Have I mentioned that gapless playback in iTunes 7 rules? Well, gapless playback in iTunes 7 rules. You don't realize what an important addition it is until you listen to some Tool and Pink Floyd albums. It's just like it used to be with actual CD players! Remember those? Since I'm talking about iTunes I'd like to share my big feature request which I'm sure many other people have also. I want to see who's connected to my library and what song's they're listening to. Ideally, this information should be kept in a log so at the end of the day I can open it up and see who connected at what times and what songs they listened to. Sometimes people will be connected to my library but are actually doing anything. iTunes maintains the connection though. When the number of connections maxes out at five nobody else can connect. I'd like the ability to disconnect anyone who was just browsing and hasn't had any activity for a while. This will also allow me to create better playlists for people who listen to my music. If I see that one or more people are consistently listening to 80's hair metal then I might be inclined to create a playlist specifically for that style of music. So how 'bout it Apple. Can you get someone working on that right away?

A couple of weeks ago Apple released iTunes 7. Some Mac users were a tad disappointed with the user-interface changes in the new version. Especially the new scroll bars. It seems like Apple is one of the biggest violators of their own interface guidelines. I did a little bit of poking around on Apple's forums and found a link to Paul Barlow's site. He has a little application that will restore the standard Aqua look-n-feel like every other Mac application has. I'm normally against UI hacks but I made an exception in this case. Here's before and after pictures.

For the first time I actually wish I had an Xbox 360. Apparently, at some point in the future Guitar Hero II will be available for the Xbox 360 and will include downloadable songs. However, according to this article it's very possible we'll someday see a version of Guitar Hero II for the Wii as well. If so, I really hope there's downloadable songs for the Wii version too. But then again without an internal HD how feasible is that really going to be? How fast will songs fill up an SD card if they go that route? It's kind of ironic that the game which now has me really wanting a next-gen system is a simple music game with no high definition graphics at all. I'm also really wishing that Nintendo had just put a cheap 20 GB HD in the Wii! Oh well, nothing is here yet and it'll be a while before we learn how all this stuff is really going to work. Hmm, are the controllers going to be cross-platform compatible too?

Check this out. GPS navigation software for the PSP. Now I really want a PSP! I'm not even being sarcastic either. Ever since we got our van with GPS navigation I have wanted to get some kind of small portable device for my car but all the decent Garmin devices are a little too expensive to justify buying for the little bit I would use it for. But if the PSP software works as good as the screenshots make it look then this is going to be a lifesaver for me. I wonder if it's going to require a separate receiver and how much that will cost though?

There's no end to the various ways you can work "Wii" into a sentence or headline as a substitute for "We". It's only a matter of time before this practice wears itself out. Anyway, I always thought my next console would be a PS3 but now I'm fairly certain it's going to be a Wii instead. The price is right but more importantly it seems like Nintendo is focused on something Sony appears to have been ignoring lately. Fun. It's pretty obvious the PS3 is really Sony's method of getting Blu-Ray players into lots of homes and thus creating a strong market for Blu-Ray discs which is a format Sony controls. So it's less about a fun game machine and more about controlling the next video media format. The Wii, on the other hand, is laser focused on fun. Instead of putting out a faster machine with better graphics Nintendo wants to change how we play games. The graphics may not be as good as PS3 or Xbox 360 but they're good enough. I don't have a HDTV anyway so the HD capabilities of the PS3 and 360 are lost of me. Also, for the first time in a really long time we have completely different type of controller. I think a lot of people like the idea of the new controllers but are at least a bit skeptical about how well it'll work out in the long run. Seeing the latest video trailer for Red Steel has me feeling optimistic. So, I'll have Guitar Hero 2 for PS2 to keep me occupied this holiday season. To be honest if they keep putting out great Guitar Hero games I'll never miss PS3 or Wii at all. But sometime next year I think we'll be seeing a brand new Wii in our house.

The HD Tivo has arrived and it's $800. Hmm. Yet another roadblock in the long list of roadblocks to getting HD in our house. You'll also need at least one CableCARD -- two if you want to record two shows at once. Apparently, you rent these things from the cable company at $1.50 to $3.00 per CableCARD. The CableCARD also provides the great convenience of copy protection. (Ya, that's sarcasm.) This means the networks can decide what you can and cannot record. Tivo is also doing us the great favor of allowing us to transfer a product lifetime service from an old Tivo to the new Tivo for $200. Uh, didn't we already pay almost $300 for the lifetime service to begin with? Tivo wants an extra $200 to transfer it to a new box?! Add to this all the complications, costs, and copy protection issues of getting real HD content on an HDTV to begin with and it feels like electronics manufacturers are trying as hard as possible to make HD fail. Seriously, it's going to be a very long time before HD becomes in the norm in regular households. Most likely, after all the copy protection and encryption nonsense fail and go away.

So, it's highly likely that Apple will start selling downloadable movies through iTunes sometime soon. It'll be interesting to see how this takes off compared to television show downloads. TV shows are largely disposable content. By that I mean a show is something people watch once and then probably not again. If someone loses a show or has to delete it save disc space most people probably aren't going to cry over the $1.99 spent for it. Then there's the quality of presentation. People tend to not care about the quality of television as much as movies. For movies having a crisp picture and 5.1 surround sound is important. For TV it doesn't matter as much. Sony has had a hard time selling UMD movies for its PSP. Do people really not want to watch movies on a portable device? Are UMDs just not priced right? Keep in mind that Apple has done a great job of finding the right audience for its products before. Remember when everyone thought the iPod Mini was overpriced and underpowered? Then Apple couldn't keep them in stock. That's because the people in the media who write/talk about technology do not represent all possible types of consumers. There's a lot of buzz on the internet about the demand for downloadable movies but I have to wonder if it really exists. Are we really ready to give up our DVD discs for downloads on iTunes they way we did for music?

Happy Labor Day Weekend! We're not planning on doing much for Labor Day at the Luton household except go to a BBQ at a friend's house on Sunday.

If you get bored you can always check out GameSpot's E3 2006 Unleashed videos. It used to be that only paid subscribers could view/download those videos but now anyone (willing to pay $1.99) can view and download five DVD's worth of E3 2006.

I worked on the purchasing process part of that page which doesn't sound like much at first but implementing the concept of pay-per-view content is a pretty significant endeavor. It's the first piece of new major functionality I've had the privilege to do for GameSpot and I'm very happy with the way it turned out. It certainly won't be the last time we do pay-per-view content. Exciting things to come!

Can anyone explain why water makes for a lousy moisterizer. I mean it's water. Water is the very essence of moisture. So how is it possible that applying water to your skin can actually make it more dry?! I've always known this to be true but I just don't get WHY.

And while we're answering scientific questions how 'bout this one. Why does cold water boil faster than hot water. It's true. It doesn't make any sense but it's true.

Here's the video I uploaded to test out the nifty new upload progress bar we have for our video upload tool. Wow. I managed to get the word 'upload' in that last sentence three times. [video=dyc7lTDw5bsIvDbZ]