Free Music Archive: Free (and Legal) MP3s

Posted Thursday, April 30, 2009

ZDNet's "The ToyBox" blog recently posted an item about free MP3 music tracks.

WFMU, one of America's most renowned freeform radio stations, recently launched FreeMusicArchive.org. Still in beta, the site does just as the title says: provides a treasure chest of free music.

Looks great. Check it out.

The home stretch. I've been needing lots of music -- free and otherwise -- to get me through the home stretch of book revisions. The iLife '09 edition of the world's top-selling iLife book goes to the printer in a little over a week. And it's a thing of beauty. Pre-order your copy from Amazon and save 34 percent off the cover price. (And ordering it through my site puts an extra Milk Bone in my dog's bowl.)

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iMovie and the Uncooperative Camera

Posted Monday, April 27, 2009

My Macworld colleague Chris Breen provides some tips on getting AVCHD-format high-def video into the Mac for use with iMovie '09.

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iMovie 8.0.2 Update Available

I'm a little late posting this, as I've been traveling and wrapping up revisions to the iLife '09 edition of my book. (Almost there!)

Anyway, Apple has posted an update to iMovie '09. The update, in Apple's words, "fixes an issue with projects having a size of 0 KB. Attempting to open these projects would cause iMovie to quit unexpectedly at launch. This Software Update also addresses a problem where full-screen mode could not be accessed on some systems."

Yay. Grab the iMovie 8.0.2 update now.

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Gizmodo On Why We Need Audiophiles - Audiophiles

Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009

Completely fascinating article on audiophiles -- we're talking $350,000 stereo systems here -- from Gizmodo.

I still like my iPod, but now...well...

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20 Photography Twitters Worth Following

Posted Sunday, April 19, 2009

Oprah apparently isn't the only person using Twitter. Popular Photography puts forth a list of the top twenty photography Twitters worth following.

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Tips for Care and Feeding of Camera Memory Cards

Posted Friday, April 17, 2009

A friend had a nasty bout of photo loss this week -- one of her memory cards suddenly acted wonky when she tried to download photos from it, forcing her to turn to all manner of panicky recovery techniques.

Fortunately, her story looks like it will have a happy ending. Along the way, I came across a great set of tips for taking care of memory cards, many of which I talk about in my book.

Read them. Live them. And have a great weekend.

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Crazy Cans: The 10 Wackiest Headphones

Posted Monday, April 13, 2009

PC World's web site has a cute little photo gallery on the ten wackiest headphone designs.

I do believe I'd kill for a set of those AKG K1000s. They cost $1200 when new.

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Face Recognition

Posted Tuesday, April 07, 2009

It isn't perfect yet.

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Muddy Waters at the Fillmore

I love Wolfgang's Vault, an incredible collection of hundreds of live concert recordings from the legendary concert promoter Bill Graham.

Right now, I'm bobbing my head like the fool that I am while listening to a Muddy Waters Blues Band concert recorded at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium in 1966.

Here's one track for your listening pleasure. Check out the rest -- they're free to listen to, and ridiculously cheap to buy and download ($5.98 USD for 11 tracks encoded as 256kbps MP3s).

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Curing iPhoto-to-Flickr Woes with Keychain Access

Posted Monday, April 06, 2009

Getting "authentication errors" when trying to publish from iPhoto '09 to Flickr? I was, too, after I'd "revoked" iPhoto's Flickr-access privileges within Flickr while testing something for the next edition of my book.

The Apple discussion boards have the solution: use the Keychain Access utility (in your Utilities folder, within the Applications folder) to delete entries referring to www.flickr.com. After doing this, you can return to iPhoto and set up Flickr sharing.

May this tidbit spare you from the wheel-spinning afternoon I didn't enjoy.

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Jeff Carlson on a Cool New iMovie '09 Feature

My friend and colleague Jeff Carlson has forgotten more about iMovie than I'll ever know. That's why I'm thoroughly thrilled that he agreed to revise the iMovie '09 chapter in the upcoming revised edition of my book.

Jeff has written a great blog post that details a feature Apple added to iMovie 8.0.1: a Trim to Playhead shortcut menu command that saves you a few steps when trimming a clip.

Check it out, and while you're at it, pre-order Jeff's iMovie '09 & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide. He's revising it at this very moment -- deeply under the influence of coffee, I'm guessing.

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Before the Music Dies

Posted Sunday, April 05, 2009

The documentary "Before the Music Dies" tells the story of American music at this precarious moment. Filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen traveled the country, hoping to understand why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether corporations really had the power to silence musical innovation.

You can watch the entire 90-minute documentary online, including right here.

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Interview with Apple's Jonathan Ive

Posted Friday, April 03, 2009

This isn't new, but it's new to me: an interview with Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of industrial design at Apple.

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30 Photo-Friendly Cities...According to Them

Posted Thursday, April 02, 2009

Popular Photography magazine has fired up its copy of Excel, pecked in some occasionally stupid criteria, and come up with its list of the top thirty photo-friendly cities in the US.

As I said, I think a lot of the criteria are worthless. Per-capita number of camera stores? Number of sunny days per year? I don't know about you, but neither factor has ever entered my mind when I venture out with my camera.

Maybe I'm just bitter because my home town of Pittsburgh, PA -- with its beautiful rolling hills, dramatic skyline where rivers converge, and historic architecture -- didn't even make the cut.

Feh.

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