Advanced Internet Radio Not So Advanced !

As many of our users already know Pocket Tunes Deluxe features Internet radio streaming. Internet radio can be a pleasant change from the everyday music that we all have on our devices. Many times I find myself browsing through the Internet radio catalog looking for new bands or anything else that strikes my interest.

However, Did you know that you are not just limited to the music catalog that we offer? Many of your favorite local stations are also now available online. This can be wonderful especially when your stuck on a business trip out of town. For instance if you visit radio-locator.com you can do a search by zip code, region or address and instantly you will get results of local stations offered in that area. Plus websites like Shoutcast.com and live365.com offer literally thousands of stations for your listening pleasure. All you have to do is navigate to these sites via Blazer or your browser of choice on your device, select the Internet radio station you want to listen to and Pocket Tunes will play it.

Now you might be wondering what if I find a station I really like and I do not want to lose it. Well all stations that you have previously listened to are filed in your Choose songs screen under unfiled. You can even make playlists of your favorite Internet radio stations directly in Pocket Tunes Deluxe which can really save time when trying to track down a station.

Now let's talk a little bit about the frills! While working in support daily I find one of the most common questions being "How do I use a Bluetooth headset/speakers or Bluetooth in my car with Pocket Tunes Deluxe?" Well now Normsoft has that answer. We have teamed up with Softick to become a reseller of their award winning software called "Softick Audio Gateway". SAG gives Palm OS based devices functionality for Bluetooth devices.

What does this do for me you ask? Well now you can use your favorite Bluetooth headset or speakers to listen to Pocket Tunes wherever you go. Imagine you have a data plan on your cell phone and already enjoy Internet radio. Why not use that in conjunction with Softick Audio Gateway and listen in your car or while your out doing the morning jog, via wireless!

For more information on Softick Audio Gateway click here.

Pocket Tunes links that might be of interest to you:

Information on creating Internet radio playlists
Manually adding internet radio streams to Pocket Tunes
Playing Live365 stations in Pocket Tunes

Links of interest from this article:
Radio-Locator
Live365
Shoutcast


- Matthew C , Customer Support Specialist/Audiophile/Gamer/Sleep Deprived, NormSoft Inc.

Pocket Tunes adds support for a classic format

Hello everyone,

NormSoft Inc. is pleased to announce that we have added support for a classic audio format.

So go up to your attics and dust them off, we've added support for 8 track tape!!!

Yes, that big boxed format of the 70's has a new home with Pocket Tunes 8 (yep, we've skipped right to version 8 we are so excited about this addition).

How does it work? Well once you purchase Pocket Tunes 8, we'll ship you a special Bluetooth adapter that will attach to the 8 track and wirelessly send those classics from the 70s to Pocket Tunes. Yes you can leave those 8 tracks right where they are, under the seats of your car, in the trunk, musty box in the basement, anywhere and Pocket Tunes can still play the tracks. Gum, chocolate, cigarette ash stuck to the tape? No problem, Pocket Tunes can digitally remove all imperfections. Casing so faded you don't even know WHAT is inside the case? Piece a cake, Pocket Tunes will figure it out and display the album art....or at least a hand drawn facsimile.

Don't have Bluetooth, don't worry we throw in a wired adapter as well.

Look for an announcement as to availability very soon. We just have some final testing to do after we pry one of the testers Three Dog Night tapes out of our test device.

For more info, please see this Knowledge Base article http://www.normsoft.com/kb/idx/50/248/article/ .

Happy April Fool's Day everyone!!

Take care,
Dave
Director of Quality Control and Customer Support
NormSoft, Inc

Sounds of my City - Seattle Edition

Several months ago I moved back to Seattle, my favorite city. Thanks to internet radio, Pocket Tunes Deluxe users can listen to the radio of any major city. Here are some local Seattle stations with URLs to the streaming audio pages. You can enter these into your Palm web browser to listen with Pocket Tunes Deluxe (or a valid Trial version of Pocket Tunes).

KUOW News and Talk Public Radio
http://www.kuow.org (home page)
http://128.208.34.80:8002/listen.pls (128kbps)
http://128.208.34.80:8000/listen.pls (32kbps)

KEXP - Eclectic Music Mix
Formerly KCMU, this was one of the first stations with a 24 hour, high quality internet stream.
http://kexp.ort (home page)
http://kexp-mp3-128k.cac.washington.edu:8000/listen.pls (128kbps)
http://kexp-mp3-1.cac.washington.edu:8000/listen.pls (32kbps)

KBCS Community Radio - Eclectic Music and Talk
http://kbcs.fm (home page)
http://9810.broadcastmatrix.com:9810/listen.pls (96kbps)
http://9820.broadcastmatrix.com:9820/listen.pls (32kbps)

KPLU 24 Hour Jazz
http://www.kplu.org (home page)
http://sc1.abacast.com:8236/listen.pls (32kbps Jazz 24/7)

KGRG Alternative Rock, Punk, Metal
http://kgrg.com (home page)
http://kgrg.com/streams/kgrg_broadband_aac.m3u (96k AAC+)
http://kgrg.com/streams/kgrg_dialup.m3u (32kbps AAC+)

There are also some great live music venues here in Seattle. One of my favorites is the Tractor Tavern in the Ballard neighborhood. They tend to book alternative country, rockabilly, and Celtic acts. I really wish I could attend the upcoming April performances by Tift Merrit and Southern Culture on the Skids but my schedule will not allow it.

We also have two big music festivals each year. The NW Folklife festival is over Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend brings Bumbershoot. Both are a great way to get outside and enjoy a wide variety of music, art, and festival food in the shadow of the famous Space Needle. If you happen to be in town, check them out! You can stream a wide variety of music from the 2007 Folklife festival here: http://www.nwfolklifeaudio.org/2007festival.html.

Who knows, maybe in future blog entries other NormSoft employees will share their own local sounds.

- Jeff Loomis, Principal Software Engineer, NormSoft, Inc.

Keeping Pocket Tunes Close at Hand

Pocket Tunes is one of the most-run applications on my Centro. Whether I'm queuing up my favorite album or working on the latest and greatest features for an upcoming version of Pocket Tunes, I like to be able to get to my music quickly.

If you really enjoy music and want to access Pocket Tunes more quickly on your Treo or Centro, here are three easy options.

The most effective way is to assign one of your phone's buttons to launch Pocket Tunes immediately. To set this up, press the "Home" button and find the "Prefs" application, usually under the "System" category. Pick "Buttons", and you will see a list of the applications that get started when you press the various buttons on your phone. Personally, I don't use the Voice Recorder, so I always set the "Press + Hold Side button" to start Pocket Tunes instead. Now you can access Pocket Tunes with a quick button press regardless of what you are doing on your phone.

Second, you can use the shortcut under the phone dial pad. On the Centro and some other Treo models, there is already a shortcut there by default. Press the Phone button and you should see a dial pad with 4 shortcuts below it. Press the down button on the 5-way navigator to reveal more shortcuts. If "pTunes" is there, you can access Pocket Tunes quickly from that shortcut. If you don't see pTunes or if you want to move it somewhere more convenient, you can add a shortcut by pressing the Menu button on your keyboard and selecting "Edit Favorites Pages..."

The third option is for power users with a lot of software on their phones. Press the Home button and make sure that you are in the "All" category. Now simply press the letter 'p' on the keyboard. It's the upper-right key on the Palm, so it's really easy to find. You should now see "pTunes" really close by, and you can use the 5-way navigator buttons to select it and start it.

I hope that brings you a little closer to enjoying your favorite tunes on your phone!

-- Tim Norman, Founder / President, NormSoft, Inc.

Pocket Tunes Provides Music Playback on the Palm Centro from AT&T

Today NormSoft announced the recent availability of Pocket Tunes on the Palm Centro from AT&T. We're very excited about the inclusion of Pocket Tunes and the music playback capabilities that it is providing for customers on the AT&T network.

Read today's complete press release at:
http://www.normsoft.com/press/2008-02-26.html

Mark Belliveau - VP, Marketing and Business Development

Pocket Tunes &trade - Your phone. Your music. &trade

Kids + Pocket Tunes + Music

"Daddy, can you bring the blue Palm and the black speakers to my room so we can dance?"

That's my oldest, Ben, age 4. He likes the Zire 72 because it's blue. I have a few Palms that I use to test Pocket Tunes with so my Kids have names for some. The LifeDrive is called "The Mooovies Palm" by my 2 year old because occasionally I'll watch a movie on it. And the Centro is "Daddy's Palm" because it is the one I usually take with me when we go out.

However the "Blue Palm" is the chosen one for music, at least for a a 2 and a 4 year old. But where do you get kids music from?

Well the first obvious place is from CD's. You can rip tracks from the CD to audio files and transfer those to your Palm using Windows Media Player. There are other options if you have Pocket Tunes Deluxe. The on-line stores have collections of Children's music that you can purchase outright or, with a subscription membership, download as many as you want, change them up every month (after the kids have listened to them a gazillion times of course).

Here are a couple of ways I look for music for my kids:

Online stores make it pretty easy to find Children's songs. Once you log into your account, go to the Genres tab. Then Select Children's Music and you can see what is available. I'll often play clips from the tracks for my kids and let them choose. I usually make up playlists with all the tracks the kids choose. Then drag them to my Palm. This way both the tracks and the playlists are transferred and I can easily select them (or avoid them when it's my time to rock). Most stores also have collections of playlists that they or other members create. These are great to use to discover new stuff or save you time searching. You can usually drag the playlist over to your Palm and the tracks and playlists are transferred over for you. I know in Napster I can select the Children's collection of playlists and it will show me a ton of different playlists that I can download to Pocket Tunes.

It's nice to have the tracks on a Palm because we can take them wherever we go. Connect it to the car radio for long trips to Grandma and Grandpas or out in the backyard with some portable speakers. Though 15 plays in a row of Barney singing "The Elephant Song" may not be the best thing for neighbor relations.

There are a few online stores out there. I've used both Napster and Rhapsody and they are both excellent. Their subscription service is nice because you can download unlimited numbers of tracks so you can keep changing the tracks up for the kids. Not all children's music is available on the subscription services, some you may have to purchase outright, but Pocket Tunes Deluxe plays purchased tracks from both Napster and Rhapsody as well as other on-line stores that support the Microsoft PlaysForSure format. The best bet is to give them a try, most have a free trial period. Choose the one that works best for you and your kids. Remember, you need to have Pocket Tunes Deluxe to play tracks from most on-line stores.

Take care,
Dave
Director of Quality Assurance and Customer Support @ NormSoft
Dad @ home

Let's see, let's see, what could we write about on February 14th?

Maybe a little subliminal message from the NormSoft team would help you remember this special day:


My Funny Valentine - Frank Sinatra


And I Love Her - Beatles


Love Me Tender - Elvis Presley


A Heart Needs A HomE - Richard and Linda Thompson


QuestioN - Rhett Miller


The Power of Love - Celine Dion


I'll Always Be Right There - Bryan Adams


From This MomeNt On - Shania Twain


ValentinE's Day Is Over - June Tabor And The Oyster Band


So don't forget the card, the flowers,... and above all ... the music that you could load in Pocket Tunes for your sweetheart.


- Thierry, husband, dad, French translator, Support Engineer

Feel The Beat !

Have you ever had a situation when you really wanted to listen to your favorite music from Pocket Tunes but couldn't? Maybe you just could not toss those ear buds in because you were sitting in your office at work or watching the children, and you needed to be aware of your surroundings. Well then I have the thing for you!

Zelco has developed an out-of-ear headphone called Outi which is said to conduct vibrations through your skin and cartilage. The company boasts clear, crisp audio without blocking the ear canal, and the best part is offering listeners a chance to actually feel the music. Zelco's Outi headphones run off a built in lithium battery that can be charged via USB and offer you 6 to 8 hours of listening per battery charge.

In conclusion if you are truly an audiophile, these little babies would be the great addition to your Pocket Tunes listening experience. If you can't seem to stomach the $99.00 price tag then perhaps you can justify it as a safety device!

You can find more information on the Outi by following the link below:

Zelco's website

- Matthew C , Customer Support Specialist/Audiophile, Normsoft Inc.

A Handy Solution for Audio Transfer

Our crack support team often recommends that users use a card reader to transfer music to their devices. While this can sometimes be more complex than using Windows Media Player, it has advantages for some users. Many technically savvy users find it simpler than dealing with the Windows Media Player connection. Also, transfer times are reduced.

The main disadvantages to using a card reader are that it can't be used to transfer licensed files from music stores, and that you might not have the card reader with you. There isn't any solution to the first problem but a clever product solves the problem of not having a card reader handy. SanDisk's 2GB Ultra II SD Plus USB cards fold over to expose a USB connector. You can plug it in to any USB port on your PC or Mac and copy audio files directly to the card without a separate card reader.

This product has been around for a couple of years but many of our customers may not be aware of it. If you are looking for a new SD card the USB feature doesn't add much to the cost and gives you a simple option to get your music on to your device.

- Jeff Loomis, Principal Software Engineer, NormSoft, Inc.

Subscription Music is for Music Lovers

Subscription music is music downloaded or streamed from an online service that charges a monthly fee for the privilege of listening to an unlimited amount of music. These services provide unlimited on demand music for a fixed monthly cost (that means no per track fees for listening). Admittedly subscription services aren't for the casual listener (financially speaking). For the music lover who is constantly looking for new music and already willing to purchase a CD or more a month, it makes perfect ¢ents.

Ranging in cost from $5.99 to $14.99 per month, subscription music services let you listen to as much music as you'd like on your PC, from an incredibly large collection. The more expensive packages allow you to copy your subscription music (again as much as you'd like) to compatible portable players and take the music with you, in addition to the unlimited access on your PC. Any handheld or smartphone with Pocket Tunes Deluxe v4.0 installed is compatible with these portable player subscription service packages.

Now the beauty of these subscription services is the ability to discover new music by experimentally "listening", since arbitrarily listening to any music incurs no additional cost to you. Without such unlimited access, you're relegated to discovering new music by "listening" to the radio or to thirty second samples at listening consoles available in many music stores. Now listening consoles aren't a terrible free solution for discovery through "listening" because they are an on demand listening system albeit with only partial tracks (at least the ones I've used), and they're only accessible at the store. Radio can be a reasonable free way to discover by "listening", but you often need to listen for long periods of time before (if ever) hearing that killer artist that your ears are yearning for. And what if you don't quite grasp a great track or artist on that first radio listen? Not to mention the often omitted indication of what was played by the announcer. Unfortunately there's no rewind, to get a second listen.

Subscription services don't dictate where the discovery information comes from; they just provide 24/7 full access to an immense collection of music. Let me give you an example: One day I was searching for Bruce Cockburn on a subscription service. Low and behold he had released a new album, "Life Short Call Now", that I wasn't yet aware of (my lucky day). So I immediately cued it up for playback (remember I have unlimited access to anything in the catalog) to enjoy that wonderful first listen to a new album from a favorite artist. As I'm listening, I browse to Bruce's web site to check out the album details. I notice Bruce had several guest appearances on the album, including Ani Difranco. If she's good enough for Bruce to include her on an album, I conclude she must be pretty darn good. (I know what you're thinking. "Who's this idiot that considers himself a music lover, but doesn't know who Ani Difranco is?") So I eventually do a search for Ani Difranco, who it turns out had over twenty albums in the catalog available for my listening pleasure. Now there is nothing better than discovering a kick butt artist who has tons of great stuff you've never heard yet. It's like a gift from the musical universe. At some point in the weeks to follow, I read an online biography of Anaïs Mitchell indicating that Ani Difranco had signed her to her label, Righteous Babe Records. Again I think if Ani likes her she must be pretty good, and off I go to discover yet another unknown artist (to me at least) through the unlimited access of my subscription music service.

Now from just this one discovery thread, (and I could go on and on about many others) I've listened to at least fifteen Bruce Cockburn albums, over twenty Ani Difranco albums, and two Anaïs Mitchell albums numerous times each, on my PC and on my Treo 650 with Pocket Tunes Deluxe, all for one fixed monthly price close to that of a single CD. That's the value of subscription music, unfettered discovery of new music through the experience of listening.

Some popular subscription music services are:

* Rhapsody Free Account: Access any 25 tracks per month for free (no credit card required).
* Rhapsody Unlimited: Unlimited access from any browser for $12.99 per month.
* Rhapsody To Go: Unlimited access, including on compatible portable players for $14.99 per month (works with Pocket Tunes Deluxe v4.0).
* Napster: Unlimited access from any web browser for $12.95 per month.
* Napster to Go: Unlimited access plus portability on compatible players or phones for $14.95 per month (works with Pocket Tunes Deluxe v4.0).
* Yahoo! Music Unlimited: Unlimited access from any computer for $71.88 per year, billed annually (just $5.99 per month); or $8.99 per month, billed monthly.

Related Links:
* Bruce Cockburn's web site: http://brucecockburn.com/
* "Life Short Call Now" by Bruce Cockburn: http://www.truenorthrecords.com/Albums.php?album_id=336
* Ani DiFranco's web site: http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/
* Anaïs Mitchell's web site: http://anaismitchell.com/

Mark Belliveau

VP, Marketing and Business Development

Pocket Tunes &trade - Your phone. Your music. &trade