SPOTIFY 101

I downloaded Spotify last August when I had heard about it through Twitter. I had little clue as to what it was. When I first opened it, I remember being in complete awe--it was like having an entire iTunes store at my disposal. I could listen to any song, in full length, and star it for later listening... for free. It was one of those things that just seemed to good to be true.

I quickly opted for the $10 a month premium Spotify and since then it has completely replaced my iTunes--I can't even remember the last time I have opened iTunes. With this service, I have complete access to any album or artist or song I can think of at any time on my iPhone. The songs that I have 'starred' for later listening can be synced on to my phone through my network, to be used in 'Offline Mode'. This means I can listen to my 'Starred Songs' (702 tracks at the moment) when my phone doesn't get any reception, like on an airplane. It's really awesome.

This following tutorial is meant to educate people on how revolutionary Spotify can be for discovering music. It always shocks me when I ask people if they have Spotify and they say "No, I don't know what that is" or "Ya, but I don't understand it". I have been given these answers by so many people that I felt it was a neccesity for me to write an article on what exactly you can do with Spotify to optimize your usage of the program and understand how easy and fun it can be for even the most computer illiterate to share and discover music.

Social Networking Gone Wrong--Summer Wars

Anime has always been a film genre I have little interest in. I find it trivial, obnoxious, and way too melodramatic for my taste. Interestingly enough, one of my all-time favorite movies is an anime film--Miyazaki's masterpiece, Spirited Away. When I was perusing iTunes trailers a couple of weeks ago I watched a trailer for a Japanese animation film called Summer Wars. I was almost instantly interested in this film based off its revolutionary animation style. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The basic premise for this film is about social networking site called Oz (think Facebook but to the millionth power) that gets hacked by a rogue virus with apocalyptic consequences.

I watched this film a couple of days ago and I was very, very impressed. The animation style really is unparalleled. There were many sequences where my jaw dropped and I was asking myself how the hell they animated the scene. The story is also pretty engaging, although a bit dramatic for my tastes, but the animation manages to completely overshadow this. I highly recommend renting this movie. It really made me think of how social networking is so deeply engrained within our society and what were to happen if it just crashed one day. How would our society react if Facebook went offline for a week? I know I would panic (kind of embarrassing to admit) but we invest so much of our lives into social networking sites that I can not imagine a future without them. Just a thought and check out the trailer for Summer Wars below.

---Post by Karl Ryan