Another Google Uhoh
The only use of thGoogle have come under fire in Germany for recording MAC addresses on private wireless networks. People are up inarms about it, but to be honest, it is crap info, and of very very little use. Why’s that I hear you ask.
Well, the WAN side of a wireless router is virtually always the private side of the connection, with the public face a cable connection back to the phone socket. The packets that go out of the network to the public side com from a different connection, and therefore a seperate MAC address. It would be useless in tying up the data, and useless for advertisng.
it’s the ISP-issued IP address you’re interested in, but the one being broadcast by the access point isn’t the same as the one on the other side of the NAT box, so what Google will end up with is a list of all the known locations of 192.168.1.1. Which is completly useless. And most people tend to replace hardware once or twice a year anyway, quickly rendering any database obsolete.
The only use f this info is the public WIFI access points, where google can detect your there, and target advertisments direct to you, about the surronding area for example. But for home users, I would not worry about it.
Oh lord why.
Why have apple made it so hard to move a iTunes libary from PC to a mac or vice versa?
There only way they say it can be done is via writing everything to DVDs. For my libary that would take many many Discs and I really don’t want to sit at the computer feeding it disc after disc.
A little bit of editing of the XML file iTunes loves to spit out however will get your libary over.
But it does not always work. I currently have over a thousand tracks missing from my libary on the mac, but present on the PC. reimporting them may fix it.
But I am certainly not going to lose hundreds of hours of listening and ratings data.
It’s about time Apple changed this. Would make it a dam site easier for people migrating to Apple. After all, you gave us local sharing, give us a migration path!
iTunes 9
Well, it is here. And I am unimpressed.
None of the rumored social aspects are in, they were just that, rumours. Only one of the features that were introduced interests me, the rest is just uneeded bloat.
The one thing, is the changing of smartplaylists. Now you ca essentially have a playlist inside a plalist to give you fine grained control over it.
Now this will maybe help with the “Source Playlist” issue, where you haveseveral playlists all feeding into one.
The other changes, such as iTunes LP interest me about as much as sticking my nuts in a blender, and I dont really care for the light colour scheme. Much preferred the black.
Having more sync options is good to, being able to sync Playlists, and specific Artists is great, good move there. And the coloum browser makes going through my large libary really a lot easier.
The Applcation sorting is good, but to be honest, I only ever move applications around on the screen once in a bluemoon. I put the icons where Iwant them, and dont move them about. So this feature will be used once only by me for each time I reset my iPhone. calling it a killer feature is a little much.
Apple have also admitted there are a number of issues, most notable are some stack buffer and a dodgy recovery mode. A sense of Deja Vue, like smart play lists having random contents when loaded on the iPod, I can remember that issue from a while ago. Looks like they undid their fix now. Same error, no lesson learnt.
The iPhone’s Webkit browser has a memory corruption issue wherein visiting a maliciously crafted website might lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.
AND ISTILL WANT TO HAVE A CHART TYPE PLAYLIST!
Oh well. Win some. Lose some. I’ll use iTunes a little more when I get some time, and write a proper review of it. At the moment, I need to sleep. 
iTunes Release?
It looks like the annual Apple music event will be held on September 9 this year, according to AllThingsD.
It is rumored that this will be a Music only related release, so no announcement on the much fabled tablet PC that apple is preparing.
Being a music only event, it could be the date that the Beatles finally make it onto the iTunes Music Store, September 9 has already been announced as the day that the music of Fab Four will make its debut on the video game Rock Band. If this is true, it would be hard to see how Steve Jobs could not make the announcement at the event.
It is also said that iTunes will support a new digital Album format, to be honest, that interests me as much as sticking my nuts in a blender. I wonder what changes the iPod line will see, camera iTouch? More capacity? Lower price?
I wait to see what Social aspects are included in iTunes this time round. That is what I am looking forward to the most. If indeed they release iTunes 9 this time, or just a incremental upgrade to 8.2.1
An idea
A idea has been running round my head for the longest time, and others by the look of some posts on the intertubes;
Wireless iPod / iPhone sync.
I don’t see why it would be difficult to implement. You walk in, your iPhone switches to your network, and syncs with your iTunes libary, if it is available. Bonjour would be able to do this, and I think the only reason they have not enabled it is to do with the .Mac crap.
Hell, Apple already have the remote available in the AppStore , which is able to control a iTunes libary in detail, so the ability must be there some where, and the Apple TV which just syncs the entire libary over the air.
iPods can only be syncronised with one libary at a time, so it would ignore any other libarys apart from the one it currently syncs to. It would just rock my boat royally. And you could then have a reason to use the new wireless charging mats that have recently come onto the Market.
I could have my mac mini sitting on the network, doing it’s media center thing, it needs a job, and this would fit it so very very well.
The only downside I can see with it, is the amount of bandwidth needed for a large sync, and a negitive effect on battery life. But I can live with it, after all my iPod when it syncs, transfers a few songs, podcasts and does it’s backup. Maybe leave the backup if sync’ing wireless and nag that it needs connecting to do that.
Come on apple! Give my mac mini a reason to be! I really hope this comes in a future upgrade.
