But wait a tick…Does trading all those freebies eventually lead to buying the real thing? Amazon.com reported earlier this year that mp3 sales overtook CD sales. I am certain that other large etailers and traditional big-box stores with online presence are reporting the same dynamics. Is the demise of Napster the reason? I think not. So where is all the money going???

The RIAA has also been actively pursuing a “song play fee” on radio stations. As if having to pay big money to BMI and ASCAP is not enough? Isn’t that a bit like biting the hand that feeds you? There currently is legislation on the table that has already passed the Senate and is up for debate later this summer in the House of Representatives. “Isn’t it odd” note – satellite stations are exempt from this fee but internet stations are not. Hmmmm…. I suppose we will continue to see the proliferation of talk radio on traditional over-the-air stations and an explosion of stations playing “Indie” music on the internet. For the record, it is much easier to get permission directly from the artist to air their songs.

What do you think? Is the RIAA forgetting their roots? Who’s getting all of this money anyway? It sure isn’t the radio stations!!

Google did not bring me a good result (surprising, yes I know).  So I did a search on the Motorola user forums.  BINGO!  Turns out Google developed an app for smartphones called PDA Net.  For reasons that I haven’t bothered to research, they pulled the app from the markets.  Thank goodness for junefabrics.com!  This is a great little app that is lite weight, quick to download, and flexible.  It is available for Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and iPhone OS‘s and can connect by a USB tether or bluetooth.  In an unusual twist for everything smartphone, this app actual loads to your pc/laptop and then sync’s the connection to your phone.  The connection is quick and flawless and you can track transfer rate and software connections on the phone.  PDA Net does not require root access so it does not void the warranty of your phone.  No hacking necessary.  Good stuff!

But be warned!  Verizon and AT&T have the ability to charge for overuse of the “unlimited” data clause.  Anything over 5 GB of transfer could lead to an additional charge.  I haven’t seen any postings of any such a charge but it is in the contract, so use PDA Net wisely!  The full version of the software is a scant $20, but the trial version is free and is fully functional removing access to https sites once the trial period ends.  No biggie either way.  Finally the app gives you a widget so you can do quick connect if needed.  This to me is a downside…the widget is 1×3 (could be a 1×2) and only gives you a connection button for USB and bluetooth.

Give it a shot and share your opinion!

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Hey all! I’ve been incommunicado the past few weeks. Been a very busy time and a time of change (or at least impending change) for me. You probably do not know I got a new Motorola Backflip about a month ago. I love this phone. It’s flexibility and power suit my lifestyle and needs at this time and this is a great phone to cut my teeth on in the smart phone era. Here is a quick list of apps that I am running on my Backflip. The first five are what is on my home pages and the sixth is a list of all that I have loaded. If you are interested specifically in the app let me know and I will start adding links for reference and download. Note…all of these apps are the free versions. Some include ads but have a pay version without ads. Worth looking at if ads bug you that much. On most of these (all but two) I don’t even notice the ads! Check them out J

1. Metricdroid – Now this is a nifty little app that converts most anything from English to Metric.  In my line of work there are several clients whose prints are Metric and being able to convert quickly to English gives me a little edge.  Great stuff!

   Realcalc – If you need a little more than basic calculator abilities then this is the app for you!  Turns your phone into a full scientific calculator (programmable even).  Stand up and take note TI and Casio.  This could be the next generation of calc’s for testing!!

   Zxing barcode scanner – More great stuff from the gang at Google.  This is a very liteweight but effective scanner app that reads barcodes and QRC’s.  It ties in with your camera and allows you to do a websearch right from the scan.

   Alarm clock – Nothing great here, just the alarm clock app that came with the phone.  There are a ton of other suitable alternatives at appbrain.com if you don’t like the stock version.

   Opera mini beta – Unfortunately AT&T has some kind of deal worked out with Yahoo! my least favorite browser out there.  Personally, I have ditched IE and have never been impressed with Netscape.  Fortunately Mozilla came out with Firefox and that is my main source of browsing.  Thankfully in searching for lite, fast browser for my phone I came across Opera.  Opera has a bunch of great features which make it ideal for the smartphone such as quick page references from the home, single button back and forward paging, and the ability to open a number of pages at once with tabbing!  Epic win in my book!  Here is an add-on that overrides Yahoo! without cracking your phone and makes Opera the browser of choice.

   Messaging

   Camcorder

   Youversion – From the folks at Lifechurch.tv  This is a great app that allows you to read and study the Bible.  There are many translations (so your favorite is always handy) and over 30 reading plans!  You can also bookmark your favorite verses and upload a comment of your own.

   Genina.com Sudoku – Hey it’s sudoku!  What else do you need to know?  Fine…it has three difficulty levels, the ability to compete with other people, and high score postable to the internet.  And did I mention that it’s free?

   Mh games jewels – I love Bejewled and so designed game.  And when you add free, there is hours of mindless color and geometry manipulation to be had.  Great fun!

   Gowalla – one of the first programs that entered the “I’m here now, do I get any points?” arena.  I like the layout of Gowalla, but I have issues with the accuracy of the satellite systems it uses.  The latency is troublesome!!  But hey, the folks that created it are from Austin, so it’s cool!

2. Twitter/facebook widget

   Executive Assistant- This is a great app for organizing your email, texts, social nets, missed phone calls, etc., into one easy to read dashboard.  Problem…it conflicts with a lot of the built in software.  That aside, by tapping a category you get a listing of basic information about the texts (or whatever) you have and the options you would like to execute.  The app has a variety of widgets so you can choose how “heavy” of a dashboard you to use

3. Messages widget

   News widget

   Camera

   Radar Now – Weather radar straight from the NOAA and the National Weather Service.  The app automatically finds the closest NWS radar site and gives you a live scan.  You can center and zoom to a certain extent, but it is accurate and the timing is more up to minute than weather services available.

   Calendar widget

   Wifi switch widget

   Ringer switch widget

4. This day in history widget

   Weather channel mexia widget

   Analog clock

   Weather channel Waco widget

   Word of the day widget

5. 3 banana note widget

   Pandora radio widget

   Documents to go

   Gdocs notes

   Quick office

   WordPress

   Motoblur account setup

   Help center

   Android market

   Settings

6. Downloaded apps…

   3 banana notes

   Accelogger

   Android pdf viewer

   Gphone antivirus

   Backgrounds

   Barcode scanner

   Youversion

   Bic concert lighter

   Yahoo browser

   Bubble

   Real calc calculator

   Calendar

   Camcorder

   Camera

   Contacts

   Dialer

   Documents to go

   Email

   Executive assistant

   Gdocs notepad

   Geoquiz

   Gmail

   Google maps

   Google talk

   Gowalla

   Group ringtones

   Happenings

   Help center

   Im

   Jewels

   Manage sim card

   Market

   Messaging

   Metricdriod

   Mobile banking

   Movile video

   Mobitv

   Music id

   News

   Opera

   Pandora

   Picture gallery

   Purchased media

   Quickoffice

   Radar now

   Ringtone

   Seismic

   Settings

   Shartones

   Spreadsheet lite

   Shopper

   Solo lite

   Sudoku free

   Text messaging

   Weather channel

   Today in history

   Tubthumper

   Video gallery

   Voice dial

   Where

   Word of the day

   WordPress

   You tube

   Ypmobile

I don’t like the way Apple does business…iphone is out! Blackberries are intriguing but I really wanted a touch screen…so they are out. I’ve always liked Motorolas and the Backflip felt like a good fit.

That does not mean it is without issues, but I’m having a great time exploring! More to come…

What is your phone addiction of choice?

It always saddens me to hear of people with so much promise taking their own lives.  It is these people that grieve my soul and cause me to wonder if they knew of the healing power of Jesus Christ.  Now it is too late to find out on this earth at this time.

We lift up prayers for the Koenig family.

It’s sad when someone gets killed doing a job they love. But at the risk of being tacky…They are called “Killer” whales.

Sorry… I couldn’t resist. Prayers going out to the family and friends of the trainer and all those that make Seaworld such an amazing place.

I have many mixed emotions about what the FCC and US Federal Government are up to.  I am truly amazed that they the FCC will authorize millions of dollars to help people buy digital receivers, but would not consider helping entities (of any sort) in transitioning away from the 700 MHz band.  In my Church, the sale of the 700 MHz band meant replacing four wireless handheld microphones and two lav microphones.  Small potatoes compared to some of the huge houses of worship and other large scale venues, but it was big to us!  Now even though the FCC felt it necessary to mess over everyone (even a great number of state and national parks and county governments), there is indeed a shining star to all of this!

Let’s hear it for the manufacturers!  Most if not all offered humongous discounts and even trade-ins for most wireless microphone sets.  Audiotechnica, Electrovoice, Sennheiser, Shure, AKG, and Samson – to name a few – all offered great packages that made the transition to better for everyone involved.  Don’t get me wrong… it was still expensive, but the burden was eased substantially to those that took the manufacturers up on their offer.  In our case, we saved nearly $1500!  As far as the FCC establishing a mandate to get-off the frequency…pshhhht!  The FCC does not have the manpower to go around town to town and make sure no one is using an appliance in the “forbidden zone”.  And even if they do actually catch someone using the 700 MHz frequency there is no fining structure built into the code!  In twitter terms, “#govtfail”.

Now here is the rub…IF the FCC is not equipped to enforce the ban, why should anyone change?  First and foremost, it is the right thing to do.  It is the law and our job is to follow the law and work on changing what we disagree with through the system.  Secondly, since our government chose to fleece the public by selling the broadcast rights for $billions to cell phone companies, you stand a good chance at broadcasting someone’s private conversation over your PA system.  Could be funny…could be really embarrassing!  Case in point…

Back to my Church.  Several years ago we were broadcasting on our local FM station.  We used a high-frequency Marti transmitter/receiver to get our audio feed back to the studio for over-the-air transmission.  We also had an antiquated, added-onto sound system with several spliced microphone and speaker cables hither, tither, dale and yon.  Much to our chagrin we discovered that these little splices acted just like little antennas.  And one fine Sunday morning when all the conditions were just right, it happened.  The radio station used, as many stations do these days, automation software.  So once the service began the station was on autopilot.  Further, we were set-up so that at a specific time the station would shift back to its regular programming (at the time progressive Country Music).  On this fine Sunday morning, it was a bit foggy.  I can’t say I thought much of it that morning.  The service went well…great singing, awesome worship and a message that, as I recall, stepped on some toes.  Then it was time for the Invitation.  The Pastor called for complete quiet; a calm moment for reflection and an opportunity to “do business with God.”  And then it happened.  Through the house PA system w

as none-other than a song by Willie Nelson.  But not just any song…it was “Beer for My Horses”!  As one of the Church Tech guys you can only imagine my and my co-hearts response.  Fortunately the staff at my Church are pros and recovered quickly and not much was said about the incident afterward.

Yeah…I know.  It probably  could have been worse.  But it did not need to be!  Imagine the kind of conversation you could pick up by someone just driving through town.  A really scary thought!

From a personal perspective, do I suggest a particular microphone or brand over any other?  No.  There are way too many things to consider when micing a venue.  But I can tell you this about your sound system.  Invest the money in one top-notch piece of equipment and build the rest of system around that.  I first heard that philosophy on HGTV of all places.  They were talking about decorating a room and suggested spending the bulk of your budget on the most prominent piece of furniture.  And I thought this makes sense for most applications.  If you start with one good piece (say a mixing board), it will make the rest of your system sound good.  Then slowly but surely upgrade what you have.  Each improvement will blow your mind.  When we remodeled our PA system, we were blessed to replace our Mackie 32 channel mixer with a Soundcraft 48 channel mixer (more bells and whistles than I have time to play with).  Now 7 years later, we have added four Sennheiser wireless handheld mics (I highly recommend these if you can afford them), Shure and AKG wireless lav mics (also highly recommended), Audiotechnica hanging mics for our choir, and some inexpensive Behringer dynamic omnidirectional mics for utility work.  We have a wide range of applications, including Handbells, Orchestra, drama, performance, and of course spoken word so this mix of microphones works for us…it might be too much for you, though.  Maybe not enough!  There is much more to our system but it all started with the Soundcraft mixer and grew around it.  Now we run three independent monitor mixes, main mix, building mix, radio mix, and television mix.  We also will be adding live streaming audio/video to our website within the year.

But I’ve digressed.  Just get your new mic’s and don’t worry about the FCC so much.  Be sure as you get new equipment you buy from reputable dealers!  Remember 700 MHz is only illegal in the US.  The manufacturers are still selling these mic’s outside the US and it is YOUR responsibility to request the appropriate frequency.  A good retailer will help you find what is best for you and some companies even know what is in your vicinity and can suggest a wireless system that will have the least interference.

Still confused or need help deciding what might be best for you?  Drop me an email and I would be glad to help.  Advice is free and if you are looking for someone to help solve some of your audio problems, my rates are reasonable specializing in small and medium sized houses of worship, schools, and small concert halls.  Write me at blunsford@kaykreationsonline.com for more information!

Update:  And yet here is another very knowledgeable guy that is fairly fed up with all of this but he posts a bunch of good links with information.  Thanks Churchsoundguy!