A Clear Need

Itunes is incredibly versatile, but there are two features that it clearly lacks.  The first is hierarchal classification.  Currently, only one genera can be set for a song at a time, so that my Irish punk is outside the realm of punk which is outside the realm of rock, although each is clearly a subset of the other.  The solution is to currently create smart playlists by adding either additional tags or by grouping generas.  Instead, what should be done is allow one to put multiple generas and to stack them.  Eg.  Rock (hard rock (punk (irish punk))).  This information would be set for all songs downloaded and can be added for songs illegally downloaded.  

In this strain of adding metadata to files, written material that one can download such as periodicals or scanned books, should have the metadata that is already known included in a universally agreed set of categories the same way music is.  Much of this information is already available and is used by on-line bookstores, search engines and cross reference sites to find the article.  The only difference is that the data should be downloaded with the file in the same way that data is included with Itunes files, so that they can be easily managed at home.

Try Before You Buy

I walked out of the store with it, I paid money to the cashier for it, but I'm not really sold on it.  The permissive return policy of big-box stores gives one the option of having a free trial period with a product before you actually commit to it.  Lately, I've been doing this with digital cameras and Walmart.  The reason that I'm looking at a digital camera at all is that the one that I bought a couple of years ago is much too large to take around comfortably.  What I want is something pocket sized that I couple do macro photography with so that I can take it into the lab and take pictures through the microscope lenses.  I liked the macro setting of one, the battery of another, liked the anti-shake ability of both and disliked the low light settings of both.   The answer?  Keep buying and subsequently returning cameras until I find one that I really like.  I'm planning on doing the exact same thing with a graphics tablet and a hi-res scanner in the near future.  I don't know if those are even the products for me, but the ability to test it out in a real setting and then return it, not for any product defect, but for the fact that I just don't like it, or want to upgrade, is very appealing.