Posted: 02/05/10

For the past two days I’ve been using Microsoft’s new Bing search engine in tandem with Google to compare the results without sacrificing my previous experience.  The main reason why I did this was because I’d like to see viable competition to Google in the search engine space — plus I just like to try new things. After using Bing for two days, I think I’ll probably be going back to Google. I’m still going to give Bing a couple more days but so far the Cons of using Bing outweigh the Pros.

As I see it, following are the positives and negatives of Bing.

Pros

   1. The fact that Bing starts playing video thumbnails when you mouse over them in search results is super slick. This really helps in finding the video content that you are most interested in.
   2. I really like image search on Bing. More specifically, I think the results are generally good and I *love* that I don’t have to page — that Bing incorporated live.com’s endless scrolling of search results.

Cons

   1. The biggest negative to me so far is the fact that Bing buries news search off the main page. I do many news queries every single day. Frequently I’ll be searching for something via Google and click on Google News. The fact that Bing makes you click on “more” to get to news search frankly flabbergasts me. This seems so basic that I honestly can’t believe someone at MSFT could not figure this one out. Instead of getting “news” search on the main page you get Shopping, MSN and Windows Live. How is it that MSFT has room for those search items but not “news?”
   2. I’m not entirely happy with the search results. A case in point. Earlier today I was trying to find Microsoft’s Bing Blog so that I could leave some of these comments there. So I did a search on Bing for “Bing Blog” Microsoft. What comes up? Lots of less than relevant stuff, but anything but the actual Microsoft Bing Blog. What I was looking for. By contrast, I do a search for “Bing Blog” Microsoft on Google, I actually can find the Bing Blog in the first page search results.
      It also feels to me like Google consistently has Wikipedia entries higher up the search results list than Bing. I might be wrong on that, it’s just the impression that I got after doing several searches. Frequently Wikipedia contains the most relevant info on a search subject and I like seeing them displayed more prominently.
   3. The Bing stuff feels sluggish to me. Several times when I tried to load the Bing Blog (and most frustrating after I typed a lengthy comment) the page wouldn’t load. It seems to be hanging on “transferring data from analytics.r.msn.com” and so the community experience has not been good.
   4. Microsoft only lets you set your settings preferences to allow 50 results per page during searches. (Google by contrast allows you 100 items per search on a page.) Paging sucks and the less that I have to do of it, the better.
   5. Microsoft Maps need a ton of work. I use Google Maps a lot, mostly to set up maps of things that I want to photograph in various cities. MSFT seems to have a similar way to build your own maps using Bing Maps. They call them collections. I started making a “collection” of neon signs in San Francisco that I still need to shoot, but was really put off that my “collections” list is a huge box that blocks about 40% of my map view (you can’t drag this menu any place but directly over your map). With Google your saved locations sit in a column on the left side of the page and doesn’t block your map view.
   6. Result relevance was never as good as Google. first 2-3 results were tolerable, following were very vague.

Given that I use Map Search so much and that Map Search feels so clunky with MSFT, this is probably one more reason why I’d want to go back to Google.

I’m going to keep trying Bing for the next few days to see if things improve. But most likely I’ll be going back to Google as I doubt that they can improve any of the above negatives very quickly.

Posted: 06/03/09 -  Comments (0)

VS 

In the beginning, there was sound! Then we invented a way of saving those sounds (by using visual representations), not only for ourselves, but for others, too, so that they could play them. It was a way of communicating, like words. Both sounds and words can make you cry, love or hate. But the difference between these two is that music gives you a wider range of feelings and sensations than words.

We’re now living an electronic revolution. But what started it in the first place ? Well, people started inventing lots of devices that could process audio signals, modulate them, and so on. These hardware devices were ment to discover new sounds, new feelings. And they did, but whit a lot of work, a lot of patience, a lot of wiring and plenty of headaches. They all had lots of knobs, buttons, wires, some had displays, and they all needed a lot of knowledge - all these to make new sounds. But was it worth the effort ? Of course it was! Music is the universal language, and these smart people extended that language to a level of endless possibilities.

Among all the possibilities that we now have to make music, we are going to talk about two well know DAW.

First of all, what is a DAW ? It stands for Digital Audio Workstation, and it’s basically a system that records, edits and plays back digital audio. The “workstation” in DAW reffers to the combination of music software and real audio hardware that we talked about earlier. Some of the modern DAWs include software like Ableton Live, Adobe Audition, Cakewalk Sonar, Steinberg’s Cubase, Logic Pro, Sony ACID, Pro Tools, Propellerhead’s Reason and FL Studio(formerly known as Fruity Loops). I’ll be talking only about the last two DAWs, because these are the biggest competitors out there in terms of music production.
Both Reason and FL Studioprovide the basic tools and techniques for recording, editing and playing back music. But as any competing software, they both have pro’s and con’s. Users world wide still debate the problem of competition between these two, and this debate started many years ago and I honestly don’t know if it’ll ever end. So i compiled a list of pro’s and con’s of these two DAWs after many hours of reading lots of forums and articles on the Internet. But before I present you this list, let’s look at some screenshots of Reason and FLStudio.

I will now list the pro’s and con’s of these two DAWs, but in a different way, meaning that for each DAW I will list the features that it has and that the other DAW doesn’t have. Warning: if you never used DAWs or any music software, the following lists will be meaningless to you!

Reason 4 (9 + for upgrading)

• sounds produced with it are more realistic and less digital, but it also allows you to make digital sounds;
• possibility to create sounds far better than any VST out there (VST = Virtual Studio Technology, an interface that allows using third-party plugins and effects inside a DAW);
• endless possibilities for making new original sounds;
• allows to reproduce any sound you wish;
• provides advanced mastering control;
• tons of soundbanks available on the market, so you never get bored;
• soundbanks shipped with the product don’t contain childish sounds (like FL Studio’s stock sounds);
• professional and “realistic” look;
• the user interface teaches the user about hardware interfaces, how they connect, signal processing, etc.;
• using many devices on one song won’t crash your Reason, like FL Studio crashes when using many or some VST plugins and effects on a song;
• it’s easier to use in combination with a midi keyboard;
• it hasn’t a “reason sound”, so you cannot easilly say “oh, that’s a reason sound” like you do for most FL Studio songs;
• provides advanced sampling with ReCycle and Dr.Rex;
• advanced hardware routing and connecting using the rear rack view (check the wires in the screenshot - this feature pops reason out from the other DAWs);
• doesn’t tend to lag in latency;
• better memory management;
• tempo and time signature automatization (it’s sick, in a good way!);
• has a full drum machine (see ReDrum);
• no skin support, so reason focuses only on its’ fuctionality and it doesn’t try to impress by using skins;
• combined with Ableton Live or Cubase, you can get your own virtual monster music studio inside a box;
• no limits for mixers, effects or anything else (FL Studio has limited mixer channels and effect slots per channel);
• full support for MacOSX (even for Ableton Live and Cubase), compared to FL Studio which has to run in a virtual machine.

FL Studio XXL 8 (9)

• VST and VSTi support (this feature makes it extensible, and because of no support for VSTs in Reason, users tend to run away from it);
• easy to use user interface with no daunting “monster hardware devices”;
• excellent for beginners, so you can learn it as you produce music;
• creates loops much more easier than many other DAWs;
• tons of VST plugins and effects so that you can create lots of new sounds;
• provides support for audio recording;
• mp3 support (another feature that Reason doesn’t seem to think about, but you can use SoundForge or any audio converter to convert your songs from wav to mp3);
• better support for vocal processing;
• lifetime free updates for customers (this is really awesome!).

So, after a few years of using both of these DAWs and after all the forums I’ve read, I sincerelly recommend you to start with FL Studio, create some songs, and then switch to Reason. This is what I have done, this is what many have done, and that’s because learning to use Reason from the beginning could get very frustrating, but once you master the basic concepts and techniques in FL Studio, it’ll be a piece of cake to use Reason. Anyways, if you care about the price, you will definitelly start with FL Studio, and maybe never switch to Reason at all.
You cannot say that Reason is better than FL Studio, or vice versa. Both have their pro’s and con’s, that’s for sure. But in my opinion, Reason is far better than FL Studio. Hey, don’t I have the right to an opinion ?!
You could also do another thing, if it’s still a hard choice to make regarding which one to use. Propellerhead has developed together with Steinberg a technology called ReWire that allows you to combine two DAWs into a single DAW! Amazing, isn’t it ? So you could buy both Reason and FL Studio and then use the ReWire technology to connect them both into one big virtual music studio. And yes, by combining them with ReWire, you get all the features from Reason and FL Studio, so you could, for example, create music in FL Studio using Reason devices, and then export it to mp3! I, myself, couldn’t choose between these two DAWs, so I use them both when producing music.

Ref: http://tuxgeek.me/2008/12/music-creation-reason-vs-fl-studio/

Posted: 03/04/09 -  Comments (1)

Well there we go... I just finished to purchase the 'Beats by Dr. Dre' and decided to share my first thoughts.

First of all, I gotta say the 'Beats by Dr. Dre' are 'WOW'!  I went to the Apple store in Charlotte, NC and got me one to review it for you and to hear with my own ears what they are about. I do have great respect for Dr. Dre and these headphone are fabulous. Before I get it on, let me let you know that I'm the CEO of Givemebeats.com and it's my job to listen to beats, a lot of beats. I made and sold some beats on Givemebeats.com, and there are a lot of great producers who are making some blazing hot beats on the site... I gotta hear them well. Well let's get to it.

On the video, I unboxed and walked through all the items that came with it:

- Beats Studio Headphone
- Monster Cable headphone cable (1.3 m)
- 1/8' to 1/4' adapter
- Monster iSoniTalk (tm) for iPhone, Blackberry and other music phone
- Touring case
- Monster clean cloth with advance Aegis Microbe Shield technology
- Anti Microbial cleaning cloth
- Two AAA batteries
- One year limited warranty

Some other features found:
- Spaciously designed earcups, which provide extra room for a higher level of comfort and listening
- Beatheable cushions, which reduce the sweat factor: stay cool while the music's hot
- Specially integrated mute button, which allows you to listen to the outside world without removing your Beats


What did I see?

It was pretty amazing how everything was designed and put together. The colors match greatly: black,red,gray.  The box looks very good, which is one of the reasons why you don't want to throw it away. A quick start guide, which was better than a full manual, however you can download the latter on the monster website. I like the case that stored the headphone, but it may be to big to fit in certain places (but that's fine though). Overall it is a stylish headphone, everything looks and feels good.

What did I hear?

“With Beats, people are going to hear what the artists hear, and listen to the music the way they should: the way I do.”, Dr Dre.

Well I finished to put the headphone together, added the batteries, connected the cord... well it was going to be the time I was going to say 'WOW' a lot (in the video). The headphone felt pretty well on my head, and my ears were enclosed in the cups so I could be in my music mode, all by myself.

That's when it got better, I started the music and what I heard was unheard of, what I felt was impalpable. I heard the most incredible sound ever on a headphone. I'm talking in a hip-hop point of view, let me try to let you hear what I heard. You know, some people put sub-woofer in their vehicle, set up their stereo very nice... and when they are driving they are enjoying the music with full bass with all those tomb tomb sound (kick 808)... well I heard all that in the headphone. On most headphones you have to turn up the volume to get a decent high and low, the Beats by Dr. Dre weren't like that, at a very low volume you will experience great sound. It was very impressive.  I played old and new songs, hip-hop, r&b, and rock music on it... and definitely these headphones are great.

Conclusion.

These headphones go for $ 350 at Best Buy, Apple Store, and Beatsbydre.com. You're probably saying they are expensive, but they are among the best in their class. 

Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Akon, Bono, The Edge, Pharrell Williams and Gwen Stefani tried them out and liked what they heard. Dre also got a thumbs-up from other producers.

The Beats by Dr. Dre cater to music producers and consumers who want to hear the music in its essence. As of now on, when I'm going to listen to the beats on Givemebeats.com or making some hot beats myself, I will be using because I know they will help me deliver the best sound.

By the way, after you finish to try them out, you won't want to hear music in your $ 60 headphone.

Beats by Dr. Dre Specs:

- Warranty Terms - Parts1 year limited

- Warranty Terms - Labor1 year limited

- Product Height 9-7/8'

- Product Width 7-1/4'

- Product Weight 3.2 lbs.

- Product Depth 5'

- Headphone Type Over-the-ear

- Water-Resistant No

- Noise Canceling Yes

- Sound Isolating Yes

- Folding Yes

- Mardix :)

Posted: 08/18/08 -  Comments (8)