If you’ve got an mp3 collection that’s missing some crucial album art, check out AlbumArt. It’s a quiet little web service that lets you search for album artwork by entering an artist, or album, or whatever… After it’s done searching you will be presented with a list of images that you can save to your computer, which you can use to update your mp3 artwork.

I use Windows Media Player and just drag-and-drop the image onto the generic album icon – WMP updates all the mp3 files auto-magically.

I’ve been using the service for quite a while and it’s been pretty good at helping me maintain my mp3 collection by filling in missing artwork – although it’s not always successful because not every album on the planet is in their database. You might be out of luck with some of the more obscure bands. Also, the artwork quality varies. But, I guess it’s better than nothing. Finally, I don’t see a way to add to the database. I don’t know who is doing that?!?

Albumart supports multiple languages. Check it out yo…

If you’re shopping around for a new Visa card, and want to help the Open Source community at the same time, consider getting a LinuxFund Visa (click  here to find out more). Basically, they will donate your rewards to various well established and proven Open Source organizations. It’s a win-win for all!

I don’t necessarily expect anyone else to use MyPicShares – and really, I don’t care. I created MyPicShares because I needed a mechanism for uploading and sharing pictures that other websites weren’t really offering.

www.mypicshares.com

What is MyPicShares and Why was it created?

Sometimes it is easier to show someone a picture to explain things than it is to try to explain something verbally or in writing. I first thought of creating MyPicShares as a way to capture a screen shot of something like, for example, an error message; upload the screen shot and then send someone, like a technical support person, an email with a link so they could look at the picture. In this way, the technical support person could see first-hand what you’re talking about. Although some day I hope to complete the screen capture software and have it available for download, MyPicShares’ more immediate mission has morphed into something else.

MyPicShares has now become a mechanism for uploading pictures so that you can link to those pictures from a blog like WordPress (unfortunately, MySpace strips MyPicShares pictures out of their src attribute – so if you want to use MyPicShares from MySpace you will have to wait until MyPicShares becomes more popular). Or, MyPicShares is ideal if you need a hassle-free way to upload a picture and email someone a link to view it. I’ve also included the ability for you to suggest a Google search, in case you think someone viewing your picture might be interested in a search you suggest. In addition to that, I’m going to be creating a little utility that will enable you to right-click on a picture and send it to MyPicShares. If the picture is larger than the current 125KB limit, the utility will automatically re-size it for you before sending it to MyPicShares. Once again, though, even though that utility isn’t created yet, MyPicShares is still perfectly usable, as is.

There are some things that are unique about MyPicShares versus other gallery and video sharing websites. First, MyPicShares is NOT a photo gallery. Instead, it is a communication mechanism using pictures as the communication medium. If you want a photo gallery, use some other tool such as Flikr. Second, you won’t need to sign up for an account to use MyPicShares. I wanted the MyPicShares experience to be simple and anonymous, like Google. By not requiring you to sign up for anything, you can accomplish picture sharing without any undue fuss and bother. Finally, MyPicShares follows the K.I.S.S. (Keep is Simple Stupid) axiom, like the good folks at the Mozilla Foundation who created Firefox – any feature added to Firefox is thought about deeply before making the cut. MyPicShares essentially enables one task, and one task only – but it does it efficiently, and it does it well. By focusing on this one task, MyPicShares will help alleviate frustration that often accompanies complicated gallery sites. That is not to say that I won’t be adding features to MyPicShares, but its core functionality is going to remain essentially unchanged. My goal is to have MyPicShares be the little utility that could, be rock solid, and simply be there when you need it.

Another nice feature about MyPicShares is that once your picture is uploaded, it’s going to be hosted for as long as MyPicShares is around – we don’t delete pictures. Originally, I had the thought that they would be deleted after a little while, but what’s the use of that? You couldn’t link to your picture from a blog if it were going to be deleted. So I made the decision to let the pictures stay. Besides, I have this crazy far-off idea of building a search algorithm that actually uses the contents of pictures to come up with matches. As an example, if I were searching for pine trees, my search algorithm would bring up all pictures with pine trees in them. Having a huge database of pictures will certainly help me develop my algorithm – well, that’s definitely a ways out there yet.

Back in reality, I don’t necessarily expect anyone else to use MyPicShares – and really, I don’t care. I created MyPicShares because I needed a mechanism for uploading and sharing pictures that other websites weren’t really offering. Most of the “free” picture sites want you to create an account, and they want to be an everything destination for you – which was total overkill for what I needed. If other people find MyPicShares fills a certain need in their lives, then so be it. If I’m the only one ever using MyPicShares, I can swing the meager hosting fees. If other people start using it, the Google AdSense words should help fund it. We’ll see. Finally, I’d like to say that I hope people don’t abuse MyPicShares. Unfortunately, with popularity comes problems. So, in a way, if no one else ever used it except me and my friends, I wouldn’t have anything to worry about. But, if it does gain in popularity, I guess I will deal with the problems as they arise.

Well, now that you know what MyPicShares is, and how it works, give MyPicShares a whirl. If you like it, tell your friends about it. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll help make your life just a tad easier.

Here‘s a somewhat scathing Techdirt review of a new movie streaming service offered by Netflix. True, there seem to be a lot of limitations, such as only being able to stream to a PC, licensing conundrums, and a meager content selection. However, as the Techdirt article points out, they are offering it gratis, as a value added service to their existing customers (with a certain level of account). By doing so, it gives the fledgling service a slim, but fighting chance to gain some traction. Looking at the big picture, these types of fits and starts are a natural part of an inevitable process. Streaming is coming, it’s just a matter of who makes it happen (a perfect on-demand storm).

Want to be an early iPhone adopter? Read Thirteen reasons to doubt the iPhone hype on Crave and you might change your mind. I think question number 11 Just how useful is the touch screen? is probably the most important question. I do a fair amount of driving and cell-phoning at the same time (I know, I’m one of those people), and I rely greatly on the feel and placement of the various buttons to help me blindly navigate my menu system. With the touch screen, that might be prohibitive. I might take a look at the Blackjack versus the iPhone if that concerns you too.

Boy, I’d be rather remiss if I didn’t mention Joost – the brainchild and current passion of Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, the digital-superhumans behind Kazaa and Skype (of which eBay recently paid them a couple of billion dollars for). According to them Joost (code named The Venice Project) is “TV perfected”. Basically, it’s a way to watch TV over the internet and get around the limitations of bandwidth, working on the same principles as Kazaa, Skype, and other P2P sharing services. Here‘s a fantastic article on Wired that lays out their ideas, where they’re at in the project, and the huge challenges they face. History in the making.

Here‘s a Slashdot entry linking to a review of Windows Home Server. Worth a look anyhow.

Feeling particularly DIYish? Here‘s an Extreme Tech article on how to build your own media server with Linux.

Another important aspect to consider is Bill Gate’s vision about a convergence of technology for the home, that stylishly integrates with your home theater and stereo. He believes an Xbox, shaped like a funky home theater component, is a perfect fit – here‘s a Reuters article about that. He couldn’t be more right. Ideas like IPTV will never take off unless you can watch TV on your comfy couch. Sitting in front of the computer watching three minute YouTube videos is one thing, but eventually you want to relax and don’t really want to interact all that much. Or, you’re done playing Grand Theft Auto 2020, and now you want to chill. Well, if the Xbox can step in and fulfill that role too, all the merrier for the consumer, and for Microsoft’s shareholders.

People may be talking about the demise of Microsoft as Google and other competitors turn up the heat, but they didn’t get where they are today by pussy-footing around. And we certainly shouldn’t forget they have boat-loads of money to back it all up.

Nothing to do with on-demand, but I had to congrats our Boise State Broncos for their nail-biting 43 to 42 defeat over the Sooners, being as I’m a Boise State alum (and fan), and the Demanding Couch is based right here in (not so little anymore) Boise, Idaho!

While only on the periphery of the on-demand pantheon, here‘s an interesting blog entry on Wired News about their visit to Seagate’s Pittsburgh R&D labs, and a look at what’s coming in the world of massive storage capacity, and the challenges faced. Worth a read, anyhow.

Now on to something that does have to do with the on-demandiverse. Here‘s a concise, but insightful, entry on Autopia (one of absolute favorite blogzines) about WiFi in your vehicle. Their main point; you can do it now, but it’ll cost you a bundle, and won’t be that great.

I hate to make you dig too deep, but Slashdot has a post that links to a review of several online movie download sites. Here. If you want to skip the Slashdot commentary, you can go directly to the review here.

Another Slashdot entry; this one about movie studios approving a technology called Qflix made by a company called Sonic Solutions, which enables a copy protection called CSS when a consumer downloads-to-burn a DVD. This means the studios are gearing up to do the iTunes thing.

One way or another, you will have to pay in an ongoing fashion for the privilege of storing your pictures.

There’s nothing more satisfying than being able to put all your vacation, family reunion, baby or party pictures online and have friends and family be able to peruse those pictures at their leisure and order prints if they want to. The web is the photo album of the digital generation – it humanizes the web and gives it higher purpose. One thing you don’t want to do, though, is spend hours and hours formatting and uploading pictures. In the days of film, a camera would typically hold 24 to 36 prints. But modern digital cameras hold hundreds of pictures. You simply don’t have time to crunch all those pictures manually. Thus, you have to have tools to help ease the burden. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of photo gallery websites. Some are very basic, others are a lot more sophisticated. I’ve tried several of them, including Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Wal-Mart, and Walgreens, but I’ve settled on (drum roll please) Picasa Web Albums from Google. However, Walgreens still fits into the schema (which I’ll explain soon). I’m sorry if I didn’t get to your favorite online gallery, but there’s simply too darn many to review them all.

Because I already know and love Picasa, it seemed only natural that I would at try out their gallery service, as it integrates very nicely with Picasa. However, I didn’t want to just settle, so I did a head-to-head comparison of Picasa Web Albums with Kodak EasyShare Gallery. I uploaded the same gallery to both places and sent out an invite email to various family members, who aren’t necessarily the most computer savvy people, to see which one they liked better. After interviewing these family members, I found out that both services were equally easy to use (although one person thought they had to register with Kodak’s site before viewing the pictures, which implies their site might be a little more confusing than Google’s). Overall, though, everyone in my little test sample was easily able to use either service, so that didn’t help me with my final selection.

Pictures take up a lot of room, and even though both services are free to use, they do eventually want some money out of you for taking up their hard drive space. Kodak’s model is a little difficult to understand at first. Basically, you can upload as many galleries as you want, but you have to purchase at least one thing – it could be as little as a 15 cent print – from each gallery within one year of loading the gallery. At first I thought buying one picture a year would be ideal – my family members would easily take care of that purchasing cute pictures of their grandkids. But it’s the account holder that has to do the purchasing, not a gallery visitor. That means that you have to buy a print out of each of your galleries every year for the rest of time (or at least until you don’t care if the gallery goes away). If you’ve got a significant number of galleries uploaded, that could get onerous. Google, on the other hand, is a lot more straightforward – they give you 250 Megabytes of space for free (which, according to their documentation, works out to about 1,000 pictures, or about 10 galleries each containing 100 pictures), and you can purchase more space on a yearly basis. Google’s prices are $25.00 per year for 6.25 Gigabytes of storage, $100.00 per year for 25 Gigabytes of storage, $300.00 per year for 100 Gigabytes of storage, and $500.00 per year for 250 Gigabytes of storage. If you do the math, the 6.25 Gigabytes of storage Google gives you for $25.00 per year comes to around 25 times the free space they give you – or about 250 galleries (25,000 photos). If you purchased 250 pictures at 15 cents each from Kodak, in order to keep your galleries alive, that would be about $37.50 per year, plus you would have to go through the motions of purchasing one item from each of your 250 galleries every year – that’s not such a good deal. Looking carefully at the cost started tipping the scales in favor of Google.

In both cases, it’s possible to game the system. With Kodak, you could simply re-upload your gallery after the year has gone by, and with Google, you could simply get more GMail accounts, which would provide you with more free space. I don’t see a legal reason why this would be a problem, but I suppose if everyone gamed the system, both Kodak and Google would give up on the gallery business and you would be searching for a new home for your pictures. So, I recommend paying your fair share – besides, you won’t feel like such a cad. After giving it a lot of thought, though, I’ve concluded that you definitely don’t want to use an online gallery as your photo backup mechanism. First, the gallery shrinks the pictures before they are uploaded and they don’t keep the high-resolution original. Second, your gallery might one day go away, so you want to be sure you’ve backed your photos up onto a DVD or something similar.

One way or another, you will have to pay in an ongoing fashion for the privilege of storing your pictures.

Ease of use is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Both Kodak and Google have a program that you download and install in order to manage your galleries and upload pictures. In Kodak’s case, it’s called Easy Upload for PCs, and in Google’s case it’s called Picasa. After installing and configuring both programs, I think the “Easy” in Easy Upload for PCs is a bit of a misnomer. There’s nothing terribly easy about using Easy Upload, and it continually caused an error on my system each time I booted up. Beyond that, it sucked up way too many system resources, and wasn’t all that easy to use. Picasa is much easier to use, a lot more intuitive, and far kinder to system resources. Based on the upload client alone, I had to go with Google’s solution. One important feature that Picasa supports that Kodak EasyShares does not is being able to load video to your gallery. Unfortunately, Mac users will have to wait for Google to add support for video, but PC users can enjoy it now.

Another important feature of a gallery is the ability to get prints off of it – all this technology is great, but eventually, Grandma wants hard-copy. Kodak EasyShares makes it pretty easy, and that was one thing in its favor. Their whole website (and client) is built around getting you to buy products, which is their bread and butter. The only issue I had with Kodak is that they didn’t do business with a photo development entity in my neck of the woods. Unfortunately, that is why I had to fully abandon them – otherwise I’d recommend going with them for your prints. If I am going to order prints, I might as well send them to a photo development place near me, where I can avoid shipping costs and get the job done same-day. Picasa Web Albums, on the other hand, uses a variety of places including Kodak EasyShares, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, and others to handle hard-copy printing. This makes Picasa Web Albums ideal because you’re not tied to a specific company to do your prints. Case in point, I signed up with evil Wal-Mart to get my prints (which I needed rapidly due to the encroachment of Christmas), but their 1 hour in-store printing site was down. Then I signed up with Walgreens, sent my prints over the wire, and was able to pick them up after work. Given my easy experience with Walgreens, and their market saturation, I’d recommend them as your hard-copy printer if you have one nearby.

So if you’re looking for a relatively inexpensive solution to your online gallery needs, once again Google comes to the rescue with Picasa and Picasa Web Albums.

The $100 laptop remains elusive, however, a company called Lite Appliances thinks that part of the problem is the cost of software, expensive high-powered CPUs, and hard drive space. So, they are running a stripped down OS on a stripped down PC, and will rely on what they call Rich Internet Applications (such as Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets, GMail, WordPress) to provide the user with all the functionality they could ever need or want. I have to wonder if using a Lite Appliance might be a tad frustrating with the current state of Rich Internet Applications. Also, I wonder what browser they are running. That might make a difference to adoption. Read up here.

From the thewirelessreport.com comes a blurb about WiMax product maker Alvarion adding WiFi to their BreezeMAX product line to help bridge the gap between the WiFi and WiMax worlds. It’s worth perusing thewirelessreport.com just for the heck of it, if for nothing else – there’s lots of interesting and useful info there.

Finding your PC isn’t quite keeping up with your ever increasing media demands? Here‘s an article on PCMag.com covering critical (yet less expensive than buying a whole new PC) upgrades you might consider doing in order to keep your old beast humming along in an on-demand world.

Here‘s an interesting article on Wired News about Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales’ vision for a better, more human, search engine. Although search engine technology is far more advanced than it used to be, I think that it is missing that subtle human touch, and that he might be on to something.