Yes, I am aware they both have iPhone apps and I could stream stations all day long, but that really isn’t a good solution for me. First, due to multi-tasking limitations I would spend a great deal of time switching back and forth to the music app and second, I see these recommendation services as “garbage in, garbage out”. Meaning the user actually needs to spend some time rating songs to get a benefit. Switching from the computer, unlocking the phone, and rating a song is a distractive process.

The other day for some reason I visited Pandora in Chrome and it worked (the sites were not blocked, in FF and IE there was a flash security error with the player). So I’ve been spending the last few days giving both Pandora and Last.fm a try. I’ve also gone ahead and Scrobblized my iTunes pay history for Last.fm.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to give these two services a good try, and see if I can discover some new music and more importantly if they can offer a fairly passive way to enjoy music. Maybe I’ll get that much closer to picking up a Sonos system to use Pandora and Last.fm with.

Related articles by Zemanta

• POLL: Last.fm Squeeks By Pandora in Reader Vote (mashable.com)
• Easy Digital Listening: Sonos ZonePlayer S5 (solution.allthingsd.com)
• Sonos S5 speaker not-a-dock uses iPhone as controller (dvice.com)

Strict is a diet void of all animal products (no meat, no fish, no cheese, no daily, no eggs, etc). While the diet is essentially the same as vegan, the term vegan denotes a lifestyle void of all animal products (ie clothes, products, etc), and many people I’ve talk with say the rational also must be for animal compassion. Since that is not my motive, nor do I omit animal products from other aspects of my life, I’ve tried to refrain from calling myself a vegan in respect for those that are.

I figured it’s been a year so I might as well write a post about it. Since I’m not doing this for social reasons (ie animal welfare) I’m often asked why. This is a good question, and one I thought deeply about before I started, and continually think about to this day. I’m doing this for my health (although through research along the way I have started to care a lot more about the environmental impacts of food production). For the few years prior to last year I essentially stopped caring about what I ate, drank, or my level of activity. I was too busy working. There was a lot of travel and a lot of very long days and nights in the office (some friends thought I died), leading to a seeming endless supply of catered meals, room service, and steak dinners, and a lack of time (or priority on my part) for physical activity. We all know what that combination leads to (yes that means too many extra pounds and being out of shape).

So in the fourth quarter of 2008 I decided I had enough, I obviously wasn’t making good choices, there was always a pastrami sandwich, a 14oz fillet, or a chocolate soufflé at the next meal and I seemed to always made the easy choice and eat it, and not a healthier option. I chose that path. I decided to talked with a few friends who were strict vegetarians, and what I leaned surprised me. It really didn’t seem that hard. Sure it would be a change, but as drastic as it sounded it didn’t seem as bas as my initial thoughts. I spent the next month or so researching online and reading a few books on eating a vegan diet to understand how to balance it, what to look out for, and ideas for success. After getting through the holidays (decided it wasn’t the best change to make right before thanksgiving), I had one last steak dinner and the next day went cold turkey.

I planed to ease into my new diet, taking out elements over a few weeks, but I found it easiest to go all the way from the beginning. It forced me to say no to tempting foods, thinking I would rationalize them as OK in a phased out approach. My goal was to make it as long as I could before adding back elements as I saw fit. Initially I thought if I made it a year I would be very happy (check).

Well now that a year has come and gone I really don’t know when I’ll start adding things back. I’m sure it will happen at some point (we all change throughout our lives) but I don’t have any foreseeable plans to do so. Going to the extreme seemed to be what I needed. I feel significantly healthier, I’ve lost weight, and am more physically fit then I’ve been in more than a decade if not my entire life. I’m not going to give all the credit to my change in diet, a contributor has also been the adoption of a more rigorous workout routine including working with a personal trainer for the last six months, but the diet certainly made a significant change during the first six months.

I have not found it to be that hard of a diet to follow. I’m cooking more for myself which is good, and there are some restaurants that I just don’t go to, but overall it has not been as bad as I originally thought.  Supportive friends and family have helped. During 2009, I do not recall having a “cheat” meal. Now, I’m sure some animal products slipped in there somewhere. With how frequently I eat out there’s bound to be some mistakes that I’ll really never find out about (ie, somethings cooked in butter and not oil as expected, or there is egg is some batter, etc) which is something I have come to understand and expect. I am certainly not as thorough as some people are, and take the approach that there is a balance between being overly cautious and living life. As a result, minor ingredients may slip through from time to time, but I’ve managed to avoid the “just this once I’ll have a cheese pizza” or it’s “OK” there is parmesan on my pasta (even at one of my good friends weeding), which I am happy about.

So here’s to 2010. I’ll see how long I can stay on this wagon. I’ll be happy if in a year I’m writing a two year post, if not I’m sure I’ll be happy as well.

I listen/ watch a LOT of podcasts and mange them through iTunes on my primary mac. I find it pretty easy to keep current on the audio ones by listening to them on my iPhone while working throughout the day, but the video podcasts just seem to pile up because they require more attention and are harder to multi-task to. As a result, they rarely get watched on my iPhone, in fact I don’t even sync most of them.

So I have been looking for a workflow solution to keep current and get through the backlog of video podcasts. While I spend a good amount of time in the mornings and evenings at my primary mac I find myself using most of the screen real estate for photo processing or other tasks which doesn’t leave me with a lot of room to play the video podcasts on this machine. Moreover, unlike audio podcasts, I have found when playing a video in a separate window iTunes does not advance to the next video when the current one finishes playing. This requires a lot of back and forth between what I’m working on and iTunes.
A few days ago I remember the new “home sharing” feature in iTunes. Yes, I know I could share libraries before on my home network before, but this incited to give it try with the idea of playing these videos on my MacBook Air sitting next to my iMac as I worked. Sort of a dual monitor solution, something I’ve used successfully for Hulu.

As would be expected the podcasts play just fine streaming them across the network to my MacBook Air without actually moving the files, which was the goal. However, something peculiar and unexpected happened. The podcast tracks were never recognized as having been played (and therefore triggered to be removed on the next refresh) on my primary machine. So in effect, I can watch the videos on a second machine but then I have to figure out which ones I watched and mark them as so on the primary machine. Definitely not a good solution. I am actually very curious as to the logic of why a track played on a shared machine would not be counted as played in the master library. Whenever I pay a podcast or song on any iPod or my Apple TV the track is recorded as having been played when it syncs back with the master library, so I find it quite odd that it doesn’t seem to work that way when using the Home Sharing feature. I’ll chalk that one up to another Apple quirk.

Anyway, if anyone has any workflow suggestions for video podcasts let me know.