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NBC Universal is looking to not renew its contact with Apple in regards to its Television content this December. Last season I purchased full seasons of Lost, Heroes, The Office, Studio 60 and Battlestar Galactica, mostly all NBC shows, from iTunes. I canceled cable and even bought an AppleTV. So you can expect, I’m a little pissed about this. If NBC wants more money, they are in ever right to ask for it and take it somewhere else if they are not happy. But if they pull from iTunes, I’ll have to resort to torrents for these files now. So Universal, since you’re so interested in dollar figures, what’s better…$1.99 of my money in your pocket or losing the war on piracy? When will companies learn that downloading shows via bitorrent isn’t about stealing, its about convenience. And I would gladly pay $1.99 an episode for convenience, especially with all the promising upcoming shows this season.

Beta 2 of Opera Mini 2 was released yesterday with a nice list of enhancements:

• Added encryption
• Added multi search, with shortcut #+9
• Added create search from form field
• Added landscape mode, shortcut #+*
• Added support for small anti-aliased bitmap fonts
• Added content folding
• Simplified setup process
• Improved image quality
• Improved fit to width mode rendering
• Simplified settings page
• Added native BlackBerry menu
• Allow BlackBerry to accept the EULA via the menu.
• Fixed decoding of images that were skipped when partially above the window
• Added clock adjustment setting
• Changing the font size via settings now clears the document cache
• Now saves full screen mode between sessions
• Dialogs are now displayed with round corners and alpha channel overlay windows
• Delayed randomess gathering for secure connections until first real page request

What caught my eye the most was the improvements made to its Blackberry support. I had tried beta 1 and was pretty unimpressed. It was clumsy, slow and hard to use so I deleted. With specific support for Blackberry devices, I decided to load up beta 2 on my BB Pearl and give it another chance.

Blackberry Changes
Right off the bat I was loving the changes. It now behaves like any Blackberry app should. The Menu button actually brings up the menu!! Previously you had to use the QW and OP buttons to access the menus. It was frustrating at best. They did a great job of making use of the Menu, Back and Trackball in the new version.

Landscape mode
As I segway from the changes for Blackberry devices, the 2nd change I was most excited about was the landscape mode. As soon as I loaded up the8thsign.com in Opera, I was hitting #+* every way I could. Nothing I did would get landscape mode to work. I must have spend 15mins using every possible key combination and still nothing. Looked under settings and no Landscape mode listed there either. So it looks like it its not enabled on Blackberry’s for some reason. Disappointing.

Other Features
Some of the nicer new features include using the 2-3-6-8 buttons to navigate around the webpage. This may have been in beta 1 but I don’t remember it being this easy or fun to navigate. When moving side to side, its even smart enough to stop at edges of text and pictures even if its only a few pixels away. Another feature I’ve noticed is that text will be reformatted to fit your screen, even when viewing the full page and zoomed in.

Most transitions are now made with a iPhone like slide effect. In most places its very smooth but gets choppy when zooming out of a page.

Also new to this version is a OS X like hud for shortcuts and info. To see what I’m talking about, hold down the * or # buttons for a few seconds. They also use this new interface for displaying link information.

Conclusion
Beta 2 is a HUGE improvement for Opera Mini 4, especially on Blackberry Devices. Why they didn’t include landscape mode on Blackberries puzzles me but hopefully it will show up in beta 3. Getting around webpages is fast and fun. I just wish there was some way you could set it as your default browser but RIM doesn’t allow that. Hopefully in BB OS 4.3. My only complaint is the full screen view looks very distorted. It maybe due to the small screen size but the iPhones full screen mode looks amazing. If you have a Blackberry, download the beta and check it out. You can get it for free by going to http://mini.opera.com/beta from your phone.

When a lead singer goes off to do a solo album, its pretty much a death-toll for the band. For Rilo Kiley it seems to be just what the band needed. After 3 years since their last album, they are back with what is the Album of the Year for me. Under The Blacklight is a grownup Rilo Kiley who have taken their sound to the next level. With what is sure to cause some tension with long time fans, Under The Blacklight mixes decades of styles to Rilo Kiley’s indie sound. The first cry is going to be “sell out” as this is the first album signed to major label Warner Bros. but anyone who actually knows, their last album More Adventurous was distributed by Warner Bros also.

Every song on the album is distinctive and rememberable. The first single off the album is the sexy and sulty “The Monkeymaker” which is my current favorite. The title track “Under The Blacklight” is a contemporary Kay Hanley-esqe song that allows Jenny to really show off her voice. “Dreamworld” is dreamy mashed-duet between Lewis and Sennett. Another favorite of mine is the ska influenced To Catch a Predator anthem “15″ which Jenny’s cracking voice leaves you with impure thoughts. The last track “Give a Little Love” is a perfect ending track that gives us a little 80’s love.

Track Listing:

1. “Silver Lining”
2. “Close Call”
3. “The Moneymaker”
4. “Breakin’ Up”
5. “Under The Blacklight”
6. “Dreamworld”
7. “Dejalo”
8. “15″
9. “Smoke Detector”
10. “The Angels Hung Around”
11. “Give A Little Love”

I hate to make this comparison, but this feels very similar to what My Chemical Romance did with there experimental album The Black Parade. Each song is new and fresh. You can tell band is having fun playing all these songs. Jenny really shows off her vocal talents by mixing up different styles. There is something for everyone here, even die-hard fans who feel they sold-out. This is easily the Album of the Year in my eyes and 2008 is going to be the year of Rilo Kiley.

I finally picked up iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 this weekend after Apple’s announcement last week. I’ve been waiting for iLife ‘08 since Macworld as I use iPhoto on a daily basis and Garageband when I record my podcast. iDVD and iWeb are pretty useless to me but iMovie was something I always wanted to get into but never did. Mostly due to not having a video camera. iWork on the other hand i rarely use and really have no idea why I picked it up but I did anyways.

First thing I did was try out iPhoto for obvious reasons. Now mind you, I never really “got” iPhoto but in the past 8 months I’ve gotten use to it. The first thing you notice is that Events now replace rolls. I think this will actually work out for me in the long run. My favorite upgrade so far is the keyword, no more drag and dropping. It has a more traditional tagging interface now which i love. I’ve only really played with the new iPhoto for a little bit so far and its mostly due to the fact it now runs like shit on my Macbook. As I write this I am rebuilding all the thumbnails, database and permissions hoping it will help. When scrolling and editing pictures, the CPU jumps to 100% and everything crawls. Anyone else having the same issues?

The other iLife apps I haven’t played with too much yet. iWork I’ll probably almost never use due to Google Apps but I have it if i need it.