News Sound Bites - Whole ton-o-stuff coming back from XMas

Yeah I gotta bunch, so lets jump in.

Jalopnik told me that Plantronics thinks you look stupid with that BT headset. Put it in the new Plantronics car charger when not in use.

Nokia's crushing on Apple, wants to make sweet music iTunes downloading babies.

Speakers = Sexy? AudioJunkies thinks so, has list of top 15 speaker sets with the curves to compete with your girlfriend.

Blizzard, your favorite WoW/Starcraft developers, are starting a podcast on game development.

In other BT Headset news, Engadget has the scoop on the Adtec AD-HSM10, one of tiniest headsets I've ever seen. I shall call it "the button" (instead of the nonsensical string of letters and numbers - Come on people! Consumers buy NAMES, they buy iPods and Zunes and ROKRs and Walkmans not "AD-HSM10's"! HOW DO YOU EVEN SAY THAT‽‽‽), and be mad that we'll probably never see it stateside.

FreewareGenius lets us know about Tunestor, a free Firefox plugin that automates downloading an mp3, and putting it right into iTunes. I don't use iTunes, so this is useless to me. I'm only writing about it for you, my faithful readers. I'm teh selfless!

Was my post about SpokenText not enough to sate the Text to Speech beast in you? DownloadSquad gives us another TtS to satisfy that "read it to me" urge.

Toon Zone interviews the original Speed Racer and Trixie!

ay-dee-ache-es-em-tenza ... nope still sucks... it's "the button" now ... I've decided!

Spoken Text reads the words for you, and here I am using my own eyes like a sucker...

I know, text to speech isn't crazy exciting, but I have a lot of fun with it anyway, so deal.

Anywho, what IS kinda cool about SpokenText, is it's a bit more fleshed out than most TtS web apps. Some serious thought has gone into the feature set, like being able to read documents, email, and web pages, and efforts have been made to also help those that actually need readers, so it's kinda for real practical, ya know.

So check it out here, and if you like the service try to donate. They're currently trying to purchase voices from AT&T to help flesh the service out a bit.

Here's a sample of SpokenText for your listening enjoyment:


Not too shabby!


Thanks DownloadSquad!

News Sound Bites - there's a lot today...

Gizmodo helps you sing and play drums at the same time in Rock Band. They didn't think of a regular Mic stand though...

Outi earphones are out now for $110. Bone conduction is interesting to me. Without a speaker to blast sound into your ears, these could be better for your ears (unlike earbuds). They just look really uncomfortable...

MusicThing has the scoop on Chimera, a CD sized analog mono synth, with patch points and MIDI. It looks really cool.

Into recycling electronics? Check out Plink Jet! It's a robotic musical instrument made from inkjet printers. They also have movies of the bot in action!

Creative has released the 32GB flash memory Zen. It's an iPod Nano on steroids, featuring 32GB of built in storage, upgradeable storage (with SD memory cards), support for Tivo to Go, and an FM radio. SOunds like the perfect alternative to those not digging the new iPods or Zunes.

One year ago today, Lifehacker helped you digitize your cassette tapes.

Radio Head and Weezer are coming to Rockband.

X-Play names Bioshock game of the year. COD4 wins best shooter and sound design. Oddly no voice acting category...

LA Times has a great write up of the current animation situation. With a lot of production getting shut down because of the wga strike, quite a bit of animation will be untouched, as it's done under an IATSE deal. Check it out.

Dreamworks Animation stock is up, pretty much because of Shrek the Third.

John Barrowman (Dr. Who, Torchwood) will be narrating his autobiography, titled 'Anything Goes'. The audiobook should be out February 2008.

Downloadsquad has the scoop on Voice Thread. It's a compelling web app that gives people the ability to record commentaries for pictures, documents and videos. It's kinda like bringing story telling and oral history to web 2.0.

And lastly (whew) Gamevideos has footage of the Spike VGA's red carpet:

News Sound Bites - Wavosaur, Writers, and Hi-Def Transfers

Just a couple cool links for ya'll.

Download Squad has the scoop on Wavosaur, a free tiny portable audio editing suite. Does it have what it takes to compete against products like Audacity?

Gizmodo is looking for writers! If only there were an influx of really good writers, with time on their hands, looking for new projects ... hmmm ... (I kid because I love)

Sound and Vision Magazine has a great article on the challenges of transferring Blade Runner to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. YAY! I get to buy the movie AGAIN once I get an HDTV! I can't wait!

How to Record Streaming Audio on The Internet

So if you need to record something that streams on line, you can patch in a mixer, making sure to route a few Aux channels, or you could check out FreeCorder.



It's a plugin for Firefox that gives you the ability to suck the audio down from any web item and save it as an MP3 or WAV. It also does a pretty good job of ignoring system sounds as it's tied to the browser not to the internal "what you hear" soundcard drivers.

Pretty sweet!

More write up @ DownloadSquad

OH! Did I mention that FreeCorder is ... FREE!

NPR Podcast Player For Facebook

I at some point might just have to join Facebook.
It seems to be blowing up right now, and I was WAY late to MySpace. I just find so little use for social networking outside of the occasional "catching up with a friend moment" that I can usually just accomplish through an email or something else.
I will always appreciate MySpace for the simple fact that it did get me blogging, so that's ... uh ... neat ... ?

Anywho, what I think is the coolest part of Facebook, is all the development going on for Facebook apps/widgets/gadgets/geegaws/etc.

Splashcast has just released an NPR Podcast player for your Facebook page. If I used Facebook, I would use this app.

IF I used Facebook...

Check out the app here.

Check out DownloadSquads write up here.

Canadian iPod levy assumes you're a criminal first, asks questions never - Download Squad

Story up over at Download Squad. Apparently:

"Canada has moved one step closer to imposing a copyright levy on every personal digital audio device sold, which would be handed over to the worlds largest music publishers as compensation for perceived piracy."

Ok, so this is good to know, but not really such a big deal IMHO. Hasn't Canada been applying the same levy to blank media for years now. As far as I knew, while this isn't to condone unlicensed file sharing, it at least "decriminalizes" it in a sense, so you wont be facing jail time or ridiculous fines.

I dont know, am I wrong here? Should Canadians be pissed that it's assumed they're criminals, so their gadgets should cost more?

Canadian iPod levy assumes you're a criminal first, asks questions never - Download Squad