Recently, I decided to get back into playing the guitar after a 10+ year hiatus. As you can imagine, I forgot a great deal. Thankfully, Apple helped out a bit with their GarageBand guitar lessons. But, it didn’t take very long for me to move through the provided lessons and want to start learning the songs in my iTunes collection.

Enter Capo

Capo is a musician’s best friend. It lets you slow down your favorite songs, so you can hear the notes and learn how they are played.

Chris asked me to help beta test Capo just after he talked me into buying my new guitar (coincidence?) and it’s been the perfect tool for learning to play all over again.

Just drag your favorite songs into Capo from iTunes and hit play. Hit a complex guitar lick or chord progression, no problem. Create a loop over the section you want to concentrate on and set the play speed to 1/2 or even 1/4 speed without altering the pitch.

At $39, Capo is just the price of a half hour guitar lesson. And the gorgeous user interface makes it so much fun to play with.

I personally use VoodooPad to track all of my design notes and brainstorming for my own software products and can’t recommend it more highly.

Congrats to Gus and co.

“Radio On Your Schedule”

Rogue Amoeba has been very busy recently. On the heels of their excellent free MakeiPhoneRingtone app, comes Radioshift.

Time shifting has changed the way we consume information and media. Setting your schedule around your favorite TV or Radio show is no longer the way of things.

Listen live or subscribe to your favorite internet or AM/FM radio in a beautiful, simple to use Mac application.

It was fun to scan the chart and find how many Apple products I have owned or actually used: (I took the liberty to add NeXT to the list)

• Apple IIe (1983) – School & Friend
• Apple IIc (1984) – Friend
• Apple IIgs (1986) – Friend
• Macintosh SE (1987) – School
• Macintosh Classic (1990) – School
• NeXT Station (1990) – School
• PowerBook Titanium (2001) – Own
• Power Macintosh Mirror (2002) – Work
• PowerBook G4 Aluminum (2003) – Mother
• Power Macintosh G5 (2003) – Own
• iPod 3rd Gen (2003) – Own
• iBook G4 (2003) – Sister
• iPod Click Wheel (2004) – Own
• Mac Mini (2005) – Own
• Mac Book Pro (2006) – Own
• Mac Pro (2006) – Own
• iPhone (2007) – Own

Can you guess by the listed dates when I graduated from college and entered the “Windows Enterprise World” and when I became a “switcher”?

What does your Apple history look like? Add your list to the comments or to your own blog.

The initial reviews are fantastic and the previews are intriguing. Here’s hoping that Casino Royale and Daniel Craig can revitalize a great movie series and character that had lost its way and died another day.

It is fast, powerful and Beautiful.

To get your juices flowing, The Sci Fi channel is releasing ten new “webisodes”: Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance

Watch Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance, ten exclusive webisodes chronicling the events on Cylon-occupied New Caprica from just after the season two finale until the season three premiere, only on SCI FI Pulse. New webisodes will be posted every Tuesday and Thursday leading up to the season premiere on Friday, October 6, at 9/8C.

I can’t wait.

How can you not be productive while wearing a “hi, i make macintosh software” T-Shirt?

My favorites are the throwback “Hero” and “Dragon” T’s. Hmm… takes me back, way back.

Let the Universal Binary testing begin:

The Bad

The end of my trusty old Titanium PowerBook?

Ah, maybe Not…

The Ugly

Wow! I never realized what a sad state current remote control industrial design was in.

I was a long time AT&T Wireless customer and was recently absorbed by the Cingular Wireless buyout. The buyout went smoothly for me. The signal coverage grew and seems to be a bit more reliable in the Boston area. I’ve travelled all over the Midwest and North East parts of the US without any troubles. A recent trip through France proved that Cingular’s international service works as advertised.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I got tired of recharging the aging battery in my T616 every day, more often if I actually had a long phone conversation. So a trip to the local Boston Cingular store produced a shiny new Black Motorola RAZR V3 GSM.

This is one nice phone! The buttons are nice and big. I prefer the flip phone design so I don’t have to lock the darn keyboard. The screen is actually bright enough to see in sunlight. It is flat and light enough to put in my shirt pocket or pants pocket without really noticing its there. If you’re into gadgets, it definitely has the cool factor going for it.

I do have a few complaints though. The included ring tones stink. I realize you can buy ring tones everywhere these days, but come on. This is $200 phone. Include some decent ring tones. Games, what games. This is a fully Java capable phone. The menu has a section for games. What games to they ship with the great $200 phone? A limited demo of Bejeweled and a slide show application? My Sony Ericsson came with a several fully featured games. Now, I’m not really a phone gamer, but if I’m sitting in an airport waiting for a delayed flight, I may want to whip out my phone to play a quick game or two to pass the time. Now I have to buy some? Come On!

These are minor issues, really. But I can’t believe that Motorola couldn’t afford to include a couple of decent ring tones and one or two decent games with their phones.