My wallet is scared of the Humble Bundles

I have a weakness.

Cheap games.

The Humble Bundle is terrifying for someone like me.  When I see a bunch of decent games for a good price I can't help but start reciting my card number with glee.  I have been a big supporter of the Humble Bundle and though this might be a good time to bring attention to how AWESOME it is.

The most current Humble Bundle is about $6 right now, as of this writing, and contains plenty of goodness.  The games included are: Dear Esther, Capsized, Awesomenauts, Thomas Was Alone, Little Inferno, Proteus and Hotline Miami.  This obviously isn't going to excite everyone.  Considering that any of these games alone is worth more than $6 bucks is worth mentioning.  We also need to remember we are getting soundtracks AND Steam keys.  Yes, you get a Steam key AND you get a DRM free version for your use wherever you want.  The ultimate win/win.

The idea is simple.  Go spend a penny and get all of the games, minus Proteus and Hotline Miami, in a DRM free format.  Spend a dollar and get all of those games you got for a penny with a Steam key.  Spend more than that 6 bucks I mentioned and you get the other two games.  Hotline Miami for $6 should be enough to make you want to buy this!

Check out the video.  Support a good cause and get some fucking awesome games.  DO IT!

Google Music All Access Revisited

I've had a little more time to spend with Google Music All Access.  I have even branched out and tried a couple of things to make the experience better.

The first thing I did was pick up this sweet "app" from vhanla.  While it basically just does what a browser does it seems to suffer less from the memory explosion of Chrome, not to mention it has options on when to dump memory, too.  There are actually a lot of neat features.  The latest version seems to add support for this latest feature that came out of I/O.  This has been around for a while and people seem to enjoy it.  I'm a bit of a minimalist, so it is nice to see that even though it is something else I've got to have running that I can smash it into a tiny attractive frame and put it somewhere that isn't going to bother me.  Kudos to my buddy Billy for keeping an eye out for something to unfuckify my life.

The second thing was try out an iOS app that supports this feature.  When I described the absolute disaster of using the Android version, I could have never imagined that an experience could exist that was even more poor.  This is that experience.  Don't get me wrong, the app isn't really all that bad, it just isn't good... at all.  The app does support Google Music All Access. It does work for the most part.  It does pretty much everything that it needs to.  The design is cluttered and kind of ugly.  The navigation is a little weird.  I don't hate it, but I'd have a hard time recommending it.  I blame Google, though.  If they would just release an app we wouldn't have to deal with these knock-offs.  The Wal-Mart version of an official Google app never offers quite the experience you hope for.  Trust me... I've got a Windows Phone.

The final thing is really put the thing through the paces.  The servers are kind of slow.  Maybe they are ramping it up, I don't know.  I am getting more and more frustrated by the stutter that is caused when loading anything that might require an ounce of processing power.  While I notice this much less using vhanla's alternative, it is still there.  It makes me want to rip my hair out.  There have been times when I have to actually STOP doing what I am doing so that I can open Spotify and load up THE SAME FUCKING SONGS.  ERGH!

I still have the ultimate faith in this product, but I am not impressed with it thus far.  I am hoping that by the holiday season I will be smitten and completely absorbed into the Android camp again.

Google Play Music All Access Review

I am a Spotify user.  I like it.  My wife likes it.  I LOVE Google, though.  I am not, however, in love with Google's latest product that is designed to compete with these products like Spotify.

Spotify isn't perfect.  It is far from it.  A lot of music isn't available.  Not every artist is available, and I'm not even talking like indie or underground bands.  Bands such as Tool are not present on Spotify.  Yeah I know that aren't as popular as they were a decade or so again, but they are still "famous" and not present.  There are other products that offer similar things for a similar price.  Rhapsody and Rdio are two other big players in this space.  Rhapsody peaked, for me, a LONG time ago.  They have since broken up with Real Networks and have attempted to modernize.  Not in a way that I liked, so I ditched that service.  My brother is a big supporter of Rdio and utilizes a feature available so that he can provide my father with music and they can still have separate accounts... sort of.  My brother pays a small extra fee so that my father can piggy back on the account, and so that his music and recently plays aren't reflected on my brother's profile.

I use Spotify because it is easy.  My wife has playlists that I create for her and then download or show her how to select on her iPhone and I normally use the Windows 8 app on my PC.  I will stream during my nightly workout, but the application is pretty bareboned and not that great on my WP8 or Android device.  Spotify allows me to have music wherever I go and I'm not stuck with a Pandora style station, I can listen to whatever I want.  It's awesome.

I love Google, though.  When I heard that Google was going to be bringing out a competitor I was on board.  If I sign up early I even get it for 8 bucks instead of 10!  I'm in!  The last couple of days using it have been sad and miserable.  I've supported a lot of products that Google has shuddered.  I have been a big time supporter of Google for a long time.  Hell, I even had all 20,000 songs that they allowed already uploaded to my Google Music account.  This is a trainwreck out of the box, but I do see the potential for it to be very good.

The fact that there is not an app or program for this is incredibly annoying.  Having to dedicate my browser to listening to music sucks.  Not only is the Spotify app for Windows 8 less memory sapping, but it doesn't shit itself with as much regularity.  I am a savvy PC user and I run things pretty lean.  I ran into an issue where I'd listen to a couple of albums and then the entire site would stop responding.  I'd have to close out my entire browser and open it back up.  I ran into a couple situations where it actually crashed.  Yes, CHROME CRASHED.  This could always be Hangouts doing this, but I've not seen Hangouts cause any issues thus far when not using the Music site.  I desperately hope that they ditch this approach and allow us to run an app.

The mobile application is available only for Android.  My daily driver is a WP8 device, but I carry an Android for some extra flexibility.  The experience on an Android device is miserable.  Maybe on a Galaxy S4 or HTC One it is great, but for me it was brutal.  Things wouldn't load, wouldn't play, the app Force Closed itself.  What is more disappointing is that there are no plans to bring it to WP8 devices, I'm shit out of luck.  They may or may not put a version together for iOS, there hasn't been any official word, yet.  So far you have the Android app and the web browser.  The redesign of the app is nice, but the functionality is a nightmare.

All this being said, I know it will get better.  If it doesn't get better then they will axe it and cut their losses.  Goggle isn't dumb.  Every time I think that they are slipping and are off the rails, they get it together and put out something better than the last big thing.  I just really hope that they get it together soon.  If you want me to leave Spotify you have to put something better together.