Online Music Recorder
Online Music Recorder is a web service brought to you by the team that also created the Online TV Recorder web application. The music service basically records songs from Internet radio stations for you which you can download once they are available. Due to legal concerns you can only download songs that have been recorded since you joined the service and actively stated that you want them to record songs for you.
This means that you create a large library of songs over time. Hundreds of songs are added daily to the list of recorded songs which are kept for an infinite amount of time. The music that you download from Online Music Recorder is encrypted and you need a special software that decrypts the music using your username and password that you use when logging into the website.
DRM Free Music from iTunes hides account info
Many users were quite happy when Apple announced that they would be selling drm free music at their iTunes online store. It would finally be possible to make one purchase and be able to play the music in your car, mp3 player, computer and other devices. Prices for the drm free music were set higher than for music with drm which did not get the bad feedback that I expected it to get.
CD-Wow to pay £41m to British record companies
CD-Wow is a online CD, DVD and games shop that operates from Hong Kong. They ship free of charge worldwide and offer some of the lowest prices in the business. They achieve this by (legally) buying the media in countries like Hong Kong and selling them to Europeans and Americans who are happy to pay a lower price for the media while still being able to enjoy the English version of a CD, DVD or game.
CD-Wow for instance was the third largest online CD retailer in Great Britain in 2005 after Amazon and Play. The companies that produce the media sure love globalisation when it means that they can produce their goods in a country like China for a fraction of the costs that it would cost them in a European country or in America.
Youloud Podcast Directory
It seems to me that Podcasts are popular amongst a certain (geeky) user group but ignored by the rest of the Internet. Honestly, when was the last time that you have listened to a Podcast ? I have to admit that I'm also not listening to Podcasts mainly because the lack of time but also because of the difficulty to find Podcasts that are interesting enough.
Youloud tries to make at least the second concern irrelevant. It lists a lot of Podcasts in their directory offering features, newest, most popular and top favorite Podcasts.
Interactive Cinema Game
Here is something that I found on Youtube and thought that it looked incredibly entertaining. We all know the drill that we are forced to watch dozens of advertisements in cinemas before the movies start which becomes increasingly boring if you go to the cinemas regularly. The title of the video is Human Joysticks (NewsBreaker Live interactive cinema game) which describes exactly what this is all about. Take some motion sensing cameras, a breakout video game, a big screen and an enthusiastic crowd and you are about to witness the funniest breakout game of all times.
Ways to get the Coke Code for iTunes downloads
I think it is really fascinating that Coca Cola is doing another major promotion in Europe teaming up once again with iTunes and giving away 2 billion songs on iTunes along with other goodies such as tickets to concerts and iPods for codes that can be found in Coca Cola bottles. You had to use four codes to be able to download one song from iTunes in the last promotion and the new one will surely use the system as well. It should be noted that only selected songs could be downloaded in the last promotion.
Vidipedia a video encyclopedia
After introducing Teachertube just a few days earlier I received an email pointing me to Vidipedia which is a video encyclopedia, basically Wikipedia with Videos. The principle is of course the same. You search for a phrase or browse a category on Vidipedia and one or more results are shown on the next page. If a single result exists it will be shown in video player mode which loads and plays the video automatically.
My Vpod TV Video Publishing on Demand
When I first saw the Vpod.tv homepage I thought I was seeing a Joost light version on the web. A fullscreen video of the infamous nunchuck guy was shown followed by several others. A menu would appear when I moved the mouse cursor over the lower region of the website showing the next videos on line and giving me some options to switch channels, skip videos and to open a secondary menu with more options.
Disclose.tv X-Files sharing community
If you like to think about the unexplainable, the mysterious, the paranormal you are one of the users who might find Disclose.tv very interesting. Like Mulder and Scully from X-Files you can delve into this site and take a look at the videos that they offer. On the technical site Disclose.tv is a pretty good Youtube clone serving only their niche. The site does offer videos and pictures as well as a forum and other ways to communicate with the community. The biggest video category so far is the Aliens & Ufology category with 234 videos followed by Paranormal with 80 videos and Spirituality with 31.
Pandora stopped International Streaming
Pandora.com made the decision to stop streaming music to users who are not living in the United States. To be able to do this they implemented a script that checks the IP address of every user connecting to the server and if that IP happens to be located outside of the United Stats of America you will not be able to connect to the streaming client anymore. Pandora already updated their FAQ section to reflect this changes, here is what the entry said:
Mix Audio Files with Mixere
Mixere is a great open-source audio application that lets you mix different audio tracks. It supports many formats including mp3, ogg and wav and can be used at parties for instance to mix the music live. It is possible to fade in, fade out of tracks, loop and auto-trigger audio and change the volume of the audio on the fly. All songs are loaded right into the main interface of Mixere with each audio file filling one track in the software. Any number of audio files can be then played simultaneously as well limited only by the operating system and sound device.
Find Similar Songs with Audiobaba
Music recommendation services like Audiobaba exist for a while now. Some like Pandora search and stream music using Internet radio, others like Musicovery use a interactive website to play music of a certain period in time. Both are great services and I'm still using them from time to time to find new songs and artists that I never heard of before. I used to get my recommendations from terrestrial radio before but since they began to only play the same top 100 songs over and over again I had to shift my attention to a new medium that was better suited to discover new music.
09 F9 11 02 T-Shirt
Did you know that you could get into really big trouble if you post the code 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 on your website ? It is very likely that a takedown notice will be send to the owner of the website as soon as the RIAA, the AACS or some of their lawyers find your website. You might be wondering why they are making such a big deal about this code which only some users might identify as the code to rule them all.. aka the processing key that unlocks the content of every HD-DVD available up to this point.
Download free Audiobooks from these Internet resources
Audiobooks become increasingly popular and there are many pay sites that offer downloads of Audiobooks after you paid for them. It is however possible to download free Audiobooks from various sites from the Internet. The main problem with finding those free sites is that many pay sites offer free samples of the Audiobooks as well but you have to pay when you want to listen to the complete book.
Move Winamp completely into System Tray
I like to move many applications that are currently running in the background into the system tray instead of the task bar to avoid that the task bar gets cluttered with applications that I do not need to access. One of the programs that I like in the system tray is Winamp. I listen to Internet radio most of the time which means I just let it play all day long without having to load playlists or song into Winamp. There is no need to have it open at all in the task bar.
IPTV Guide
IPTV guides are rare on the Internet. You can access dozens of Internet TV guides which recommend services like Joost, Bablegum or those Asian P2P Internet TV clients such as Sopcast or TVUPlayer. The difference between IPTV and Internet TV is that IPTV is normally supplied by a broadband operator using a closed network structure. The most popular IPTV service that got worldwide coverage last year was ABC's IPTV service that streamed popular TV shows such as Lost or Alias to United States citizens.
BBC Opens up Archives. Looking for Testers
If you are living in the United Kingdom, have a broadband Internet connection and are at least 16 years of age you can apply to become a beta tester for the BBC Archive. The BBC is looking for 20000 testers that use the system for a period of six months exploring the vast archive that will be available for download (probably mean streaming). Testers will have to take surveys from time to time to improve the service during the test.
Free Music Downloads with We7
While there is no shortage of sites that offer mp3 downloads, both legal and illegal, the concept of a site for legitimate free mp3 downloads that is completely supported by ads remains elusive. The latest site to take a stab at making this model work is We7, a new site with a prominent backer in the form of no other than Peter Gabriel.
Currently the site is still in the early stages and the range of (DRM-free) mp3s available for download is still quite small (I counted 8 artists and 19 tracks, but I guess you have to start somewhere).
New Trend: Raise Music Prices by offering DRM Free Music
Now if that is not a clever idea. Force DRM on the users for several years with a pricing scheme straight out of hell and then use a huge publicity machine to make the customers believe that DRM free music is the future raising prices once more. If you thought that everything would be good now that many labels decided to offer drm free music albums as well you could not be more wrong. What is happening now is that the Music Industry once again fools the customers by offering overpriced products.
Selling music on iTunes
Tunecore online service offers an incredible opportunity for everyone who is creating music. You can use Tunecore to upload your music to their site and publish it at well known online music stores such as Apple iTunes, eMusic, Sony Connect or Rhapsody. It is possible to upload single songs, albums, cover art and everything else that is related to the music. Tunecore gets non exclusive rights to submit the songs and albums to the stores that you selected and to collect the money from the music sales earnings. They have no other rights on the songs such as merchandise rights or master recording copyrights.
Paint is a real image editor
For the average user Microsoft Paint is just a basic image editor with limited functionality. It never occured to me that artists could great pro images even with such a basic image editor. I probably would never get in contact with works of those artists if video sites such as Youtube would not exist. Thankfully they do exist and I was able to select some handpicked images that have been created with the Microsoft Paint image editor.
Listen to and download free mp3 music
A reader of my blog recommended a great music download site with the name ElectroBel, a free underground electronic music community site. The mp3 music that can be found on Electrobel can be listened to online or downloaded as mp3 files to your own computer. Every single song has been created by a member of the music community and released under Creative Commons.
Say Goodbye to Joost and Bablegum, here comes Zattoo
My participation in both the Joost and Bablegum beta phase has taught me several things about those social TV over Internet clients: They do add interactivity to the TV experience. Users can chat about a TV show they are viewing at that moment or rate shows for instance. Both TV clients have one big disadvantage though that weighs much more than the new interactivity. Joost and Bablegum stream pre-recorded tv shows only, at least in this stage. There is absolutely no live content and the content that is currently offered is considered by many as B-Movie content.
Joost 0.9 is out
A new version of the Internet TV application Joost has been released yesterday. The first thing that struck me was that I had to uninstall Joost 0.85 before I could install the new Joost version. If that was not bad enough I had to create a new account because Joost changed to a new user system. Signup was hassle free though. There have not been many changes to the system as far as I can tell, one new feature seems to be the so called channel catalog which displays all the channels that can be added to view in Joost.
Remotely Access your Music Collection with Winamp Remote Plugin
If you ever wanted to access your mp3 collection remotely the Winamp Remote Plugin which is currently in beta status might be exactly what you are looking for. Once setup you can access your music collection from any web browser using a normal Internet connection. The computer with the music collection that streams the content has to be connected to the Internet as well. Just download and install the Winamp Remote Plugin and create a new account. This is important that only you, and everyone who is having the username and password, is able to connect and listen to your music collection.
Jamendo distributed one million albums
The free social music networking site Jamendo announced today that they have distributed more than one million downloads of albums that are freely available using bittorrent technology. Only albums that have been fully distributed have been counted or as they put it: "this figure is the minimum indicative number of the total of complete albums we have distributed so far". This is a huge success for sites that believe that drm free music sites can and will succeed in the long run. Jamendo has an incredible download rate of more than 200000 albums every month and the figure is increasing with each passing month.
Youtube Video Awards 2006 Winners
You might know that Youtube held a video awards voting on their site for the last five days were everyone was able to vote for their favorite videos that Youtube preselected. Ten entries were shown and you could assign spots from 1 to 10 to them. Now, after all votes have been cast Youtube presents the Winners of the 2006 Video Awards in the categories Most Creative, Best Comedy, Best Commentary, Best Series, Best Music Video, Most Inspirational and Most Adorable. The videos below are in the same order in case you are wondering.
EZTakes DRM Free DVD Downloads
EzTakes is a movie store that offers DRM free DVD downloads. You may watch and burn the downloaded DVD movies as often as you want without restrictions or additional payments. The format of the movies is the standard DVD format with a VIDEO_TS folder. DVD Covers and prints will be downloaded automatically as well completing the movie download process. Most other movie stores, like Amazon Unbox, restrict usage of the downloaded movie files and make it impossible to burn the movies on DVDs that can be watched using a standalone DVD player.
Sideload download free mp3
Moby, James Blunt, Metallica, Jack Johnson and Madonna. That is only a sample of the artists that you can find on Sideload. Sideload basically searches the internet for free mp3 files that are for example used for promotions or available on the artists websites. Those mp3 files get indexed by Sideload and can then be found using the Sideload search. The homepage of Sideload already lists about 100 mp3 files that can be instantly listened to. Just click on the little green > icon to play the song that you want to listen to.
DRM Free Music Search
I found this interesting article at DRM Alternatives and would like to share it. DRM Free Music Search is a service that searches 19 music sites that offer - only - DRM free music. Some sites sell the music while others provide it for free to their visitors. The search uses Ajax to display the search results. Just enter a search term and watch how the results appear below the search box. Every result displays the title, the artist, the name of the album, the music site that hosts the file and the possible price of the file or album.
Fix Avi Frame Drops and Artefacts on the fly
I think we all experienced frame drops and artefacts in avi movies which is pretty annoying if it happens during the whole movie. I found a media player called HDngn which is able to interpolate new frames in realtime using Direct Show and Open GL. This is achieved by using frames more than once and algorithm that recalculate everything in realtime.
I would not say it is the perfect media player yet but it surely has some nice interesting features that no other player offers yet. The drawback is that it currently supports only a limited amount of filetypes and not enough possibilities to change the configuration of the player at all. It took a while until I was able to remove the logo of the player from the upper right corner. I had to edit the lua file which was used to init the interface.
Guide to watch Champions League, UEFA Cup and Leagues live online
The tv companies in your country decided that it is not worth to show all the games on free tv ? I always have the feeling that my time gets punished the most by this decision because i rarely have the opportunity to watch live games on tv. One great way of seeing the football games with no additional costs at all is to rely on a tv streaming application that uses p2p data transfer methods to stream the content.
Reactable a multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument
Rectable looks so damn futuristic that I had a hard time believing it was a concept of our time. The reactable hardware is based on a translucent round table. A video camera situated beneath, continuously analyzes the table surface, tracking the nature, position and orientation of the objects that are distributed on its surface, representing the components of a classic modular synthesizer. These objects are passive without any sensors or actuators, users interact by moving them, changing their position, their orientation or their faces (in the case of volumetric objects).
Big List of Online TV services
There are several ways to watch tv online. You can download episodes from video portals, use p2p networks to download shows, use p2p clients that stream tv in real time and use websites that do the same. The demand for and resources to do so are ever growing and it becomes quite a task to keep an overview over the best possibilities.
Add Divx support to your Zune
The Zune seems really hackable, wonder if that is on purpose or just laziness. Anyways, the following registry hack makes it possible to add Divx movies to your Zune player and sync them successfully. Once that is done the Zune automatically converts them to the native format which makes it possible to view them just as any other video that you have stored on your Zune player. Copy and paste the following lines into a text editor, save it and rename the file extension to .reg afterwards.
Invitation to Joost
I'm a participant of the Joost beta best and have currently one free beta invite that I can freely give away to one of my readers. I will be getting more invites as the Joost beta progresses and will give them away as well. I probably should start to describe the service that Joost offers before I announce how you can win the beta invitation to Joost.
Copy data from and to a Microsoft Zune
I do not own a Zune and will probably never own one but I know a few people who do own one, this article is for them. You can enable a hard drive mode in the Zune which is similar to the hard drive mode of the iPods. All you need to do is change some registry keys in windows which enables this.
1By1 Lightweight MP3 Player
Many software mp3 players are bloated with features that most users rarely use or even know of. 1By1 is a small, resource-saving software mp3 player - the size of the player is only about 100K. It offers some interesting features that are worth a closer look.
List of free movie sites
The guy who is running One Tip a day posted a monster list of free tv sites and softwares that make it possible and easy to watch even commercial tv series and live events. Most sites and programs work for users from any country, only a few - like ABC - check the origin of a user and block access if he does not come from the allowed countries.
Incredible Video Links Website
The following website contains links to 17992 tv show episodes, 5151 cartoon series, 2582 movies, 12235 anime shows, 5741 music videos and 957 sports clips. It is called Alluc and could be described as a link aggregator for video websites. All it does is that it offers the users of the website a opportunity to post new links to videos that they found on various social video websites such as youtube or dailymotion.
