The Apogee ONE

I will occasionally write reviews here of products that I’m particularly enthusiastic about, or which I find myself using frequently. The Apogee ONE is just such a product: it’s a very high quality digital audio interface (I just made my high-school English teacher cringe by stringing five adjectives before a noun).

But first: what the heck is a digital audio interface anyway?

Simply put, it’s a device that translates an audio signal (for example, the sound of my voice captured by a microphone) and converts it into a digital signal that can be processed by a computer. Specifically, this little device has an input (actually multiple inputs, though you can only use one at a time) and a USB output that plugs into your computer (specifically, your Macintosh—I don’t believe that Apogee supports Windows PCs). Let’s say you want to record a podcast; you’d plug in the digital audio interface into your computer via its USB port, then plug a microphone into the audio interface, then start your recording program (Garageband or Logic Pro for me) and record something.

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My new Tascam Digital Pocketstudio DP-008 arrived with the UPS shipment yesterday, and I’m enjoying it greatly. It’s a self-contained 8-track recording studio that runs on batteries.

Tascam Digital Pocketstudio DP-008

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Inspired by this FriendFeed post, which points to this article, I’ve gathered together the stuff that I usually carry on my person.

All the stuff that I usually have with me

Clockwise (from top left): wallet, iPhone 3Gs, guitar pick, Citizen Nighthawk watch, fountain pen, external microphone (enhanced video/audio recording with the iPhone), a Yahoo!-branded Jawbone Bluetooth headset, keys, eyeglass cloth, Buck knife, change, small Leatherman flashlight, another key, and my trusty Levenger pocket briefcase.

Update: Alex Moskalyuk, my friend at Facebook (seen in the image below), tells me, “Yeah, they should’ve made it clearer. It’s available to 100% on the read side, write side (actual check-ins) are rolled out gradually. If nothing bad happens, check again this evening.”

With great fanfare, Facebook announced Places yesterday, their version of the somewhat popular geo-location services that haven’t really swept the nation. Like their competitors/partners Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, Yelp!, and a few others, the idea is that you can, from your mobile device, “check in” to a location and let your friends/stalkers know where you are.

Facebook Places; no check ins allowed

There’s just one problem: they left out the “Check in” button. Either that, or I’m too stupid to use their application. When I run it, I get a screen that shows me where some of my friends are, so it’s obviously working for them, but it sure isn’t working for me.

According to their FAQ, the application is “available to users in the United States.” I suppose it’s possible that I’ve been transported outside the US, or that California seceded from the Union in the last 12 hours, but I think I would have heard about that.

So this is the review that I would have written had the product I would have written about actually worked.

In all honesty, however, I’m sure it’s a really, really great feature. I have no idea why the “Check In” button is not available; presumably some technical issues with Facebook.

It’s not creepy at all. If it is, then the San Francisco Chronicle has instructions on how to opt-out of having your location shared.

Rob Michael (of the Atmos Trio) has a great video showing how he made his latest track, a cover of the Doobie Brother’s well-known “Takin’ it to the streets.” The great thing is that all the video is synchronized with the audio, so you can actually see him playing guitar, ukulele(!), bass, and MIDI keyboard throughout;

(My favorite part is the final ukulele solo as it fades out.)

It’s very creative, and it’s an insightful look into the process required to produce something of this quality. If you’ve ever been involved in professional music production, you’ll understand that much goes on “behind the scenes,” and this video gives you some insight into that.

I see that Skype has updated its iPhone application this morning. The app had been updated to run on iOS4 and support background operation (i.e., being able to stay running and receive calls while in the background), but had reportedly caused serious power consumption problems. In my own personal test, with Skype alone running in the background, my battery went from 100% to 73% in a little under an hour—with the power plugged in! Obviously, this really made background operation unfeasible, and many people like myself avoided it.

The new version (2.1.1) makes no mention of the power issue in the release notes, but it does mention these new features:

• You can now disable IM alerts
• The dialpad is now more responsive (ed: I wonder what that means?)
• The behavior of the volume, when Skype interacts with other apps, is better
• When your status is set to Do Not Disturb, notifications are not shown when the app is running in the background.

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Kodak DC20

In August, 1996, I purchased my first digital camera, a Kodak DC20. This was, in fact, one of the very first (if not the first) “consumer” digital cameras. It was well within my price range at the time, which was indeed rather limited.

Unlike today’s digital cameras, this little gem did not have a built-in LCD display, high-speed USB transfer (USB had not been invented yet), a flash, or any of the other features we consider normal. Its resolution was measured in kilopixels, not megapixels, with a maximum photo size of 320×240 pixels. It connected with the computer via a serial cable terminated with what appeared to be a 1/8″ headphone plug. There was not an electronically-generated shutter sound; instead, there was a reassuring but mysteriously mechanical “thunk” when you pressed the shutter button. It would hold approximately 20 images, even at that low resolution.

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