Apple’s iTunes U(niversity)

Apple iTunes U “puts the power of the iTunes Store to work for colleges, universities, and other education organizations, so users can easily search, download, and play education content just like they do music, movies, and TV shows.”

This is Apple’s service for faculty to provide content for computers and portable devices.  Something to look into for podcasts and other online video/audio/PDF delivery services for classes.

SoundJay: Free Collection Of Sound Effects

MakeUseOf has a post on SoundJay which is a free Collection Of Sound Effects.

SoundJay is “a web resource that lists free collection of sound effects. Anyone can download and use them for personal non commercial purposes. All sounds are nicely organized in different categories like background sounds, button sounds, human sound effects, communication sounds and more.”

Simplify Media – Connect Your Music

Simplify Media is freeware which lets you play your music in iTunes, Front Row, Winamp, Windows Media Player 11, or Linux’s Rhythmbox.

It’s file streaming software for Windows/Mac/Linux systems as well as iPhone/iPod Touch.

MyCast your digital media with Orb

MyCast your digital media with Orb 2.0 remote pc access software.

“Orb provides the ability to “MyCast”. MyCasting gives the user instant access to photos, music, videos, live television, and other digital content on their home PC at anytime and from any internet-connected device, such as a mobile phone, PDA or laptop. MyCasting is media anywhere.”

Freeware. Windows Vista, Windows XP (Home or Professional) with Service Pack 2, or Windows XP Media Center Edition (2004 or 2005), Wii, PS3 and Xbox.

Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better

Lifehacker has a post on how Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better.

Songbird is the younger sister application to Firefox and Thunderbird and other Mozilla freeware, and it handles the media playing.

These add-ons pump up the functionality of Songbird.

Kantaris: Unique Media Player Based on VLC

The How-to Geek has a post on Kantaris, “a Unique Media Player Based on VLC”.

Kantaris combines “the plays-anything aspect of VLC with the pleasant interface of Windows Media Player”.

Screamer Radio

[updated 2009.7.2]
Screamer Radio “is a freeware Internet Radio player for Microsoft Windows.”

• It’s easy to use
• It’s not bloated
• It’s ad free
• It has no spyware
• It has a huge database of radio stations
• It has a cool peak meter
• You can easily record what you’re listening to
• You can hide it in the system tray
• You can play back on multiple soundcards
• .. and it’s free!

Pick a radio station (now this is really impressive — I didn’t know most of these even existed!).  Tune in, turn on, and listen.

Note: some of these stations listed have broken links.  Keep trying and some of them will work.

Didn’t find the station you wanted on the furnished list?  Here’s a possible way to include it:

Open the File drop-down menu, select Manually Edit Favorites and look at the list of possible stations you’ve already selected.

The easiest method is to copy one of the entries to a new line, and then edit it to match.

Example: I found in my Favorites:

<Station title=”Mellesleg.FM – Soundtracks (192 kbps)” url=”http://www.mellesleg.fm/”>
<Source>http://195.228.254.168:8070/</Source>
</Station>

Note: the “Soundtracks” actually read something non-English (“Foado”), so I edited that first to something that meant more to linguistically-challenged me.

Now the lists didn’t include every station from Mellesleg, so I wanted to add others that looked interesting.

I copied the existing entry to the next section.  With Screamer open, I clicked on the link to that group of stations, and found another I liked, which wasn’t on the lists provided with Screamer.  When I clicked on the new station, I got the IP address for it shown (in Firefox) which was 195.228.254.168:8120, which differed from the first one only in the section after the colon:

<Station title=”Mellesleg.FM – Musicals (192 kbps)” url=”http://www.mellesleg.fm/”>
<Source>http://195.228.254.168:8120/</Source>
</Station>

So I edited the change, made it into “Musicals” and I had a new entry in my Favorites.  Saved the file, and used Screamer to change to the new Favorite channel.

The same principle applies to other channel addresses — especially if you already have another one from that station.  If not, see if you can get the IP address and work out your own custom link.

Amarok music player

Amarok is an open source freeware music player “for Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows with an intuitive interface.”

It seems to be a head-on competitor for iTunes, without the commercial aspects, and integrates with web services, along with offering a number of powerful features.

Might be what you’re looking for in a music player.

Lifehacker’s Five Best Media Center Applications

Lifehacker’s poll on the Five Best Media Center Applications has the results in.

• XBMC (Windows/Mac/Linux/Xbox/Apple TV)

• Boxee (Mac OS X/Apple TV/Linux)

• Windows Media Center (Windows/Xbox 360)

• SageTV (Windows/Mac/Linux)

• MythTV (Linux)

… along with some info on capabilities.  Some of these are freeware; others allow free trials.

Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better

Lifehacker has a post on how Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better.  Songbird is an open source media player.

Like Firefox and other open source software, Songbird has the ability to accept some useful addons which greatly improve the ability of this player to handle music and video easily and conveniently.

iPod, QuickTime, and Windows Media playback, streaming players, extra info for what’s playing, and more.

TagScanner for your music files

TagScanner 5.0.525 “is a multifunction program for organizing and managing your music collection. It can edit tags of mostly state-of-the-art audio formats, rename files based on the tag information, generate tag information from filenames, and perform any transformations of the text from tags and filenames. Also you may get album info via online databases like freedb or Amazon. Supports ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis comments, APEv2, WindowsMedia and MP4(iTunes) tags. Powerful TAG editor with batch functions and special features. Playlist maker with ability to export playlists to HTML or Excel. Easy-to-use interface. Built-in player. Version 5.0.525 includes support for online databases like Discogs or Amazon.”

MEDIAPORTAL is a free media center

MEDIAPORTAL is an open source program to do much of what Windows Media software does on the “ultimate” version of Windows.

“MediaPortal turns your PC / TV into a very advanced MediaCenter / HTPC. [Home Theater PC]  Our software allows you to listen to your favorite music & radio, watch and store your videos and DVDs, view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder and much much more. You get MediaPortal as Open Source software. This means you can help in developing MediaPortal or tweak it for your own needs with lots of innovating plugins from our great community. “

So if you’re worried that you missed out by not upgrading to that fancier Windows package, this may cover some of what you missed.

MP3Gain and easyMP3Gain raise the volume

Rolling along, listening to your music… and you hit that one really low-volume song you have, so you have to turn up the volume — and then hastily reduce it again for the next song.  Ever wonder if there’s a solution?

A search on SourceForge.net turned up MP3Gain, which raises the volume of MP3 files that turned out to be too low for your use.

Also here is easyMP3Gain, a front-end for MP3Gain, to make it even easier to use.

With both of these, you can raise the volume of those individual MP3s to something like that of everything else you have.

LMMS – Linux MultiMedia Studio

LMMS – Linux MultiMedia Studio is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio®, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.

Features

• Song-Editor for composing songs
• A Beat+Bassline-Editor for creating beats and basslines
• An easy-to-use Piano-Roll for editing patterns and melodies
• An FX mixer with 64 FX channels and arbitrary number of effects allow unlimited mixing possibilities
• Many powerful instrument and effect-plugins out of the box
• Full user-defined track-based automation and computer-controlled automation sources
• Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and full MIDI support
• Import of MIDI and FLP (Fruityloops® Project) files

vloud makes MP3s LOUDERRRRR!

vloud is a free audio tool that makes those MP3s that were recorded too quietly a little LOUDER.

Just upload that song (you know, that irritating one that you have to turn up the sound to hear) and get it back in a louder version.

Use at your own risk — they’re your ears!

Gizmo’s – Best Free MP3 Tag Editor

Best Free MP3 Tag Editors reviewed by Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert

“MP3 has become the most common audio format for playback, storage and transfer of music. If we need to playback MP3 files with their tag information shown correctly, a good MP3 tag editor will be helpful.

In this category, both standalone and built-in MP3 tag editors are reviewed based on three basic needs which include:

• Support basic tags, embedded cover arts and lyrics.
• Rename files using tag information, and edit tags using file names.
• Lookup online databases and save tags into MP3 files.”

iSpeech: Convert Websites & Docs To MP3

MakeUseOf has a post on iSpeech.

I blame Apple for all this “i” this and “i” that…. Now it’s iSpeech to convert text to audio files.

You can convert a file, a web site (just enter the URL), or type in text.

Once the conversion to an MP3 file is complete you can:

- playback and listen to it online,
- download and store the recording on your PC,
- podcast it,
- or embed it as an audio object on any site and let others play it as well

Features:

• Convert websites, RSS feeds, blogs and documents to audio.
• Do as many conversions as you like.
• Convert DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, RTF and HTML docs to speech.
• Play and listen to converted recordings online.
• Download recording as an MP3 file.

aTunes for your music and sounds

ZDNet has a post on aTunes which is “is a fully-featured audio player and manager, with ripping and encoding tools included. aTunes is coded in Java programming language (Java 5), using Swing, making it a highly portable piece of software. Version 1.9 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.”

Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista, Java Runtime Environment 1.4.2.  June 2008.  Freeware.  Free registration is required.

Vista’s sound control for each program

Internet Fixes has a post on Vista’s sound control function, which “allows you to independently control the sound level for each application that uses sound.”

For example, say you want to keep Windows system sounds at a mid range level, and Media Player at a lower level. You can change the volume level settings by opening the speaker volume application (lower/right hand side of notification area of task bar), click mixer, and individually change the volume level for any application that uses sound and is currently running. You can even mute the sound for each individual application.”

BTW: Internet Fixes is a great source of practical advice and help.

GuerillaRadio: Search, Listen & Download MP3 Files From Web

MakeUseOf has a post on GuerillaRadio: Search, Listen & Download MP3 Files From Web

“Just type the name of the artist or band and click on “Find”. GuerillaRadio will then search for it on the web and bring you a ready playlist of MP3s from that artist. You can play tunes online or download to your computer.”

Features:

• Search, listen and download MP3 files for free.
• Play and download as many files as you like.
• Clean and easy to use interface.
• No sign-up needed.

GuerillaRadio