As we reported previously, today is the day that hundreds, if not thousands, of online radio stations are going silent, broadcasting static, or PSAs and other messages to their listeners to bring attention to the impending royalty rate hike from the Copyright Royalty Board.

Across the net you can see signs of the protest in action. Yahoo! Music's radio station guide is featuring links to SaveNetRadio.org at the top of its list. SomaFM, a popular indie radio station broadcasting from San Francisco is playing intermittent PSAs against the background of the BART. Rhapsody has a large banner across their front page showing a woman with duct tape across her mouth, with a zipper drawn on it. ShoutCast has information posted where its normally lengthy radio station guide sits, issuing a call to action.

If you care about online radio, and want the luxury to be able to turn it on a year, two years or even five years from now, then act today and contact your Senators and State Representatives. Don't sit idly by and let net radio become a victim of senseless royalty rates, while terrestrial FM & AM stations continue to play the same boring material over and over, without having to pay the same exorbitant royalties. Post links to other net radio stations participating in today's protest in the comments.

Update: KCRW Santa Cruz is joining the protest today by interrupting all programming to discuss the upcoming royalty rate hike with Mike Riksen of NPR, Kurt Hanson of AccuRadio, Tim Westergren of Pandora, Caryn Mathes of American University Radio, Ian Rogers of Yahoo! Music, Ted Leibowitz of BAGeL Radio and Johnny Floater of Live365.com. Check their site for more info. (Thanks Brad!)

Related:
Download Squad Interview: Tim Westergren of Pandora
Net Radio gets two more months to live

As we reported earlier today, switching gears from alpha into beta, Adobe has revealed Apollo's true name, AIR. Short for Adobe Integrated Runtime, the framework remains largely the same but gains some new functionality under the hood. Expect to find embedded SQLite support, WebKit HTML rendering, drag & drop support, support for PDF and general improvements to window management and networking.

So what's in it for users? Sure, its got some great functionality geared towards web developers, but what's the use unless there are some real useful applications for AIR? I did some digging around and have found 3 AIR apps that I think have some usefulness, and show some promise for AIR. If anything, by the end of this article you'll get tired of reading the acronym AIR.

Salsa - A simple Amazon S3 client
Salsa is a super simple client to copy files between Amazon S3 and your computer. It's just a simple uploading and downloading interface, that's all. Amazon S3 has been called a cost-effective backup solution, and this app could make that practical on a desktop level. Salsa is considered 'alpha' quality, but if I needed a simple, secure method for backing up files I can see its value. Salsa is available on the Adobe Labs AIR:Applications:Samples wiki page. It would be great to see this little app mature a bit and move beyond the lab.

Tweetr - Twitter client
Yeah, we love Twitter around here at DLS, it's a little shameless. There's no shortage of ways to go about tweeting, and Tweetr is a nicely done implementation in AIR. The interface reminds me of a little bit iChat, a little bit Twitterrific. While not perfect, it's lightweight and does a fine job. I like how you can view your replies and direct messages as well. Check it out at http://www.tweet-r.com.

Fresh - RSS feed reader
Another one straight outta Adobe Labs is Fresh, a straightforward feed reader app. What I like about Fresh is that it's pretty full featured for only being a sample: OPML import/export, tabbed interface, integrated web view for stories, themes and more. Obviously an application like this isn't very innovative or groundbreaking, but it's a good demonstration of AIR's abilities: structured content, feed retrieval, ui elements, and HTML rendering. Check it out on the Adobe Labs AIR:Applications:Samples wiki page.

If you'd like to keep an eye on upcoming AIR applications, here's some good sites to keep your browser or feed reader pointed at:

• AIRApps.net
• Mike Chambers' Blog
• Adobe Labs Wiki: AIR

Gallery: 3 sample AIR apps

Last month in Portland, Oregon, approximately 250 people convened on Cubespace, a co-working space, for BarCamp Portland 1. BarCamp, if you aren't familiar, is an unconference - an Open and free event whose content and direction is decided by its participants. It's a great way for people to come together in the spirit of community to share knowledge, talk about technology (generally related to Web apps and Open Source), and generally geek out. Started two years ago in Palo Alto by Andy Smith, Chris Messina, Eris Stassi, Matt Mullenweg, Ryan King and Tantek Çelik (among others), it has grown quickly to an international scale. To date there have been BarCamps in Amsterdam, Austin, Shanghai, Milwaukee, Paris, San Francisco, Chennai, London, and many, many more places.

One of BarCamp Portland's organizers, and artisan of all things community, Dawn Foster, took a moment to answer some questions relating to BarCamp Portland and the BarCamp phenom in general. Read on!

DLS: What inspired you to take up organizing BarCamp Portland?

Dawn Foster: Last year, I was lucky enough to be invited to FooCamp, which is a yearly invite-only O'Reilly event that was the model for BarCamp. Spending the weekend having discussions with some very smart people from across the technology industry was an amazing experience, and I wanted to replicate that experience here in Portland. We have a great tech scene in Portland with so many users group meetings, but very little cross pollination between groups. I wanted to create a monthly meeting that brought a diverse group of techies together for networking and discussions about a variety of technologies. As I was talking to people about this idea, I learned that Raven Zachary was starting to plan BarCamp Portland. The two ideas were so similar that Raven and I decided to merge them into a monthly BarCamp Meetup that we would use to plan the BarCamp Portland event.

Last weekend at BarCamp Portland, I gave a brief talk on switching family and friends to Linux. I hear you asking, why would you want to do that? Well, for a number of reasons really: cost, principle, maintenance, all of the above, or any reason what so ever. In my case, my father's work PC was a constant source of trouble for him (and me). So, with his agreement (and my assistance), he made the switch to Ubuntu Linux. So far it's been a success, barring a few minor problems (printing envelopes from OpenOffice, for example). It might also be good to note that my own personal affinity for computers does not, to the best of my knowledge, come from Dad (thanks Mom!).

However, I don't want to give the whole story away. Instead I invite you dear readers to take a look at my presentation slides. Do you have family or friends that you have given thought to switching? Have you already switched someone? Let me know your experiences in the comments. I'd also enjoy any feedback or additional ideas that you may have.

There have been a number of things you can do with the Wii browser (tabbed browsing, watch videos) and here's another one to add to the list: TV listings. Sure it seems like a simple enough idea, but the trick is having a TV listing web site that is simple, easy to search, and is legible on a TV itself: enter Couchville.

Fire up your Wii and launch the Internet Channel. Once it's up, click on 'Enter a Web Address', punch in www.couchville.com, and hit OK. While the page loads, you might notice the progress bar hang, and if you do just hit stop (I think this might be the browser getting hung up in processing the JavaScript). Then, enter your zip code, television source, provider, and hit the Enter button on-screen.

Once the guide has loaded up, it's (almost) like viewing Couchville in a desktop browser: You can drag the listings around by holding the A button the Wiimote, and if you've got good aim you can click on the title of a show to see its details listed. If the text is too small and illegible, you can zoom in by pressing the + button on the Wiimote. While this hack isn't terribly original or perfect, it's a quick and fun trick for the Wii browser.

The Mandriva team released Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC1 on Thursday and here's a quick look at the Spring release. Some of the major updates in this release are KDE 3.5.6, OpenOffice.org 2.1 and Firefox 2.0.0.2. Mandriva Linux, for those who aren't aware of it's history, first started as and was formerly known as Mandrake Linux, a RedHat Linux based distribution. However, it has over the years matured into its own, and has it's own distinct tools (Rpmdrake, urpmi) and personality. Mandriva Linux is available in a few different flavors (Discovery, Powerpack, Powerpack+ and Mandriva One) which are subscription based, but is also of course available for free. The main advantages to the paid versions are additions of non-free software (such as DVD playback).

Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC1 first look

There are all sorts of tricks that web developers have for decreasing page load times and optimizing their content, here's another quick and easy one using gzip and PHP. If your web server's PHP installation supports zlib (most do), you could squeeze a few KB worth of precious seconds out of this trick. Paul Stamatiou, the author of this handy tip, gives an example of Digg's stylesheet, which weighs in at 26.3kB, and after compression comes out at a featherweight 6KB. Not a bad savings in exchange for a few minutes of your time, if you are so inclined.

(Thanks, Paul!)

It's been a long day, 5 o'clock is rounding the corner, and nothing could sound better than getting together with some friends and quaffing a pint, right? Unthirsty helps you find the nearest and greatest happy hour based on your location and preferences. In my opinion, this is a home run Google Maps mashup that is done right. Need your nacho fix? Want to find a pub with Wifi? Looking for a cheap martini and outdoor seating? Check, check, checkity check.

With a clean interface, easy to use search, user comments, and a features key, they have seemingly covered all the bases. If you're already out with your friends and want to find the next ratskeller to wet your whistle at, their mobile site has you covered too. And, if you discover a new watering hole during your travels, you can submit it to their database.

Not with a real vacuum, silly, but with SQLite's vacuum command! If you fancy yourself a bit of Terminal adventure, this simple command can supposedly increase Mail's responsiveness. Especially helpful if you have a hefty mailbox like I do.

1. Quit Mail (if it's open)
2. Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities)
3. At the shell prompt, type: sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index and press Enter.

You'll be greeted with:

SQLite version 3.1.3
Enter ".help" for insructions
sqlite>

4. At the sqlite> prompt type: vacuum subjects; and press Enter.
There will be a short delay while sqlite optimizes the subjects table, depending on how large your mailbox is this could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes or more.
5. Once you're returned to the sqlite> prompt, press Control-D to exit.
6. Restart Mail and enjoy your newfound speediness!

Please be aware that you do this at your own risk. There's a potential for data loss, so if you want to be extra cautious backup the ~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index file before attempting this trick.

[via Hackszine.com]

Last week the folks over at Creative Commons released version 3.0 of their licensing suite for user-generated content. The bulk of the changes center around clarifying the existing licenses, and addressing the growing internationalization of Creative Commons content. With 3.0 also comes a compatibility structure that will allow them to identify and certify other licenses as CC BY-SA (Attribution Share Alike) compatible. They have also attempted to address concerns voiced by Debian and MIT.

Since the beginning of the Creative Commons in 2002, the language of the licenses had always been based around US copyright law and "generic" in nature because it was not specific to any particular country's laws. So when it came to applying CC licenses to works from other countries, the licenses had to be "ported" to conform to the law of those countries. In fact, the core license has been ported to 30 other countries, or "jurisdictions", to date. To this end, CC have spun the old "generic" core license into two parts: "Unported" (which is based around the language of international intellectual property treaties.) and a separate United States specific license.

If you are already licensing your content under a CC license, you may want to take a look at the updated licenses. But if you haven't taken a detailed look into the Creative Commons yet, there's no time like the present.

I think that this is a really ambitious but really cool idea - it provides a place where user-generated content can be user-rebroadcast and reach a broader audience. Instead of people nibbling away at single videos on YouTube, or single photos on Flickr, they can bring it all together into one easy to digest kibble of media. It's like a simple to use mash up interface.

The one thing that concerns me is that it doesn't seem to have any controls in relation to copyrights. There's a cute warning when you go to upload media which says, "We don't allow copyright infringement, porn, or hateful stuff." but that seems pretty weak. I can only assume that they are monitoring uploaded content, which seems like a daunting task when faced with policing user-generated content. It would be cool if it endorsed Creative Commons licensing, or was able to detect CC content. Also, the entire interface is Flash based, which can be a turn off for some folks. It's also not as flexible as I would have expected (I can't specify a Podcast RSS feed, for example). All my gripes aside, it looks like a cool concept and will be interesting to see where it heads.

[Via PodTech.net]

For those who have tried out or even purchased Parallels, odds are the first virtual machine you created was for Windows XP. I'm also willing to bet that you underestimated how large to create your virtual hard disk. If that's the case, then that clever chap Dan over at UNEASYsilence has put together an über-handy how-to on making some more elbow room for yourself.

Using a combination of the Parallels Image Tool and the GParted LiveCD you can, with little effort, add as much or as little space that you like to your Windows XP virtual hard disk. And since it's all virtual, you can test it out by making a 'backup' copy of your existing virtual hard disk just in case you run into trouble. (While you're over there, make sure to check out ToasterClone as well!)

By default it features Xfce as its desktop environment and alternately Fluxbox. Both are not as popular as the obvious picks Gnome or KDE, but both are perfectly usable and are a nice change of pace. If you decide to do some actual work you can save and restore it from FAT32, UFS2 (Unix File System), ext2 (Linux) or ReiserFS disks or "slices" (partitions), including USB thumb drives - just use the mountdisks cheatcode at boot.

While not as mature as comparable Linux live CDs, FreeSBIE 2.0 is a big milestone for the team and good step forward for the project. If you are curious about the Unix-world beyond Linux, FreeSBIE is a great and easy way to get a feel for FreeBSD.

[Thanks, Dolores!]