We've always been fond of Amarok. It has some good features, nice add-ons, and felt just a little friendlier than some other Linux media players. We recently discovered a contender to the title of most loved Linux media player, the ominously named Banshee. Fortunately, Banshee doesn't involve listening to shrieking demons, unless that's your genre of choice.
It's an application that has been increasingly packaged with distributions that include GNOME as the default desktop. For those distributions that don't include it on a standard install, it's almost always available from a repository. Many of those repositories include, at present, Banshee's 0.13.3 version. This is the stable version of Banshee and shows loads of promise, but it isn't quite Amarok.
We recommend, if possible, hunting down packages for your distro of choice of the latest version of Banshee (0.99.2). If there are no packages available, try installing the newer version via Subversion. It takes a bit more time, but it is well worth the effort.
Why? Because Banshee 0.99.2 (or alternately, Banshee 1.0 Beta 2) is an almost completely different screamin' demon. It may be a beta version, and not without its bugs, but it works much more smoothly than the 0.13.3 install we were using previously on Hardy Heron.
MediaCoder has been one of our favorite video conversion tools for a long time. The free Windows utility can convert pretty much any audio or video file from one format to another. Want to shrink the file size and pixel dimensions of a video so you can upload it to YouTube or fit it on your iPod? MediaCoder will do the trick.
But if you don't have the patience to wade through dozens of menus adjusting all the settings manually, you might want to check out MediaCoder for Devices. The MediaCoder team offers up four different versions. One is optimized for creating PSP-compatible videos, another creates 3gp videos for mobile phones, a third does H.264 files for the iPhone or iPod Touch, while a fourth version can create a variety of MP3/MP4 files.
There's also an audio version of MediaCoder if you just want a good utility for converting WAV files to FLAC or MP3s to OGG files.
If you liked the iPod/Nike+ gadget to help you with your runs, you may be excited to know that was merely the beginning of what seems to be a much larger pie Apple has been working on (pun absolutely intended).
AppleInsider appears to have gotten its hands on some patent filings made for what looks like a comprehensive "fitness companion." At this point, it looks like a bunch of iTunes-esque prompts for a "fitness inteview" to help you get a fitness program for your goals, and flow chart type displays of how these programs might look as you are using them.
Considering that it is still in the patent stages, we have no idea if Apple is really going to follow through. But at least we can be hopeful. Whether this will work on current iPod Touch/iPhone technology or on next generation models isn't clear, especially with rumors of new iPods coming on the market later this year.
Or maybe we can just memorize our workouts and write down our progress on paper. Old school, but it works.
When Apple released the latest generation of iPods, the company also caused a great deal of pain for Linux users. While Linux developers had an easy time getting every other iPod in the past to work with Linux distributions like Ubuntu and SUSE, the latest iPods are different. In their infinite wisdom, Apple redesigned the iPod music database in such a way that it is encrypted with a hash key. Not only does this make it difficult to develop third party software that can access that database, but if you try to sync your 6th gen iPod with Ubuntu 7.10, it will destroy the database, making your music unplayable on the iPod (but still accessible in disk mode).
Of course, the Linux community being what it was, it took just a few days before a highly technical solution started making the rounds. But how does Joe Six-pack use this to sync his shiny new iPod? Download Squad delivers. Read on for step by step instructions!
Been spending the week gearing up for SXSW and then realized that you forgot to book tickets to Austin? Worry not, Download Squad will be bringing you blow by blow coverage from SXSW Interactive over the next few days. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and check out some of the top stories from the week that was.
Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 beta
Microsoft released the first beta version of IE8 this week, and while it's explicitly for developers and not early adopters, we rushed out to test it, and were severely disappointed with its performance. Sure, it renders the Acid2 test properly -- sometimes, but it does a pretty poor job with many other sites, including Download Squad. And many of you told us you were having even bigger problems. Check out the IE8 reviews and comments left by Download Squad readers. Microsoft launches Office Live Workspace beta
IE8 wasn't the only Microsoft beta to launch this week. The company also pushed the first public version of Office Live Workspace out the door. And while the service does provide users with a way to store and share Office documents online, we can't help but wonder whether people who have gotten used to actually being able to create and edit documents online with services like Zoho and Google Docs are going to care.
Linux users aren't exactly known as big fans of proprietary software, but sometimes a big commercial app comes in handy. iTunes has been up and running on Linux for a while now, but it was missing one big reason to choose it over an open source music player: iPod Touch and iPhone syncing. These two Apple gadgets need to be unlocked to work with a third-party music player.
But now iTunes on Linux is reportedly able to recognize and sync all iPod models, including the Touch and the iPhone. Maarten Lankhorst recently alerted the wine-devel mailing list that he got iPod-iTunes syncing to work on a Linux system with Wine, iTunes 7.6, and minimal patches. Good news for anyone whose 'Pod wasn't supported by the available open source apps.
There's still a little more work to be done before this will work on unpatched Wine: direct access to the device in explorer is not supported, although it should be coming soon. For now, at least there's a solution for Windows users who also want to keep their iPhones and iTouches locked - even if it's still proprietary.
There are otherprograms that can download videos from YouTube for Apple devices, but Tooble requires only a few clicks to do the entire process of download, convert, and copy to iTunes. Tooble is free for Mac 10.4+ and requires a (free) install of Perian for the conversion work.
To use Tooble, either enter a YouTube video URL or use one of the helpful sidebar options like "Popular Videos," "Highest Rated," or even "Your Favorites" which Tooble finds if you enter your YouTube username into the preferences.
You can also search YouTube from within Tooble, so you don't have to go find a video's URL from YouTube to put back into Tooble. When you start the download, Tooble queues the item and will start to download the video. The video is then converted and copied to your iTunes Movies library so that it can be synced with your iPod, iPhone, or AppleTV (although AppleTV supports YouTube directly).
Three little letters, about a year ago, had a death-grip on the music industry: DRM. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? DRM limits the unauthorized copying and sharing of music. We can see that argument. It also limits what music can be played on certain devices. Should you get a new computer or device and need to transfer your licenses, all we can say is -- good luck with that. We speak from experience.
Recently record labels and at least a few online music sellers have moved away from offering DRM-laden music. And today, Napster announced it was making the move to DRM-free downloads. (The company's subscription service still includes DRM) Napster, the service that once offered DRM-free songs (illegally), and then legally sold DRM'd songs, has been reborn into the service it should have been all along -- legal music, DRM-free.
Moving to the MP3 format opens up Napster to a wider array of devices, including the ubiquitous iPod. We're not financial gurus, but we sense this can only mean good things for Napster, and for the music industry as a whole. Music that we can play on any device we might have, on any computer we might have? We might break our music boycott. We might even have the heart to upgrade the circa 2004 Zen Touch to something new. You know, now that we can actually own our music, and not just rent it for the life of the device.
Yesterday, the Songbird team released version 0.4 of their Mozilla based music application. We took a quick look at it, and were pleased with what we found.
While at first glance Songbird may seem like an iTunes clone, it is actually much more than that. It's sort of what iTunes might have been were Apple not an evil Monolithic corporation. It serves as an open platform that allows any content provider to integrate their stores, podcasts, communities, or whatever else they can dream of into the program's interface.
Although is is still in Alpha status, this developer preview boasts many new features, including "display panes", enhanced iPod support, and much more. It is certainly one of the better jukebox type applications for Linux, and we were delighted to see it integrate the 22 Gigabytes of music on our test machine almost instantly with no hiccups. This is less than we can say about the more sluggish Banshee.
Who likes music by a wide variety of up and coming artists in many differing and unique genres? Who would like to be able to legally download that music to your computer and portable device? Who thought Spiderman 3 was the best of the trilogy?
If you answered in the affirmative to all three of those questions, we're afraid there's no hope for you, my friend. If you said yes to the above two, then read on!
Jamendo is one of the hottest places to legally download music, and they've just released a refreshed website. Updates include direct music downloads in http, more intuitive navigation, easier saving of tracks, albums, and playlists, and more.
All of the music on Jamendo is licensed by the Creative Commons license, meaning you can download, listen, burn, share, and talk about the songs as much as your heart desires. And though all the music is free, you can donate to the bands who have given you particular joy or satisfaction. Jamendo even shares 50% of its advertising revenue with artists who choose the "Revenue Sharing" program.
Jamendo also has a great community aspect; you can build customized playlists and share them with your friends and family.
Jamendo is currently running a contest in celebration of the release of their new version. The top 5 user playlists, as voted on by the users, will receive a free iPod Nano.
How sweet is that?
You can listen to free music, share what you like with your friends, and maybe win an iPod Nano. That's not just having your cake and eating it too. That's mixing the dough, putting it in the oven, frosting it, cutting it into pieces, and eating more than your fair share, all with a glass of ice cold milk.
So get cracking. Register for Jamendo if you haven't already and broaden those horizons.
You already know that Apple wants you to buy a new iPod or two pretty much every year. That's why the company keeps coming out with skinnier/cleaner looking devices that have more and more storage. Since 98.9% of the US population already owns an iPod, the company needs to keep pushing out products that make your MP3 player look like a Sony Walkman so that you'll be ashamed to walk around with your ancient technology.
But there's a price to upgrading (beside the hundreds of dollars you spend to, you know, buy a new product). It turns out that if you've purchased games designed for playing on previous versions of the iPod, you'll have to buy the same games again to play them on the latest generation.
On the upside, you get some minor improvements in the new versions of the games. They've been "reformatted" for the new devices. Updated games include Tetris, Soduku, and Ms. Pac-Man. The games will all run on the new iPod Classic and Nano. 15 more games will be added soon. Games cost $5, and may be obsolete next time you buy a new device.
Despite Apple's inclusion of a hefty feature set in its iApps and the iPhone, there always seem to be a few things missing that users want, and it's left to the hacker community to add these missing features. Mass-adding album art to iTunes used to be a pain. So did putting RSS news items onto your iPod. So, coincidentally, did viewing YouTube videos on your iPod or offline iPhone. Jax has solved all these dilemmas and more. The program, which we're convinced is named after the cliche "jack of all trades" is really a hack of all trades, because its functionality isn't limited to just music, or to video. Jax really does a ton of stuff. Like automatically collecting album art for your iTunes library, converting your RSS subscriptions into spoken audio files for syncing to your iPod, iTunes lyric searching and a scrolling lyrics visualizer (very handy for practicing musicians), and even automated downloading and transfer of YouTube videos to your iPod or iPhone.
This weekend we discovered that Apple had killed Linux compatibility in its newest iPods. The song database on the new iPod Classic, Touch, and Nano includes a new security measure that prevents users from synchronizing their portable media players with anything other than Apple's iTunes software. Today, it looks like some enterprising Linux developers have figured out how to circumvent those security measures. The website with information on how to perform the new hack is down after receiving a ton of traffic frm Digg, Engadget, and other sites. So we can't give you too many details right now, but given the way these things work, expect the solution to be rather complicated today. We're pretty confident someone will develop a more user-friendly version within a matter of days, or weeks at the most.
Part of what makes the iPod so popular is the way it seamless integrates with iTunes. You can rip your CD collection or download movies and music onto your PC and quickly synchronize them with your iPod for when you're on the go. But while the iPod is certainly the most popular portable media player on the market, not everyone is a huge fan of iTunes. And some folks, like say, Linux users, couldn't use the software if they wanted to.
In the past, those clever Linux developers figured out a way around this and managed to get open source software like Amarok and gtkpod to synchronize with iPods.
But it turns out that Apple has locked down the song database file on its latest generation of iPods including the iPod Nano, Classic, and touch. The change means that there's no way to transfer music between a new iPod and a Linux PC.
Given enough time, we suspect Linux developers will find a way around this limitation. But what made Apple lock down the new devices in the first place? Conspiracy theorists (who may very well be right) will surely suggest that Apple wants to lock people into using just their hardware and software. But seriously, what Linux user is going to switch to OS X or Windows just to use an iPod? Essentially Apple is just convincing open source advocates to stop buying iPods. We're betting Steve Jobs isn't that dumb, so we wonder if there might be some other advantage to adding security measures to the song database.
Following the lead of major label rival EMI, Universal Music is set to start offering DRM-free downloads through a variety of online retailers - but apparently not through iTunes. The New York Times has reported that Universal will be the second major label to try out DRM-free music, through a trial that will see its unencumbered tracks available through retailers such as Google Music, Wal-Mart, Real Networks and Amazon.
It's reported that Universal is saying that the DRM-free sales will be on a trial period up until the first quarter of 2008, however it is not clear if Universal will follow the lead of EMI and place the DRM-free downloads in the market at a higher price-point than its other DRM encumbered tracks.
The move also seems designed to continue to place pressure on Apple's in the ongoing dispute between Universal and Apple over royalties from iTunes and iPods. Back in June Universal told Apple that it wouldn't renew its agreement with iTunes to sell music through the online store for another year and would sell at will, allowing the major to potentially pull out of iTunes at any time. The DRM-free announcement seems designed to turn up the heat on Apple to reach a settlement on royalties.
The news is particularly good for Amazon who announced in April that it was going to launch a DRM-free record store, but with only EMI's DRM-free content to work with to date, the online mega-retailer was looking like it was going to enter the digital music space with a pretty mediocre offering. The news is also great for consumers, by leaving iTunes out of the loop for the minute, competitors to the dominant service may get a chance to catch up on a small piece of the market, thus increasing competition and hopefully providing more options for the digital music buying public.
We've always been fond of Amarok. It has some good features, nice add-ons, and felt just a little friendlier than some other Linux media players. We recently discovered a contender to the title of most loved Linux media player, the ominously named Banshee. Fortunately, Banshee doesn't involve listening to shrieking demons, unless that's your genre of choice.
When Apple released the latest generation of iPods, the company also 
Been spending the week gearing up for 
Three little letters, about a year ago, had a death-grip on the music industry: DRM. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? DRM limits the unauthorized copying and sharing of music. We can see that argument. It also limits what music can be played on certain devices. Should you get a new computer or device and need to transfer your licenses, all we can say is -- good luck with that. We speak from experience.
Yesterday, the Songbird team 
Following the lead of 
