Converting to Retina
These are my personal recommendations for making the switch to a high-DPI website. 1. Step one: stop working at 72 DPI This one is for the designers: get into the practice of doing everything at high-DPI. If you are working in Photoshop, get to know and love shape layers and the path tool, even for [...]
Google Analytics for Backbone Apps
When you build a single-page web app with something like Backbone driving routes and managing browser history, the page load event is only going to happen once at the beginning of the session. The standard Google Analytics javascript snippet doesn't work so well for these single-page apps. You should trigger an Analytics event when the [...]
Music Streaming Snapshot
Monthly Users According to Facebook - February 2012 Service Launch Date Monthly Users % Change Spotify Oct 2008 15,800,000 +20% Pandora Jan 2000 9,200,000 +3% SoundCloud Oct 2008 3,100,000 +24% Bandcamp Sep 2008 1,200,000 +21% Grooveshark Jan 2006 1,100,000 0% Slacker Jun 2007 150,000 0% MOG Dec 2009 140,000 -30% Rdio Aug 2010 100,000 +43% [...]
Universal's Audible Watermark
Update, April 8, 2013: Can you hear it? Take a watermark listening test. A while ago I posted about my confusion regarding Weird Spotify Compression Artifacts. It turns out the artifacts are not due to compression, but a result of audio watermarks that Universal Music Group embeds in digitally distributed tracks. The artifacts appear on [...]
Google Latitude is Cool
Google Latitude is starting to look a lot like my original Stractor location tracking concept work. They have pie charts that illustrate where you spend your time; work, home, out and about. Google Latitude: Stractor: Okay, that's nice. Here are some other Stractor concepts...maybe we'll see some of these soon: http://www.butterscotch.com/news/168/Google-Continues-To-Improve-And-Streamline-Maps-In-New-Update
Music Smasher: Streaming Music API Mashup
Music Smasher is a smash up of popular music streaming service APIs. I developed it to simplify the task of searching across Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshark, and other catalogs to find out who has the music you love, giving you more information for choosing a streaming service. Music Smasher is currently hosted at mattmontag.com/smasher. Note that [...]
Weird Spotify Compression Artifacts
Spotify Artifacts Showcase I love Spotify. But I've noticed some weird artifacts on a few albums. It sounds like a fluttery warble noise in the midrange. It's most noticeable during big string or choir sections with broad spectral content. The problem seems limited to certain albums. The worst album I've come across is this Pascal [...]
Pandora and Flash Player, a CPU Hog? Really?
OK. I am using a Pentium 4 2.2 GHz machine, Chrome browser, and playing some Pandora tunes. When Pandora is in the foreground, Flash Plugin is using 50% CPU time. When I switch to another tab, Flash cools down to 10% CPU time. So just a tip there, hide that Pandora if you want your [...]
What’s Wrong with the University of Miami IT Policy
The University of Miami campus network and IT policy has problems. It's a big part of life for college students and faculty, so this is a call to action. Here are a few frustrating things that the IT department at Miami should try to improve. 1) University e-mail forwarding is prohibited You aren't allowed to [...]
A note to Digsby developers: Fix file transfers
Re: Digsby Blog - Striving for Perfection No Gtalk File Transfer = No Perfection. In order to revolutionize chat, Digsby must create a working file transfer solution for Gtalk. Trillian, Meebo, Adium. Many have attempted and many have Failed to answer the call for cross-protocol Instant File Sharing. Some more miserably than others. Whoever can [...]