Monday, August 19, 2002

Audible Books on Your iPod. More than music, more than contact information, more than addresses--yes the iPod can now be your personal, audible book library too. It's easier than you think. Erik Ray shows you how. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site. NEW YORK (Reuters) - The world's largest record companies sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access the China-based Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]

Andromeda, a personal MP3 server. Andromeda is a way-groovy PHP app that allows you to stream your MP3 library over the Internet. It takes a little bit of tinkering to get it running, but once it's up, you can put your whole MP3 collection on a low-cost desktop machine, then bring your WiFi-equipped laptop into another room and listen to it. What's more, you could leave your MP3 collection at home and use your DSL link to stream your MP3 collection to your machine at work; if you're staying at a hotel with broadband in the room, you can listen to your collection on the road. [Boing Boing Blog]

Going offsore    Now that the RIAA has made the U.S. inhospitable to Internet radio broadcasters (reception, thankfully, is still legal), Kevin Marks suggests we look at the instructive historical example of Pirate Radio (broadcasting from the high seas) in the U.K. Can they die even sooner, pleeeease?    David Bowie on the record companies:   I personally don't think the copyright will exist in the next 10 years. We'll lose all authorship whatsoever...the corporate companies will come to an end...Yeah. It's all over. They're just Canutes. They're sitting on the beach asking the seas to go back. It's over. [Doc Searls Weblog]

I bought an iRock last week. Here's my take on this FM transmitter for getting portable audio onto the car stereo... 1) Best reception if standing upright, on the passenger side (if the car has a traditional antenna). Perhaps not a problem in newer cars with the antenna wrapping around the windshield. 2) Reports suggest the rigid cable is fragile at the mini-plug end. Certainly seems vulnerable. 3) On-off switch looks nice, but will certainly turn on when packed into your pocket or a media pack, thus draining the AAA batteries. Form-over-function. 4) Best quality peeked at less-than-strong commercial FM, but I'll take that over the crap Clearchannel broadcasts any day! Over-all, if you rent a lot of cars, this device is well worth the $24. Otherwise a tape adapter or aux-in modification to your car stereo would better serve you.

Fax-like utility for sending CDROMs. CDFax is a command-line Linux utility for "fax-like transfer of CDs." Two people run the software. The receiver loads a CD blank in his burner, and the sender puts a CD to be sent in her drive. The sender enters a brief command that specifies the receiver's IP address and the disk is imaged, sent, and burned at the remote end. A simple and striking idea. (via Beltorchicca) [Boing Boing Blog] Really? Cool!