Since using Spotify, my music habits have altered. Now that I have access to all the music known to man, I am listening to things which I don't usually listen to or would not be willing to buy. Due to the cost of music, I would only buy a track I really liked. Now, with Spotify, I am listening to everything I may or may not buy. Friends are able to listen to what they want, rather than my collection. The artists page is an excellent part of the Spotify service. It pulls in all the music by a certain artists, into a nice organised list. It has allowed me to discover new music by my favourite artist. Each page also has a detailed biography about the artist and related artists, which is one of my favourite aspects. Similar artists to the artists page you were looking at will be listed here. I am able to find other artists I like and find music I have forgotten about and new music.

The Spotify client in Linux works great, possible the best experience of Spotify. However, there are still major issues. The critical bug is the dreadful CPU usage, playing a song or sitting idle, the client will bounce between 30 to 85%. If you use the Windows client, on the Windows OS or via Wine, it will stay at 1 & 2%. There are also plenty of feature requests. Support for Notify OSD (via libnotify), support for Indicator Applets, support for D-Bus, moving the buttons to the left hand side instead of right. Still alot more work to make Spotify even better. All these bugs and features have been identified in Spotify's feedback page, which has been populated with Linux users. What is great about Linux users, is their knowledge and helpfulness when coding. Spotify developers are asking/working with Linux users to improve the experience. On the D-Bus request page, I was delighted to see a Spotify Developer asking for help to implement this API, with Linux users responding. No other community will offer this much help!

On the social side, I have been continuing my need to create plenty of playlists to show off to my friends. As well as browse through my friend's playlists for new music. I have been sending and receiving music, still a feature under-used.

Hoped you enjoyed my update on my music life with Spotify. I may do a few more of these posts about Spotify, people seem to like them and it might get featured on OMGUbuntu's twitter feed again!

The market leader in the music download business is sadly still iTunes, and its unlikely anytime soon it will change. Why is iTunes the market leader, when its the worst in its market, although same can be said for Windows Consumers need to open their eyes for the better service, and that is Amazon.

Both Amazon and iTunes provide the same-sort-of-service, with iTunes making it easier with syncing to your device. Music selection is pretty much exactly the same, both retaining the major record companies. Its the pricing and DRM where the differences lie.

On Pricing, Amazon tends to be cheaper, offering tracks as low as 49p to as high as 89p. While iTunes is higher at 69p t0 £1.20! Why is iTunes more! Your getting the same music, but at a lower bit rate on iTunes (128kbps on iTunes, 256 on Amazon).

DRM, my favourite topic, if you ask any of my 'geek' friends! Though in the past few  days I have become a hypocrite *cough* Spotify *cough*. iTunes in the past has in the past been dreadful with this, but in recent years, they have let go of some restrictions. However, music bought off iTunes is still full of DRM. Watermarking, requiring authentication to listen to purchased music and using a file format only used by Apple. My brother in the past few weeks has been a victim of Apple's DRM, and many others have when switching MP3 players or computers. Amazon is totally DRM free, allowing users to listen to their music where ever they want. My article about iTunes DRM can be found here.

Basically, STOP USING ITUNES! It maybe easier to use, for getting songs on your iPod. It is expensive, lower quality and full of DRM. iTunes was the service to use years ago, now its Amazon MP3!

Linux is great! We all know that, but there are two major things I believe need resolving before we can say Linux is ready for the mainstream. The first is video editing and the second is gaming. Gaming is a very important part of the success of Linux, so there is much work to do before we can safely say that Linux is the platform of choice for gaming. In order to achieve this, I believe there are three key areas that need addressing: games, distribution, and services. Each of these areas is important for gamers, especially PC gamers.

The number and quality of games available for Linux is probably the most important area. Although it has many great games, it needs more games from major developers, such as EA or Activision. The big PC games need to be ported to Linux, such as World of Warcraft, Counter Strike, Battlefield, and Call of Duty. These are the games that all the gamers are playing. There is no point in trying to move gamers to Linux if they can not play the games they love. Linux does have ways to make it easier for people to switch from Windows to Linux, thanks to great work from the Wine team. Games like Counter Strike do work in Linux. However, the support is not perfect. I much prefer native games to games played using Wine. It's important that we try to convince developers to develop games for Linux, and to port games to Linux. Hopefully, as OpenGL gets better, it will be easier for developers to do this. We may be able to help, by making the transfer from DirectX to OpenGL as easy as possible.

So, you may be thinking, now that we have these major games for Linux, how will we get our hands on them? The best solution for Linux is digital distribution. I do not see Linux games ever being in shops. It would be far better to have a website or online store from which we can download Linux games. I believe a service like Steam is the best solution to getting games onto Linux. This solution is looking likely to happen, since Steam is apparently coming to Linux!

The final area is the services. There are many services which PC gamers use on Windows. These mainly consist of communication methods. The two major services are the gaming networks and the VOIP services. The gaming network is heavily used by gamers for talking to friends, joining games with each other, and for clans/guilds. The biggest network is Xfire, with over twelve-million users. It is important that this service is accessible for gamers on Linux. Luckily, there is a plugin for Pidgin, called Gfire (gfire.sf.net). The second major network is fairly new: Steam. This online store now provides a social networking side for gaming, which is used in a similar way to Xfire. Sadly, there is no way to use the Steam community feature yet, unless you use Wine. The VOIP services are very important for clans/guilds to use during a match. The whole team needs to be in a VOIP channel to be able to talk about tactics during a match. The two main services are Teamspeak and Ventrilo. Teamspeak has a native Linux client, but Ventrilo does not. However, Ventrilo does work very well in Wine.

If we are able to achieve success in all these areas, then we'll have a platform for Windows gamers to move to. I believe it is possible to achieve the last two areas, because we can develop these services within the Linux community. The difficult part is getting the developers on board. Apple is having a hard time trying to get the developers on board with their platform, so it is likely that Linux will have a bigger challenge.

Fairly quickly after starting my subscription I knew Spotify was my new way to listen to music. Music removed from both of my computers, and archived onto external Hard Drives. I was going Spotify all the way!

Discovering the social feature to Spotify added another level to this service. Linking your Spotify account with your Facebook account, pulled in all your friends who use Spotify. Very quickly I was checking out songs my friends listened too, and adding the songs to my favourites. It has a nice feature to 'send' songs to each other. This started conversations with friends about music, which I have never done. I dont usually talk about music with friends, but since Spotify makes it so easy to share songs with each other, it just sort of happens.

I  am loving Spotify every time I start listening and looking for music. Its nice to pay one flat fee and have as much as I want. Its likely that I will carry on paying for the unlimited service, don't like ads! I will be hunting, sharing and talking about the music on Spotify from now on!

Listen Now!

Currently, to use the preview of Spotify on Linux, you need a Premium or Unlimited  account, because Ads don't work yet. I decided to upgrade my account to Unlimited, to try the client and support the efforts of Spotify!

Essitially, if you have tried Spotify on Windows or Mac, its the same. This was the aim of the developers, to get the same experience cross-platform. Spotify is very easy to navigate, find the songs you want to listen to, whole albums, create playlists, see the top played songs. It has great social features to share the music your listening to with your friends.

The general look of the client is very much the Mac-look, it is more suited on a Mac desktop. I wasn't expecting the theme to be changed on Linux, this is made harder by using QT instead of GTK, which means us Gnome users will have to install the QT library. Luckly, Spotify uses Alsa, no Pulse Audio here! This may sound really small, but stood out for me, the font. Its a nice look font, which is very easy to read, and gives the whole client a great look. The client is quick and songs stream instantly. My only compliant is that the client uses high number of cpu cycles, compared to other platforms. I am using a dual core Intel Atom, while songs are playing, it hits 52%, when idle hits as high as 78%. Some serious optimisations will need doing before this client comes out of beta.

The whole Linux community are pleased we finally get a native Spotify client. It works and looks exactly what we wanted. A few minor issues at the moment, which I am sure will be fixed before release. You will have to pay a monthly fee at the moment, which is the first time I have done with Spotify, one thing I will say, its nice not having Ads!

EDIT: Just realised, the buttons are on the right hand side , hopefully they will switch it to the left hand side, like they have on Mac OS.

Spotify on Linux....finally!

There is only one feature I like about the nearest competitor, Chrome, and that is 'Every tab is it's own process'. If a tab crashes, it doesn't crash the browser. Mozilla is hoping to solve this issue in Firefox 4. In the meantime, they have gone

Adobe Flash has crashed again! (click to enlarge)

half way with plugin crash protection. Plugins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight is run in its own process, separate from Firefox. If the plugin crashes, it wont crash Firefox. You just need to reload the page to try again. Apparently, 90% of Firefox's crashes is down to the plugin. This new feature was added in a small update, 3.6.4, which is usually reserved  for security and stability updates, rather than new features. Find more info here.

Listen Now!

Since it is highly unlikely I will get a chance to try Ubuntu Light out in the near future, mainly because its only available to OEMs, I thought I will do a quick review of what I have seen of this latest version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Light was announced a few months go in Belgium, at UDS for Maverick. The initial idea purposed by Mark Shuttleworth was a version of Ubuntu, stripped down, which will be installed along side Windows. Marketed at a very fast way to get to the Internet. I was a bit reserved at the idea, for two reasons. Why do we need another version of Ubuntu, we are going to turn into the Windows way of having too many versions which confuses the user. Secondly, is it a good idea marketing a stripped down version of Ubuntu, when we should be promoting the full Desktop edition.

However, after a chat with Popey on the podcast, and watching the video above, I think I understand the idea. Its hard to get Ubuntu on OEM computers as the default, everyone (at the moment) wants Windows. However, in recent years, as our need for quick Internet access has grown, people want to be online as quick as possible, Windows does not cut it. By creating a version of Ubuntu to be installed along side Windows, for super quick access to the web, more people may choose to boot into Ubuntu Light more than Windows. Ubuntu Light, when finally released, should offer 5-10 second boot straight to the web. Advancements in boot speed, since Jaunty (9.04), stripping down Ubuntu to the bare basics for the web, creating a fast slick new UI, and choosing to use the super quick Chromium (Google Chrome). All this has allowed for fast access to the web, which seems to be what most users want these days. Why wait to boot into Windows 7 to use Internet Explorer, which could take 2minutes, when you could boot into Ubuntu which takes 10seconds!

The overall aim is to get Ubuntu into more users hands, and maybe one day, will encourage more users to make the switch!

Microsoft

The first press conference of E3, delivered on what we expected and already knew. The only stand out, which was unexpected was the deal with ESPN. ESPN matches will be shown through your Xbox 360, in SD and HD. Its for Gold members only, but the biggest surprise was that there is no additional charge!

We got the demos we expected from Call of Duty, Gears of War 3, Fable 3 and Metal Gear Solid Rising. The renamed Project Natal, Kinect, was shown again with new games, which all seem to be very similar games to what we saw on the EyeToy for PS2, many years ago. Microsoft also announced Video Chat, which was expected since it is a video camera.

The finally bit of news was the re-design of the Xbox 360, called the slim. It was leaked before the event. Its alot smaller, black, but looks worse than the original 360, if thats even possible! It has built in WiFi N, which is nice and a 250GB HDD. Sadly, its still Microsoft's proprietary HDD, instead of a laptop drive which the PS3 uses.

Nintendo

Nintendo had far the best press conference of E3!

They showed off the Nindeo 3DS, a 3D DS without the need for glasses! It even has a 3D camera. It has a very strong game line-up as well; Kid Icarus: Uprising, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 3D, Assassin's Creed, Resident Evil, Super Street Fighter 4 3D Edition, DJ Hero, Mario Kart 3DS, Star Fox 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time!

There was two stand out game demos as well. The new Zelda coming to Wii, which will use the Wii-Mote to control the sword and shield. By far the biggest news and excitement from the entire E3 was the announcement of Goldeneye! Finally a remake of the greatest game of all time is coming to Wii. Goldeneye 007 was originally on the N64, due to its incredible FPS gameplay and mulitplayer, it has gone down in history as one of the best games of all time. Years of licensing issues, Nintendo has finally brought it back. This game alone may force me to buy a Wii!

Sony

Sony had a game conference. Mainly showing off big titles, pushing the PSP more and showing the games which will use PlayStation Move.

The demos of PlayStation Move has re-estiblished my view good about the Wii-Mote (buttons and an actual controller) and using cameras to track the controller to give far better control and the use of the Z-Axis, since the Wii can only use the X & Y Axis.

Killzone 3, Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 were all demoed, which looked amazing. The rebirth of Twisted Metal hits the PS3. Gran Turismo 5 has finally got a date, November 2010, and it looks brilliant, could be the best looking game of 2010! Before E3, Valve announced that Portal 2 will be delayed till 2011, but they said to look out at E3 for their big announcement. Well, we got it, and it was a huge disappointment. Portal 2 is coming to PS3.