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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Utilities, Web services

LastSharp silently downloads MP3s from Last.Fm playlists


Last.Fm is one of the better streaming music services around, but you're probably wishing you could save the tracks it plays. Brush up on your German (or just keep reading) and grab LastSharp, and you'll be downloading in no time flat.

The download link on the author's site is just below the Aktuelle Version text (to save hassles, it points to RapidShare or you can find mirrors on Rapidspread). LastSharp doesn't require installation, just extract the contents of the rar file. As you may have guessed from the name, you'll also need the .Net 2.0 runtimes to use it.

When you launch it the first time, the interface will be in German. To change it, click the tab marked Erweiterte Einstellungen. Click the dropdown marked Deutsh and change it to English, then close and restart the program.

Log in with your Last.Fm username and password, and enter your search text - results are displayed neatly in the "Tune In" box. Downloading is as simple as checking the songs you want and marking the Continue Downloading Automatically option (otherwise you'll be grabbing them one at a time).

LastSharp has a lot of useful options, including on-the-fly normalization with MP3gain, automatic scrobbling, cover downloading, and filtering. Downloads are automatically filed in a tidy Artist -> Album name folder structure.

This is a great app for music downloaders, and I hope it sticks around long enough after this post goes live for our DS readers to enjoy it.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Utilities, Windows

Airfoil for Windows 2.0 released



Apple's AirPort Express is a handy little, nearly-pocketable wireless router that, amongst other neat features, allows you to wireless stream iTunes music from a Mac or Windows PC to a set of speakers, thanks to its standard headphone jack (which doubles as an optical jack as well). The only problem is: iTunes is the sole app that the AirPort Express is designed to stream audio from. Fortunately, long-time Mac OS X software company Rogue Amoeba decided this iTunes exclusivity just wasn't right, so they developed Airfoil in both Mac and Windows versions.

Airfoil is a great little utility that allows you to stream any audio from your computer to an AirPort Express, but it doesn't stop there. In fact, a fresh new version 2.0 update for the Windows version today introduces cool new features like sending audio to multiple AirPort Expresses, playing back audio locally while still streaming it and a 10-band equalizer for adjusting the audio you're streaming.

If all this has your attention, an Airfoil demo is of course available, while a license costs just $25. For existing owners, however, Airfoil 2.0 for Windows is a free upgrade.

Filed under: Audio, Video, Web services

Agregga: Like Pandora for videos, but not as useful

Agregga
Now that Pandora is unavailable outside of the US and UK, where do you go for your streaming music recommendations?

Aggrega wants to be a sort of Pandora for music videos. You enter an artist and it will pull up videos from that performer and others it thinks you might like. You can improve the recommendations by clicking "I Love" or "I Hate" buttons for each song.

But here's the problem. Aggrega grabs all of its music videos from YouTube. In other words, you'll wind up with a lot of fan-made music videos of kids lip-syncing songs or amateurs performing covers. The service also brings up a fair number of videos that have been removed, which shouldn't be surprising since many of the actual music videos posted to YouTube are done so without the consent of copyright holders.

As YouTube continues to crack down on copyright violations, it's likely that Aggrega could become even less useful unless the service uses videos from other services or actually gets distribution rights for the videos it serves up.

Another thing that's kind of annoying is that Aggrega will show you a list of upcoming videos, but it won't let you skip ahead to listen to those songs, and it doesn't always play them in order.

[via Mashable]

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Utilities, News, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services

MP3tunes gives away unlimited music storage

MP3tunesMP3tunes is now offering free unlimited storage and music streaming for all your tunes. The site previously gave away 1GB of storage to sync your music, and even "sideload" any tunes you find on the web with Firefox and IE plugins to save the tunes you find to your locker. Now you get unlimited space to upload, store, sync, and enjoy all your music from any computer anywhere. Their uploader seems to upload fairly well, and doesn't take much babysitting to get it to work either. The audio quality is worthy of listening, it is seriously not bad. I am somewhat of an audiophile, and this service is really rocking for me right now. If you have a lot of music, it can take a while to upload your tracks (so leave it uploading overnight at least), but man, it is worth it, to be able to listen to your music anywhere you want. The service boasts the ability to stream to mobile devices, but sadly I haven't tried that feature yet. If you have the opportunity, try it out and let me know what you think of it. You can even sync album art. Wicked. My ear drums are going to need a vacation after this.

UPDATE: If you sign up and don't see your account go to unlimited right away, you will still have 1GB, and will be put on the list for an unlimited account. The service is great, either way, but apparently, it isn't fully rolled out to all users yet. I had a free OBOE account previously, so I guess they allowed me to upgrade sooner than new sign-ups. My bad. Thanks Taylor for pointing this out.

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Video, Windows

Watch live streaming NHL games online (US only)

Stream live NHL games on Comcast hockey live
There was certainly a lot of fanfare when Google announced that they were going to allow people around the world to watch in-season full-length games on Google Video. Well, it seems that Comcast now allows anyone in the US to stream up to 2 live games a day. When Comcast and the NHL first made this announcement, the games were only viewable to Comcast High-Speed Internet customers. This year, anyone in the US can watch the games - even DSL subscribers - via the Comcast Hockey Live site.

Before you get too excited there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Local games are usually blacked out, and to watch the live streams you'll need a PC with Microsoft Windows Media Player 9.x or higher and IE 6+ or a similar generation browser. So Mac users are out of luck (shock).

Filed under: Audio, Macintosh, Open Source, Social Software

Last.fm OS X client updated to 1.1.0

last.fm updated os x client version 1.1.0Social music site Last.fm has recently updated their OS X client to version 1.1.0. While the site is short on details for the new version, there are some fairly obvious UI changes that include new icons, font changes and button sizes. This beta version is only compatible with Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger).

I've been using it all day today, and I'm happy to report that it hasn't crashed yet. This is good news, as the previous version (1.0) would frequently decide to stop working on my MacBook Pro. As Last.fm user sandymcc points out, the ability to play multiple tags at the same time seems to have disappeared. For those of you who have updated, what changes have you discovered?

Filed under: Audio, Utilities

MP3myMP3 easily records audio streams

mp3mymp3This nifty tool will record audio streams and encode them to either .mp3 or .wav for you. It uses the LAME "educational" encoding engine, the same as Audacity. Honestly, I already have and use audacity for this function, recording stuff off the Internet or other sources, and it has editing features as well, so I really don't know why you would use MP3myMP3 unless you don't already have Audacity, because why have two programs to accomplish what one can do by itself? I haven't seen the value in application redundancy, but perhaps you will. MP3myMP3 has a nice UI, and I like how it picked right up on the song I was listening to without having to select the source or anything. I suppose the main advantage to this program has to do with its quick and dirty factor. It simply records without any config, unlike Audacity. It is always a trade off between the ability to do some professional tweaking or to quickly and simply do it automatically without taking the time to config everything.

Filed under: Video, Web services

Download videos from Google, YouTube with KeepVid

KeepVidI've seen a number of sites that let you directly download videos from sites like Google and YouTube, but KeepVid beats the rest with its nice design, easy-to-remember URL, and its ability to download not only from the big guys but also with about three dozen other video sites like iFilm, Vimeo, Putfile, Revver, and MySpace. It's also got a handy FAQ that offers some help in dealing with those pesky FLV files and streaming (mms://) videos.

[Via Lifehacker]

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