Audiobook Builder

Just want to point out a fantastic little program called Audiobook Builder. If you take a look at my reading page you will note that over half of the books that I have “read” so far this year have been in audio form. That’s mainly because I have been so busy with writing lesson plans and grading papers that I rarely have time to sit down and actually read for pleasure. Atudibook builder has been very helpful in this regard. I just take my audiobooks, rip them into the program, set the chapter marks, and hit the build button. A couple minutes later I have a nice, fully iTouch compatible, audiobook waiting for me in iTunes.

If you like audiobooks, take a look.

It Wasn’t Dead Already?

Just read at Wired that AOL has announced the end of life for Netscape.

Personally, I thought that Netscape had gone away years ago. I certainly knew of it in its heyday though. In fact, I remember when my family paid something like $30 for Netscape Navigator 4.6 Communications Suite.

Remember those days? When we actually paid for web browsers. Oh, there are still some browsers out there that cost money (although OmniWeb is the only one that I can think of, now that Opera has gone free).

Personally, Netscape 3 was my favorite. Back then it was competing against the miserably unstable Internet Explorer 2. And it was free. But then came Communicator Suite, and suddenly Netscape cost money and was loaded with extra features that did little more than slow everything down.

Of course, I cannot say anything about Netscape without mentioning that it formed the basis of the Mozilla Project which, among other things, spawned the Firefox web browser. 

Flocking

I have decided to try out Flock, a variant on Firefox that focuses on blogging and social networking.
Not sure about it yet… While I like the built-in blogging and think that the RSS support is equal to that in Safari (and far better than in Firefox), we’ll have to see if I stick with it.

Three things stand against Flock from the outset:

1. Built on Firefox.
   Now don’t get me wrong: I love Firefox. Back in the Beta and 1.5 days, Firefox was my favorite browser, mainly because it was so fast. Sadly, ever since Firefox2 came out the memory leak “feature” makes the whole browser run so darn slow and bog down the whole system after about 2 hours or when I have about a dozen tabs open.
2. Social Networking.
   Frankly, I don’t do much “social networking.” I do not like myspace at all, only use Facebook to track college friends, and don’t share photos or videos on public sites.
3. Not Safari.
   OK, this is both good and bad. I really like the speed of Safari, and with the Inquisitor
   plugin, it has the best search of all web browsers. That said, I am looking around because Safari and WordPress do not get along well.

I’ll let you know how things go.

EDIT: OK, issue number 1 found… the “tags” link to technorati, not the wordpress tagging system.

Free Music!

Just thought it was worthwhile to point out that last.fm has an entire page dedicated to free music. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that most of the music on this page is… simply terrible… but if you have a few minutes it is certainly worth the time to take a quick listen and see if you like any of it.

Last.FM Tag Cloud of Free Downloads
Click a tag to see what they have.

80s   90s   acoustic   alternative   alternative rock   ambient   avantgarde   black metal   breakcore   british   california   canadian   chill   chillout   classic   classical   club   composers   dance   dark ambient   darkwave   death metal   downtempo   dub   ebm   electro   electronic   electronica   emo   ethereal   ethnic   experimental   female vocalists   finnish   folk   french   game music   german   glitch   goa   golden arrows   gothic   guitar   hard rock   hardcore   heavy metal   hip hop   hip-hop   house   idm   indie   indie pop   indie rock   industrial   instrumental   japanese   jazz   lesser known yet streamable artists   mellow   metal   metalcore   minimal   minimal techno   new age   noise   piano   polish   pop   post rock   post-hardcore   post-rock   progressive rock   psychedelic   psytrance   punk   punk rock   rap   remix   rnb   rock   romantic   russian   russian rock   scottish   screamo   seen live   sid metal   singer-songwriter   soundtrack   swedish   synthpop   techno   throat singing   trance   trip-hop   twee   ukrainian   uplifto   video game music   world

New Moby Album

Just browsing the interwebs and found out that Moby has a new album coming out in March. He describes it as “basically a love letter to dance music in new york city.”

He has posted a free preview on his website.

My interest in Moby has grown and faded over the years, but in general I do like his work.