Amarok 2.0 Linux music player released

Open source music player Amarok 2 was released this week. The latest version of the popular KDE-based application features a completely retooled user interface, integration with online services like Shoutcast, Magnatune, and Jamendo, and support for the KDE 4 desktop environment.
That last bit is important, because if you try to install Amarok 2 on a system running KDE 3.5 you'll probably need to download a whole slew of other updates in order to get the music player working.
There are Windows and OS X ports of Amarok, but right now online Linux distributions (including Kubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian, and PCLinuxOS) are officially supported.
[Via: Ubuntu Unleashed ] [Tag: amarok-2, kde, linux, music ]

MP3-Check examines your music collection, tells you what's wrong with it

Got a few thousand MP3s in your music collection with missing or incorrect ID3 tags? MP3-Check won't fix them for you, but it will let you know what's missing. It's a light weight utility that can process large amounts of information quickly and let you know if your MP3 files:

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  Are missing ID3 tags
  
  
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  Don't meet your bit rate or sample rate requirements
  
  
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  Are stereo or mono
  
  
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  Meet a specified volume threshold

MP3-Check also lets you choose third party tools to associate with the program so that, for example, when you find an MP3 with no ID3 information you can right click on it to launch your favorite ID3 tag editor. If your ID3 tags aren't just missing, but are actually wrong, you might want to check out a tool like MusicBrainz which will compare your files with an online database and try to find the correct metadata.

[Via: GHacks ]
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Oh, cheer up! Just push the red button ...

We've noticed a meme traveling around Twitter lately that seems to be making people's days at the office a little more fun. Or, depending on how you look at it, making their coworkers' days just a little more annoying. What is this life-changing trend? Old-school sound effects buttons.
If you need a drummer to punctuate all your snappy remarks, like some kind of quirky late-night talk show host, visit Instant Rim Shot. If something doesn't quite go as planned for you or someone in the room with you, go to Sad Trombone. These are perhaps the two most indispensable sound effects in any jokester's repertoire.
Safari users, take note: this is where you finally get some use out of that Web Clip feature, so you can keep these in your Dashboard for the appropriate occasion. We hope you enjoy them -- or loathe them -- as much as we do.
Thanks to Jim Ray for the Web Clip idea!

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Video-Tabs: Learn to play guitar the YouTube way

A few month ago we checked out iVideoSongs, a web site that lets you buy music lessons from experts like Rush's Alex Lifeson, or Graham Nash from Crosby, Stills & Nash. The video quality is excellent, the lessons are top notch, and you can find lessons for beginners, intermediate, and advanced musicians. But only some of the lessons are free. For many you'll have to pull out your wallet.

Or you could just resort to the thousands of music lessons uploaded to YouTube and other video sharing sites for free. But who wants to sift through videos from every dude who thinks he's the next Jimi Hendrix in order to find the most worthwhile lessons? That's where Video-Tabs comes in. The site is basically a blog that features user generated guitar lessons, which are sometimes punctuated with actual guitar tabs.

Some of the lessons are excellent and easy to follow. Others not so much. But for the most part, the tutorials that we checked out seemed to feature people who actually knew how to play the songs they were teaching. If you're a visual learner, the site is definitely worth checking out.

[Via: listio ]
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Escape Pod - Download Pod

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.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Audacity 1.3.5 beta Cross-platform audio editor updated

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:

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  Hit Shift while clicking record to start a recording at the end of an existing track
  
  
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  Users should see fewer invalid sample rate problems under LInux
  
  
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  Updated versions of the Portaudio, Libogg, LIbvorbis, and other libraries
  
  
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  More informative dialogs when dealing with unsupported file formats
  
  
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  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.

[Via: Making Music ]
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Seriously, Where's the Zune Support for Mac?

While at the Zune Media Event in Redmond on Monday, the media had some downtime between presentations, and naturally the conversation moved to Microsoft vs. Apple. The mix of bloggers, reporters and Microsoft advertorial/internal bloggers provided some predictable replies. iPhone's keyboard sucks...WinMo's browser is blah...The iPhone isn't mainstream because my grandma doesn't care about it...on and on. Then the convo turned to iPod vs. Zune, and the question of Zune's lack of Mac support came up. The closest anyone came to giving a good reason was suggesting Mac users bought Apple products more for the logo than the actual product, meaning they'd never abandon the iPod for a Zune. A fair point, perhaps, but a silly reason for a company to justify their lack of support for another platform. Here are a few reasons Zune should support OS X:Tech Journalists and Reviewers Use Macs: Sure, Microsoft may not think it's profitable to develop software for a platform where users are unlikely to purchase their products, but what about drawing interest from the media? If you look around any tech media event, you're going to see more people using Macs than PCs. And sure, most, if not all, of us have both platforms running. But for those of us who use OS X as our primary OS, how many are using Zune past the initial review stage? It's more of a hassle to go back and forth between machines just to use devices, especially when it comes to the storage of media files. I think the media would be more interested in the nuances of Zune if it fit in with their daily lives.Zune 2.0 Is a Quality Product: Pound for Pound, I'd say the Zune80 is a better product than the iPod Classic. It has a better UI, more features (hardware and software), a better platform and control mechanism for gaming, and a decent enough design. While many companies in the past have put out good MP3 players, none have hands-down outclassed the iPod. The Zune80 might be the first to challenge the supremacy of the iPod. Why not have faith that Mac users will see that?Devices And Platforms Should Never Be Exclusive: The iPod never really took off until it began supporting Windows with it's 2G iteration. Of course, Apple had more to gain from opening up to a much, much larger Windows user base, but it never hurts to make a product more widely available to the public.How Costly Can Mac Support Be?: Even if the number of potential Mac users who would buy Zune products is minuscule, how expensive can it be to code an app? There have been far smaller companies who have supported both platforms, and Microsoft has other Mac apps, so what gives?All The Cool Kids Are Doing It: The iPod didn't become the de facto standard for MP3 players because of its technical prowess alone. The great white earbud craze of 2004 probably started because a handful of popular kids liked the design of the iPod a year or two earlier, which in turn made them technological tastemakers. All the kids who want to be popular generally follow along. I think it goes without saying that it's currently considered "cool" to own a Mac. Microsoft is never going to get Zunes in the hands of this group if they can't get their music on it.It's entirely possible adding Mac support won't have a huge impact, but with open source technology and DRM-free media growing more popular by the day, giving people the freedom of platform is always good for the image.

[Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]
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Zune Marketplace adds TV shows, other stuff

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:

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  The desktop application is integrated with the "Zune Community," allowing users to send messages and share their collections with friends
  
  


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  Ability to drag and drop a friend's Zune Card onto your portable media player
  
  


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  Gapless playback
  
  


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  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.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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NIN gives away another album, either Reznor gets it, or he's just rich

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:

1. It's possible to give away your music for free and make money by touring, and asking fans to pay for premium content.
   
2. 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.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Record and save online radio streams with Chilirec

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.


[Via: Go2Web20 ]
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You Look Nice Today - Download Pod

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.
[Via: Download Squad ]
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