Why Would I Want A Record Player?

I really, really, really want a record player, just a basic turntable I can hook up to my Mac and speakers and listen to music. Considering that physical data storage devices (i.e. - records, cassettes, CDs) are becoming an outdated medium, it is interesting that people actually still buy vinyl records.

When I went to preschool, we would always have Sing & Dance time. The teacher would put some dainty music on and we would gather and dance in a circle. This was all circa 1990. Cassette tapes were still very much in use but my teacher would pull out vinyl records and play them for use to dance to. I can't even remember what songs were played, but yeah, they were played right off of vinyl records.

So what's the fascination with records? There's that understood debate that vinyl records have the best playback quality. I think even though quality is very important with music, the portability aspect is the biggest downfall of the record, and subsequently the CD. I know DJs use records but there is s much music engineering technology that most just hook up their computers to digital turntables and jam away.

I think this limitation in music portability is what made records, tapes and CDs so valuable. Think about it. It's the 90s. You're getting ready for a 5 hour flight, and you only have enough room for a couple CDs. You're gonna pick your favorite CDs or that new CD that you really want to listen to. I think we appreciated the CDs we kept with us more by not having all of our music with us all at once.

[Update: Probably won't get a turntable until I have my own apartment.]

Got My Google Wave Invite!

FINALLY! About a month ago, I applied to receive a Google Wave preview account after watching Google's nearly 90 minute spiel of its new, open sourced, online software in development. As per Google,

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Even though I only have a preview account, the software still allows me to fiddle around with most of the basic  perks of using waves instead of emails. The first time I saw Google Wave I thought it was Email 2.0. Wrong. If anything, a wave is absolutely not an email, at least, not necessarily. Like Gmail, it records conversations, one after another. Unlike Gmail, these messages can be edited at any time as well as add text, pictures or video to any part of the message. For example, say you're "waving" about a group project and you're brainstorming how to attack your topics; "wavers" (Google Wave users) can add onto other's messages similar to Facebook's Comment feature instantly. So instead of replying and forwarding an email back and forth to different people, creating different versions of it, Google Wave is one, live host of messages where you can add people to access it. Since it's currently in preview, you only get to forward 8 invites and the functionality is still rocky but it's awesome - updates to come once I play around with it more.

Below is the Google I/O Demo Presentation of Google Wave: