This (pretty awesome) article I wrote last year needed updating. So I just updated it. (Yes, the images are fixed, finally.)

For those curious whether I still use this method for managing my music, I do not. I no longer use an iPod Classic — and I’m fully in the iTunes Match camp now, with no full local copy of my music collection on any computer or device. Further, I’m incredibly excited for iTunes Radio, when it launches later this year.

Speaking of TidBITS, I'm proud to announce my first article for this respected operation has been published. It's a review of Duolingo:

Learning a new language from scratch is a massive undertaking: getting started with basic words and phrases is a common approach, but leaping beyond these ordinary words to a solid understanding of grammar and pronunciation requires dedication and a lot of practice, particularly for adults. This is often so much to ask that the new language is quickly set aside, turning something that should be a fun and rewarding challenge into a boring chore that’s easy to put off.

Duolingo is a free Web site and app designed to solve this problem.

Bonus points for my first podcast appearance, too! (Big week.)

Written by the one and only Glenn Fleishman for TidBITS. If you're curious about the new Wi-Fi specification, this will (probably) answer any questions you have. There's a lot of technical jargon involved, though.

If you've got an invite to the new Google Maps, these videos will help you right away. If you haven't yet got an invite, it's worth checking these videos out to see the future of maps.

Great cut, from the recently launched Verge Video website.

A summary? Nothing huge happened, but (as usual), Google gave away hardware to every attendee which cost more than the ticket to attend. I have to wonder if doing that every year attracts “Google fans” rather than Google developers. This year it was a Chromebook Pixel ($1,299) for a $900 ticket.

As a platform, Android is quite poor by a surprisingly large number of metrics: New version uptake statistics are very slow — which isn’t helped by carriers. The paid app business on Android is generally considered bleak, too — even more so when directly compared to iOS.

(And remember that Google makes four times more money from iOS than Android.)

Bill management and reminder software will never be sexy, but the folks behind Chronicle are doing all they can to make it useful. I reviewed the software suite for The Industry.

If you’ve never used any kind of software to remind you about due bills (I hadn’t before using Chronicle), you could do worse than starting here.

This is a simple little trick that fixes a major annoyance for me. Most websites using Typekit fonts take a second or so longer to load — and before they’re fully loaded, any underlined areas show up incorrectly for moment.

It’s hard to notice on the desktop, but much more obvious on mobile. This simple piece of CSS code hides all text that’s using a Typekit font (so all text on Chasing Perfection), until the typeface is loaded.

The specific CSS code I added to my CSS here is as follows:

.wf-loading {
    visibility: hidden;
}
.wf-active {
    visibility: visible;
}

Check out Typekit’s guide before trying this on your own site, but it’s fairly simple to implement and solves a little annoyance.

I wrote a pretty great review of Sleevenote for iOS for The Industry, even if I do say so myself.

In short, this is an app for music lovers who really care deeply about their collection. The interface is noteworthy: with a completely black background and no UI chrome at all, the artwork of your albums becomes the interface. I'm a big fan.

(If you read Chasing Perfection because you're an audiophile like myself, be sure to read on to find out how I use Sleevenote on my iOS devices. I use it with iTunes Match in a pretty clever way.)

Volume 1 of the the J.D. Power and Associates 2013 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Study was released this week, showing Apple at the top of the pile both in overall ranking and significantly outpacing competitors in terms of overall quality. Apple's iPad scored 836 on a 1,000-point scale of owner satisfaction and an industry-best five out of five on the J.D. Power Circle Ratings for Consumers, rating it "among the best" for tablets, a descriptor given to no other manufacturer.

Not bad.

Can’t say I disagree.

Sponsoring Daring Fireball must be a pretty tough pill for Microsoft to swallow.

I bet sponsoring Daring Fireball to promote iOS cloud services is even tougher.

Respect to Microsoft for appropriately sponsoring to push their product, though. It looks pretty solid to me.