Tag Archive for ‘Rant’ at elwoodicious

My love hate relationship with Jinzora continues in my quest for the right method for sharing my music collection, on a Linux server, to my XP crippled work machine. For the indefinite future it looks like I need to keep one XP-crippled machine at home running J. River MediaCenter so that I can (A) listen to my music and (B) update my Last.fm profile; with Jinzora I can only get (A), (B) is a non-option at the moment, even though they insist that it is and it is easy. However, Last.fm doesn’t top my list of annoyances. Here’s what the as_debug.log shows:

9/19/06 1:11:01.02, user:james, jzCreateLink: ssid = e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:11:01.03, user:james, jzCreateLink: ssid = e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:11:01.04, user:james, jzCreateLink: ssid = e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:11:01.04, user:james, jzCreateLink: ssid = e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:11:01.05, user:james, jzCreateLink: ssid = e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:11:10.89, user:anon, mediabroadcast: SID = jza=e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:11:10.94, user:james, AudioScrobbler: Starting up (inside startup routine)
9/19/06 1:17:44.62, user:anon, mediabroadcast: SID = jza=e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:17:44.67, user:james, AudioScrobbler: Starting up (inside startup routine)
9/19/06 1:27:44.63, user:anon, mediabroadcast: SID = jza=e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:27:44.67, user:james, AudioScrobbler: Starting up (inside startup routine)
9/19/06 1:31:01.08, user:anon, mediabroadcast: SID = jza=e413355a887e4ab4a0d56a13cbdfc8c1
9/19/06 1:31:01.13, user:james, AudioScrobbler: Starting up (inside startup routine)

From what I can figure out it is generating the playlist and then the AudioScrobbler routine kicks off and then… Well, then nothing shows up at Last.fm.

When Jinzora is running, it is a well oiled machine that can take you to the places you want in style but getting started is a hassle beyond belief. Importing media is a huge pain in the ass. “What? How? All you do is let the little import wizard work its magic! n00b!” Yeah. Right. The wizard works great with small collections as anything over 9k will have it seize up like you shot it with a tranq gun tethered to a taser. the collection I tried importing over-and-over-and-over is only a paltry 23k and to finally get it imported I have to break it up into discrete 4-5k blocks. Not a big deal, I suppose, but one that had me gnashing my teeth for about two hours.

*Sigh*

I’m back to doing research on implementing a robust media serving solution, one that can come close to the functionality of J. River’s Media Center, but I’m not too optimistic.

Sure the byline reads, Michael V. Copeland, Business 2.0 Magazine senior writer, but the article On the Launchpad: Unlocking the iPod is written like a self-congratulatory shill piece typically pumped out by over paid PR firms that Astroturf the news outlets. Minor massaging it is no different than this piece found over at MacNN. Hell, just Google for it and you’ll see close variations on a theme. From business to politics to health-care to world events this type of mouthpiece writing is prevalent and it does a disservice to the consumer of the news. Then again, if you follow the money, who is the real customer?

Not you and not me. The real customers are the ones paying for the placement of these pieces and they are paying for readership. It is the same model as broadcast television where the viewing public is the product and the customer is the advertisers, same model as Google AdWords. So what bothers me about this more than advertising? PR is insidious in that it clothes itself the trappings of authority and responsibility alluding to the notion of substance. Advertising is much more easily spotted in that it does not often pretend that it is any more than what it is, though there are exceptions it is less disturbing and damaging than PR which inserts itself in and amongst items that might actually be news.

PR pieces are laudatory and do not ask the obvious and sometimes difficult to answer questions. In the case of Navio that would be, “How is this different than every other closed source solution that has preceded it?”, “So, tell me, I’m going have to buy yet another device for playback of music and movies?”, “Great, another phone-home solution that will also act as a layer between me and my hardware and likely cause nothing but headaches when I want to burn a CD of photos from my kids first birthday. Why?” I suppose that I ask too much from the Fourth Estate.
To Navio, the PR machine, and all the news outlets that run this crap without asking the tough as well as easy questions, I say screw you.