Music Ventures: cloud computing locker services psonar social features streaming music
by Rob
4 comments
The online music locker service and more - Psonar
If you’re looking for a place online to store and stream your music from why not give Psonar a try? I will admit up front that it’s built mainly by a few of my friends so I may be a little biased but I’ve been using the service for while and I think it’s really quite good.
Psonar are in the business of storing your music on the Cloud, that way it’s backed up - no dropping your iPod in the sea on holiday can destroy your music, all you have to do is log back in and download it - so that’s the basic locker service covered. There’s also streaming so you can listen anywhere, this even works on mobile devices which is very cool. The search features are getting there so you can find other music that’s in the cloud that you might like and finally there will be social features so that you can share music with your friends and others.
It’s still at quite an early stage but most of the core technology is there and they just need people to use it in force so that they can tune the interfaces and make sure they are building exactly what people want, why not give them a try? It’s a chance to really influence how the system works. It doesn’t take two minutes to signup and get started - the more music they have in the cloud the better the service becomes.
Good Hunting
Lost in lost
Lost is back on our screens, well the laptop’s screen anyway. After nearly an hour and a half of season 6 I’m more confused than before. Now watching lost really has got to that point where I don’t really care - I just want to know what I’ve wasted my time watching is about!
*** WARNING - I might let slip a spoiler if you haven’t seen it… ***
It summary of the last season we watch the core characters end up holding a nuclear (likely I know) weapon and dropping it down a shaft that was the source of an ‘energy pocket’. Now only in lost does this make any sense and as Charlotte pointed out when we watched the last season Libby was very small and we therefore were running on minimal sleep and understanding - not the best start to ‘getting’ lost.
Anyway now we seem to have two versions of what’s happening, resurrection, death, anger, reveals, disappointment and confusion - no laughs though. I miss the comedy of Hurley which seems to be sadly lacking. Can I get excited about the next episode? Yes, but because I just want to know dammit! Why is Sayid suddenly ok and what an earth is Jacob going to do will now that he has to talk through Hurley? Who is Locke then? Who’s the new Jacob? Who are all the people? Why wasn’t the temple occupied before? Answers please!
Good Hunting
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-07
- @nightracer I hope this wasn’t the Henrik… in reply to nightracer #
- @dhawes667 Sounds good! Next years Christmas best seller perhaps… in reply to dhawes667 #
- @Skaffen http://bit.ly/c51EKy #
- @Skaffen Maybe one day there will be backend release cakes… they will be the best. in reply to Skaffen #
- @AndiSmith Sounds cryptic…? in reply to AndiSmith #
- @dhawes667 What’s it about? in reply to dhawes667 #
- @dhawes667 Didn’t know you were writing! in reply to dhawes667 #
- @james_dunmore I see what you mean, I don’t like the very linear middle part of the system, it’d be better to stop at 8. in reply to james_dunmore #
- @james_dunmore Reliablity and the Winner? #f1 #formula1 Article: More changes to the points system http://bit.ly/ak6jUd in reply to james_dunmore #
- Libby is no tyrannosaurus rex… #
- @rich_urwin I’m not sure that William would want us to rewrite it in c#
in reply to rich_urwin # - Grrr c++ is annoying! #
- @AndiSmith That’s cool, you got another one today in reply to AndiSmith #
- @AndiSmith Quite enjoying it at the moment in reply to AndiSmith #
Computing Musings: academia Bjarne Stroustrup industry programming software accreditation software development university
by Rob
2 comments
Why indeed? Stroustrup, new developers and accreditation.
In software development there’s not many times that you can disagree with Bjarne Stroustrup but I’m not sure I agree with his article “What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why?”
I agree that the teaching in Universities isn’t aimed at industry enough and that some things just aren’t taught enough, well emphasized enough perhaps. At university I was taught Java in what seems to me now an awful way, teaching procedural programming in the Java language is just not sane - especially to extend it four weeks later to full OO and expect everyone to start writing properly structured programs. Code style was never taught, and efficiency wasn’t top of anyone’s priorities. It was all geared to getting the job done - a typical attitude in research.
However I consider myself a reasonable developer, I can write tidy efficient code - even in c++ - so I must have learnt it somewhere, which must be either in my own time or work (I think both have played their part) and it wouldn’t take much to add it to the material covered in the programming courses. However teaching things like Unit testing, effective code review technique and build systems just won’t happen at university, these things have to be learnt on the job, no one is going to take the unit testing course if they can pick robotics are they?
As for his suggestion that there should be some form of accreditation for Software engineers, well he can sit in his tower saying all of that but some of us struggle to make it through University financially - having to take a whole set of accreditation exams after that would exclude many people - me included - from entering the profession. That’s in addition to the extra time that this would require, you’d effectively be making people choose between a research career or a professional one as those that do Masters/Research qualifications would then have to get another accreditation before they can start practising professionally.
What would an accreditation scheme do for the profession anyway? Well I think that software engineering is one of the most innovative jobs out there and a formal qualification structure would halt that in it’s tracks. Every accredited engineer would have to follow a strict set of guidelines that would be agreed on by committees that people like Bjarne Stroustrup would sit on and if they strayed from this they would be struck off. Yes it would mean we inside the circle could earn more money but isn’t this why we all hate lawyers? How many start-ups would employ chartered software developers I wonder?
Maybe I missed his point.
Good Hunting
Schumacher returns to the track
Yesterday was the first day of pre-season testing for the F1 teams and Michael Schumacher returned to the track after a three year absence, another return was that of Massa.
Both drivers impressed with Massa topping the times and Schumacher posting a faster time than Nico Rosberg, round one to Michael it seems. The Renault of Kubica seemed to be way off the pace but then Kubica can have trouble getting up to speed sometimes and this is the first day of testing - though with the limited testing that they have I’d be surprised if anyone was really just taking it slow.
With all the main teams at the test bar Red Bull it really shows that the new teams are up against it, I think it’s Virgin who’ll start testing first but it seems strange to miss days of valuable testing, perhaps they think they’ll need it later in the year.
There have also been a good few car launches over the last few days and none more low key than the Sauber launch but then they go and post the second fastest time of day 1, is this going to be a repeat of the Brawn success? I wouldn’t go that far but they may be a dark horse for the season.
Good Hunting