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Filed under: Audio, Fun, Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

Mixwit - Make your mix tapes online

Remember when you put together mix tapes on cassettes and lovingly wrote the song titles in microscopic script on the tape label, maybe even including artistic doodles? Remember the recorded intro you did for the recipient? Remember the songs you selected? Each one chosen for its particular meaning - a special code for you and the receiver's relationship. Yeah, we don't remember that sappy stuff either.

Well *cough,* not that anyone would do that, but Mixwit is a site where you could if you wanted to theoretically speaking, do something kind of, sort of, like that, if you were into that type of thing, which you're definitely probably not.

Making a mix tape with Mixwit is super easy. You can upload your own artwork for the tape skin, search for songs online and drag and drop them on the playlist you're creating, share by publishing it on Mixwit or even embedding on your blog or website. It's absolutely free too. We think you'll love it.

Filed under: Audio, Web services, Freeware

Pandora now has classical music

classical musicThe number one requested feature from Pandora users is the ability to Pandora-ize classical music, and well, it is here. For all you fans of the concerto, symphony, the sonata, and all the finer styles of music the world has to offer, Pandora has your audio fix ready to download into your ears in grand style.

As with all previous Pandora ideas, you can type in the name of your favorite composer to create a station. Hard to say at this point just how much classical music is available, because it takes a while to classify all that music using the near 400 point genome scale. You will simply need to check that out for yourself, and let us know how you like it.

Who said you need smoke, mirrors, lights, and fancy stage antics to get music that is sublime? Well, open Pandora's music box, and you'll see what is possible.

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Freeware, Social Software

MXplay makes music yours in new ways

MXplayAs a music fan, sometimes you feel as if you have heard it all. Every music playing application feels generally the same without too much difference. One music playing application stands out in this regard. MXplay is a different kind of music experience, in that it allows you to move the speakers, thus altering the sound in it's 2D panel (as seen in the gallery below). You can also move your head to make the music sound different, have more depth or sound closer, behind you are just right to the angle of your head.

Move my head? Yes, but a digital head, not your real head. This digital head lets you spin to hear at different angles or slide side to side for interesting audio perception results. This feature of MXplay is by far the most fun to play with and can take you a while to begin to stop playing with it, so you might not want to try it at work.

The real value in MXplay is in the social networking aspect, or so it would seem. The social features of the app include the ability to mix in videos from YouTube, Google, and others to add to your audiospace. Once done, you can save and share audiospaces (even though some contain video) with other users of the application. You can also make recordings of the various speaker moves in a pattern that is also saved as a part of your audiospace.

Running this app on Vista worked just fine and shouldn't give you to much trouble, however the use of certain features wasn't very clear in some cases, and there doesn't seem to be extensive documentation by any means, but it is at least worth playing with to experience the pseudo 3D sounds it produces.

There are MXplay plugins for Nintendo Wiimote, Last.fm, and even one in the works for MP3tunes.com as well. so stay tuned!

Gallery: MXplay

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Blogging, Productivity, Web services

Digitizing media with AudioDizer

audiodizer podcast audioAudioDizer wants to pack our iPods and portable devices with more content than we can handle.

This text to speech company is aiming at creating a new distribution channel for traditional media companies, creating high quality MP3 podcasts for newspapers, magazines, websites, and advertisers. AudioDizer uses multiple voices, speech patterns and accents to enhance listening experience while trying to improve the content that is stored on devices.

The whole text to speech does seem creepy when heard, and can be a little distracting if the timing is off or when words don't flow together properly. Technology Review uses AudioDizer for every article they publish online and it has been working great for their users. The process is simple for the user, choose an article, then choose whether you want to listen to the article, or download an mp3. I have to say, it is high quality, but still has that creepy distracting feel to it. Mind you it has the potential to be very beneficial when you are in a rush, or on your way to work and want to catch up on your favorite sites content.

What do you think? Click here for an mp3 sample.

Filed under: Audio, Web services

Listen to continuously streamed Podcasts with Noisely

noisely podcast

Do you listen to a few different podcasts, but hate plugging them into your player? Wouldn't it be nice if you knew about Noisely before today? Noisely has coined the term "intelligent podcast player". What does this mean? Enter words that describe what you want to listen to and Noisely will automatically generate hours of continuous podcasts. Noisely works soley online in your browser and searches through their database, spitting out results based on matching keywords, and the date the actual podcast took place. If you feel like listening to some chatting on your areas of interest throughout the day, this is a tool you might want to check out.

[Via EmilyChang]

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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