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Technology
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010 23:45 |
 Prince is releasing his new album "20Ten" as a free CD with the Daily Mirror in London. During a recent interview he declared the "Internet is over".
At first we thought this was some type of prank by "The Onion" but apparently The Purple One believes the Internet will soon go the way of MTV and become irrelevant. "The Internet is completely over," Prince told the Mirror. "I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it."
Wait, it gets better. Prince doesn't seem to like electronics at all aside from what he uses to make music as he went on to add, "All these computers and digital gadgets are no good," he said. "They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."
Prince does not intend "20Ten" to get a download release in addition to the free CD distribution with newspapers and magazines. He has also shut down his official website and does not plan to license new music to download stores or subscription services. U.S. distribution is in question.
Prince is one of the funkiest artists of all times and would be in the funkyfresh hall of fame if we had one. Perhaps he is once again ahead of his time and all this Internet stuff will just blow over. Not likely but we can't say we would be all that disappointed if it did. For now, we're pretty much overflowing with 1s and 0s. |
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Technology
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Saturday, 05 December 2009 04:47 |
 Sony PS3
Now that it’s $299 and includes a killer Blu-Ray player, the PS3 is hard to beat as a versatile entertainment machine. Plus it makes a pretty good space heater during the winter months.
GPS
The best units are still built in but Garmin and company aren’t too far behind. For the loved one that’s constantly lost and calling you to look up directions online, as if you’re a personalized Onstar system or something, this is a good call.
Digital Camera
More megapixels, better lenses and faster shots always makes a good stocking stuffer. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 10megapixel is a good starting point.   Sony and Canon are also good bets. Plus memory is dirt cheap so take lots of shots.
Kindle
When you want a good book to read and the bookstore is closed, download it. The Kindle from Amazon is a good choice for enjoying e-books. Sony has recently entered the fray as well.
Mobil microSD Reader
Basically it allows you to move lots of data around really easily without taking up a lot of space. Great for moving pictures, movies, music or other stuff from your phone to your PC to your USB enabled DVD drive and any combination thereof. Very, very handy and perfect for the geek on your list.
MP3 Player
Our current favorite is the Clip+ from SanDisk. It will play just about any kind of audio file, synchs easily with subscription services such as Rhapsody, includes an FM tuner, is expandable with a microSD slot, includes a built in clip for working out, is slotRadio compatible and most importantly sounds great.
Casio G-Shock
The Casio G-Shock is in the funkyfresh hall of fame. We’ve had a love affair with the G-Shock since it was first introduced. This is one gift that’s guaranteed to get plenty of use. We love the new funky green color. Casio always keeps it fresh. Be sure to check out the Tough Solar models that run on sunlight and automatically set the time. We forgot about one unit in the trunk of a car and it was keeping perfect time six months later.
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Technology
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Thursday, 29 October 2009 19:49 |
 Ninite is an extremely useful free service that allows you to simply mark a checkbox of all the applications you want and download one installation package to automate the process. It's an incredible timesaver for installing must have apps for any new PC.
At funkyfresh we have become the defacto tech support group for friends and family and Ninite will save us a lot of time whenever it's necessary to do a fresh install of an operating system or simply add a few apps that are missing. The best part is get can just send our relative to Ninite and with one click they can handle a bunch of stuff at once. Wih remote access to the PC we're much more efficient too
Some of the popular applications you can install with Ninite include iTunes, skype, Spotify, Hulu, Picassa, Adobe Reader, Flash, uTorrent, CDBurnerXP, Firefox, Audacity, AVG Antivirus, OpenOffice and many more. Just check all the boxes, click install and go "Ninite", maybe that's where the name comes from. At any rate, Ninite is a funkyfresh essential element of any PC environment.
Visit Ninite to grab all the apps you need now. |
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Technology
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Tuesday, 22 September 2009 16:08 |
 This is one of the coolest apps we’ve seen for the iPhone. It’s like the music identification app Shazam but for any kind of product. You simply snap a picture of the product you’re interested in and submit it to Amazon. Amazon Remembers matches the photo against a vast database of products and in a few minutes you’ll have the product name, the retail photo and the price.  Amazon already offers one of the best shopping experiences on the planet and now it just got that much more impressive. It’s perfect for those times when you’re out and about and see something you need. Instead of asking someone, “Hey, where did you get that?”, just snap a pic and wait for the results. 
We tested Amazon Remembers by taking pics of studio speakers, PC backpacks, snacks and other various items. It was surprisingly accurate even when the photos were taken from less than perfect angles and less than perfect light. It’s really cool and a huge timesaver or time waster depending how you loot at it.
Visit Amazon for more information. |
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Technology
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Monday, 14 September 2009 00:00 |
 Google brings an analog flavor to news with it's new FastFli web app. It kind of made us want to reach out and slide articles around on our flat screen similar to the way we use the screen on the iPhone
At funkyfresh we're partial to anything with an analog vibe. We miss our knobs. Almost all the recording and mixing we do now is "in the box". Our local paper just made a plea for ideas on how it might be saved from extinction. We're not digging the ink on the hands but we still enjoy the flipping of the pages.
Google Fast Flip makes it easy to do just that with myriad sources in a fast and custom way. It's fun to literally flip like mad until something catches your eye. We find it a great way to do a visual scan of the days news. Perhaps the novelty will wear off but for now it's something fresh and fun from the Googleplex.
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Friday, 14 August 2009 14:07 |
 Sandboxie has been around for a few years but unless you have a specific need for this utility you might not have discovered it. We recently needed to run two instances of an M3U editor that doesn’t allow multiple instances in Windows. Well, Sandboxie worked great for that and is handy for other tasks as well.
Sandboxie runs programs in an isolated space on your hard drive which prevents unwanted permanent changes to your system and other programs running on your computer. Just like a sandbox little kids might play in, the programs are free to trash this area and wreak havoc while everything stays cool with the rest of your PC.
If you like trying new software but hate the problems that come with removing poorly written code than Sandboxie just may be the ticket for you.
Visit Sandboxie for more information. |
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Technology
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Thursday, 13 August 2009 22:06 |
 IK Multimedia adds another funky app to the fray. The GooveMaker for iPhone ports the PC/Mac application to the wondrous little phone. It's like a poor man's version of Roland's GooveBox in the palm of your hand. It's getting to the point now where you could pack an iPhone, a laptop, decent sound card and condenser mic in a backpack and bang out a demo tape just about anywhere.
We could spout off about what we think but when it comes to fun toys like this you really have to just check it out for yourself. Just load it and play and see what happens. The free version includes a variety of house and Hip-Hop styles with plenty of loops to get you started. IK always does a pretty good job with the sounds so you may surprise yourself by the noise you can make.
Visit Groovemaker for more information. |
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