Google Music

Google has launched its cloud-based service for music streaming. You can download their free Music Manager software (I used version 1.0.22.3409) to your computer, then use a (free) Google account to upload your computer's existing library of music to their servers, up to 20,000 songs.

With Internet access, you can then play your songs from a browser on a computer, on selected Android devices (which likely provide the best experience), or from a browser on an iOS 4 or higher device: http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1114577&topic=1663424.

Under iOS 5.0.1, I use Safari, which worked best in my testing, and I bookmarked the site in Safari's Reading List, to be shared across any iOS device having my Apple ID.  Using Camera Roll on a 4th generation iPod, which includes the possibility of playing video (which includes an audio component, which would naturally compete), stops music that is playing.  Some other apps like Mail, which don't have native, primary audio components, could be used without interrupting the music.

I tried two browsers I rarely use, Late Browser Mobile (1.0) and Sleipnir Mobile (1.4.8), to see if they might be repurposed as music-playing apps.  They were apparently limited to playing a single song once (continuous play would not work), and unlike Safari, they stopped playing music as soon as you tried to switch to another app (with a double press of the Home button).

With no Passcode set on an iOS device, you can set Auto-Lock to never, which is optimal for using Google Music.

However, if you have a Passcode set on your iPod, the Auto-Lock can be set for at most 5 minutes, severely limiting your options for using Google Music. The maximum analogous iPad option is 15 minutes.

Apparently, Safari must be open in the foreground and the iPod active (i.e., not in sleep mode) for much or all of the time that you are using Google Music in order to play multiple tracks continuously. If the iPod goes to sleep mode, it still loads the next track, but you must wake the iPod to play the track.

If you want to replay the same track continuously, Safari need not be in the foreground, and the track will keep playing even if the iPod goes into sleep mode. Perhaps only folks like me, who years ago recorded the same song continuously on both sides of a cassette tape to play on auto-reverse tape decks, can really enjoy Google Music on an iPod (A version of 茉莉花, plus The Art of Noise's Moments in Love from The Best of the Art of Noise, inspired me to make such tapes.).

I had previously ripped my CDs at 320 kbps (highest quality) onto my PC, primarily for use with my Microsoft Zune. The Zune provided a very helpful introduction to podcasts and mp3 usage, but I use it less and less over time. The ripping process for those CDs was long and laborious. Not particularly needing music on my iPod, I never felt like repeating it for PC iTunes, or cared enough to look into how to make those mp3 files usable in PC iTunes (particularly if such required making another copy of each song for PC iTunes). Google's Music Manager allows me to leverage my existing mp3 library with a bulk upload operation for use with my iOS devices.  With my slow Internet access, it took me about two weeks (mostly overnight) to upload around 3200 songs and podcasts.

If you lost all the media (e.g., iOS device, personal computer, CDs) on which you have your music collection (e.g., because of a natural disaster), your Google Music backup should still be available.  The rules (as of 12/5/11, anyway) allow you to download 320 kbps mp3 files of your music:  http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?&answer=1701736.  I load only some of my songs onto my iPod, but upload all of them to Google Music as a remote backup, and for occasional web browser listening.

The iPod speaker can be fairly tinny sounding, but I am not a serious connoisseur of audio quality. I generally don't like wearing earbuds, so any time I can reasonably listen to stuff without them is good with me.

My slow Internet access could be a significant factor for some of the following symptoms which I experienced on an iPod or on an iPad:

• There is a delay before each streamed track begins.
• A track might not initially start playing.  Hitting pause and/or play sometimes starts it playing.
• A track might abruptly stop playing.  Sometimes it will restart by itself.
• When playing multiple tracks, a track might abruptly stop playing, and the next track might start.
• If you switch from playing one track to playing another (in my experience, switching between tracks of different artists), the album artwork display may get updated before the streamed track, such that hitting play for the second track actually plays the first track. Hitting pause, then play, corrected that.

When I checked, Google Music was offering some freebies (you must provide a valid credit card, though), so I grabbed Cheap Trick's I Want You to Want Me, Five for Fighting's Superman (It's not Easy), and Men At Work's Who Can It Be Now?, all of which I've liked for some time. The Dave Matthews Band's Live On Lakeside album was also free, so I thought I'd give that a whirl as well.

11/28/11:
Even with better wireless Internet access than I normally have, it's really seemed like if you want to hear one song play all the way through on an iPod, you have a decent but not 100% guaranteed shot at that, and your chances get worse if you want more than that. Google Music is okay with me since I rarely have a particular need to listen to music on my iPod, but it may not be worth the effort for many folks. (Soon after writing this blog entry, I was obliged to get a new iPod, one whose port actually worked normally. I quickly enough discovered how nice it was to listen to music stored locally on the iPod, and Google Music became rather less significant to my iPod use.)

Podcasts for advanced French lessons

7/8/12: Click for my blog entry about (later abandoned) complementary usage of the iOS 5.1 Podcasts app.

Having just been jarred awake about getting podcasts "over the air" onto my iPod using the Music app, here are my candidates for working on improving my French (I may update this list over time):

• French Podcast ("Linguistic 360: News in Slow French". Around 30 minutes each until episode 141 (released 11/8/13), after which free episode content ends after about 7 minutes; within PC iTunes it appears this shortening of free content (perhaps for streaming use) occurred earlier, after episode 136 (released 10/4/13). I normally download (instead of stream) over wifi to my iPod, and episode 142 is my first short one. Probably the slowest speed French of these 3 podcasts, as befits its name. Acknowledging the difficulty in getting used to larger numbers in French, the hosts typically repeat them twice; a grammar and idiomatic expressions [e.g., poser un lapin, to stand someone up, not to give someone a rabbit] segment comes at the end of each program. Text included: summary; outline of news; outline of grammar and idiomatic expression topics.) The primary host Rylan describes the podcast as intermediate in episode 163, and probably in others as well. While it's admittedly News in Slow French, the vast majority of the content is entirely in French, which to me seems fairly categorized as advanced.
• Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com (Around 5 minutes each. Mix of normal and slower speed French, depending on the episode. Words and expressions are routinely repeated to assist listener learning. Spelling tips for words are often given. Occasional dictation exercises, which can be checked at the website. Text included: ~3-4 lines introducing the lesson content, typically ending in "...".)
  8/22/11: I wonder if there is some hidden internal number for each podcast episode, or some other issue at play. I had (have) episodes 835-1212 showing sequentially from top to bottom on my iPod, but subsequent episodes, starting from 1213, are loading (sequentially) at the top (before 835). Not a particular problem, but odd.
  10/24/11: After a sync with my PC, the sorting was corrected for all the episodes I had. However, episodes 1213 and on had their playing times changed to 0:00, and their "album art" was lost. Newly downloaded episodes are coming with the album art and proper playing times, but they are regrettably loading at the top of the list, just like 1213 and on did previously.
  10/29/11: I think it was another subsequent sync with my PC which ended up eliminating the album art from the main listing of episodes in the Music app (which is actually good, since more of each episode's title is now visible in that list), and the sorted the episodes properly again. We'll see what happens after future episode downloads and syncs with PC iTunes....
  9/22/12: Episode 1453 was for a long time sitting incorrectly at the end of the list, out of order. Today I deleted it, then downloaded it again, and Voilà! It (and, I think, all the episodes) are all in the correct order!
• One thing in a French day (Around 3 minutes each. Normal "gentle" speed French. Until 6/4/13, the FULL TEXT, minus standard introduction and closing, of podcast is included!! After that, only the first third of the text is included -- the 6/4/13 episode ["Le podcast évolue"] explaining this format change is how I learned that (le) tiers means "third". The full text is available to paid subscribers of her newsletter. When the full text was available within the iOS 5 Music app, everything was together in one place, available without needing wifi as long as a podcast episode had been downloaded in advance. That's more significant to iPod users, who are less often connected to the Internet, but even subscribers with iPhones may find the separation of the components inconvenient.)

I found the longer News in Slow French nice to listen to during hands-full cooking. Some listeners may object that one of the hosts is not a native French speaker (probably an American, I would guess; don't know if he ever states where he's from), but he has good style and carries on lively dialogue with the other host (hostess, usually; a few different women during the time I've been listening).

I previously listened to my old friend Louis (Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com) on the Zune during quiet lunches, when it was convenient to replay things for review. Louis explains many words and expressions. Dialogues are at normal "unfettered" speed; he explains selected content, and then you hear the dialogue a second time.

I was beaming for quite some time when I accidentally tapped the iPod screen and discovered that text is included with these podcasts (associated text may be available at the websites, too, but I don't normally go to those, I just listen on the iPod). I happened to be listening to One thing in a French day, which, as noted above, included the full text until 6/4/13, so this discovery was particularly exciting. That text gives me an option to just have some French reading practice, if I'm ever in a situation where listening to the podcast is inconvenient or undesirable. Because of its format, One thing in a French day lends itself well to (potentially) including the entire text (swipe up and down to scroll). The other two podcasts have lengthier content, so it's perhaps less practical for those creators to include the full text.

All of these podcasts are wonderful, and in just a couple of days of listening, I feel I have already learned good stuff. Did you know the (or at least some) French say arobase for the @ in e-mail addresses? Laetitia (One thing in a French day) includes that in each episode's closing, so I looked up what I incorrectly imagined was a robase. Common name for a cell phone? That's portable, which I know now from Rylan (French Podcast). Louis (Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com) taught me that I had the wrong impression of how to pronounced suggérer (to suggest) -- I didn't think there was a (brief) hard g sound in it at all.

There may be other similarly wonderful advanced French podcasts, but these showed up first on iTunes in my search (real estate's "Location, location, location!" is analogous to the value assigned by Google's Page Rank), but I doubt I'll look further as long as these creators continue to produce more, similar quality episodes.

Occasional episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com (e.g., 1270 - Real Life French: un attroupement) and from One thing in a French day (e.g., Le parc de Couzieu) report that they "cannot be played on this iPod" when I try to download them. I'm not sure why, but it is not a big deal if I miss an episode here or there.

While some podcasts have little value after having been listened to, I always wished that I could mark a podcast series as one whose episodes should not be deleted by Zune sync-with-PC operations. I never found an option in the PC Zune software to do that.

I am so pleased that retention of podcasts on an iPod is totally under the user's control (some info from Apple discussions). I no longer have to fear that my French (or other) podcasts will be deleted against my wishes during such synchronization.

Previously, on my 3rd generation iPod Touch running iOS 4.3.5 (10/18/12: I've actually been on a 4th generation iPod Touch running iOS 5.1.1 for some time now), processing a long list of podcast episodes does take a significant amount of time:

• When the Music app displays the list of my ~300 and growing episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com.
• Directly switching from the Music app to the podcast source in the iTunes app as I describe here is also slow. On 10/29/11, that podcast lists 293 episodes.

In the iTunes app on 10/29/11, Linguistic 360: News in Slow French has 35 total (lifetime) episodes, and One thing in a French day has 20, which Laetitia has presumably chosen as the maximum to show there at one time.

After syncing to a PC, in the left panel under Devices > (your device name) > Podcasts, you can see how many times you've listened to a particular episode, which may be of interest.

Although I often use the White Noise app to help drown out external noise when trying to sleep, on quieter (too quiet?) nights, I have sometimes found it helpful to fall asleep to some One thing in a French day episodes (perhaps excluding those involving excited children ;-) ), though I doubt that is greatly strengthening my French....

11/26/11: Under iOS 5.0.1 (I used iOS 4 when I first wrote this entry), I recently noticed that after tapping the FREE button for an episode, it turns into DOWNLOAD for some podcasts, but into GET EPISODE for others (only Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com of the above three podcasts). DOWNLOAD doesn't get redrawn on the iPod when tapped, which speeds up the process of queuing for download, particularly helpful when you're downloading many episodes. Maybe the GET EPISODE button has some benefit for podcast producers?

10/18/12: Under iOS 5.1.1 on my 4th generation iPod Touch, which is now loaded with over 800 French podcast episodes, I try to quit all other apps before loading new episodes. For Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com, of which I have 512 episodes, I try not to queue up more than one at a time for downloading, to minimize the risk of iTunes crashing, based on unpleasant experience.

4/27/13: I rarely use Spotlight Search for anything, but I just realized that if you allow it to search Podcasts (in Settings > General > Spotlight Search), you can search podcast episode titles, which could help you do word(s)-focused review. I just did such a search for Grève (strike), and 5 episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com came up. Spotlight Search is apparently a case-insensitive "and" search, so if you enter "soleil du" or "du soleil" you will only get episode titles having both of those words (anywhere), and not those having only one of those words.

You mean I can play music on my iPod?

I'm one of those people who doesn't have a great need for new music.  I've been largely content with my CD collection for years, which I ripped to my PC and also transferred to my Zune, a gift from a relative who had no need for it. The only artist whose works I almost always buy is Jackson Browne, and it's only as I prepared this blog entry that I learned from this jackson browne discography, maintained by another fan, that I've missed two(!) albums since 2008.

My iPod's port hardware is unreliable to the point of the iPod generally not showing up within my PC's iTunes after connecting iPod and PC with the USB cord. Since that type of connection is how I would copy my music collection to my iPod, I had expected not to put any music on the iPod.

However, after opening the Music app ("You have no songs", or something like that), I was guided by Apple's savvy to the iTunes app. I had previously put the iTunes app into an "Entertainment" group, which I had largely forgotten about given my other (happy) use of the iPod.

In iPod iTunes, I downloaded the 4 free songs currently being promoted. I subsequently discovered that I wouldn't be able to delete them from the iPod since I lack access (reliable access, in any case) to my iPod though my PC's iTunes. Okay, so no more wild downloading of free songs -- who needs additional clutter?
(8/1/11: With some cable fiddling I got my iPod to be recognized by my PC's iTunes, after which a second pair of hands helped me delete those songs. If I released my awkward hold on the cable, my iPod would immediately disappear from within my PC's iTunes. Right before that, I was also finally able to update my iOS to 4.3.5 from 4.2.1 using the same type of cable fiddling.)

However, podcasts can be deleted directly from the iPod, and that is a whole 'nother thing (and future blog entry).