Memorial Day brings the start of another Vermont summer. Enjoyed the lake, cheered on the marathon runners, and took a moment to remember all those that are serving and have. Everything is always a little better with waves & sun.
UVM is wrapping up over the next few weeks and I got this great post from Seth Godin on: The coming melt-down in higher education. What grabbed my eye was the chart. Ouch! Higher education costs in the US are rising faster than Medical costs. While I don’t agree with all his points I firmly subscribe to his conclusion that there is a coming wave of ways to drive affordable liberal education with out going into massive debt.
UVM’s 4.8 percent increase this year would make in-state tuition $12,276. Out-of-state tuition would be $30,984. Add in room & board, books, and you are looking at $26,340(In State) and $45,398(Out). If your borrowed all of that $181K is a massive debt load even before you add in an MBA or other advanced degree. The college board reported that the avg 2010 increase for a private university was 4.4%. Time to look at alternatives. Three year programs with a year doing public service or an internship? We need to have a debate on how we get students better skills with out the massive debt load.
There was a high chance that when Apple bought Lala.com they were going to shut it down. It now had been officially announced that Lala’s last day is May 31st. I will reserve my judgment on Apple till we see what they do with future versions of iTunes. I am going to miss the service as it was how I played music on my work laptop without running afoul of IT. Now my last tool is 8Tracks which is a very different service that does a great job of music discovery but lacks the ability to buy and store my music in bulk.
Sunday Tunes from: Gyptian, Daphne Willis, Paolo Nutini, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Jay Nash, Matt Duke & Tony Lucca, Tyrone Wells, Anais Mitchell, Solvent, and Gorillaz.
Photo Credit: adambowie
I fell in love with Xaphoon Jones Mix Tape Vol 1. (which you can download for free from PMA) so this weeks music is built around his song I Wanna Know Now (Bob Marley, MGMT) which is pure genius.
Play on 8tracks as I can’t seem to edit my lala playlists.
Enjoy…
2009 was a great year but I’m looking forward to 2010.
2009 Travel Recap:
2009 Tech Recap:
2009 Alec Recap:
This playlist is built around Joss Stones new single; Free Me with support from OneRepublic, The Noises 10, Sting, Imogen Heap, Never Shout Never, Etta James, and John Mayer.
The rules: I have to use new music to my library since my last playlist. Thanks to lala.com for allowing me to share. Bummer that they were purchased by Apple on Friday but we will see what Steve and Co. do with this little gem.
You can also play it on 8Tracks.
Music is at the core of my life. It just makes me happy. So, it has been great to recharge this holiday weekend by playing with 8tracks and lala. A co-worker introduced me to 8tracks which is this very simple tool to upload MP3′s and share playlists. It’s brilliant way to discover new music. It has some severe limitations in that you can’t skip more than three songs in an hour and the track uploading can be tedious. I can live with these limitations easily as now I have a simple tool to share and discover new music. In some ways it brings me back to the nostalgia of High School when I spent countless hours making mix tapes.
The other service that I finally got to play with is lala. Which is a much more sophisticated tool as you can easily upload all your playlists and music to the cloud. Out of the 12,352 tunes in my iTunes library lala had some 8,300. It took about 8 hours to do the match but now a decent chunk of my music is accessible to me on the road. As someone who travels most weeks and can’t load your music on the company laptop I always get these random cravings for tunes not carried on my iPhone. Now when I need to hear the White Album or the Jackson 5 I can just jack into the cloud and listen to lala. I have found lala much harder for unaided music discovery than 8tracks. 8tracks will just take you from one great mix to another effortlessly. Lala is better than iTunes in that you can play a full track once and buy the rights to listen to a song on the web for only .10 which means a lot of music that you might not pay .99 becomes readily available. You can still buy tracks/albums and download them but we will see if this replaces my iTunes usage anytime soon .
Now if only they could merge the two services I’d be in paradise by having the easy discovery of 8tracks with the web album ability of lala. If you are into music I strongly recommend checking both tools out and I look forward to listening to your mixes.
Happy Turkey day to you and yours. There is a lot to be Thankful for this year. Family, friends, and good health. In the last months cancer has suddenly struck hard at three people in my circle. All three face it with more grace and strength than I could hope to muster. They are a resilient crew and I daily think about their fight. So, this season I’m thankful for one knowing them and two for their inspiring me to live better. Life is short.
As we gather for T2(a tradition of a second gathering) tomorrow around my table I will raise my glass in thanks for having them in my life. And I plan to take a little extra time for hugs this season…as they can be in short supply in this rushed life we lead.
The middle seat on flights goes better with some new music to get lost in. Spent the weekend recovering from the plague and now packing for another week on the road: Chicago, Minneapolis, and CT this week.
New Tunes:
