Back on August 23rd, I posted about a new service in Canada called ‘Rdio’, and I tried it out for a month. I was quite hopeful and loved (and still do) the way that I can ‘push’ music to my phone automatically as no other service I’ve found since (and I’ve tried a few) can do that.

Since I had a jailbroken iPhone – I then tried Grooveshark and honestly was quite happy with that product. I used it right up until yesterday – when I received my iPhone 4s.

The good points about Grooveshark was that the iPhone application was QUITE polished, and worked the way I wanted it to. I could keep all my files offline and not have to worry about data charges, finding them was quite easy as well as obviously they have a HUGE amount of files and music selection to choose from.

But I’ve found my newest favorite.

Slacker Personal Radio is my new favorite and the music service I’m currently subscribing to. I should mention that all these products cost roughly the same amount per month which is right around the $10 mark. I can justify paying for these legal services since well.. I can’t actually remember the last time that I purchased a CD and truthfully trying to maintain and keep a constant library of music on countless hard drives is a pain in the arse.

The advantages of slacker is it’s very impressive radio stations which play varieties of music hand picked by DJ’s … I’ve only started the service today, but I’ve already found a bunch of tunes and downloaded them for offline use to my phone (via a playlist).

It kind of sucks to have to ‘refresh’ your offline files every time you make changes – but I can deal with that as most of the time I’m going to be on wifi when I’m finding and checking out music anyhow – PLUS, when I’m home touching up photos, I’m going to just leave it on a custom radio station and then just pick the files I want anyhow to listen to.

Now if I can just figure out the best way to stream my iPhones music to my various electronic systems around the house I’d have a complete wireless home theatre system.. which would be awesome

You can read another great review here as I’m just giving you my own quick lowdown.

Why? Well, pretty simple really.. why would I bother to download, import, keep them on hard drives, etc.. when I can simply stream it for free from an online service? Grooveshark was one of the first which I really enjoyed, but I don’t even think you can get the iPhone app in Canada for it. Spotify is another one which I hear great things about – unfortunately however.. no luck for Canadians at the moment as it’s unavailable.

Enter Rdio. Firstly, it’s open to Canadians which obviously a must. Secondly, it’s got a 7 day trial to check it out – and good thing, cuz I don’t think I’d be writing this if it didn’t as I’d likely have just skipped it.

The biggest advantage of this service so far for me is it’s iPhone application. I can listen to music on the web here at my computer, and with a click of a button.. I can send that music to my iPhone, and even have it available for offline listening! Yes, that’s right.. you don’t have to be connected to the Internet to listen to it!! This is huge.

I’ve just finished syncing up a bunch of music from my browser to my iPhone and I happily enjoyed a bunch of great new songs during my drive home and over lunch hour.

After the 7-day trial to have the same syncing and features that it gives you is a $9.99 charge a month. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be using one of my rfid credit cards and purchasing the monthly plan after this week. Hell, I could sell the hard drive that I keep all my old music on and use that to pay for the monthly fees.. it really isn’t that much to have new music available every day ready to sync up (note I didn’t say download) and listen to – and the fact I can avoid having a huge library of music on my iPhone and home computer could really be a benefit.

Try it out.. let me know what you think.

The problem is, most of the times the data is spread across so many drives, duplicates are going to happen, whether I like it or not, perhaps I clicked on ‘rename’ when I wanted to simply move files over to another directory.. who knows?

In any case, I’ve had a really tough time finding the right tool – until now. CloneSpy has done the job for me, and as we speak, I’ve put my hard drive on the weight loss supplements that I don’t need to buy! I love freeware!

Head on over to CloneSpy’s homepage and download it. If you are heading out on the town tonight, and don’t want to sit in front of your computer but wouldn’t mind doing this.. that’s all the better! See what it does is create a unique ‘fingerprint’ of each file called a CRC Checksum. This fingerprint is then compared to the other fingerprints that you have in your pool. So for example – if you had all your music in a directory called c:\my music\, then you could simply choose that folder – then use the following settings on the page to scan through all your files.

Note – The first time I ran this is PROMPTED ME EVERY FILE, which is not what I wanted to do – so in the options – go into the following options to change it from prompting every time a duplicate is found (unless that’s what you want):

Change the setting so that it doesn't prompt you every time it finds a duplicate

To find out how fast it works, I just scanned almost 2000 high resolution DVD cover images in 6.5 minutes – it was able to report to me that I actually somehow ended up duplicating most of my files, so I cleared them and saved myself 4.6 gigs of space. (Sweet!)

What I also did was since personally I ended up renaming most of my files with (1) at the end, is just choose to mark the longer file names in each of the pairs, then delete it based on that. I did however REVIEW ALL THE FILES to make sure I didn’t delete ones that weren’t supposed to be.

Also a great idea to choose is to delete to a seperate folder instead of deleting to the recycle bin or delete permanently. You can change those options as well.

Choose to move to a different folder just to be on the safe side (I have it set to go to the recycle bin)

Anyhow.. very handy, and I plan on using it for both my pictures and for my music… I’m very excited about the music idea as I know I have a lot of duplicates and that’s going to save a lot of space.

http://www.facebook.com/BudLightLimeCanada?v=app_120723072752&viewas=100000140656821&ref=ts

Bud Light Lime is giving away some killer tunes just by becoming a fan (my current fav being the black eyed peas – i got a feeling)…

Here’s the song list:

• I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas
• Fire Burning – Sean Kingston
• Summer of ’69 – Bryan Adams
• Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas
• Burn It to the Ground – Nickelback
• Margaritaville – Jimmy Buffett
• Sex on fire – Kings of Leon
• Jammin’ – Bob Marley
• Poker Face – Lady Gaga
• It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere – Alan Jackson

I’ll give you the brief rundown of the day and night..

12:30 pm – buying some snacks, getting some cash.. and trying to make it on time to the bus at the St. Pius X parking lot.

12:50 pm – forgot to buy a 6 pack of beer.. really regretting this as we are on the UPEI Panther bus and everyone else seems to be drinking.

1:20 pm – on our way to Moncton.. bus driver has AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” CRANKED on the radio.. really regretting not having any beer

2:40 pm – our bus driver is passing EVERYONE.. starting to think he’s suicidal.. but the rest of the bus seems to be cheering.. I will cheer too!

3:00 pm – why does Moncton have construction all over the main roads to get there? Oh well.. AC/DC still cranked on the radio and we’re almost there. Food is now all gone. Still need beer.

3:30 pm – our bus is going through the crowds to the chartered areas.. people are cheering and staring at our bus.. I think they actually think we’re all UPEI Panthers.

4:00 pm – we’re here and ready to Rock! Glad we brought sneakers.. where are those beer tents?

4:30 pm – Victory is mine! Liz and I wandering all over the grounds.. first purchase of 6 beer tickets for $40.. *sigh*

4:45 pm – Very cool.. we walk through the beer area gates and there are 2 people holding a cooler ready to sell us beer.. at first I had no idea what was going on, but realize soon that this is part of the service. Definitely a lot different than Aerosmith.. no waiting at all.

6:00 pm – Getting a good buzz on.. we’re sitting in the beer area grass, realizing I’ve paid over $80 for 12 beers.. and they are going down wonderfully. Some odd characters are around including an overweight guy in a pink tank top with ‘say no to crack’ on the back with an arrow.. I’ll let you guess which way it was pointed. (I hope he lost a bet..)

6:30 pm – “The Answer” goes on.. they’re alright.. never heard of em.. don’t care.. still drinking and having fun in the sun.. glad I wore sunscreen.. it’s BEAUTIFUL!

7:30 pm – “Anvil” plays a heavy and long set.. I think I told Liz about 30 times we now have to watch the movie about their life… see info on it at http://www.anvilthemovie.com/.

8:30 pm – Myself and Liz (with good buzzes at this point) decide to get in closer to the action for the big show… we leave the beer area and head to the stage…. or at least attempt on getting as close as possible. Liz agrees.. but I think this is partly due to her good buzz.. This video here shows where we were about sitting.. except a lot closer.

9:00 pm – They keep playing jazz music while we’re waiting.. seems like forever..

9:10 pm – Best entrance to a band ever (see it here!).. they have this cartoon-ish like train ride on the screens where Angus is making it go faster and faster.. finally.. BOOM!!! Fireworks go off, and the screens on stage split to reveal a huge train with AC/DC on the side.. and they start playing.. BEST.. ENTRANCE.. EVER! So pumped!

9:50 pm – Near get in fight with two or three drunk guys behind me pushing me into Liz and into a lady next to me.. thankfully.. nothing thrown.. they go ahead of us  (this is a good thing I realize)

11:20 pm – Highway to Hell plays as part of the encore.. and they’re off..but..

11:30 pm – Fireworks! Right off the side of the stage.. very cool way to finalize the night.. awesome.

11:35 pm – We look back at a SEA of people all trying to leave..

11:45 pm – Get back to the bus.. finally off our feet.. glad we wore sneakers.. sleepy..

3:00 am – Get back to my car after a long ride and dozing in and out the whole way.

Great video of the entrance:

Entrance and Thunderstruck.. better audio

Thanks to AC/DC, Trius, and the city of Moncton for one hell of an experience.

Personally this is the second time I’ve seen them as I watched them indoors at the Calgary Sattledome way back in .. um.. I think 1996? They were awesome then.. so awesome that my brother flew out to see them at the time from Halifax.. (he says it was to see me.. but yeah.. I don’t think so).

So the bus leaves at 1pm or so.. and I’ll likely have a few beers or something before hand.. at least I think.. I certainly don’t want to ‘bust the bladder’ before I get there.. good god I hope it’s well organized.. I’ll make sure to write a post when I get back on it. It cost me $100 to take the bus for the two of us.. but I’m glad we’re doing that.. we’ll get a lot closer to the action this way, and I don’t have to worry about sleeping in the vibe, something that will make a car insurance claim.. heh, or the hellish traffic that will likely ensue trying to get out and back to the Island! It’s going to be nuts! Any guesses as to how long it’ll take to get over there and back? I’m guessing way over 2 hours.

I’m bringing hardly anything.. cash.. ID.. sunglasses It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.. for those about to rock.. “WE SALUTE YOU!”

Personally.. I like it..