Free MIT Classes, Certification for Peanuts

I was reading an article on Inc.com today (How to Get an MIT Education for Peanuts) that kinda blew me away. Apparently, MIT is going to start offering free classes that lead to a low-cost certification.

Free classes from major educational institutions are not news, because for years now you can get some pretty awesome free classes on Apple iTunes U. However, getting a certification at a low cost from a major institution is a groundbreaker.

According to a little research I did (What is MITx?), MIT plans to launch the program in spring of 2012. It's worth checking out if you think this might be a good course of study for you.

Definitely worth checking out.

iOS 5

Today Steve Jobs and the Apple team released info about the upcoming iOS 5 update.

The best source for concise info about what the new OS will do is from Mobile Crunch (Everything You Need To Know About iOS 5).

The biggest deal for many seems to be the addition of notifications, and missed notifications on the lock screen that allow you to swipe directly to the pertinent app. Apparently many folks felt this was a major issue on the Apple vs. Android battlefield.

I'm personally more interested in the newsstand portion of iBooks, where your subscriptions to magazines will now appear.

Many folks were also stoked to hear about the reading list option. From Safari, you can now add items to a reading list which will showcase your articles in a "prettied up" version. Sort of like your very own magazine or newspaper.

Reminders, the way I understand it, is the least useful change for me personally. I already have reminders popping up from my calendar, which I've synced to Google Calendar for years now.

One thing that is interesting is the photo shortcut from the lock screen. This makes capturing spontaneous shots easier, faster, and better. They say the camera's improved as well with this latest software update. This is probably aimed at higher-pixel camera phones coming out daily nowadays.

The thumb keyboard cracks me up. It's the keyboard separated into two areas, one on the left margin and one on the right margin.

The "PC Free" concept is pretty much, yes very, a huge deal, since we've all been tethered to laptops and desktops indefinitely for iPhone and iPad updates and syncing...and let's not even bring up iTunes syncing *shiver* The Wireless synch to iTunes and the iPad mirroring are nice add-ons that make a difference without much effort from the user.

Twitter is now better integrated, and iMessages promises stealth and speed when sharing between users--not something earthshaking since I don't really use my IM app of choice (eBuddy) all that much anymore, nor IM in general. And I doubt this is that relevant for most, since they're anyway used to texting.

I am very excited that this latest iOS update brings with it so much functionality, that I can barely contain myself to run home and plug in the little buggers to see how it all applies to the particular models of devices I own (iPad 2 and iPhone 3GS).

If anything interesting happens once I update, I'll be sure to follow up with a post.

Cheers and happy iOS-ing. Of course, we have to wait until the fall, but what's a couple of months!

Playing Around in iTunes

I just bought a CD on iTunes (Goose's Bring It On) and I wanted to convert the songs to mp3, but I forgot how to specify the quality (I like it as high as possible).

It's very easy. Here's the site I used to re-learn how to do it. Go to iTunes/Preferences/General and in the Import section select Custom and pick the


Next, I wanted to find out how the heck one selects multiple songs that are not adjacent one to the other cause I haven't been able to figure that out yet in my Mac. I'm slow sometimes.

It's also very easy, you just click Command and the songs. Duh!

Sync your iPhone to a New Computer

My VAIO is on its last leg. It's been taking forever to just open up programs. I may have to consider having it sent to Sony to get it cleaned up.

I have been thinking about switching my iPhone sync over to my MacBook Pro for a while, and this was the week I actually got around to working on it. It's been a busy-work intensive experience.

I wish I'd gone to the Genius bar at my local Apple store *before* I started working on this little task, so that I got the straight story before I started the monumental undertaking. Cause it's quite easy really.

So here's what you do when you need to start syncing your iPhone from a new computer:

1) Take an external drive, connect it to your new computer, if it's a mac use the magnifying glass icon in the upper right-hand corner of your screen to look for the disk utility. Once in the utility, select and reformat your external drive (MS DOS FAT format) then eject it.
2) plug in your external drive to your old computer. Go to iTunes, Preferences and click Advanced, the address in the very first box is where the folder called iTunes is located. Navigate there and copy it.
3) Navigate to your external drive and paste the iTunes folder. Eject your external drive.
4) Connect the external drive to the new computer, copy the iTunes folder. Navigate to the iTunes folder in the new computer, click paste (replace).
5) then go to iTunes, under Store select "Authorize this computer"

The next time you hook up your iPhone to your iTunes in the new computer, all apps and such will cross over, allowing you to sync from this computer from now on without losing your information.

Good luck!

iTunes 10

My friend and I were WAY overexcited about iTunes 10. So much so, we stayed online till 10 pm CT when they released it, so we could both download it and compare notes.

Did I mention my friend was in Minnesota and I am in Illinois? IM rules.

my library on iTunes 10 

So we each realized something as we began our respective downloads, mine was a lot faster than his, even though we both have DSL. That was peculiar. After that, nothing much differed. Installation and use was just as fine.

This version of iTunes changed most of the interface to a gray hue, and added Apple's new music social networking tool, Ping. I'm not really sure what to make of Ping yet. You can follow other people with similar music tastes (yeah, on Last.fm and Pandora you can as well) and follow musicians and groups (yeah, so can you on Facebook, duh). So I'm not really sure what the use of it is.

Apple may very well drop it a la Google Wave. Time will tell. I also don't know what to make with this new default view, where you have album art, album name, song, artist, etc. I kinda hate it. I switched to the regular list view which I used before. I really don't care much for the album cover view.

One thing that I can tell you right now, is that my laptop's gotten worse with this latest install. So much so that it hangs continuously, making surfing, chatting, or pretty much anything quite the chore. This must be a heavy iTunes install. Must be sucking the memory (.99GB) dry outta my ole VAIO.

This sucks because this is the laptop I use to sync my iPhone...and although I was able to share my iTunes music library between two computers using Dropbox, I am unable to get my iTunes on my Mac Book Pro to recognize what apps my iPhone should have. This makes me not a happy camper.

I checked online and pretty much no one supports RAM to fit this make of laptop anymore. Makes me feel antiquated and dusty. In a corner like.

Steve Jobs said during his Apple Music Keynote that the new iPhones OS update would come out in November. Here we go again...can't wait.