Summer is certainly a good time to get your mind off teaching and work. It’s time to delve into whatever you want. Some people take the time to read, others travel. I love the summers because I can really take some time to try out services and tools that I otherwise wouldn’t have the time or energy to explore.
My favorite two new discoveries this summer are Google Voice and Music Discovery
Google Voice
Google Voice is an awesome service that allows you to create a new phone number. It works perfectly like any phone number. You can choose it from a list of phone numbers in your area. This phone number when called will ring your mobile phone(s). It’s nice because you can give it out to whoever you want and it’s not your real phone #. You can always abandon the # at a later date without switching your real phone #.
How I currently use it:
1. I can text from Google Voice or from my IPod Touch.
2. When I receive a text to my Google voice #, it will send a text message to my email.
3. If someone calls it and leave a phone message, it records the message (playable in a browser) or on my IPod Touch and sends me a email message with a poorly transcribed message.
Why it’s valuable to me is I can get much of the functionality of a mobile phone without paying for a phone service contract and use a pre-pay cell phone. It’s another cool offering from Google that seems hard to believe is possible.
Music Discovery through MOG and Rdio
It’s funny, but I’m not much for ownership of digital media. I have at the most about 10 DVDs and rarely ever purchase a novel or book, relying heavily on the library (say it isn’t so). I have a large music collection though. I don’t value owning digital media because it’s an occasional event when I want to watch a movie or read a book a second time. It’s not that I don’t ever, but I usually can find an old book in the library and can get any DVD from Netflix if I feel the desire. I’m moving away from owning music media. I hate paying $1 for a song when I like to play a song repeatedly at the beginning, but after I burn it out, I don’t feel the need to listen to the song as much any more.
There are many free services for music discovery from Pandora to Rhapsody. I dislike advertisements with a passion and refuse to listen to the radio anymore and Pandora, Rhapsody and Grooveshark are almost as bad. They are free though. I have become a fan of subscription services like MOG and Rdio. You can pay $5 for unlimited streaming or $10 for unlimited streaming plus mobile syncing. I think having access to entire catalogs of songs online for $10 is outstanding. I always thought that Apple would deny the inclusion of these types of services on IPod/IPhones, but they have changed their mind. I can sync any album to my Touch as long as I’m a subscriber. Why do I need to ever pay for a song again? For $10, I have a vast, always-fresh library without the need for storage.
I have been back and forth between two services, MOG and Rdio. I loved MOG at first, but they lacked a mobile syncing option. I moved to Rdio and loved this ability to sync an entire album. I’d try albums I’ve never listened to before and go running. But the Rdio collection has holes and with the MOG’s ability to sync to mobile devices, I’m headed back mostly due to the more complete library. I prefer the Rdio user interface more, but there is nothing more frustrating than paying for a service and searching for an album everyone is raving about (Arcade Fire), and finding it’s unavailable. I’m going to resubscribe to MOG, but I’m sure this is not the last move. I loved Lala, but Apple bought it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same occurs to these services in the future. These services are an improvement on Lala due to the ability to play every song or album as much as you want and sync it to your mobile devices. I had been waiting for another service called Spotify to come to the U.S., but it looks like MOG and Rdio beat it.
For a list and comparison of all the different options for music discovery, check out this Lifehacker article.
