Buzzsonic.com

• WHA!? Studios
  Bastard pop net label, including Scissor Sisters mash-up remix album. Free MP3s/torrents.

• YouTube Killer Gets CNet On Board
  News Corp. and NBC Universal announce today a multi-year content and distribution agreement with CNET Networks for their joint premium online video venture dubbed the YouTube Killer.
• Earbuzz anounces new site.
  the independent online music retailer, has announced a complete solution for music artists as the first and only music store to offer both digital downloads and CD sales with 100 percent of the purchase price paid back to artists
• The Filter Launches Last.fm-style Social Network, WMP Support
  The Filter is a music recommendation service which started as a beta in 2006, and is endorsed/evangelized by none other than Peter Gabriel.
• Beatport Launches Song Player for MySpace Profiles
  Of all the MySpace add-ons, it seems like the music category is filling up the fastest. The latest to join the long, long line of MySpace music players is BeatPort, an online music store that specializes in dance music and remixes. They’ve just announce

• Rough Trade opens massive record shop to fight internet - Independent
  Rough Trade, which had its origins in a pokey music store on Kensington Park Road in London, is to open Britain’s biggest music-only shop in a direct challenge to the all-conquering power of the internet.
• Legal Music Services Compared
  And not so legal services….Run down includes borderline legal Russian download services.
• Listening Post - Wired Blogs
  the popular online music streaming site Pandora instituted blockade against IP addresses outside of the United States. Frantic Industries posted a list of proxy techniques you can use to fool Pandora into thinking you’re in the U.S.

We’ve been running a music industry search directory for a number of years now as a sub domain on the 99th Floor Elevators blog here and have long been planning to update the resource as its been running on a creaking five year old php script, which is as far removed from Web 2.0 as you can get, bursting at the seams with horrid session iDs and other unsightly stuff !

Anyhow, we’ve moved the directory over to its own stand-alone domain name at Buzzsonic.dj and a new script from those clever Malaysian programmers at Indexu (since bought out by French owners I understand). There’s still some work to be done, especially cleaning up the database and adding tags but its looking OK so far. There’s going to be a forum added hopefully for more interaction and you can actually post comments and “tell a friend” already on any of the directory entries you might want to share or shout about.

Any suggestions are actively encouraged naturally.

• Daves Imaginary Sound Space
  Web toolbox, list of useful online apps.
• Media Distribution
  If you were looking for a list of links where you can get your podcasts, videos and audio distributed in the web 2.0 media world, here it is, courtesy of Dave’s Imaginary Sound Space.

• Blog Growth Stalling: Some Reasons Why I Nearly Quit Blogging » Webomatica - tech, movies, music blog
  Some recent numbers from Technorati (condensed by Valleywag) suggest that while the total number of blogs is increasing, more blogs are falling inactive, meaning blog growth has stalled at 15 million.

• Wordpress Theme Generator
  Word Press Theme Generator lets you create your own unique wordpress theme easily within minutes.
• Library clips :: The many ways to post to your blog :: April :: 2007
  There’s no excuse to not publish blog posts, you can do it from anywhere using various web tools!
• Geek to Live: Build an internet jukebox with Jinzora - Lifehacker
  With Jinzora installed on your home server, you can browse your music library, create playlists on the fly and stream your music from home over the internet to another computer or handheld anywhere.
• iPodifier
  Freeware application iPodifier monitors user-defined folders for videos, automatically transcodes them to an iPod-compatible format, adds them to iTunes, and then syncs them with your iPod.
• LH Top 10: USB thumb drive tricks - Lifehacker
  The explosion of USB thumb drives gives anyone the ability take some serious file storage space along with their house keys.

• Digg - Carry a PC Repair System on a USB Drive
  The Daily Cup of Tech computer help site put together a USB-drive based collection of software that’ll help you resuscitate any ailing PC. All wrapped up into one convenient, 14.2MB zip file, the USB PC Repair System contains 37 fix-it utilities.

• Rogue Amoeba - Fission: Lossless Audio Editor for Mac OS X
  Fission is a streamlined audio editor designed to get you editing in minutes, not hours. Fission lets you copy, paste and trim audio, as well as split files, all with no quality loss.

• Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit
  The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile inform

• GOOG-411 offers free directory assistance - Lifehacker
  Google Labs just rolled out a Google Voice Local Search, which is basically a free 411 search.

• The Steampunk Workshop
  Making artifacts from an alternative age.
• Telegraph Clacks out RSS Feeds
  Morse code into RSS feeds?
• An App A Day - Downloads: Day 7 - Google Wallpaper
  Using Google image search to switch your desktop wallpaper automatically.

• MozBackup - Backup tool for Firefox and Thunderbird
  If you want to save or back up your profiles in Firefox and Thunderbird email client this neat little app is great and easy to use if you dont want to go through the pain of the Mozilla step by step.
• Link Alert :: Firefox Add-ons
  The Link Alert Firefox extension displays customized mouse cursors in Firefox to let you know what a link is pointing you toward.
• Google Firefox Extensions
  List of official Google Firefox extensions.
• Mozilla: Why Desktop E-Mail Crucifies the Browser
  Thunderbird developer says Thunderbird 2 will still keep pace with GMail.
• The 10 Real Reasons Why Geeks Make Better Lovers-Wired.com
  Well, thats OK then!!

• New Rave? Old rubbish | Electronic | Guardian Unlimited Music

• Decrypting - Doom9’s Forum
• Microsoft’s war waged with FairUse4WM - Engadget

• Wi-Fi Networking News
• If No One Reads Your Blog, Does Disclosure Matter?
• Vator.TV
• User/Submitter for Digg Users and Submitters
• Webmaster Forum - Internet Marketing & Search Engine Forums

• Modding the Motorola Razr V3 | razr mods | Razr Software Upgrading - Home
• Convert YouTube Videos for Your iPod
• Snap Preview Anywhere
• EMI Drops DRM For New Premium Line-Up, Higher Price; Apple First
• paidContent.org: This Just In: Steve Jobs To Music DRM: Drop Dead
• When will Ringtone providers be outlawed?

• Buddi - Personal budget software for the rest of us
• How To: Erase Your Hard Drive - Consumerist
• Add an “identities” widget to your site with ShowYourself - Lifehacker
• GooSync
• GTD Search at Did I Get Things Done?
• Vitalist » Online GTD Software
• Tracks-Doing Things Properly
• WinSnap - enable superior screenshots - NTWind Software
• JibberJobber :Career Toolset
• Isabont - Plan your career. Manage Your Job Search.
• WebHostingTalk Forums - Web Hosting Discussion
• Jamendo : Open your ears
• Best of Bootie 2006 CD
• Mozy Online Backup: Free. Automatic. Secure.
• Lijit- Personal Search widget
• Associate-O-Matic :: Build a custom Amazon.com Associate Store with 1000’s of items in minutes
• Google’s CPA Move: Will Microsoft & Yahoo Have To Buy Their Way Into CPA Game?

Since the blog makeover a couple of weeks ago I’ve been bombarded by comment spam for some reason. Its one of the things that makes blogging work and not fun. So, I finally activated Askimet (Automattic Kismet to give it its full name) on my WordPress install (didn’t really pay attention to it before for some reason?). Its actually working wonders right now and since activating the plug-in its halted more than 2,200 of the most bloodcurdlingly despicable types of spam you can imagine that up to now I’ve been having to edit manually daily.

Askimet comes installed by default in Word Press but you have to activate it in the Plugins area in your admin area and get a free APi key. A five minute task that’ll save you hours of work weekly.

Related Links

Askimet FAQ ( Askimet)

Here’s a really useful widget for people with blogs or multiple memberships at social networks, bookmarking sites and the like. If you’re like me you probably have profiles at a bunch of different websites, Flickr, MySpace, Digg, YouTube and such. With ShowYourself you can combine all your profiles on the web into one neat looking widget that you can put on your blog, your MySpace page or anywhere on the web.

With developer Dustin Bachrach’s app you type in your usernames for the sites you use and clear the checkboxes for those you don’t. The ShowYourself widget-builder lists around two dozen popular destinations, from AIM to Last.fm to YouTube, and you can easily add others.

Via Lifehacker.com

Related Links
Yahoo Widgets (Yahoo.com)
WordPress Widgets (Wordpress.com)

I rambled on here about finding flights and deals online in the ‘traditional’ manner using meta-searchers so you dont have to visit each individual travel site etc, but there is an even more time efficient way by using RSS. I’m assuming that readers have some entry level knowledge of RSS, if not, read this to get some background on the format that’ll help save you bundles of time.

I use the Sage RSS reader in my Firefox browser. Its a great lightweight way of reading RSS feeds without having to log-in to an online reader or fire up a desktop stand alone ( I use Feed Demon for more heavy duty feed trawling). Once you’ve installed Sage in Firefox you can open it in a browser sidebar to view your feeds.

The “big three” online travel agents, Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz all now offer various RSS feeds.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Buxfer: Track Your Money
• The Freesound Project
• Home Based Business: Online Job Hunting Trick: Know Yourself First
• NewTeeVee » 10 Pipes for Your Tubes
• Find Neighborhood Profiles and City Information on Yahoo! Real Estate

Joining in the fray of predictive holiday and flight search is Hotwire, following on the heels of Farecast and Fare Compare. A Fare Prediction shows if the lowest fare is rising or dropping over the next seven days for the specific dates and cities searched (according to the Farecast website). So, in laymans terms they basically ‘predict’ when its cheapest to go.

Hotwire’s offering is called Trip Starter and my seaching for a trip to Las Vegas from my local airport at Fort Myers returned a graph showing airfare and hotel price fluctuations by the month.

Best time to fly, according to Trip Starter is January, February and September. Best time to stay, July, August and December. They advise to avoid the crowds, go during the first three weeks in December or on weekdays in July.

One advantage Trip Starter has over its rivals is that by plugging in the results to Hotwire affiliate Trip Advisor they are able to offer local guides, events and maps, something Farecast and Fare Compare dont offer right now.

Courtesy iExploreFlorida.com

• English Football Grounds - Community Walk
• Google Operating System: How Google Blog Search Ranks Results
• Born to Roam For Free - Voxilla
• Welcome to Roam4free - The end of sky high roaming charges !
• OpenMoko-Free Your Phone
• Blog Translations: The Next Web Frontier
• Fighting Syndication Based Spam - ReveNews -
• dnScoop - Domain Name Value, History, Stats Tool and Forums
• Web Worker Daily » 5 Ways To Use Skype Prime to Make Money «
• WiFi Cafes and Hotspots
• Best Travel Notebooks
• The Ultimate Geek Go Bag
• How to Time Your Gadget Purchases: The Ultimate Guide | The Free Geek
• VIRB°
• Alpha Geek: 10 cool cell phone tricks - Lifehacker
• Geek to Live: Make a ringtone from any MP3 - Lifehacker
• oneSearch™ on Yahoo! Mobile Web. Search for anything from anywhere.
• Skype Journal
• p2pnet.net - Google phone is talk of the town

Late last week Google quietly acquired data visualization software tool, Trendalyzer from its parent company, Gapminder. They are already making the tool available for free here and the software developers have moved into Google’s Mountain View HQ.

Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations.

The Official Google Blog reports, “We hope to provide the resources necessary to bring such work to its deserved wider audience by improving and expanding Trendalyzer and making it freely available to any and all users capable of thinking outside the X and Y axes.”

via Paid Content

Related Reading
A Word In Motion (Official Google Blog)