A personal message to Steve Jobs…
I do not, I repeat, I DO NOT WANT SAFARI FOR WINDOWS!
I am so tired of closing update notifications on all my PCs! Just because I use iTunes everywhere I have to pay the Safari tax? No thanks…
What, are you crazy? If you are using Gmail, you should be using IMAP…
I know it’s hard, we all do. We gather around in our little group, and everyone takes turn standing up and saying, “Hi, my name is Jason, and I am a POP3 Email user.”
The crowd welcomes you and begins to help you heal. Everyone knows you should be using IMAP, you’ve been tucking email everywhere, hoping your family won’t notice that you have 14 inboxes.
The telltale signs are all there, you stay up all hours of the night making sure your mobile devices, work PC, laptop and home computer all have the mail synced the same. You have deleted that Viagra spam mail that made it through your filter four times but still you hang on….
I kid, but seriously. I used to do this. I would use webmail at work, POP3 on two laptops, two desktops and a Windows Mobile phone. I synced my ass off and it was still always out of whack.
Unlike many of the splintered, I refuse to have fourteen email accounts. I have one that I manage well and guard against spam with an iron fist. I do have a few for specific sites, but they all forward directly into the main one. I get a lot of mail. How do I do it? IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)
If your client is any of the following, you can too!
- Apple Mail
- Novelle GroupWise Windows Client
- iPhone
- Eudora
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft Outlook Express
- Microsoft Entourage
- Windows Mail
- Windows Mobile Mail
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Pegasus Mail
- Opera Mail
The Advantages over POP3
Connected and disconnected modes of operation
When using POP3, clients typically connect to the e-mail server briefly, only as long as it takes to download new messages. When using IMAP4, clients often stay connected as long as the user interface is active and download message content on demand. For users with many or large messages, this IMAP4 usage pattern can result in faster response times.
Multiple clients simultaneously connected to the same mailbox
The POP3 protocol requires the currently connected client to be the only client connected to the mailbox. In contrast, the IMAP protocol specifically allows simultaneous access by multiple clients and provides mechanisms for clients to detect changes made to the mailbox by other, concurrently connected, clients.
Access to MIME message parts and partial fetch
Nearly all internet e-mail is transmitted in MIME format, allowing messages to have a tree structure where the leaf nodes are any of a variety of single part content types and the non-leaf nodes are any of a variety of multipart types. The IMAP4 protocol allows clients to separately retrieve any of the individual MIME parts and also to retrieve portions of either individual parts or the entire message. These mechanisms allow clients to retrieve the text portion of a message without retrieving attached files or to stream content as it is being fetched.
Message state information
Through the use of flags defined in the IMAP4 protocol, clients can keep track of message state; for example, whether or not the message has been read, replied to, or deleted. These flags are stored on the server, so different clients accessing the same mailbox at different times can detect state changes made by other clients. POP3 provides no mechanism for clients to store such state information on the server so if a single user accesses a mailbox with two different POP3 clients, state information–such as whether a message has been accessed–cannot be synchronized between the clients. The IMAP4 protocol supports both pre-defined system flags and client defined keywords. System flags indicate state information such as whether a message has been read. Keywords, which are not supported by all IMAP servers, allow messages to be given one or more tags whose meaning is up to the client. Adding user created tags to messages is an operation supported by some web-based email services, such as Gmail.
Multiple mailboxes on the server
IMAP4 clients can create, rename, and/or delete mailboxes (usually presented to the user as folders) on the server, and move messages between mailboxes. Multiple mailbox support also allows servers to provide access to shared and public folders.
Server-side searches
IMAP4 provides a mechanism for a client to ask the server to search for messages meeting a variety of criteria. This mechanism avoids requiring clients to download every message in the mailbox in order to perform these searches.
What does all this mean to you?
It means that you can have your mail on every device you use, and when you make changes to the state of your mailbox (delete, send mail, organize, etc) It will be reflected anytime you access it from any other device. Central management FTW!
If you haven’t already, go to your Gmail Settings, enable IMAP support, find your client on their setup help page, and give it a test drive. You can always switch back, but why would you?
Has Amazon lost their mind? $349 2nd Gen Nano
I saw this as an email offer from Amazon this morning. Did they just lose their mind?
Retail is $150 for the latest 4GB Nano. What the hell? If you look in the list below they show a newer model for $134, and then show that 43"% of people are buying the old one at $349. I think not.
iMovie for Kicks…
I was screwing around with the iMac after I finished some recording tonight and I decided to take a quick clip with iMovie and upload it to YouTube. In case you didn’t know, I play guitar a little bit, enjoy!
Logic Express 8 for Mac
I have been recording music for a long time. If I trace my roots it goes back to trying to write stuff on an old 486 with a Roland MT-32, recording it to a tape deck in a home stereo, then using split cables and another stereo to bounce tracks together.
When I first got my hands on cakewalk it was light fireworks in my head, then Pro Tools, well…that was just another huge leap in what would be a 20 year obsession.
Recording technology has changed so much, from those early days to day, I am able to sit in my den and record up to 16 channels of audio simultaneously at better than CD quality, and mix and edit them non-destructively with an unlimited array of instruments and sounds that were previously only known in $5,000 professional synthesizer workstations.
The price of entry for all of this power? A decent Mac computer and $199 for a software package called Logic Express 8.
Logic Express 8 is no wicked step-child to Logic Pro 8. The difference lies in the exclusion of 4 core professional features.
- Support for high end control surfaces
- DAE/TDM Support (if you don’t know what it is, you don’t need it)
- DAP or Distributed Audio Processing, which means hardware enhanced audio performance
- Surround Sound
Toss in a few other effects and synthesizer plug-ins, and Logic Pro 8 is more of an enhanced version of Logic Express 8. This is unusual in that many times the consumer oriented versions are usually so drastically different that they are really similar in name only.
This is underscored by the fact that Apple’s Logic Pro Training book is for Logic Pro 8 and Logic Express 8 in the same book. The additional features are covered in an advanced book. Using the application is exactly the same.
Apple’s PR Engine advertises these bullet points for Logic Express:
New in Logic Express 8.
Logic Express 8 makes it easier than ever to translate musical inspiration into professional recordings. A redesigned interface and a range of powerful, easy-to-use features put sophisticated tools at your fingertips.
Single-Window Design
The Arrange window in Logic Pro 8 consolidates production activities in a single, elegantly-designed workspace. You can record multiple takes; cut, move, or stretch audio with sample accuracy; browse channel strip settings; audition Apple Loops; and drop chords onto your lead sheet—all from one central space, without managing multiple windows.
Effortless multitake recording
Region-based take management speeds up multitake recording, editing, and processing. An expandable take folder makes it simple to recall overdubs, and entire take folders can be moved and edited like regions.
New audio editing tools
Work faster and with greater precision using powerful new features like snap-to-transient selection, graphical time stretching, and sample-accurate editing in the Arrange window.
New Instruments
Logic Express now includes Ultrabeat, ES2, and the complete EXS24 Sampler.
Simplified setup
Production-ready templates, a streamlined track setup window, and dynamic channel strip creation get you up and running fast. Improved ReWire support provides easy integration with other music applications.
Quick Swipe comping
With breakthrough Quick Swipe comping, you can simply swipe over the best portions of each take to create a seamless comp, complete with transition-smoothing crossfades.
Portable preferences
Save your key commands, channel strip settings and plug-in settings to your .Mac account for easy backup, sharing, and portability.
New Effects
Logic Express now features Guitar Amp Pro, Ringshifter, and full-featured Pitch Correction.
That’s a mouthful! In spending two days with this software I have to say that it’s everything it’s billed to be. For someone with a good bit of Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) experience, it’s a very good interface. Everything is easy to find and configure. I had it up and running with a firewire interface and MIDI keyboard in minutes.
There is literally no latency. When using Reason on PC I have had many problems getting fast MIDI tracking with software synthezisers and that is not a problem here.
The drum plug-in Ultrabeat is great sounding and simple to use.
I will be diving in more this weekend and will probably do a videocast and some more blog posts about it, but color me impressed. This is one fantastic piece of software.