The iPod vs. the iRiver ihp-120

Firewire connectivity. It's hard to find a player with this, and as always, Firewire devices cost more. But, that “more” equates to faster download/upload speeds. Firewire 400, despite being burst-able “only to 400 MB/s” instead of 480 MB/s like USB Hi-Speed, can sustain much higher speeds, to the tune of 33-70% faster transfers. Since these little puppies are nice external storage mediums for any type of file, the Firewire 400 speed seems advantageous to me. Transferring songs is blazingly fast — an average of one second per song.

Elegant simplicity. This has always been Apple's “thing.” Look at the two players' fronts. The iRiver's controller protrudes from the front and looks rather counterintuitive from what I can see. The iPod's clickwheel is flush with the surface of the iPod so that it won't catch on anything and is extremely simple: slide your finger up (like on a touchpad) to move up, slide down to move down. Click on the side that has the function you want if you want to play, go to the menu, etc. I'd note what C|Net's James Kim said about the interface and control between the two players (note, the ihp-120 is a year older than the present iPod so the whole review is based on the 3G iPod). “We found the multidirectional joystick control on the front easy enough to use for navigating the deep menu structure, but compared to the Apple iPod's scrollwheel, it makes going through long lists of songs a tedious chore.” I'd also note that the iRiver is laden with buttons on the side, whereas the iPod only has three buttons/switches: the clickwheel, the center button and the hold switch on top (to disable the buttons when not in use).

Same goes for the software… no one wants to hassle with complicated software when your out and about and want to listen to music. The iPod software is the simplest I've seen, but still does everything you'll likely want to do. It has multiple On-The-Go playlists that you can create using only the iPod, you can rate songs while they are playing and then the shuffle function will play your favorites more frequently, you can play Audible.com Audio Books (including some free ones) and much more. Simplicity doesn't mean it lacks miscellaneous features — it still has a place to read notes you've placed on the device, a calendar, contacts, three little games, a music game (where you try to identify short clips from your collection) and so on. Simplicity means everything “just works.” It even has touches like automatic pausing if you remove your headphones.

Accessories. Since the iPod outsells its competitors by about 3:1 (if not more) in the hard disk unit arena, if you want accessories, you'll have a lot easier time finding them with an iPod. Want a dock with speakers built into it? You can get one. Not satisfied with just any speakers? Get the iPod-exclusive Bose SoundDock. Want to store digital photos on your player during a long trip? Choose from adding a memory card reader or a USB port that will download photos straight from your camera. New cars (Minis and BMW's so far, but I expect more affordable fare in the future) now come with iPod support, new car stereos as well… Need a case? Choose from dozens of models that fit every need. With hp now support iPods, expect even more stuff to be available.

Software. Now this doesn't matter as much under GNU/Linux (although once CodeWeavers finishes its work on iTunes support it will)… the iPod/iTunes combination is far more elegant than any other I've seen. Auto-sync on docking (including, on Macs, auto-sync of contacts, calendar, etc.), easy organization tools, smart playlists that add music automatically based on select criteria, etc. As I understand it, the ihp-120 uses drag-and-drop manual uploading instead and requires you to manually run a playlist updater afterward if you want your selection menus to have your music in them.

Both iTunes and the iPod support Apple Lossless, which gives a completely lossless encoding that is 50% smaller than normal. Both support Apple Advanced Codec (AAC), the MPEG-4 based open standard format that produces file sizes dramatically smaller than Ogg that also sound better.

iPod is also the only player with a cross-platform music store for when you only want to buy one song (for instance, I bought the Michael W. Smith single “Healing Rain” two months before anyone not using iTMS could get it). iTMS music can go on five computers, be burnt in the same order 10 times (and burnt in different orders unlimited times) and go on unlimited iPods. At first I never thought I'd use iTMS, but over the last year and a half of its existence, I've found it useful numerous times. Will I buy a whole album through it? Not likely, but for individual tracks its great. As an aside, by purchasing an iPod your going with the only major player that does not work with Windows Media-based online music stores — yet, you are getting the only player that works with the world's most popular online music store. Therefore, it is a win-win situation: (1) the record labels cannot be content to work merely with Microsoft and its partners and (2) you aren't hurting yourself by choosing the iTMS compatible player, you are getting access to the online music store with the most tracks.

All this, plus a similar battery life as the iRiver (only more efficiently, since the AAC format requires less hard drive accesses, since the files are smaller — it also supports MP3), in the new 4G iPods (that's any iPod with a clickwheel). According to C|Net's tests, the same music player reviewer gave the iPod a 9 to iRiver's 8.7 and so on — despite the fact that the iRiver came out nearly a year before the 4G iPod and therefore should have had an easier time obtaining that “9.”

Aestitics. Sure, looks don't make a good player, but if your stuck around this thing all the time, its nice if you like the look. I've always been someone who appreciated simple, clean industrial design: the exact thing you get with the iPod.

Overall. I think it all comes down to what you plan to use it for. Some people will want a player with an FM tuner, on the other hand, if you are like me, the only radio you listen to (other than at Christmas) is AM talk radio — 50,000 watts of Rush Limbaugh, yeeeeaaa! —-so an FM tuner is just something else that can end up breaking on me. Others will want to be able to record sound, but I already have a PDA and a cell phone that do that (and Belkin makes a recording accessory for the iPod). On the other hand, the features I do want, such as an easy to use interface, sleek (and non-mechanical) control mechanism and iTMS support are available almost exclusively with the iPod.

Request for Comments: Spam Blocking

The spam situation is getting worse. Thousands of spams now find their way into the mailboxes on my server each and every day. Each client of mine receives SpamAssassin, a tool that helps filter those messages out of the main inbox, but the messages keep coming. Bandwidth is still wasted and spammers realize that the messages are being delivered (at least, by most appearances).

I'm thinking about adding SMTP-level filtering that would follow blacklists and block mail accordingly from known spammers. Presuming I'd do this, I'd try to go with the list(s) that seemed to have the least amount of false positives. However, anytime one uses a blacklist some legitimate traffic may be blocked.

Now, some of you who read my blog are hosted by ServerForest, at least a few others have inquired about my services and virtually all of you have some kind of web hosting account. Here's the question: does you present server (if you aren't on my server) use blacklisting and if so, how do you like it? If you aren't presently on a server with blacklisting, do you wish you were? Would you object to being on one with blacklisting? Would it change your view positively/negatively concerning ServerForest if we used blacklists?

Sorry to use y'all as a focus group, but I figured I should confront this issue, and I knew I'd get some good opinions on my blog. I've actually received a request from one client to implement this, and I was sort of thinking about it anyway.

In other news, I need to implement a password protected section to this blog. There are some interesting server security-related things I'd like to post about, but for the obvious reasons, it is advantageous not to post such publicly. Maybe I'll do that in a few weeks.

Christian Spammer Blacklist: Were Did It Go?

You may remember my announcement in July about a Christian Spammer Blacklist (CSB). The project is not dead, I just have not had the chance to take the submissions I received and put them online in a nice format. I'm hoping to do that in the next few weeks.

Just thought I'd let y'all know.

Two Dells Down, One to Go

Well, concerning the computers I mentioned awhile back, I've finished up with two of them and I have one to go. The two new laptops have been configured, save for Microsoft Office on one (I need to go get the license key from the church office). Now, I just need to get the old desktop refreshed with a new copy of Windows XP and all will be as well as it can be with Windows.

The laptops are nice. Frankly, I think they over-ordered, but hey, who am I?

Whoops!

For the simple reason that I want to keep my mailbox from just filling up my server's hard disk as it pleases, I have a quota of 200 megabytes on it (I keep a copy of messages on the server so that I can use IMAP to access my box from different locations). Unfortunately, I forgot to pay attention to the fact that I was approaching 200 megs of messages until this morning when my mail box traffic seemed a bit slow and my message rules weren't moving things into the right folder. Stupid me!

At any rate, if anyone tried to send me an e-mail message recently, would you please resend them?

Comments Working...

And you ask what kind of news is that? Comments have been working on asisaid since November 2002, months before it was even asisaid, right? Yes. But they weren't working in my next generation blogging software. Now the software properly retrieves comments from its database — the only thing left to do concerning commenting is setup a way to add new comments.

After I complete that, I may try to write a script to pull the data out of the encoded text files that the blog is in now and move it into the new script's SQL database. Of course, some things are still missing in the new code base — trackback support being the biggest of those features. On the other hand, it supports searching previous posts, which is nice.

At the point that I get the code operational, it will be the first significant modification to my blog's code since the aforementioned addition of comments and a more traditional layout and navigation system two years ago next week. I really need to do this — with the plain text file that stores the actual entries growing to over a megabyte in size, it is no longer efficient by any means. To draw the front page, the script must work through that whole megabyte of entries plus read the complete text of the last 15 posts' comments and trackback files so that it can generate the numbers of comments and trackbacks that go under the title. SQL can do all this much more efficiently.

More importantly, asisaid is going to become a test bed of this software for OfB. In the end I'd like to nuke PHP-Nuke and switch OfB over to this new system as well (for security reasons).

Just In Case You Were Wondering...

…the case I am using now for my iPod is a the WaterField Designs Super Dooper ipod case. I'll be reviewing it in more detail once I've tried it out awhile longer, but overall, it seems really nice. It fits nice and snug around the iPod and provides easy access to all the stuff you need to be able to get to. It also doesn't leave any part of the iPod, that is likely to bump into things, open and able to be scratched.

I got an iPod Case today...

…I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

MacSword

I've been playing with MacSword as of late. MacSword is the Cocoa/Mac OS X front end to CrossWire's SWORD Bible study software project. It has some really good design ideas that seem to raise the bar over what I've seen in BibleTime and Sword for Windows.

First, and perhaps most importantly, MacSword has an extremely clean interface with very minimal clutter. There are only a few tool bar icons and each translation is placed in a completely separate window (MDI interfaces are a no-no on the Mac) with its own bookmark drawer that can be “pulled” out. This decentralizes the feel of the application, emphasizing the individual modules as distinct and able to exist “autonomously” on the desktop.

I also appreciate the arrangement that Sword modules are simply dropped into the folder that is right next to the MacSword.app file instead of hidden elsewhere on the system (although a global Sword location is possible). These individual modules folders, if renamed with a .swd extension, will be converted by Mac OS X into package files similar to how .app files are arranged (e.g. they are really folders but respond like files), and by doing so provide an easy way to launch straight into the module you want: just click on its .swd file and MacSword comes up and opens to that module.

MacSword is not necessarily feature rich just yet, but it is well thought out overall. I'd recommend taking it for a spin if you are around a Mac, it definitely shows that SWORD can be developed into a user-friendly package that I think non-technical users will actually enjoy for what it does rather than stumbling around the interface (a problem that is not, by any means, specific to SWORD-based tools).

OfB Choice Awards

Today marks Open for Business’s third year of informing you on the latest enterprise computing news. It seems very appropriate for this day to also mark the announcement of our third annual OfB Choice Awards. We have spent the last year testing and reporting on the very best open computing offerings and it finally comes down to this time when we must pick the very best of these best of breed products to report to you as our OfB Choices.