Noise cancelling headphones

Noise cancelling headphones are really cool, what they do is to monitor the background noise around the user and then sends inversed noise into the headphones thus canceling the noise.  This technique is among other places used on aircraft carriers to protect the ears of the flight crews, and many frequent fliers use them to remove the annoying humming when flying. 

So, the technology is cool, however two problems exist with most noise cancelling headphones;

1. Price (they are often very expensive)
2. Power (usually these headphones require an extra battery pack for the noise cancelling part which is bulky and unsexy)

But these Blackbox i10 headphones seem to have something going for them, 1) Not THAT expensive (still the price is not for the faint hearted) and 2) The power issue has been solved in an excellent way by using the ipod 30pin connector (which does require an ipod or an iphone)..

https://www.blackboxonline.com/ca/pages/i10-Earphones.html

Grooveshark – one of those sites you just HAVE TO visit

My colleague Jesper mentioned a web-site to me a few days ago, and I must admit that this site has been on top of my favorite list for the last few days.

The site is www.grooveshark.com and it’s a free music service.

The cool things about this service are;

1. it’s free (always a good argument)

2. it has a TON of music in all sorts of versions (different artists, mixes and remixes) 5 mill + songs

3. the interface is just excellent, totally intuitive.  It lets you ‘browse’ the music library just like you do the web, you will be on a journey through music.

4. you can make playlists which you save online and possibly share with friends.

oh yeah, did I mention it’s free well it is, and it’s totally cool.

There only seem to be one or two drawbacks;

1. it is streaming only, so you can not download music and put it on your favorite mp3 player for road-duty.

2. legality, So, is this legal?  Well, to the best of my knowledge no, but hey I am no expert on international IT copyright law.  Anyhow the service has existed for some time, and it strikes me as strange that it has not been taken down by a ton of law suits if this was blatantly illegal, my guess would be that it’s in the same gray zone as Youtube etc.

Read more about the story of the site here

This is one of the coolest sites I have discovered for a LONG time…  It does by far beat the closest similar service I know of, something called TDC Play (a danish service that require subscription with a specific ISP).

Internet Radio – Part 1

I have never really done much research in the field of Internet Radio, guess I have enough to occupy my mind elsewhere   but I just stumbled across what seem to be a quite cool Internet Radio App and I just might give it a spin; it’s free, it’s easy/intuitive, it can record and it has a LOT of preset radio stations world wide.

Try it yourself, get it here;
http://www.screamer-radio.com/

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MP3tag.de Mp3 tagging

Trying to manage your huge MP3 collection?  Perhaps collected over a long time, well the problem often is that some of your MP3 files has incorrect or missing graphics and or ID3 tags…  Well this tool can help you to manage your MP3’s, I have not tried it personally yet but it claims all sort of neat features   Give it a spin.. 

Get it here;
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html

SkreemR MP3 search

A new google like type search engine for music files has emerged, http://skreemr.com/advanced_search.jsp (the advanced search page), you can here search for music and the service will then scour the Internet for the MP3 you seek and return a list of possible links.  Once you click a link the music is ’streamed’ to your computer (right click on the link and save link as will allow you to ‘download’ the music).

It also has a custom software which can be downloaded here;
http://songr.co.cc/

Legality;
Some in Denmark claim that this is not ‘true’ streaming as the file is downloaded before or during playback and that you thus is breaking the copyright.  I don’t know, it’s a gray zone so you need to consider both the legality in your country and your continence also…  never the less an interesting search option.

Ipod/Iphone audiobooks

If you have a bunch of Audiobooks lying around and want to use them on your Ipdo/Iphone then it’s an advantage to convert them to .M4B files (then your device will remember where you left off the last time you listened, and not as .MP3 where you have to use the slider to get to where you were)..

I found this free util that will assist you, it’s not perfect – but it works most of the time and it’s free

http://www.freeipodsoftware.com/

DoubleTwist a torn in the Apple

DoubleTwist will allow you to sync music and video from Itunes to a lot of other devices than Iphone/Ipod (such as PSP, Blackberry, Nokia etc), and whom other than DVD JON to be involved in such an annoyance to Apple.

Download a free beta from the DoubleTwist website.

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Songbird – for music lovers..

Just heard about this today, have not tested it but it was given high praises.

Songbird an open source music player and music organizer, should support the more popular players and formats.

From the website.

The Open Music Player

Seeing is believing

When I fist saw this house on YouTube I actually thought it was a model or something, but…. its not, some guy actually did create this utterly cool Christmas display…

It makes my few Christmas ornaments look like nothing…  Its SOOOOOOO cool..

So for a few idea’s for your next christmas display goto this site and see the walkthrough;
http://www.holdman.com/christmas/projects.asp

Splitting up CUE files to MP3

I recently got a CUE file containing a whole Audio CD album, but as I wanted to transfer the music to my Ipod I was puzzled how to do..  I could burn a cd and then rip it, but this felt like a de-tour .  A little browsing the net came up with a neat little freeware utility “Medieval CUE Splitter V1.0″, this neat utility split up the CUE to mp3 files in no time. Nice.  But why someone need to create these CUE files in the first place is beyond me.

http://www.medieval.it/