~Fanboy~

I got my first iPod in my second year at the university. It was the all new iPod Touch and not many people on campus had one. I remember not having enough money to get one and I knew I couldn’t ask my dad because he’d ask me if it was an asset or a liability and have me tell him the real importance of the iPod. So I turned to someone who wouldn’t ask me any question as to why I wanted to acquire a shiny overpriced (in retrospect) piece of shiny metal music pocket computer gadget device – my mom. She sent me money. I added it to what I already had, gave the money to Ebenezer (Shot), got my first piece of Apple hardware. This here is the origin story of an undeniable fanboyism.

~When Elephants Fight…~

My first music streaming experience started with Pandora many years ago. It was nice to be able to log into a computer and stream music I didn’t have stored locally in the computer. It wasn’t until I discovered Songza however, that I truly enjoyed the streaming experience. 

It was a free service with a beautiful, simple UI and some really interesting approach to song selection and playlists. Besides the really well thought out user interface and experience, Songza initially didn’t require VPN for me to stream in Nigeria.

Time came for Apple to go into streaming, Google was going in as well and Spotify were already miles ahead of the competition. Google acquired Songza and pretty much ruined it. Google Play Music wouldn’t stream in HD without being choppy at the time (I haven’t tried it in a while), and  even though the key Songza features were ported over the experience with Google Music was far from exhilarating.

~It just works~

As far as free streaming options go, Pandora and Amazon Music have been my go to. Even though unlike Spotify, Pandora doesn’t allow album streaming, I’m still unbothered. I personally find the album shuffle on Spotify irritating so I stay away from it altogether. Once a while, I try out Spotify again until a public service announcement for ad free music come on and I’m reminded that I do not remotely appreciate this type of advertising and then I uninstall again. Amazon Music is one of the very many perks of a Prime membership and I must admit, it is a really good streaming option. I am yet to try out Deezer even though I have heard some interesting things about it. And then finally I have the default music app on my phone which occasionally advertises music plans to me. Thanks Apple.

The entire plethora of music options and the segmented nature of ‘my ecosystem versus yours’ has left many consumers with way too many tentacles of apps and services especially with Music considering Apple and Google have music streaming services. I purchase most of my music on Apple Music except for the records I get from the Jazz Hole, Amazon and Barnes and Noble — of which most of the records from the latter two come with an ‘autorip’ feature which includes digital copies of the music.

It really won’t hurt Apple much to have a free tier of Apple Music for iPhone owners. Apple have some of the most loyal customers in the world and this option will not only keep them in the ecosystem, it will also be a very good incentive for people looking to migrate from other ecosystems/devices. Being one of the few one of the few offering Apple has in the Android-verse, Apple Music is on the rise and it seems it will continue to be despite stiff competition all around.Users could have fewer access to catalogs and playlist management and even ads can be included! Just being able to make the Music app useful and default again for a lot of customers will be a welcome return to the basics.

Just in case you don’t know, Apple recently started giving away freebies on the AppStore just like they do on the iTunes music store. Last week, it was Cut The Rope Experiments. This time around, it is Snapseed.

Snapseed is an award winning photo editing application for the iOS that is just beautiful. The app not only lets you apply filters to photos (which it seems like that’s all other editing apps do), but it lets you go further by giving you detailed options to straighten, crop, adjust hue and saturation, apply a tilt shift effect to your photos, etc.

After editing, you’re given an option to save your photo or share via email or on services like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. It also has an option to print but we know how nearly impossible that is without Apple’s AirPrint supported printers.

One downside I noticed is the option to add text which does not exist. I wish I could in the least add some text to my photo after editing but that is not possible. (I really shouldn’t be complaining; I got this app for free!)
Others who paid for it though, may be looking forward to this in an upcoming update. I will be too.

In all, a free app that was awarded ‘Best Mobile Photo App 2012’ (TIPA) and was once the ‘iPad App of the Year’ deserves at least a download from you. Or even more.

This App is awesome.

Requirements

First of all, if you don’t burn CDs to play in your car anymore because you have the auxiliary jack or the FM transmitter or even the Bluetooth receiver, you need to step up your audio game. These options don’t tend to give you as much audio clarity as playing from the disc itself.

That said, don’t you just hate it when you burn a disc to play in the car and the player shows ‘no title’ or ‘unknown’? This can be annoying. After burning many discs with windows media player, and searching for plug-ins to make burning CD metadata (particularly track name) possible on the disc, I gave up on the idea.
Well, until I saw a little checkbox while burning a disc in iTunes.

If you haven’t been burning discs in iTunes, here’s a quick tutorial in the next paragraph. If you have, kindly skip the blue tutorial.

Click on the ‘+’ sign at the bottom left corner of the iTunes window to create a new playlist and name it whatever you want. Now drag your songs from wherever (make sure they’re in mp3 format otherwise iTunes will try converting them hence creating a new copy of the files possibly on your hard disk) into the selected playlist in iTunes. Click ‘File’, select ‘Burn Playlist to Disc’.

When your ‘Burn Settings’ come on, select your preferred speed – I usually leave mine at ‘Maximum Possible’. Select your Disc Format and gap between songs. If you’re so keen about a sound check you can check the box for that. And now most importantly, the reason why this entire article was written: check the box that says ‘Include CD Text’. This will store the name of the song, name of the artist, and the name of the album on the disc. That way, you don’t have to keep listening to ‘Now Playing: Unknown song, Unknown artist, Unknown album’ when you are driving to Elegushi.

NB: Please make sure when selecting your Disc Format, your drive is capable of burning the disc, and that your destination drive can play the disc.


Disclaimer: Copyright content – especially music – are properties of the individual owners and they should be used only as specified.

Hope this article has taught you how to get the most out of your in-car audio system LED display? Or even your Home theater with text support? Got any questions or comments? Leave them down below. Thanks for reading.