Friday was Halloween and possibly the sickest thing came before my eyes…

To be REALLY honest, I was terrified, petrified, sickified and whatever fied have you – this THING was scary. It had blood splatter all over the apron, the face looked as though it was made out of FRIED SKIN, the face was painted BLACK (and no, I'm not trying to be a colour-ist here) – and if that's not enough, it's got rubber gloves, a strange walk and voice… NOT exactly the coolest looking thing on the face of this planet.

It turned out to be Moe Nasrul – yes, the dude who goes on air telling you about traffic conditions on the station. This man really went all out to get the who make up done. Apparently it was black face paint and he got some form of wax to create his mask…

Okay, enough of Halloween costumes and such – so on Halloween night, I decided not to freak myself out no more – so I headed to the Curve to checkout the Ice Bar… the place was AWESOME! Freaking -15 degrees in the heart of Petaling Jaya – and trust me, you won't be able to last 1 minute in there without a jacket – my ears were freezing, so were my cheeks (and I'm talking about my face cheeks – the other one was well padded) – it came to a point where it started HURTING!

Then of course there were the drinks, it was served in LITERAL ICE CUPS! Since it was -15 in there, nothing made out of ice would melt… and so the cups lasted as long as we were in there… Great experience but I wouldn't stay any longer than 10 minutes in there – now I know how it feels to be in the North Pole! I feel so blessed to be living in a country with such 'BEAUTIFUL' weather… it could be super warm at times but it sure beats the cold that would freeze and hurt your cheeks!

Many many many moons ago, Sony came up with an idea...

Hey! Let's create a feature which integrates with our latest Mp3 Walkman! When a user is playing a specific song, wack a button (we shall name it "Artist Link") and voila, all songs in the mp3 player that's related to that song he / she is listening to will be put in a playlist for him / her to enjoy!

Absolutely GREAT idea. It was implemented to some of their mp3 players - problem was, many people hated Sony's now debunked, exterminated, deleted, thrown away, cast to the other end of the world software - SonicStage. This was their iTunes competitor. A software that marriages their mp3 player with the music on the user's PC. Little by little, their market share got eaten away by Apple and so Sony decided to listen to their market, throw away the crappy software and let users either drag and drop or use Microsoft's Windows Media Player which is light years away from their original SonicStage software - great move BUT "Artist Link" was exterminated along with the software.

Many many moons later today...

Apple computers decided to implement something similar... in fact extremely alike - the name... GENIUS.

If you own one of Apple's latest Mp3 players, that includes the latest generation of the iPod Touch (or if you've got a 1st Gen iPod touch with it's software updated to version 2.0+), iPod Nano etc., you'd notice this new "Genius" logo - similar to the one above.

Every single time you play a song, just wack it - and VOILA! Genius goes through your entire library on your iPod or computer (if you're using Genius in iTunes 8) and display a list of songs that would match the similar genre / artist you're listening to.

I've found this to be one of the coolest things ever! I've got such a massive library of music that I would probably listen to about 20-30% of the music I have leaving most of it forgotten. This is where Genius brings everything back to life, helping me pick from the entire library - bringing back long lost favourite tunes... absolutely GENIUS.

So how does it work you ask?

• Load all your favourite music to your iTunes 8
• iTunes 8 will send out information about the kind of music you have in your computer and retrieve matching information for each of your songs
  
• Have them saved in a database that's both in your iPod & computer
  
• Next time you are listening to something, just wack the "Genius" button and voila, it gets into the database and finds music in your computer that matches what you're listening to
• Done!
  

The best part of all of this is you DON'T NEED to own an iPod. Genius works even in standalone iTunes mode. Just load the songs and away you go!

Once again, I must say, congratulations Apple... you've excelled in areas where others failed... now where's my free iPod touch? :)