The Audacity team has released an updated version of the popular opern source audio editing application. Audacity 1.3.5 beta packs a bunch of minor updates, including bug fixes better file handling, and some interface improvements. Here are some of the things that jumped out at us:
Hit Shift while clicking record to start a recording at the end of an existing track
Users should see fewer invalid sample rate problems under LInux
Updated versions of the Portaudio, Libogg, LIbvorbis, and other libraries
More informative dialogs when dealing with unsupported file formats
New keyboard shortcuts
Audacity is already one of the best free audio editing applications for Mac, Linux, and Windows, and the program just keeps getting better.
Last time we told you about a science podcast that was all about getting to the truth, now let's look at a podcast that covers the other side of science. Escape Pod is a weekly short story podcast hosted by Stephen Eley released every Thursday. The three-year-old podcast will stretch your mind with all types of sci-fi including space, time, technology, hard science, and even weird psychological science fiction. Each episode features some of the best science fiction from the present and the past with some stories from the great digests being read as well as this years Hugo nominees.
All stories come with an introduction that helps guide the listener into the work and gives fair warning to parents about the content of the work. Each episode even carries a rating similar to movies (G to R) to help determine whether you want your kids to listen. This week's PG episode features a 2008 Hugo nominee that was published in Asimov's Science Fiction short story magazine last year. The story took our minds on an Outer Limits type journey that included a main character living out the end of his life and discovering someone who may have been the reincarnation of someone very close to him.
Escape Pod is part of a network of short story podcasts including the horror podcast, Pseudopod, and the fantasy podcast, PodCastle.
Download Pod is an occasional series about our favorite podcasts. If you have suggestions for podcasts you think we should check out, let us know in the comments or via our tips page.
Microsoft released an updated version of its iTunes competitor today. The new Zune Marketplace adds TV downloads and a bunch of new music features. Here are some of the highlights:
The desktop application is integrated with the "Zune Community," allowing users to send messages and share their collections with friends
Ability to drag and drop a friend's Zune Card onto your portable media player
Gapless playback
Tools for editing meta data
But it's probably the new TV store that's going to steal the show. Microsoft says more than 800 episodes are availabe as of today, with titles including South Park, The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, SpongeBob, Ghost in the Shell, Battletar Galactica, and Robot Chicken. Programs will cost you $2 per episode. There's no word on if and when we'll see movies on the Zune Marketplace.
After successfully releasing the last Nine Inch Nails album in 100% digital format with a variety of pricing levels ranging from free to $300, Trent Reznor has decided to go all out and give away the band's new album, "The Slip" for free. You can download all ten tracks in a variety of DRM-free formats, including MP3, FLAC, M4A lossless, and even 24/96 WAV.
This latest move proves one of two things:
It's possible to give away your music for free and make money by touring, and asking fans to pay for premium content.
Trent Reznor has made so much money from music that he can affort to give away his songs for free.
While we'd really like to think that numbe one is true, there's no doubt that the second option is absolutely true. In other words, this is hardly a business model that's going to work for most struggling musicians. But it's encouraging to see the direction that some popular artists are taking when they're freed from the shackles of the major record labels.
Audio players come in all shapes and sizes, from resource hogging beasts such as iTunes and Windows Media Player, to relatively more lightweight competitors such as Winamp, MediaMonkey. And if you happen to have an iPod or some other sort of portable media player, chances are you are sort of locked in to whatever application works best with your portable device. But let's say you don't care about support for a portable player and just want a capable, lightweight player that has frills but not too many.
Meet AIMP2. AIMP2 weighs in at a mere 2.88MB, has a slightly smaller memory footprint than Winamp and can do just about everything you want except sync with a portable device. It supports anything from AAC to WMA, allows you to record radio streams, has a fully fledged library to organize your music, allows you to manipulate playlists while listening to another, and even supports a number of Winamp plug-ins. And for those who like to wake up and fall asleep to music, AIMP2 also includes a timed start and an auto shutdown timer.
Although lacking some of the features that the bigger media players may have, AIMP2 has an impressive feature set for its size. Additional skins and plug-ins are relatively scarce, but the basic skin works so well other skins are almost unnecessary beyond mere aesthetics. It has also been localized for a number of languages (the default being Russian), which makes this a very international user friendly application.
Overall, AIMP2 just feels right, and is a good alternative for anyone that is looking for something that works the way it should.
Several companies that broadcast internet radio streams, including RealNetworks, Yahoo!, and this blog's parent company, AOL owe ASCAP millions of dollars. That's according to a federal court in New York. While the court did not determine the exact amount of money owed, ASCAP estimates that the fees could climb as high as $100 million.
ASCAP stands for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, and the group represents over 300,000 songwriters who are currently receiving no compensation when their music is streamed by the three media companies. This despite the fact that the radio streams are supported by advertising, which means AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo! are making at least some money through their streaming music operations.
This whole issue is separate from the dispute between the RIAA and online radio stations last year. The RIAA represents recording artists, while ASCAP covers songwriters.
There are two things that make FLV.To absolutel amazing. The first is the sheer number of Google AdSense and referral ads that the developer managed to cram into a small space. But we're willing to overlook that because the other remarkable thing about FLV.To is how easy the site makes it to save YouTube videos as MP3 files.
No, you're not going crazy. YouTube deals in videos, and MP3 files are audio only. But there's a huge number of music videos on YouTube, and FLV.To will let you save the audio from those videos in a matter of seconds. Just pop in the URL of any YouTube video and the site will proces the file and spit out an MP3 which you can download and listen to. If you've already gone through the process of downloading YouTube videos as FLV files, you can also upload Flash videos from your desktop for easy conversion.
We'd never, ever turn down a good ghost story. Aliens, even the abducting kind (especially the abducting kind!) are incredibly cool. Still, we are pretty sure that T. Rex existed and didn't use those huge incisors for gnashing hellaciously into cantaloupes and mangoes. And we have enough acquaintances who act a little too similarly to lower primates to believe Darwin was too terribly far off.
We really dig people who can talk about the Drake Equation. We dig people who can speak articulately about science, sound extra intelligent, and still be accessible enough that we are able to follow along.
Scientific podcasts are a funny thing. There are many out there that remind us way too much of our college days when we sat for two or three hours in a hot lecture hall listening to a professor full of even hotter air drone on about weather patterns. But there are gems like The Skeptic's Guide, which feel much more like you're sitting a table in a restaurant having a conversation with your smartest friends.
And these guys (and girls!) are smart. The host, Dr. Stephen Novella, is a neurologist teaching at Yale Medical School. Rebecca Watson is the resident Skepchick on the panel, and has the unique claim to fame that there's an asteroid named after her. Jay and Robert Novella are regular contributors and leaders in the New England Skeptical Society. And the weekly guest, James Randi, is the most interesting of the bunch: He's a magician. He's a world famous escape artist. And he's ready to expose, explain, and share with the layman the very scientific explanations for the magical things that go on in the paranormal and pseudoscientific world.
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is available from their site, or through iTunes.
SeeqPod is a search engine for finding music on the web. But it's much more than that. Enter an artist or song title in SeeqPod and it will look for MP3s, video files, or web sites related to you term and present them in a nice clean list -- with links to play the files on the site. You can use SeeqPod without registering for an account, but if you want to save playlists you'll want to sign up for a free account.
SeeqPod has been around since last year, but we're having one of those days where we keep thinking of cool things we've never shared with you before. This morning it was the K-Meleon web browser, and now we bring you SeeqPod.
There are a few other nifty things you can do with SeeqPod, like embed audio clips on your web page or find lyrics or tour dates from an artist. Or you can even embed an audio search and playback widget on your web site.
Bear in mind, many of the songs that SeeqPod finds on the web are not exactly being legally distributed. But since SeeqPod isn't actually hosting the files itself, the company is sort of gray market and may be able to stand up against any future legal challenges. Or it may not.
With Twitter being all the rage these days, it was only a matter of time before a podcast would grow out of new Twitter friendships. And the time has apparently come, since You Look Nice Today is a podcast created by three friends that decided they enjoyed each other's senses of humor so much in their tweets that they ought to start recording their interactions for everyone else to hear.
You Look Nice Today describes itself as a "journal of emotional hygiene". Whatever that means.
The subject matter of You Look Nice Today meanders pretty erratically, but fortunately it's pretty consistently entertaining. Topics range from what each host uses to wash themselves in the shower, to the relative merits of each of the types of nuts in a can of mixed nuts.
The show is squarely aimed at adults (and probably primarily male adults), and It should be noted that despite the innocuous title, You Look Nice Today is decidedly not work-safe. It proudly sports an Explicit tag in iTunes, due to both subject matter and the odd forceful expletive.
The topics are certainly entertaining, but this podcast is really about the personalities. If you're familiar with the concept of "ratholes" from MacBreak Weekly (and how they can sometimes be the most entertaining part of the show), just consider You Look Nice Today as one huge rathole, and you'll be on the right track. Your hosts are @hotdogsladies, @lonelysandwich, and @scottsimpson. This is how they describe themselves in the credits of the show, by their Twitter names rather than their given names, ostensibly due to the fact that the show grew out of their Twitter friendships. Their real names, respectively, are Merlin Mann, Adam Lisagor, and (unsurprisingly) Scott Simpson.
We've seen desktop applications that let you record music from internet radio streams. But ChiliRec is the first web app we've seen that rips music from online radio stations and stores it in folders.
Here's how it works. When you visit the Chilirec site, you can choose from a long list of online radio streams. By default, every single stream is selected, but you can uncheck the boxes next to any stations you don't want to record. Once you've selected your streams, ChiliRec will rip the songs from each station and store them online. You can access them from a list of recordings, play them with a Flash-based media player, or create and save playlists. You can also save files as MP3s to your desktop. Keep in mind, audio recorded from an internet stream may not sound as good as a track purchased from iTunes or other stores, and sometimes the beginning or end of the song may be cut off.
ChiliRec does not let users add their own radio streams. We have a feeling the service is constantly recording each of the streams in its directory, and when you sign up for an account it simply gives you access to the stored recordings starting at the moment you hit record. That would use up a lot less bandwidth and storage space than actually creating separate recordings for each user.
Microsoft has released two new Windows Vista Ultimate Extras. Windows Vista has been out for over a year, and so far Microsoft has released remarkably few Extras. The company initially promised that Extras would be special applications available to Vista Ultimate users that would help set the premium version of the operating system apart from cheaper versions. But Microsoft has been rather slow to deliver.
Today, users can download a new content pack for DreamScene, an animated desktop background application. There are also two new sound schemes called Glass and Pearl. Reading their descriptions is a bit like reading the description of a fine wine, so if you want to know what they sound like, you'll probably just have to download the packs yourself. Or you can listen to an audio demo created by Long Zheng of istartedsomething.
In other news, Microsoft has also released 18 updated language packs for Windows Vista, which should show up via Windows Update.
Oh the promise of Digital Rights Management. Ever since the dawn of technology, DRM of some form has existed with the promise being that if large companies supported it, the removal of basic (and somewhat fundamental) consumer fair use and rights would be made irrelevant. The likes of Apple and Microsoft aren't exactly going to kill their own music services and DRM servers, in turn locking you out of music you've actually paid money for. Are they?
Sadly, that's not entirely the case. Whilst Apple understands the PR nosedive that would follow any attempt to 'disable' DRMed purchases, Microsoft perhaps does not. Today they've announced that, effective August 31st 2008 "[Microsoft] will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs ... purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers" which basically means this: once you've activated your allocated number of computers for the music you've paid your hard-earned cash for, you can kiss you music goodbye if you ever change your computer or operating system. Yes, you can still burn your tunes to a CD and re-import them in another (DRM-free) format. But the questions remains, why should this even be necessary?
Time and time again, DRM has proven not only totally ineffective in preventing piracy but also a method by which legitimate paying customers get treated as criminals for doing the right thing. If there's one thing consumers are repeatedly learning the hard way is that ultimately DRM only shafts paying customers. There is but one question now: how long will it take the labels to realize that DRM is about as welcome at the digital party as Lynne Spears at the Parent of the Year awards....
The NPR Intelligence Squared US (IQ2US) audio podcast is a series of recordings of public debates held in New York focusing on hot-button issues (most specific to the U.S.) like immigration, affirmative action, and global warming. The debates are held in the Oxford-style meaning there are one motion (topic), one moderator, three speakers for the motion, and three speakers against the motion.
Prior to the start of the debate, visitors cast their votes for or against the motion. During the debate, the results of the initial vote are shown, and the visitors vote again at the end of the debate to decide which side "won."
The debates move quickly, and it's nice to learn things in the car on the way to work instead of listening to drunk 30-somethings talk about "news."
The IQ2US series holds five debates in the spring, and five debates in the fall, and is available from the iTunes Store or the NPR website.
CaTraxx is a music management tool that aims to catalog all of your music, from digital media to CD's, cassettes, and vinyl.
CaTraxx will automatically scan your computer for any supported audio files and import them into its music database. Additionally, you can insert your CD's and CaTraxx will scan and download the audio tracks automatically. The program has a direct connection with the CDDB database; track and album information are instantly downloaded as you import your files.
CaTraxx also functions as a basic jukebox/media player, though iTunes and Windows Media Player would be better options if all you want to do is play your music.
So what good is CaTraxx? In our minds, it's beneficial to think of the program as a database rather than a music collection. So why do you need a database of your music? Well, for example, you might need a database for insurance purposes, in case your beloved vinyl collection is usurped by a thief (or vengeful ex). The database can also keep records of who borrowed pieces from your collection and when they borrowed it, so you never lose track of a CD.
CaTraxx is available as a fully functional trial; after that, it'll set you back $40. In our minds (can we say that twice in a post?), you'd have to be pretty obsessive of your collection to shell out that kind of dough.
With Twitter being all the rage these days, it was only a matter of time before a podcast would grow out of new Twitter friendships. And the time has apparently come, since 
