amassed lust Blog of Raymond Angel; Startup Enthusiast, CEO

Every once in a while I see things that are really cool and recently one startup which has asked to remain unnamed promised me they were working on something really cool for the iPhone.

It is simply for the time being called “Project Aries” and it is a new file sharing service for the iPhone.

Other file sharing services for the iPhone exist but this one has a plethora of features that truly set it apart and has come an amazingly long way in only a matter of weeks.

They are currently working on two versions one of them simply requires you to fire up Safari and the other is an application that will be free on the iTunes store when applications finally go live.

I’ve obviously been testing the web version on my iPhone and the simplicity is one of my favorite aspects of the service.

The service has a free plan that offers 1gig of storage or you can upgrade to other plans that offer more storage and some premium features. The billing of the application is really cool because I don’t have to use a credit card but rather the monthly billing appears right on my at&t bill.

Of course this limits users to this new startups project to iPhones on the at&t network only (upgrading will be met with an error message on other carriers) but the at&t network has a great deal of users so I don’t see this being a major issue in the beginning.

I originally was going to sprinkle this post with some shots of it in action but the guys working on it have asked me to not do so just yet. They did promise me that when the time comes (very soon I am told) I can post a some pictures and show you what they’ve got and what makes it truly cool.

Tonight on a whim I decided to just trash Windows.

Yeah… I decided to not even try to dual boot with it anymore on my machine.

I’ve decided to attempt running Windows applications on a Virtual Box under Linux Mint.

Why?

Because when this is the only icon on your desktop you know it is time for change…

I’ve been dual-booting between Linux Mint and Windows Vista on all of my machines for a while now trying to make the adjustment to using Linux full-time.

I still find myself switching between the operating systems often. For somethings Linux works best, for others I still have to come back to Windows.

Linux is a “your mileage may vary” kind of operating system.

Choice is great. I have a great deal of choices in Linux… but sometimes I have so many that it just ruins the experience for me.

A good example is how applications are installed on various distros.

For most you actually have to compile the files before you install them. I’ve actually found myself getting pretty acquainted with the process and it isn’t terribly hard but can my fiancee or my mom do it? Certainly not.

I know that the great part about Linux is that we have choice… however this is part of the problem. With so many choices no one can decide on a standard for installing applications on Linux that the regular average computer user can sit down and do.

RPMs, DEBS, these are things that the average user just doesn’t understand… nor do they want to.

So what can the people pushing Linux truly do?

Honestly I’m not sure. Getting people to agree on anything in the Linux community is going to be about damn near impossible.

My experience with the community is another “milage may vary” sort of topic. Sometimes I’ll ask for some assistance and people are quick to jump up and either give me the answer I need or at the very least point me in the right direction of a tutorial that I couldn’t find even after a great deal of searching.

Othertimes they can all be egotistical assholes. They believe they are better then everyone else because they use an “alternative” operating system. Sure buddy… that makes you so much “cooler”.

I’ve found that someone like my fiancee or my mother won’t have much luck finding help all of the time for issues they may have. If I decided to set either of them up with a Linux system I would myself have to become more familiar with the innerworkings so they have someone that can help them.

Linux has been great in the productivity department for me. I have found a plethora of great programs that keep me productive on Linux and it truly shows that Linux is becoming ready for the business and educational enviroment. As far as entertainment goes I’ve found the choices to be lacking.

A great deal of music and video software exists for Linux but not each program does everything and it often times takes me two programs to do things that one simple program on Windows could do but I’ve noticed that in this area a new program for Linux comes out nearly all of the time and that the developers are dedicated to making software that does everything I want.

Gaming on Linux has also been suprisingly pleasant. I’m playing World of Warcraft on my Linux box through Wine and I must say the experience has been VERY positive for me. I thought the game would run slow, the framerate would be bad or I’d run in to a lot of problems. Everyone makes installing it out to be some huge nightmare but I honestly had ZERO real problems getting it up and running on my Linux box.

As a matter of fact I’ve found that World of Warcraft not only LOOKS better on my Linux box then it does on Windows I get a much higher framerate then what I’ve been getting on Windows Vista.

I can run World of Warcraft at a higher graphics setting in Linux then I could on Windows and it looks better! I still can’t get over that.

With more and more software becoming avaliable each day I find myself pulled more and more to Linux because my system is more secure, seems a whole hell of a lot snappier, and most everything for Linux can be had for no charge.

Once the community learns to be more accepting of the new Linux users, some standards are established, and some more companies like Dell start offering Linux preinstalled you will see more and more people switching over to Linux.

P.S

The Linux Mint community has been the most pleasant community in the Linux world to date. When other distro communities were mean, hateful, and full of themselves the people in the Linux Mint community were understanding, thoughtful, and nice.

You might have noticed my lack of entries this month in comparison to the past two months.

I’ve been sorta AFK. I’ve been on the computer but I haven’t had the time to get over here to my own blog and post some of my thoughts and what not on all of the stuff that has been taking place because things at MOSH mobile have been os busy the past two weeks.

I have some blog posts coming up about Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 beta 4, my experience with Linux thus far, a story about why I HATE my local Walmart, my attendance at a Hillary Clinton rally (who would have thought!!) and much more.

Here is a meme I’m starting here….

One feature of Windows is the ability to move your most used applications up higher on the Start Menu to make it easier to use them faster.

What is on your Start Menu?

I’m tagging, James, Patrick and Jared to show us next and tag three more people.

I promised that I’d give my full scoop on Real Rhapsody soon and today I plan on keeping that promise.

A while back I downloaded and installed Real Rhapsody on a fourteen day trial. I’ve had and used Real Rhapsosdy in the past but heard they had made several improvements. They also sent an email asking me to give it a second chance.

So I decided to be fair and give it another install and ignore my previous poor experience with the software and the service.

The install went fairly quickly but attempted to install Spyware on my system, thankfuly I caught it hidden away in the installer and was able to prevent it from infecting my system. Strike 1. Big strike 1.

After a fairly quick install I signed in using my account name and password found some tracks to play and started arranging them in to a play list.

Easy enough thus far.

I found the music catalog to be extensive enough but the player was already using a large chunk of memory and space on my screen.

One feature I found handy was the ability to make the player a small bar that when hovering your mouse over the right hand or left hand side it would display what is playing.

I however have the Logitech G-15 keyboard which normally displays what music I am playing on my keyboard LCD but out of the hundreds of applications I’ve used Real Rhapsody is the first one to NOT display this information on my keyboard.

The more I used Rhapsody the slower my PC  got. Strike 2.

The already large footprint of the Real Rhapsody software simply continues to grow the longer it is open. Even after closing the application the process keeps running for over thirty minutes eating resources.

Any software that I pay per month for that installs spyware on my machine is an instant DOES NOT APPROVE from me.

So Real Rhapsody… you are nothing but a REAL piece of crap.

I installed Linux Mint on my computer and am dual-booting between it and Windows Vista.

If I can make World of Warcraft run on Linux properly then I will use it a lot more in my day-to-day computing.

The installer is downloading the files I need right now

My ongoing review of Rhapsody countinues.

Impressions thus far?

It is pretty solid software but a bit more clunky then I like.

The best feature I’ve found so far though is the ability to make the play come up when hovering over the left hand or right hand corner of my screen.

Rhapsody calls this feature the “mini-player” I often find it handy to not bring up the full player to find what song I’m hearing by simply hovering over the left hand corner.

My complaints with it though are simple. When the player is minimized make it go away off my taskbar. I can always pull it back up with the mini-player.

Is this one feature really that handy? The jury here is still out on that one as I have the Logitech G-15 Gaming Keyboard and most audio/video players show what I am listening to already on the little LCD screen on my keyboard and of course Rhapsody isn’t one of those players.

The “mini-player” is handy but I really shouldn’t have to use it. The keyboard supports nearly every other player but of course Rhapsody doesn’t report information the standard way so the “mini-player” becomes a necessity to power users such as myself who demand more.

It is still early and I’ll keep putting the service through the paces but as of right now I won’t be subscribing. The player is clunky, a memory hog, the response time slow, the lack of third party plugin support and the great deal of annoying “features” makes this a no go for me.

Today I signed up for the trial for Real Rhapsody.

Once upon a time I was a subscriber to Rhapsody and really enjoyed the level of music it brought to me. Once I purchased the Zune I cancelled my Rhapsody account and enjoyed the Zune Marketplace.

This weekend I formatted my computer and got an email inviting me back to the new and improved Rhapsody software.

So for the next fourteen days I’m giving it a trial again. Will I likely keep it after the fourteen days?

I’m honestly not sure. The software is a lot more responsive and easier to use then previously. The sound quality is pretty good but I do enjoy my Zune Marketplace because it intergrates with the Zune.

I’ll keep you posted.