For some ungodly reason Apple has decided  iTunes requires Mac OS 10.4.7 to run. I currently run 10.4.4.

iTunes loaded fine yesterday. Now I can’t even open it without upgrading my entire freaking OS.

Last time I attempted this upgrade it fried my hard drive.

Really, I had to install a new one and lost gigs of data, including thousands of photos I will never get back. And if you tell me “Ravi, you should have backed up your shit” I’ll reach out and slap you across the face…twice….at least.

Whoever said Mac’s “just work” and never cause problems have never owned one.

For the past year or so, I’ve had this consistently and mildly annoying, yet sometimes debilitating affliction. It has been a real pain in the neck; literally. You see, I work in a place where you are never more than 5 feet away from a computer. It is your umbilical cord to the mother-ship. It is your best friend. Going computer-less for a day is like getting soft-serve without the sprinkles. It just isn’t right.

Personally, I like to think that my computer loves me as much as I love her. She’s a bit codependent and that’s ok by me. She keeps me mildly entertained and helps me get stuff done. In fact, I have such a good relationship with my computer that I thought it would be a brilliant idea to add another one to my “family” at work. So for the past year or so, I had a laptop and desktop computer sitting right next to each other. I’d read e-mail on one and write documents on the other. Brilliant! I am now twice as productive. Or so I thought.

You see, the monitor for my desktop was about a foot above my laptop. Unbeknownst to me, my head would be doing a quick back-and-forth between the two a couple thousand times a day. I hardly noticed. I only noticed the flurry of emails I could now produce. With twice the screen real-state, my ability to absorb the stunning gossip content on MSN during my lunch had now doubled. I was enthralled.

However, about six months ago, I developed a terrible pain in my neck. I thought it was caused by just using my laptop too much. I cut back on my laptop use and that seemed to help a bit, but the problem persisted on and off.

After coming back from my month away from work (and computers) last Sunday, I was completely healthy and pain-free. I was stunned, however, when on Wednesday I woke up to an incredibly sore neck. My range of motion was 90 degrees (not 180!). The pain got worse on Thursday.

I then turned to my best friend, my computer, for the answer. Turns out, one of the common causes of “Tech Neck,” (no, it’s not contagious) is the exact setup I have been using at work for the past year!

So on Friday I “broke-up” with my second machine, and settled in for a day of 50% productivity. Lo and behold, my neck actually felt fine most of the day. Sticking with this approach the past few days, I’ve seen rapid improvement in my condition. I can’t tell you how many hours of lost sleep and frustration I’ve had to tolerate with my neck issue. I’m just glad I caught the cause before it did irreparable damage.

Lesson learned. Take the time and spare no expense to make your workplace setup as perfect for your body as you can. There are a lot of resources online about workplace ergonomics. Read up!

It really does pay off to take some time (and spend some money) to get your computer/office layout dialed in. Mine is very minimal, but with the addition of a brand new chair yesterday (a $65 floor display model from Office Depot), is just about perfect! The only thing I am waiting to upgrade…is my computer. I really want this and this. Yes Gavin and Richard, I am very very envious.

I’ve had this setup for the past few months and using the computer is so much more enjoyable. My previous setup was just wrong….lighting was poor, table was always cluttered, wires all over the place, bad Feng Shui. Now I have:

Think your computer setup beats this? Not a chance!

No, I’m not playing XBOX, just fiddling around with my blog template. Even though Cutline is the best Wordpress theme in the Galaxy, I am having some fun (and frustration) trying to get it just the way I want it.

It is about 50% of the way there. Unfortunately, my knowledge of CSS/PHP is super-low and I have hit a roadblock. I can’t figure out how to:

1. Make the entire center portion of the page (header, body text area and sidebar) have a white background. There is a 50 pixel gap between my posts and the header I can’t close!
2. Add a little more buffer space between the body text in the white area and the background.
3. Add a thin black border and drop shadow to the entire white area to further set it apart from the background.

If you happen to know how to do any of these things….pls let me know!

Video: Office Live - Power Lunch

Microsoft Office Live offers free domain names and web hosting, and much more. A great offer for small businesses out there. Check out the video to hear what CNBC has to say about it.

Technology is great. Gadgets and software help us to get more done in less time. Most people spend more time at home in front of their computer than their TV. People relax with technology (playing XBox or listening to an iPod) get work done with technology (smartphones and laptops) and goof off with technology (MySpace anyone?).

Some of us have really tricked ourselves out with all the latest stuff. At home I use a bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse, smartphone for mobile email, laptop and desktop computers, iPod and surely some other stuff I am forgetting.

I’ve been a regular pandora listener for the past 3-4 months. I have a daily habit. Try it out at http://www.pandora.com and get hooked yourself! Pandora is the brainchild of Tim Westergren, who I got to meet today at Seattle’s EMP. Tim knows music, having spent about 10 years as a rock musician, experiencing life on the road firsthand, living out of a van and travelling the west coast playing gigs where he could find them. He also studied computer acoustics at Standford while an undergrad, and spent some time as a movie score composer (or trying to be one that is!)…experiencing the music industry from multiple perspectives. During the discussion today, Tim talked a bit about his background, the history of Pandora and spent quite a long time taking questions from the other pandora listeners who came out to put in their own personal feature requests.

This meetup is one stop on a nationwide roadtrip Tim is making to informally connect with Pandora listeners. Tim mentioned that one of his first stops in New York City a couple months ago included a whopping 2 people meeting him at a cafe. Today in Seattle he packed an auditorium of the EMP with 150 people! Keep in mind, the meetup was only publicized in a single entry on the pandora blog. Each person who attended also got an e-mail reply by Tim himself. What started out as an informal meet and greet tour is turning into one of the best and least expensive marketing campaigns they could have ever imagined!

As background, Pandora came about as a sideproject, with the original idea being the platform Pandora sits on, the Music Genome Project. This project involves categorization of songs by a taxonomy that captures their essential qualities. The key to the taxonomy, is that each of the 400,000 songs (and growing) in the Pandora database are assessed manually by a trained musician. Each assessment takes about 20 minutes and Pandora has now grown to include over 40 musicians helping to grow what they call “The Genome.”

While the original vision for the project was to create the Music Genome and use it to help e/retailers identify music to cross sell to their customers (think Amazon’s referral engine only much much better), an early attempt at creating a webcast service was soo successful that it has now become the primary business. I highly recommend checking it out. Tim’s vision is to utlimately create a “middle class for musicians” by making more obscure/independent artists more apparent to the masses as a result of the Music Genome and the cross-referencing it enables. Think of it this way, if you are a big Police fan, Pandora will play songs that are similar in “spirit”, including more obscure artists you may have never otherwise discovered.

Some other interesting stats thrown about at the meetup:

• Pandora has over 2 million listeners
• Pandora has over 23 million radio stations created by listeners
• Viral from the get-go: the original pandora.com service was opened to 200 friends and family, the website was password protected so only these people could access it. Within a few days, over 5000 people were accessing the service! This was the original sign that streaming audio was really something they should pay attention to!
• 10% of pandora sessions result in someone buying music using the links to purchase on Amazon.com or iTunes! This conversion rate is incredibly high.
• Pandora makes about 5% per purchase their listeners make on Amazon or iTunes.
• Currently about 70% of their indexed songs are from popular artists, 30% are from lesser-known or indepedent musicians.
• Currently about 70% of incoming songs they are in the process of indexing are from lesser-known or independent musicians!
• 400K songs are currently indexed as part of the music genome project….this is growing every day
• Pandora is funded through a cut of purchased songs, advertisements on their homepage, and use of their Music Genome Project platform by eTailers (Amazon was specifically mentioned) to help cross sell music to their shoppers.
• They currently have 70 employees, and are growing!
• During the dot-com-bust they had to stop paying salaries to keep the business going (they have since made up for that!)

I love Pandora because it plays great music, and helps me discover bands I otherwise would have never known existed. Is there really any better feeling than discovering a cool new song or band? After hearing Tim speak, it is also inspiring to see these guys stick it through for over 6 years since founding the company, pushing through 1) the dot com bust and 2) the flood of music related startups (think Napster et al) and coming out on the other side a success.