Years ago when I was first using Napster on a then blazing-fast dual-channel ISDN connection, WinAmp was my media player of choice. It's come a long way since the early days, and gone from being used by those in the know to the go-to player of more than 84 million people worldwide.

When I finally updated from my trusty old RCA Lyra to an iPod Touch, I quickly downloaded WinAmp again and let it go to work on my library. Autotagging, organizing, and syncing was a breeze.

Tonight, version 5.5.6 arrives and brings with it beefed up discovery and social features thanks to the Orgler plugin. Orgler has been available separately since May, but it's now included as part of the main WinAmp download.

Similar to Last.fm scrobbling, the plugin keeps tabs on your listening and allows WinAmp to provide discovery features. Tracks you play are automatically added to your AOL Music profile page (here's mine - keep in mind I only activated the Orgler this morning). Streaming tracks aren't currently supported, though that will likely appear in future releases. Don't feel like sharing? It's not required, so just change your options in the Orgler preferences.

KissTunes is an online service that makes it easy to play and record music using your computer's keyboard. It offers three different instruments, and all the home row keys (and a few from the row above) represent notes. You can save your song, along with any comments from friends, as a .kiss file that will open from the KissTunes on any computer.

The "kiss" in KissTunes probably refers to a show of affection, but it could also very well stand for "Keep it Simple, Stupid!" KissTunes isn't a complex compositional tool, and it's not aimed at professionals. It's more akin to a greeting card, except instead of sending cheesy canned music, you play and send the music yourself. Obviously, this isn't going to revolutionize the Internet, but it's a fun idea.

If you've been looking for a way to stream music from your iTunes library on the web that "just works," you should give pulpTunes a look. With pulpTunes, it's extremely easy to set up a stream at a private URL, and even password protect it. Even better, it's available on all platforms.

The basic premise of a web server for your music is pretty cool, but pulpTunes throws in a lot of other iTunes-ish perks, including AAC support, album art, and iTunes DJ support. You can also download songs from your iTunes, or share a direct link to a song or playlist with your friends. That's a lot of features for an app that's so simple to set up.

[via AppScout]

Wordnik is a bit like a dictionary, in the sense that it collects words and their definitions, but it aspires to be more than that. Users contribute example sentences, audio pronunciations, images from Flickr and more, so you can really get a good idea of how and when a word is used. There's also a thesaurus-plus "related words" feature, which shows not only synonyms and antonyms, but other words that are used in a similar context.

Wordnik isn't exactly Wiktionary, but it does accept user contributions of just about anything you can think of about a word. The combination of images, audio and contextual clues would also seem to make it a better dictionary than most for non-english speakers, and its library contains a weighty 1.7 million words. Since it's laid out better than most dictionary sites, and also incorporates definitions from some of the better ones, it wouldn't be a bad move to replace your current favorite online dictionary with Wordnik.

Pixelpipe defies definition a bit, but basically it's a mo-blogging / mobile micro-blogging tool that satisfies nearly every sharing feature I've ever wanted from my mobile since the first time I picked up a smartphone.

When I mention Pixelpipe to people they usually say, "Oh, like Ping.fm." Yes, yes, Ping.fm lets you update a ton of services but, Ping doesn't do video or audio -- although they've been threatening to do video for a while. On the other hand, while Pixelpipe does text, audio, photo and video, until recently there wasn't a convenient way to get your video to Pixelpipe while on the move.

Friday Pixelpipe launched a new version for Android phones, taking advantage of the newly released video recording features in Android 1.5. When I read the anouncement, I realized -- as much as I've pimped out Pixelpipe on my own Twitter feed -- I've never actually posted about it on Download Squad. For shame!

With clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android, you can send quick updates, longer blog posts, just-snapped photos, just-taken video, and audio snippets to over 75 different social services. All your favorites are there (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, 12seconds, etc.. ) along with some services you might not have used -- If you can name all the logos on the PixelPipe list, you're doing better than I am.

Added to that, Pixelpipe will do traditional, non-social sharing like uploading to any ftp server, email any address or post to just about any blog.

Pixelpipe clients for all platforms are available for free at PixelPipe's site, and the updated Android client is available via the Android Marketplace from your phone.

Grooveshark is my favorite quick way to listen to a particular song online. With an extensive library, easy sharing and embeddable widgets, it's a powerhouse in the music sharing arena. It's only getting better, too, with the recent addition of a Facebook application and a Wordpress plugin. The Facebook app lets you share songs directly to your wall, and the Wordpress plugin lets you quickly put together a playlist widget for your Wordpress blog.

The Facebook app, in particular, is the easiest way to share music on FB that I've run across so far. In addition to publishing a song to your profile, you can also select individual friends to share it with. With over 10 million songs in Grooveshark's database, it's likely you'll find whatever song you're looking for.

Tired of using other people's lame tablature to learn how to play your favorite songs, if you can even find a tab at all? Would you rather just figure out the music yourself? Well then, Capo is the Mac app for you. Drop an audio file from hard drive into it, and it will slow down the music so you can figure out how to play it. Everything takes place with one simple, beautiful window.

Capo has a lot of other neat tricks that make learning a song easier. One of the best features is looping a selected part of the song, so you can focus in on the bits you're having trouble with. Playback speed and pitch are adjustable, and you can drop handy markers for verses, choruses and the bridge, so you don't have to scroll through the song to find the part you're looking for. Sure, it's a tool that's designed to do one thing, but it does that one thing extremely well.

WinLAME is a free and open source utility for Windows that handles batch audio encoding jobs quickly, easily, and efficiently. This week the developer released winLAME 2009 beta 1, which is the first major update in ages. The update brings the ability to read ID3v2 tags to and from MP3 files, and some updated encoding libraries.

But the most exciting thing is just seeing that this application is still under active development. I've been using winLAME for years, and this is the first update I can remember in a long time. Not that the program needed much updating. The latest versions did an excellent job of converting audio to and from MP3, OGG, WAV, or WMA.

Because winLAME 2009 is still in beta, you'll want to be careful before selecting the option to automatically delete files after converting them. The developer warns that it's still possible the beta includes bugs that could reduce audio quality.

[via gHacks]

Call Graph is a Windows utility that lets you record Skype conversations in MP3 format. We first looked at Call Graph last year when there were no restrictions on the service, and it wasn't entirely clear what the company's business plan was.

Now there are two versions, Call Graph Standard and Premium editions. The Standard edition doesn't have any recording time limits like some other Skype audio recorders. But it is advertising supported. It will display ads when playing back your audio and on the screen that lists your recordings. For $15/year or a one-time $25 fee you can get an ad-free version.

Calls are recorded as stereo, variable bitrate MP3 files. Your end of the conversation will be recorded on one track and the other end is recorded on the other, which comes in handy if you need to edit the audio for a podcast or some other purpose.

Call Graph also offers a transcription service, where you can pay $0.50 for each minute of audio you want transcribed. The transcripts are generated by machines and proof read by real people. So if there's anything you wouldn't want someone reading, you might want to consider transcribing it yourself.

Phony-o? It sounds like an April Fools' Day joke, but it's not. The drop.io team is actually releasing new services at an amazing rate, and the latest is a conference calling, voicemail recording, podcast ready app called Phone.io. It works like any other Drop.io drop, in that you can set it up in a couple of clicks by just naming it and giving it a password.

Your phone.io drop has phone numbers you can use for voicemails or conference calls, and you can save the records as mp3s. Where phone.io really gets cool is in the number of ways you can share your stuff in very few steps. You can embed your audio in other sites, download it, or push it out to RSS or iTunes. If you're into social networks, you can also share it via Facebook or Twitter, and of course, you can share the Drop.io drop itself. Phone.io scores points for both features and ease of use, and it's definitely worth a look if you need to deal with over-the-phone audio.

I'm a huge fan of Twitter, and I'm also a huge fan of the music site Grooveshark. Grooveshark has become the main way I share streaming music with friends, and it's handy for embedding in other sites. So, when I heard that some folks from Grooveshark had built a Twitter music mashup, I had to check it out. It's called Twisten.fm (rhymes with "listen") and it crawls Twitter for tweets about songs, and lets you listen to the songs people are talking about.

Twisten.fm is what would happen if every tweet about music had a play button next to it. It's not much more than that yet, but I'm already imagining features that would be make it even more awesome. I'd love to be able to see just what my friends are listening to, and maybe use Grooveshark's playlist generator directly from Twisten. A most-played chart for all of Twitter would be good, and a most-played chart for just the people you follow would be even better. There are plenty of pointless mashups out there, but Twisten.fm is one of the good ones.

Lately, there's been plenty of news about Google and intellectual property. First we heard (or rather, didn't hear) videos go silent on YouTube. Now we've learned that they're also targeting bloggers who post mp3 files on Blogger.com.

The problem is, some of the people sharing songs are doing so at the request of artists and their promoters. That's the case with Ryan's Smashing Life, whose story has been picked up by LA Weekly and Rolling Stone.
In November, some of Ryan's posts began disappearing. There were no takedown notices. The posts were not unpublished. They were unceremoniously deleted without warning.

What's going on behind the scenes are the same idiotic practices that have plagued the music industry for ages. The promoters push material to people like Ryan for publicity without talking to corporate muckety-mucks. The suits get mad, and blame the little guy. Google hosts the content, so the labels order them to grab the intellectual ballbat and make with the kneecapping.

In Google's defense, surely there's something in the Blogger.com TOS that permits this sort of thing, but these actions don't do anything to further Google's friend-of-the-people image.

Ultimately, though, it's the bass-ackwards business model of the music industry that continues to frustrate and inconvenience the rest of us who just want to listen to our music.

[ via Inquistr ]

I have fond memories of Muxtape, which briefly reigned last year as the online music sharing method of choice for hipsters everywhere. Well, Muxtape is finally back, after shutting down for a while due to problems landing an affordable licensing deal for the music that was getting passed around on the service. It's a different kind of service now, although the interface looks the same. Now bands can sign up to add their songs to the site's library, and anybody can make a mixtape out of what's available.

Yes, this sounds a lot lamer than the old Muxtape, at first blush. It's not that bleak, though, as the first dozen or so artists helping to kick off the new service rock pretty hard. Perhaps you've heard of Of Montreal? Amanda Palmer? How about the golden boy of mashups, Girl Talk? Well, they're on the new Muxtape, and the future looks bright for Internet indie kids if the service keeps growing in that direction.

Saturday Night Live's "More Cowbell" sketch, featuring Christopher Walken as mega-producer and cowbell aficionado Bruce Dickinson, brought us some of the most-quoted lines of the decade.

Now you can automatically add them to any mp3, along with -- what else? -- more cowbell. MoreCowbell.dj makes the whole process easy, and it sounds better than you might expect.

Upload a track, adjust the cowbell slider and the Walken slider to your liking, and hit the "Gimme more cowbell!" button. Your cowbell-ized track will be delivered in embeddable form, so you don't have to worry about hosting when you want to share it. You can just send a link.

There's also a "recent cowbells" page, where you can listen to other people's ideas of songs that needed more cowbell. The site does a good job of analyzing songs to keep the cowbell on beat and insert the quotes during rests.

Sometimes you want to turn the sound off on your PC so you don't hear anything at all coming out of your speakers. And sometimes you just want to turn off some sounds, like the Windows systems beeps, clicks, and other bells, and whistles. The system volume button lets you do the former, while SoundOff lets you do the latter.

You can use the free Windows to make sure that you don't wind up listening to clicking noises and the loud honking sounds that accompany error messages when you're listening to music or making VoIP calls on your computer.

Sure, you can also adjust the Windows sound settings from the Control Panel, but SoundOff sits in your system tray and lets you toggle your audio settings with just a click or two which can save you a few seconds of time every day.

[via Lifehacker and Life Rocks 2.0]