Straight from AOL. Funny, I never thought I’d be recommending something from them, but here it is: Send to Cell. You’ll find a helpful little list of AOL Mobile applications, such as MovieFone, Mapquest, AOL Mail & AIM, etc. Actually, these are not really applications, but links that will be sent to your phone as a text message so you can easily find them online on your cell, which you then bookmark for later access. Can come in handy, so why not?

But if you really want to hack your non-smartphone cell, check out Pogue’s post “How to make your cellphone act like a Blackberry.” There he outlines a bunch of neat tricks to make your regular phone step to the next level.

Great list by Mashable has all the info you need to download videos embedded in websites such as Youtube, Google Video, etc. It’s really a “must-bookmark” webpage…
(I used KeepVid and it worked perfectly!)

Here is a short list I compiled for some good Iranian music. There are probably tons more (pls let me know!), but this is a start:

• Iranian Radio - with 3 different choices: pop, dance, or traditional (sonati) music
• Arya Live - with an online station of persian songs and farsi talk shows
• Radio Javan - up-to-date informative persian website with radio, entertainment news, etc
• Radio Darvish - my favorite for persian traditional music, which really is the most beautiful, calming, and meditative music I could listen to…all day long
• Tapesh - site has some persian music videos as well as a strange ‘persian faces’ segment, the radio is contemporary and starts with an annoying Tapesh ad

A couple days ago, I posted an article entitled “Radio Sucks.” Pretty poetic, huh? But at least it’s to the point, that finding/listening to music nowadays is a chore, and with all the technology out there trying to ‘help’ us, I find it even harder to filter out the crap and just listen to good music.
It all started with the slow downfall of our public music staple, the radio. A silent, yet deadly, weapon has been attacking it, slowly yet thoroughly, at its core. This weapon, called ‘payola‘, has a deep, strong hold of radio, due to greed, among other issues.
Now what does the listening public get in return? Annoying boring songs repeated over and over, often on multiple stations at the same time. It’s sickening. I can spend an entire 100 mile car trip just flipping from one station to another, never finding any song worth listening to. And it’s not only the public who suffers. Countless dj’s & musicians, with tons of talent, are being blocked out of the airwaves, while bland artist-wannabe’s get played constantly.
Now I finally see a ray of hope: Dan Mitchell’s article “What Can Money Buy” in the NY Times documents a possible crackdown on payola. Although just a tiny step in the right direction, this might indicate a new momentum towards opening up the airwaves to real music again.
[Note to bloggers & readers of blogs: this article also explains the ‘blog type of payola’, or paid-for-blog-posts. That’s right. Reviews you see online may not be what you think!]
Please check out the Future of Music Coalition’s take on this recent payola settlement here.

…and so does satellite. I even get sick of my mp3 player, and now it’s broken anyways… In my car I still have a tape player. With no way of taping anything anymore, I can only listen to old, old “mixtapes” I made years ago. These amateur tapes have songs that are temporarily refreshing, since I haven’t heard them in years, but still annoying as soon as the tape replays.
I have tried internet radio, and find the same problem. Lukewarm songs chosen by someone else? Not much better than regular radio, but at least there are (almost)no commercials.
     I have tried Pandora, and now last.fm. Both websites have the same problem, for me: they are both just not big enough yet to really understand what I like, which is a mixture of somewhat-random music such as hip-hop, latin, persian, and RnB. Of course, I am picky within each of these categories, where the only common ‘thread’ would be a sort of ‘passion’ in the music or “mambo.”
     The only time I find myself truly listening to a bunch of great songs in a row would be either during certain radio lunch-hour mixes or weekend pre-night-out dj ensembles. There’s always energy in their choice of songs then, and they typically choose great songs, independent of recent billboard chart hitlists.
     I’m still waiting for the internet custom-tailored mixes to work for me - in the meantime, check out these helpful sites:

• last.fm - helps you listen & find your favorite music based on social data
• pandora - tailors your listening based on ‘music genome project’s’ categories
• Steve Krause’s blog - with a well thought-out breakdown of last.fm vs. pandora
• datawhat? blog - compares various ways of discovering new music
• MusicIP - another music-matching website
• tapestry - finds music playlists for you based on style, theme, & tone
• finetune [via Lifehacker] - first music site I’ve found that actually knew old-school reggaeton (i.e. underground) artists existed…also offers html links of your playlists!

Good luck to you in finding music that works for you. One thing I noticed is that most of these systems work better when you input a specific song or artist rather than a genre or tag…
If you’ve been in my situation and found a solution, please let me know how!!!!

The other day I must have downloaded a faulty video, because no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to play. I thought I needed to install video codecs, which of course turned out to be unnecessary, but now that I went through the process, I thought there may be others trying to do the same thing. Any google search will get you to the same place, but here are the links that helped me the most:

• ffdshow - DirectShow and VFW codec for decoding/encoding many video and audio formats
• updatexp - and here, you can follow their guide to get codecs for the divx & xvid, & avi formats
• chris’s blog - where you’ll find a concise guide for getting g-spot, software that will analyze your video for you to give you the code that will determine the codec needed
• fourcc - with a list of codes to determine what codec your video needs
• xvid movies - with a faq to help you troubleshoot
• directX - codec from Microsoft

For those of you who know what I’m talking about, you KNOW what I’m talking about! Yes, that cryptic, outlandish, high-tech (at the time), animation with the most captivating background songs EVER! (Okay, I’m going overboard here, but at the age of 4, 5, I don’t really remember, Star Blazers was the best thing next to chocolate chip cookies.

I truly believe that the storyline, none of which I really remember anymore(but I still *feel* it), shaped the way I feel about things today. The passion for deep mystifying philosophy, the pain I feel for epic stories of irony and tragedy, the idealistic stance I have towards certain rights and principles…. haaaaa, it must have come from somewhere…a cartoon!

Well I admit, kids do get involved in stories, dreams, and myths more than they would later in life, but Star Blazers truly was something special. There is a small, yet strong, group of people (it took a while to find them) who’ve posted great information about the cartoon online.

If you love Star Blazers like I do, you have to visit

• www.starblazers.com, where they have a cool intro, a pic gallery, plus some great buys
• Space Webzine Yamato, where they go into detail of the Space Cruiser Yamato, as well as the anime’s music, timeline, and characters’ uniforms!
• Anime News Network, with very detailed facts about the cartoons airings, credits, etc
• Madman.com, with a slick interface and actual trailer! (a must-see)

(these links are good starting points with their own links for even more info!)