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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.

Bandwagon, the iTunes backup program, has finally released their version of software that supports backup to an FTP server. They have had a version that supported Amazon’s S3 service for a couple months now but now you can backup to any FTP server including another computer on your local network. I tested it last night by backing up my iTunes music to a Buffalo Linkstation I have on my LAN. The 40 gigs of data took about 2 hours to backup so speed was good. I’m probably going to try a backup to my Dreamhost site soon but thats going to take some time. Everything worked great except the app was always at 100% CPU usage when it was running. The program is in beta so bugs are expected. For a first release tho, it offers a great way to backup your iTunes library locally or offsite.

Also they are offering a free 6 months to any blogger who posts about the release. Just make a post, not unlike this one, and post a trackback to the post on their blog and you will get a code good for a 6 months free.

No, thats not the answer after a drunken night of co-ed naked Clue, its the name of my new website and podcast covering the weekly comic books. As you may know from some of my blog posts, I recently got back to into comics a few months ago and now I’ll be producing a weekly podcast covering my view of the weeks comics from the eyes of a new comic reader. Bare with me as I try to get everything working smoothly. I hope to polish my public speaking skills, get more comfortable working in Garageband, and get on a solid release schedule, but the first episode is up and you subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or just stream it from the webpage.

Bandwagon is offering free 1 year subscriptions to bloggers who blog about there service before Feb 22th. Bandwagon is an online backup for iTunes. Currently I’m using Mp3tunes.com to backup my iTunes but I’ve been running into some problems with them. First off they just backup musics and not other media files where as Bandwagon backs up everything. Music, TV Shows, Music and even games. Also from the screenshots the application looks great. Mp3tune’s Oboe Sync is for a better word, lacking. They are still working on a pricing scheme but so far I think I maybe be replacing Mp3tunes very soon.

Btw, Bandwagon is Mac only.

If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of time trying to keep your music collection backed up. If your library is relatively small, you can use iTunes 7’s built-in backup to burn to DVD. Thats all fine and dandy unless you have a large collection. In my case I need to keep my iTunes library on an external hard drive due to my Macbook’s hard drive being too small to support it. This poses a problem as now I need an additional external hard drive just to back up my music. I would buy an iPod and keep everything sync’d to there but I’m waiting for the 120GB Widescreen video before taking that route.

This is were Mp3tunes.com comes in. They are now offering unlimited storage for free accounts. This means I can sync my entire iTunes music library and now have it backed up to an offsite server for free. Plus I can sync my library with other computers and stream my entire library wherever I have an internet connection.

You use a program called Oboe Sync that scans your collection and will only uploads what has been added or changed. There is a Oboe Sync client for Windows, Mac and Linux so no one is left out. There are also plugins for iTunes, Mac and PC, and Winamp that allows streaming of your locker. In the case of the iTunes plugin, you see your locker show up under the Shared music source list. Files are streamed at 128kbps so its CD quality.

While everything sounds perfect. There are some caveats:

1) It only sync’s music, no video files so any iTunes TV shows or Movies you have, you still need to back those up on your own. It will sync DRM’d music tho.
2) Syncing takes along time. This is due to your internet connection. Upload speeds tend to be a lot slower than download. For a 42GB library, I’ve been syncing for about a week on and off.
3) The Obeo plugin for iTunes (Mac) is not Universal binary yet.
4) All new free accounts do not have unlimited storage right away. They are adding the unlimited storage to free accounts in waves. It took me about a week after I signed up before my account was converted to unlimited.

If you’re looking for a way to backup your music collection, look no father. The price is right, free, and you have the added bonus of being able to stream your music anywhere and keep multiple computers sync’d with the same library.

[Sign up now]

January - started using Mac OS X

February - built dedicated computer to run Mac OS X on

March - Starting using iTunes to manager my media

April - stopped using Bloglines, switched from Exchange to Google Mail and Google Calendar, bought a Jimi wallet

May - switched Layout, Skype is free for the rest of the year, started a new job, Macbook’s released, went to grand opening of Apple 5th Ave store, bought my Macbook

June - joined valleyshwag, MC360 released for XBMC, bought a Nintendo DS Lite, canceled my Final Fantasy XI account after 3 years

July - switched to Flock, Macbook got hit with discoloration, started running using the Nike+iPod kit, Macbook Random Reboots started

August - switched from del.icio.us to Shadows, started using OpenDNS, got hard to find Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright for the DS, new mc chris and Evanescence albums, bought the Timbuk2 blogger bag

September - started new full-time job, fall TV season starts, bought a Xbox360 after Guitar Hero 2 is announced with new controller, canceled my Myspace account

October - got tickets for macworld 2007, Xbox360 troubles, 300 trailer, Macbook RSS fixed, bought my first Blackberry, my Xbox360 has its own blog

November - interviewed for MacNewsWorld, Gears of War, Guitar Hero II and Elite Beat Agents all released on same day, turned 28, XBL Video Marketplace released, subscribed to Netflix and Gamefly, bought an HD DVD

December - Geekdrome dead, started reading comics again, finally found out what all the hype about Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars and Greys Anatomy was all about

Connect360 was just updated today to support Video streaming. Connect360 allows Music, Picture and now Video access from your Mac to your Xbox 360. It will scan your iTunes and iPhoto libraries and share them to your Xbox 360 over the network. I love this program and is a must have for any Mac and Xbox 360 owner. Version 2.8 just added streaming Video support that was added to the Xbox 360 in the Fall Dashboard update. After you install the new version and start the service, it will index your “Movies” folder . Right now its only WMV support as thats all the Xbox 360 supports but I’m hoping they will find a way to support transcoding mpeg4 files somehow.

[Trial Download]