatever folders and playlists you had synced just showed up in a flat list. Now everything is nested just the way you have it in iTunes. This is really useful for me because I make pretty heavy use of folders and smart playlists to sync just the right music to my iPod (since I have a collection larger than I could fit on my iPod, getting the right music on it requires a bit of magic), and before all of those playlists showed up with all the other ones, which was annoying. Now everything is safely tucked away and organized the way I like it.
The last thing I want to mention is the speed boost. Ever since upgrading, everything feels a helluva lot snappier and smoother. I noticed almost immediately that everything seemed to just zip along compared to before, not that it was sluggish or anything, but still. Damn. I can only wonder how much faster everything is and feels on the iPhone 4.
Speaking of which, I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to make the jump and upgrade to the iPhone 4. I didn’t pre-order it (stupid decision), so I don’t know how hard it’s going to be to actually get one, but I plan on getting in line Thursday morning around 5am with everyone else at my local Apple Store and try my luck. I decided on the black 32GB model, just like what I have now. Then once I have my new iPhone 4 and everything is working alright, I’m going to ship my old 3GS off to NextWorth, my quoted price is going for $200, so overall the upgrade is going to cost me $100 plus tax and the $18 upgrade fee. Not too bad I guess. So you can expect an update sometime Thursday or Friday detailing my experience trying to get a new iPhone without a pre-order.
AT&T’s New Data Pricing
Initially I was quite upset about AT&T axing their unlimited data plans. But after thinking about it all day and then reviewing my own data usage on my iPhone for the past few months, I’m actually a little happy.
At first I was a bit outraged, I’ll admit. My first thought was that this was a move to squeeze more money out of iPhone users with overage charges up the yin-yang, and I was worried about my rising cell phone bill already. I was sure that I was going to be one of those people that would keep hitting the 2GB limit.
I then later found out that this change wouldn’t affect anyone that currently has the $30/month unlimited plan. I thought about it the whole thing a little more and then took a look at my data usage for the past few months. It turns out, I’ve never even hit 1GB in usage, my highest so far is 650MB, which was last month. So I’m actually very pleased with this move, because it’ll let me knock $5/month off my bill once I’m able to change my plan. Sure, I’ll be permanently giving up the unlimited data, but I’m not really going to need it. I use my iPhone a lot, and I still don’t get to half of what my new limit will be.
The next big part of the announcement is tethering. Finally! We’ve been waiting forever for this, and it’s finally here. Well, almost here. Once the new iPhone OS 4.0 ships this summer everyone will be able to get tethering on their iPhones, for $20/month on top of the $25/month 2GB data plan. It’s a little pricey, but since it’s just an added feature you can add and remove it as you need it, so if you’re on the go and want an internet connection on your computer (assuming you can get a good data connection wherever you are), it’s just a $20 add-on, which is cheaper than most hotel internet for more than a day or two. Plus you get tethering for the rest of your billing cycle (so plan those trips at the beginning of your cycle to get the most bang for your buck).
Version 3.0
So this morning I finally released the latest design iteration of my personal website, ie. the one you’re at right now (unless of course you’re reading this in a news reader, in which case, come on over and check out the new design).
This one is a bit of a departure from the previous versions, namely the design isn’t centered. In fact it’s probably the first design of mine since my first few years in the business that isn’t. I wanted something a little different, so I went for it. The other major difference is the color scheme, or at least the existence of one. The last iteration was a little bare thanks to my then-obsession with minimalism. I’ve since moved on a little bit, and while I still kept things simple and clean, I made sure it didn’t feel empty.
So welcome to ryanboswell.com, my home on the internet.
Social Mail
One of the coolest things that Google unveiled this week at Google I/O, at least in my opinion, is Gmail contextual gadgets. I’ll skip the small talk and get straight to the point. This is huge. Beyond huge. The capability of these gadgets to interact with your email data is amazing.
One of my biggest desires is to make my address book and email communications more social. I am somewhat obsessed with connections and being able to connect to and contact people in a variety of ways. That’s why I really wish that someone would make a plugin for Apple’s Mail and Address Book applications that adds these kinds of hooks. So when I found out about Gmail contextual gadgets, I quickly searched through for anything that would add a social layer to my email communications. I found Rapportive.
Rapportive is a really cool gadget that adds a right-hand sidebar to Gmail and searches the currently viewed (or selected) message for any and all email addresses in it. It then searches the web for any social network profiles that are linked to that email address and displays links to those profiles. It also tries to parse out information on that person such as a profile picture (not sure where this comes from, my picture is an older one that I don’t use on any of my profiles), job (LinkedIn), location (could come from several places), and possibly more (that’s all I’ve seen so far in my limited use). Rapportive also offers the ability to include various ‘raplets’, or plugins, to the interface to include extra information that isn’t provided by default. Five services are highlighted, mostly CRM and business-related, and there is the option to add other raplets from a URL.
Unfortunatley I don’t use the web interface for any of my email very often, since I’m usually with either my laptop or my iPhone, and I can get my email in the Mail applications on both. But if more and more useful gadgets start popping up, I may consider switching.
Apple Makes it Official, No Flash on Mobile, Ever
The open letter posted to Apple’s website today entitled Thoughts on Flash has put the final nail in the coffin for any hope of seeing Flash on any of Apple’s mobile devices. Signed by Steve Jobs himself, the letter thoroughly explains the six big reasons that Apple will not allow Flash onto their devices, several of which are scathing condemnations of Adobe. We’ve seen a few of the arguments used before (battery life, stability/security) when to explain why Flash hasn’t appeared, but several of them are new. Overall it is a very interesting read and provides quite a bit of insight into exactly why Flash is dead to Apple.
Update: And for those of you that want help reading in between the lines, TechCrunch has a wonderful decoding of Steve Jobs’ letter.
The Case of the Missing Ringtones
One of the features added to the last update of iTunes is the ability to compress higher bit rate songs that are synced to your iPhone (and probably iPod as well, but I don’t have one anymore to test this) to save space and cram more of your music on your device. This makes a big difference for people like me that have very high quality audio tracks that take up a lot of space. So I jumped at the chance to take advantage of this feature. But I ran into a few problems. One is that there was one particular song that it couldn’t convert (I never could figure out why) and so it wouldn’t sync it, and it felt the need to notify me of this twice each time I synced my iPhone. The other is that all of a sudden my custom ringtones stopped syncing. The second part I attributed to a weird bug in the iTunes update and didn’t consider it a side-effect of the compression settings. And so I spent the next two weeks or so using only the standard ringtones (reminding me why I created the custom ones in the first place). A third problem is that iTunes didn’t sync the entirety of my playlists, there were several playlists that only contained half the songs they were supposed to, which really annoyed me.
Today I decided that I had had enough of the annoying compression-error pop-ups and not having half my songs with me, so I turned off the compression option and re-synced my iPhone. It took a little over an hour because it had to re-transfer all of my songs. Shortly after I finished syncing I received a call from a friend, and the iPhone played the custom ringtone I had set for him.
So my mysterious missing ringtones have been found, and I now know that this compression feature really needs some work because it just doesn’t work.
The Next iPhone?
If you are at all in tune with the tech world online, you’ve no doubt heard all the hubbub about the next-generation iPhone that was found at a bar and surfaced two days ago on Engadget, and then resurfaced today when Gizmodo posted a more in depth look at it after they purchased it from the finder. Obviously, this is huge. Nothing like this has ever happened before, or at least nothing this high-profile. TechCrunch has a very interesting post about the timeline of this incident and what it could mean for Apple, the iPhone, and the media.
Personally, I’m still a little skeptical about the legitimacy, because the boxy design of the device is a departure from the sleek, curvy design that Apple has used in the past for it’s mobile devices. Then again, Apple is known for making these kind of huge changes, and if they want to add another reason for people to want to upgrade, a design refresh certainly adds just enough to push someone over the edge.
One thing that is noticeably absent from all of this is Apple itself. You would think that with something this huge and important they would have immediately stepped in and blanketed the internet with cease-and-desist orders and found whoever originally picked up the device and brought them under the most restrictive NDA their lawyers could come up with to make sure they didn’t spill anything else, recovered the device, and of course whoever the device was given to would no longer be employed at Apple. But nothing has happened, yet. It’s very suspicious, maybe they’re figuring out just how to respond to all of this, especially since it’s now exploded and is everywhere.
I guess we’ll see the truth when this all comes out in the wash.
UPDATE: Well, it looks like this thing is real. The really weird thing is that Apple seems to be going about the recovery process in a very civil manner, issuing a formal request at Gizmodo’s request, thus proving that it’s real. No corporate bullying or ninja-lawyers serving C&D orders to every website that posted about the device.
The Future of Computing
Very interesting and thought-provoking post on TechCrunch(IT) this evening, entitled CouchPad. Steve brings up an interesting point that Apple and Google are both re-inventing the way we interact with our computing devices. Apple with it’s iPhone OS and Google with Android. Both are parred-down operating systems built from the ground up for simplicity and with newer ways of interacting with your device and the applications and information on them. I, for one, am really excited for what the future holds in this realm. I’ve always been a fan of futuristic computing interfaces (the gesture-based interface in Minority Report remains one of my favorites to this day), and I love seeing things progress and move away from age-old interfaces like the keyboard and mouse. Yes, they are so comfortable and common, but honestly they’re not as efficient as they could be, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us 10 years down the road.