New App's to consider for your Smart Phone

A recent magazine listed two apps, neither of which I was familiar with.  One is a nearly perfect GPS app, the reviewer says is as good as Garmin and has some advantages:

1.      it will pull street addresses out of your contacts, or vendors, which might make it easier to navigate, no new input required for those

2.      it is equal to most specialized Navigation devices the reviewer says, and this one will figure the traffic ahead and route you to avoid it and arrive in the best possible time.

3.      you would need a windshield mounting device, suction cup or something

Now the bad news.  It is called Navigon Mobile – Navigator.  (navigon.com)  and costs $100, the most expensive app I have ever seen.  Probably just for iPhone, not sure.

Another big app recommendation was Viper – already downloaded by 100 million people.  Allows a user to text message, and do Skype type calls (better than Skype) over the internet, all for free.   Skype is worried, and might try to buy the company.  It is located in a dictatorship (Belarus) but they get inexpensive workers there, the home base is really in Israel.  Source:  Businessweek Magazine.

Vinyl vs. Digital Sound For Home Music Systems

Bet you thought that debate was over.  But Fortune Magazine just ran this article and I got interesting in the 91% number quoted.  Read below.

(Do old records really sound better?  By Omar Akhtar, Fortune Magazine Sept 3, 2012)

“They do.  Think of MP3’s, the format of most digital copies, as the sonic equivalent of Cliff Notes: a summary of a recording’s highlights.  There’s the beat, the melody, verse, and chorus, but not the subtle variations in pitch, resonance, and volume.  In fact, some 91% of the information is lost while converting to MP3.  Vinyl not only retains greater sonic information, it adds a rich harmonic “warmth” as the needle hits the spinning grooves.  Of course vinyl decays while digital is (theoretically) forever.  If you really love an album, spend the $15 for the record… but also keep a digital copy on the cloud.”  Omar Akhtar

Ormar revives the old debate there, and of course I grew up with vinyl and loved it, but the clicks and scratches eventually made me switch over to the CD format.  But I still have lots of vinyl, and I am slowly converting it to MP3, using the special turntable called Ion.  It is a quality unit, and I like how it works.  I use a program I downloaded that will take the input and convert it to MP3.  So far I have not listened to these newly created MP3 versions on quality equipment to tell whether or not it has done a decent job.

If anyone cares to comment, just leave a post with your experience with vinyl, and or the conversion.