Google Music - No Longer A BETA!

Watch out, iCloud! Google, my favorite company in the world, launched Google Music Beta a few months ago for avid Googlers, like myself. The moment I got my invitation, I uploaded my 11,789 songs to "the cloud" and began headbanging to my awesome tunes everywhere!

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll try and explain. The idea behind "the cloud" is that you can store files in some random blob of internet serverdom and then access it whenever and wherever you want. BRILLIANT! Since my work seems to keep blocking music sites such as Pandora, Spotify, etc. I had to find a new way to get my jams. Yesterday, Google Music moved out of the beta stage, and is now open to all users! All you need to get started is a Gmail account - and if you don't have one of those, then I don't know what you've been doing with your life.

Unlike iCloud, which seems to require you to have an iPhone or some shit, Google Music can be used by anyone. Basically, you sign in with your Gmail account, upload your songs (which might take a VERY long time, depending on your connection speed and number of songs), and then listen anywhere. As long as you have internet access, you can get onto the Google Music page and listen on your computer. Or if you have an Android device, there's an app that'll let you stream it to your phone. There is a 20,000 song limit currently, but come on. That's a shit ton. Google Music also lets you download a bunch of free songs everyday PLUS they don't count towards your 20,000. Freaking sweet!

Did I mention that it also keeps track of all of your playlists in iTunes? Well it totally does.

Screenshot Explanation

Here's a little bit of what the app looks like:

It can do all of the same stuff: keep your playlists, sort by album/artist/song/genre, remembers recent songs, etc. 

I'm still not a complete pro, since I haven't spent a lot of time exploring everything that Google Music can do. BUT, since Google is amazing, they always have a tour to look at and show you all of the awesome things you didn't even know existed. I just looked at it for a second and learned something new - GOOGLE MUSIC TOUR

I guess that concludes my rave about Google - it will take over the world one day. And I, for one, will be on board!

Chrome, Sweet Chrome

When I was in kindergarten, my dad brought home our first PC complete with Windows 3.1x (that's what came out before Windows 95!). In order to play one of my favorite games (Treehouse) you actually had to close Windows, get into the Dos, and type a few lines of code to pull up the game. Can you imagine doing that now??!

My first foray on the interwebs included a sketchy dial-up connection through Netscape. Looking back, I have no idea how the internet caught on. It was SO SLOW. I can clearly remember waiting an hour and a half for one picture to load. 99% of the stuff out there was text-only, so that picture seemed totally worth the wait. What I didn't realize at the time was that you actually couldn't access some of the information out there if you were using the wrong type of browser. Kinda like if Internet Explorer let you see Yahoo and Firefox let you see Google. Crazy.

Internet browsers have come a long way in the past decade(s). Thank goodness! Once I got my own computer, I started playing around with different browser options - IE, Firefox, Safari, etc. The best one I've come across by far is Google Chrome. I'm always amazed when I come across someone who's still using IE. If you're stuck in the past, still using Internet Explorer (I know you're out there!) you should really download Chrome immediately. I've never had it crash on me, it's really easy to use, very customizable, and so far it doesn't prompt you to add all of those obnoxious toolbar search engine things. Plus it has apps you can add to it!

Since Google is really open about who they allow to create apps, there are TONS of options. They have pretty much every kind of news, social, or entertainment source you'd ever want. I was browsing through the App Store the other day and ended up adding a bunch of things to test out.

Angry Birds, Robot Unicorn Attack, Robot Unicorn Attack: Heavy Metal.
Enough said.

Phone 2 Chrome, Chrome 2 Phone
I absolutely hate stumbling across a site on my phone and then having to type in the incredibly long link into my computer. Or from my computer to my phone. These two extensions (not sure why they haven't combined them into one) use your Google account to beam sites back and forth between the two. You can actually link up several computers to one phone, not sure if multiple phones can send to one computer though. Haven't tried that yet. I believe that you have to have an Andriod phone for this to work though. Not positive. You do have to be able to download the app on your phone as well, and I'm not sure if those Fruit phones have it yet.

PriceBlink
PriceBlink is an extension that runs in the background and pops up when it sees you shopping for something. Pretty much it scours the internet looking for the same product and then reports back with all of the other prices it finds. Which. Is. Awesome. It's pretty annoying to buy something from one site and then find it for ten bucks cheaper immediately afterwards. Here's a pic of PriceBlink in action:

Are You Watching This?! Sports
Are You Watching This?! Sports monitors any and all sports being played right now and lets you know if you should be watching them based on the score/how much time is left/how many other people are watching. A little icon just chills at the top of the browser and turns colors if you should click on it and see what you're missing. When you click on it, it'll open up a list of all of the games currently being played, the score, the time, and what it's rating is. This extension is also available in app form, but I haven't tried it out yet.

There are hundreds (thousands?) of other apps and extensions out there if these ones aren't your cup of tea. But I totally recommend downloading Chrome if you haven't yet (weirdo) and checking out how awesome you can make your browsing experience!

I Are Couch Potato

Good lord, it seems like forever since I've been on here. I have a good excuse, though! Just started a new job, and this past week we've had events every day from 7AM till 11PM. Needless to say, all I did when I got home was sleep.

Update: I watched the US v. Mexico Gold Cup game! We lost... I'm having terrible luck with teams the past couple years. HRMPH.

So I've been trying to think about what might be interesting to write about. My life seems pretty dull right now - just going to work and attempting to unpack/organize my new apartment. Today (no work!) I managed to catch up on some tv! Since I'm a total tv junkie, I'm trying out all of the new summer shows. Perhaps I shall recap what I think about them? It's either that or talk about organizing my tiny apartment.

Rookie Blue - ABC, Thursday @ 9/8c
This is the second season of this show, actually, so I had to catch up on the previous one before I started watching it. But it was worth it! Especially for a summer show. Usually they don't last very long and are pretty crappily-made. But this one seems to be good enough to make me watch it even during the regular season. Quick recap - A bunch of rookie cops in Toronto doing cop things. When it first started, people tried to call it "Grey's Anatomy in the world of rookie cops," but that's a lie. [Just like how they tried to call The Deep End the Grey's of lawyer shows.] Not nearly as much sex and drama, and the characters don't have a lot of back-story yet. There is a bit of a love-triangle/rectangle brewing right now. I'm hoping it'll get a little juicier this season.

Combat Hospital - ABC, Tuesday @ 10/9c
Another Canadian show, except this one is about an army medical base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2006. I was a little thrown by the flashback, but I guess they're setting it a few years ago because they fighting was more intense then. There have only been 2 or 3 episodes so far, so not much has happened. As of yet, I'm not really impressed. The stories aren't as shocking or heartbreaking as I'd like, and the characters have no personalities yet. The main character(s) could die and I wouldn't care. It kind of reminds me of Off the Map (no one watched that one, I know) but not as funny. I have a feeling that this one might not make it, but I'm going to give it a season.

Franklin & Bash - TNT, Wednesday 9/8c
If you haven't seen a commercial for this yet, then you do not watch TV. I think there was an ad for it on pretty much every channel. Anyways, two lawyer best friends who like to take on ridiculous cases and do strange things to win them get hired by a huge law firm - Like if Shawn and Gus from Psych magically became lawyers. This show has huge potential! The guys themselves are hilarious, but their cases aren't that great. Weird yes, interesting no. This one might stick around for a while, just because the actors are pretty well-known. Hopefully the show's writing staff steps up their game a bit and comes up with some good case ideas.

Suits - USA, Thursday 10/9c
Another lawyer show. Yeah I know, but this one is even better. One guy is a hotshot lawyer who thinks he's the greatest and he takes on an ex-con genius kid to pretend to be a lawyer, since he's got the book memorized anyway. The guys are hilarious, the supporting characters are great, and there's already some potential romances. This one seems like it's got a better back-story to really flesh out the characters. I'll definitely keep watching this one.

Falling Skies - TNT, Sunday 10/9c
This show follows a group of survivors from Massachusetts after an apocalyptic alien attack. They're a rag-tag group that has put together a resistance to protect civilian survivors and hopefully figure out how to fight back against the "Skitters." What's kinda cool about this one, is that they can't just go out and slaughter all of the aliens. The Skitters have captured and enslaved thousands of children to fight for them. So, of course, the main character lost one of his kids and is attempting to get him back. Pretty good so far - I hate the people I'm supposed to hate and am rooting for the others. Apparently it's getting huge ratings, so I don't anticipate this one disappearing soon.

The Glades - A&E, Sunday 10/9c
This one is also in its second season, so I had to catch up really fast. I pretty much laughed my face off at every single episode, the main character is adorable, and there's a really cute love story going on. Recap - a cop originally from Chicago pisses off his boss, gets fired, and moves to Florida to work there. I definitely recommend watching this from the beginning. They were all on Hulu, but I think they just expired. It hasn't had a new episode in a couple weeks, so I'm kinda going into withdrawal. It better not have gotten cancelled...

Random thoughts:
- I am NOT liking the new look of Google Calendar. I feel like they downgraded to some old, crappy site now.
- Burn-bans stink during Independence Day.
- Bed Bath, Pottery Barn, and West Elm all sent me 10-20% off coupons in the mail! Not sure how they know I'm a new resident, but I am grateful.
- Just got onto Google+. Not so sure what it's all about yet... It's a limited release right now, but most people have figured out the back way to get people onto it. It's supposed to be something like Facebook, but I'm not so sure. This might flop kinda like Google Wave. Cool idea, poor follow-through.
- I'm watching Laura's cat for the week, and this morning he woke me up by head-butting me. And the entire time I've been writing this, he has been rubbing his butt in my face.