I never would have thought in a million years that Shazam would be one of the most used apps in my app arsenal.  Yet, I find myself using the application almost daily.  I have a long commute to work and often come across a new tune that quickly catches my interest.  The days of hearing an awesome beat and wondering where it comes from are over.  In seconds I can whip my smartphone out and tap the huge Shazam button, knowing the artist and album instantly.  Well, Shazam is back at it again improving their application to give you the best possible experience when it comes to music searching and discovery.  So what’s new in their latest update?  Plenty.

For starters, and in addition to a very slight and light UI tweak, they now offer “music previews”.  A small play button has been added for you to check out a 30 sec preview for the tune of interest.  The preview works for tagged songs, browsing history, your friend’s tags and even in the Tag Chart and recommendations section of the app.  In addition, they have improved the tag results page, offering bigger and better cover art for your convenience.  Furthermore, you can now track the location of all your tagged songs.  If you haven’t tried Shazam for yourself, you can check out the app here on our apps database and here for the Shazam Encore application which will run you $ 5 bucks and offers you more goodies under the hood.  You can also snag the download on the Android Market here and here.  As always, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.

Shazam Update Now Brings You Music Previews And More!

Android News, Rumours, and Updates

 

When looking at images on your BlackBerry, you may have noticed the View Slide Show option. Your images you have stored are panned through with style. That’s…pretty much it. Oh, wait, sorry. From the options menu you can only change the interval from 4 to 8 seconds between images.

What slideshow maker does is give you more options to manage the slideshow experience. First off, you can choose each and every image to be included in the slideshow. Another slide you can manage is the title slide; in which you can customise the text and colours. Once that is done Slide Show Maker takes you to a screen where you can choose 5 sound clips to accompany your slideshow. Unfortunately, you cannot choose any music files of your own. After you select the sound clip the slideshow is then uploaded to the Cloud (yes, I also said “to the Cloud”, as well). It only takes a few seconds for the upload process to complete. At this point, you can then share your slideshows by email or on Facebook. I can’t view any created slideshows on my BlackBerry at all – I can only share. If I could somehow add my own sounds, change the interval between images and view slideshows whenever I wanted, I could be a happy man. Slide Show Maker is available for $ 2.99 from the CrackBerry AppStore.

More information/download Slide Show Maker

CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Slide Show Maker puts your images to music. Warning: tender moments may occur

CrackBerry.com blogs

The GTunes  Music Android App by Luke wood app is a music player replacement/music downloading/ music editing app all in one. This app is similar to other music downloading apps in that it utilizes different server to find music files for you to download straight to your device. The app also offers an actual music player which will scan the files of your device for any music and you can use this as your music player as well. Another feature of GTunes is the editing tab in which you can cut and splice songs to take out only the parts you would like to hear. This feature is ideal for creating your own ringtones, text message tones, or contact specific ringtones.

When you open up the app you will be greeted by the simple interface in which you can make different selections. In the music tab all of your music will be listed in the library. Under the search tab you can search for music and select it for download. If you cannot find a song initially simply click the letter next to the search box and change the engine letter. You can stream the songs or download them and then once downloaded you may edit as you see fit. This app is smooth and yields much better results than other music download apps.

Overall, this is one of the better music download apps on the Android Market. While every song known to man may not be available search results are pretty accurate. At the time of this review the GTunes Music Android App is free. Thumbs Up.

Download GTunes

When you find out the reason that Amazon was able to beat Google Music and a cloud-based iTunes to market, you might be a bit surprised. See, those other services have been talked about for months upon months, with the main reason we haven’t seen them launched stemming from licensing issues between the companies wishing to instate cloud-based music services and record labels still sour over the demise of physical music sales. Amazon’s cloud music locker seemed to spring up out of no where, so what’s the deal? Turns out Amazon didn’t even bother to get the proper licensing before launching their service, and record labels, as you could imagine, aren’t all that happy about it.

In fact, Amazon didn’t even bother to get in touch with record labels until last week and decided to go ahead and launch their new service while terms of licensing were still being negotiated. It’s a bold move, one that may end up costing the retailer in the long run. A Sony Music spokesperson said, “We hope that they’ll reach a new license deal, but we’re keeping all of our legal options open.”

Perhaps some heat from the music industry and potentially being sued by the RIAA or individual record labels is a small price to pay to leapfrog Google and Apple, the two companies expected to dominate these area of digital media distribution.

[via Reuters]

Want a fresh method for discovering new music?  Look no further.  RanDinger, by Twisted Castle brings you just that.  RanDinger allows you to receive random new music content by delivering you a different tune based on genre, artist or top chart hits, all via a ringtone.  The app is powered by 7 Digital’s 10 million song music library.  After you hear the preview, you have the option to either purchase the song or just close it out.  RanDinger then offers more music based on your choice. The app also comes with three different theme options to deliver a custom UI for your phone.  So, if you’re ready to purchase your music in a new, easy and fun way, then head on over to our apps database for more info.   Read More…

RanDinger For Android Brings Music Discovery Via Ringtones

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

If you’re the type of person to love music, but you can’t stand the cookie cutter tunes your local radio station plays on regular rotation, Play.fm mobile app may be just what you’re looking for on the go. You’ll get streams from top DJ’s from around the world, genre tab for quick selections, audio skip by seconds, and search for favorites as well. This app is EUR 2.99 in the Android Market now. Also, they’re launching a Premium app subscription service in Q2 2011. No charge has been announced yet for that.

The service will give you unlimited listening for the first 90 days, then 5 hours per month. Also something to keep in mind is your carriers data plan. It could go up using this service, so user beware. Unlimited data users need not worry.

Android market Link

Click here to watch an introduction video for Play.fm

[Source - Play.fm]

Play.fm app on Android gives streaming music on the go

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

Motorola’s introduced a number of new or new versions of apps with their latest version(s?) of MOTOBLUR. One of them – their music app – has been pulled from either the Atrix, the Bionic, or the CLIQ 2 and is now available for download. Users will be able to enjoy ShoutCAST integration, song identification through SoundHound, community features through TuneWiki, and so much more. Lots of integration with some of the best music services on the Android market. Courtesy of Droid-Life, here’s the .APK for you to try it out now.

View full post on Android Phone Fans

Nokia is ending its bundling of free music downloads with cellphones in 27 countries, where it has gained little traction since its 2008 launch.

The world’s top cellphone maker will continue to sell phones with 12-month subscription to free music downloads in China, India and Indonesia and with 6-month subscriptions in Brazil, Turkey and South Africa.

Ovi Music Unlimited, previously known as Comes with Music, is a music subscription that has been included on some Nokia phones. It allows users to download an unlimited amount of music to their PC or over the air to the phone. After the subscription is over users can continue to listen the tracks they have downloaded.
Nokia unveiled the service in late 2008 — but the Comes With Music program has lacked operator support and failed to attract many customers. All four major labels — Vivendi’s Universal Music, EMI, Warner Music Group and the music arm of Sony — signed up for the service, which was seen at start as a major challenger for Apple’s iTunes.

Reasons behind the lackluster performance include use of older supporting handsets for the product at its launch, digital rights management (DRM) software that tied downloaded music to the device and a difficult to understand product offering.

“The markets clearly want a DRM-free music service,” said a spokesman for Nokia, adding the firm continues to offer DRM-free tracks through its music store in 38 countries. DRM software limits sharing of songs between different devices.

iTunes accounts for 70% of worldwide online digital music sales, making the service the largest legal music retailer. Other services besides iTunes, such as Spotify, also offer access to music on their smartphones for a monthly fee.

Consumers with the free music bundle in the 27 countries where the sale of the service have stopped will continue to have access until their subscriptions run out.

View full post on dailywireless.org

You may notice on here and on ZDNet that I try not to post too many rumors and news right away since so much of it today seems to come from fairly unreliable sources and I would rather wait and get the truth with some of my own personal perspective out there. This morning I woke up and started reading Twitter before I went for my run and saw Tweets all stating that Nokia was shutting down and killing Ovi Music Unlimited service. The problem with Twitter was that there was no context to this news or the rest of the message that stated they indeed stopped selling new subscriptions back on 31 December 2010 in order to make way for new services and that those with the service would still get full support.

I highly recommend you read the Nokia Conversations post for the full story that actually has me excited about the possibilities of these new services. The whole Ovi Music Unlimited service was never even applicable to the North American market so I don’t know why anyone in the North American market is even reporting on the news, except for the apparent need to find ways to slam Nokia whenever possible. Actually, when you do a Google search for the news I am very disappointed in the main stream media’s irresponsible reporting on products that are not even available in the US and very little, if any, mention that the reason is also tied to new upcoming services being rolled out.

As you can read in the story from Nokia, they stopped selling new subscriptions a couple of weeks ago and anyone who has a supported device or even someone who buys a device still out in stores will get uninterrupted access until their subscriptions finish, including the ability to keep their downloads forever as promised. This change is also not universal and Nokia will continue to offer 12-month subscriptions in China and India, while offering six-month subscriptions in Brazil, Turkey and South Africa.

Check out the video below to hear more about the changes.

For those of us in North America, remember that you can use your unlimited Zune Pass subscription, Mobbler, Soundtrckr, and soon Slacker Radio so there is really nothing to see here for those in North America while there is the possibility that something may come to us here from Nokia.

View full post on Nokia Experts

Google Music was first teased back at Google I/O 2010, but little developments have been made since then. Countless times we have heard the service was near launch, but this latest bit of info gives us hope that it might actually go live before Google I/O 2011. You’ll see in the above screenshot a device running Gingerbread with a “Sync Music” option within the accounts and sync dialog. The image comes courtesy of GizmoFusion, and suggests that music integration will be as deep as contact, Facebook, and calendar sync.

Still, a lot of questions remain and the screenshot should be taken with a grain of salt. Where did this build of Gingerbread come from? Is it actually the Android 2.4 build we have recently been hearing of? What do you all think?

[via Engadget]

View full post on Android Phone Fans

Looks like Google’s cloud-based music service may actually be headed to Android devices in the near future. The leaked image is causing quite a ruckus and has people in the Android community buzzing.

This isn’t really anything new as we’ve had third party cloud based services on Android devices for a while now, but with Google doing it directly, it will make the overall user experience much better.

Early builds of Gingerbread haven’t seen this feature yet, but we could see this feature in a future update. It appears that the new feature will be in the Accounts & Sync settings. Where you would normally select to sync your contacts, calendar, pictures and mail, you would be given a music option as well.

What do you think about this new feature? Leave a comment and share.

Source: GizmoFusion

View full post on AndroidSPIN

Those of us Nokia fans in the US have been bummed out with all of the overseas talk of Ovi Music and Spotify. We do have Mobbler (Last.fm support) for the Nokia N8, but it is always good to have options. On my Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 devices I have been using the excellent Slacker Radio service and rather excited to reveal that Slacker is coming to Symbian^3 in February. Yes, us Nokia N8 owners in the US will finally get the ability to use Slacker Radio on our devices.

The Slacker Radio for Nokia client will support the following features:

• Music library featuring millions of songs
• High-quality stereo playback from any available wireless connection
• Create custom artist stations based on artists or songs
• Over 130 professionally programmed and customizable genre stations
• View artist biographies and photos
• View album art and read reviews
• Rate songs as favorites
• Ban songs and artists from stations

The Slacker Radio application will be available for free in February. It was developed using the Qt application development framework and should run on all Symbian^3 devices.

It is encouraging to see Slacker coming to Symbian and now I have my hopes set on Amazon or Barnes & Noble bringing their ebook clients to Symbian too.

View full post on Nokia Experts

Want a sneak peek at some Honeycomb goodness? Of course you do! And now, thanks to xda member johnnie93, you can have some. It looks like good ol’ Johnnie managed to yoink the default music app for Android’s yet-to-be-released Honeycomb iteration, and wants to share his wealth. The UI is smooth and slick on this author’s Evo, and the entire experience is pretty smooth. Remember, though… it’s not 100% functional, and has a tendency to force close. The great news here? You don’t even have to be rooted to install the app. Simply:

• download the .apk
• put the .apk on your sd card
• use a file explorer to navigate to the .apk, tap and install

And that’s it! Be sure to hit the break for the download link, as well as to check out a gallery of screenshots, and tell us what you think in the comments!

Read More…

Download: Leaked Android Honeycomb default music player app, with complete UI overhaul

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

Thanks to the portable music players we carry in our pockets it’s possible to let everyone join in the musical fun. Here are some suggesting for pumping up your party.

View full post on Macworld

The Open Library, an initiative of the Internet Archive, has just launched a new version of its online e-book reader, featuring an improved user interface as well as other new tools. You can use it to read the more than 2 million books available via The Open Library and the Internet Archive.

The updated BookReader features:

• Redesigned user interface. Maximizes the amount of space given to the book.
• Navigation bar. Helps show your location in the book and navigate through it.
• New Read Aloud feature. Reads the book as audio in most browsers. No special software is needed
• Tables of contents. Automatically generated for most books and can be edited or added manually through the Open Library site.
• Vastly improved full-text search.
• More sharing options. Gives you to option to choose how to link to the book and set options when embedding the BookReader on a blog or website.
• Touch gesture support. Swipe to flip pages in two-page mode, pinch to zoom on iOS.
• Improved support for tablet devices. Like the iPad.
• Updated UI for the embedded BookReader. Now includes “expando” button to view the book in a new browser window.
• Integration with Open Library. Books that have an Open Library record can have their title and table of contents edited through the Open Library site. The chapter headings on Open Library link directly into the BookReader.

This collection is open to the community for the contribution of any type of text, many licensed using Creative Commons licenses.

Here’s an embedded book for you to play with. For any of our publicly accessible books you can embed it on your blog too by getting the embed code from the Share dialog.

Click on the music players below to enjoy some public domain music from the 20s and 30s from Archive.org.

The Internet Archive gives you free access to millions of documents and high-quality digital artifacts including more than 2,000 movies and 2,000 TV shows that are now in the public domain.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Holiday music always puts me in a great mood. But even I have to admit that after a little while the same songs, over and over, can get a bit old. (Though there are a few that I will never tire of. I’m looking at you, Good King Wenceslas.) Putting together a good Pandora station, or trying the SomaFM stations are good options. But what if you want something a bit less random?

You can always get good holiday CDs or mp3 albums online. But which ones? Or what if you want a mix of music? For me, Twitter has provided the answer. I came across Twitter user 20Tauri a while ago; I don’t even remember how. We share a love of astronomy, though hers is probably much stronger and more based in education than mine. But she’s also put together some very interesting compilations of holiday music. There are some old standbys like Gene Autry’s “Here Comes Santa Claus,” but most are unexpected delights, or traditional songs sung by nontraditional artists. One of my favorites is “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses. Check out 20Tauri’s compilations for 2007, 2009 and 2010. Hopefully they will inspire you to create your own holiday mix. If you do, please share it with us!

View full post on GeekDad

The Holiday Season is almost here and what better time to take out your wallet and open those piggy banks then by sharing your love of all things BlackBerry with family and friends. Need help finding just the right gift for those music loving BlackBerry addicts? Whether they are out and about, at home, or in the car, we’ve got your covered. These products will be sure to put a smile on any music lover’s face.

read more

CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. CrackBerry Holiday Gift Guide – Accessories & applications for music lovers

View full post on CrackBerry.com blogs

Rdio is a new streaming music service, available on the web, desktop, or your BlackBerry. You can add as many songs/albums to your online collection, accessible from any of these platforms. Rdio also supports playlists, and people (similar to Apple’s Ping). Possibly the coolest feature is the ability to resume a song/album/playlist from where you left off last, when transitioning from desktop to mobile, or vice versa. Their collection of music seems very complete, and every song I searched for was found, and available for play. Rdio streams over WiFi, 3G and EDGE, comes with a 3 day free trial,  and is completely ad free.

Overall, I think $4.99 per month is a fair price for those who listen to a lot of music, and may not have the space on their device to store enormous amounts of music. It brings unlimited music to you, wherever you are, even if you don’t have a cellular signal (available music caching). However, this probably won’t entice the casual listener, or those who listen to free streaming radio services like Slacker, and Pandora. But, it is another choice. It is now compatible with the Bold, Tour, Curve 8500, and Storm devices.

• More information and free trial of Rdio >>

CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Rdio – A cross platform streaming music service for BlackBerry

View full post on CrackBerry.com blogs

Flannery Brothers' The New Explorers Club

As a rule, musicians hate it when you instinctively describe their sound by relating it to other bands or artists. Yet that is exactly what I am about to do.

On their recently released CD The New Explorers Club, Maine’s Flannery Brothers sound like a sonic pillow fight between Jonathan Richman and They Might Be Giants. There – I did it. And I did it with the added amenity of ham-fisted imagery. Go me.

I parallel the Flannery Brothers with such eccentric pop luminaries because, like any good kids music act, it’s easy to mistake their output for more traditional flavors of fresh-faced indie rock. I’d be lying if I didn’t say there were times in recent weeks where a song like the island groove-heavy “Kitchen Floor” wormed its way into a random playlist and I unapologetically bobbed my head, only vaguely aware that I was listening to a track more specifically written for my children.

The New Explorers Club is positively eaten up with perfectly relatable little musical moments like that. From the sultry shaker and punctuating horn hits of opener “Big Kite” to jaunty acoustic anti-ballad “Best Adventure,” the album genuinely sounds like childhood. It manages to capture that wonder and innocence while still challenging the listener with its eclectic tastes. Like Sesame Street or a trip to the natural history museum, the Flannery Brothers engage audiences of all ages by reminding us that the most fun and fascinating things in life are also often the simplest.

Tracks like “Swallowed a Bug” (which channels an almost ragtime danceability), the preschool friendly “Hi 5 Dance” and the jangly “Boots” excel as much by the group’s own musical virtues as they do their blissful neglect of anything resembling the traditional educational slant of children’s music. Even in songs that do purport more edutaining content – like “In the Middle,” a beginner’s lesson on the concept of relativity, or the particularly tuneful “The Elements,” which catalogs the joys of outdoor play – The Flannerys approach such subjects coyly.

Rather than saturate their music with tales of school day triumphs of warning against cavities, The Flannery Brothers instead seek to make music that inspires by elevating. It’s feel good music of the highest order, and it should easily prove infectious to listeners young and old. Will the outright absurdity of “Pirate or Parrot?” teach your daughter to tie her shoes? No, but it will likely cheer her up after a tough soccer game or help her decompress on a long car trip, and sometimes that’s more than enough.

The New Explorers Club is another grand addition to your kids music library, and it’s available from in both digital and physical formats to suit either taste. Those looking to try before they buy are also encouraged to check out the group’s official site for a full album stream. At 13 tracks it’s just the right length, and because of the obvious care taken in the writing and recording of this impressive collection it is certainly an easy sell.

Flannery Brothers fans in the mood for an even more outrageous listening experience are likewise encouraged to check out the band’s follow-up Dance Songs for Silly Kids. This 12-song collection remixes the band’s 2009 release Love Songs for Silly Things in its entirety. With high energy electronic tracks about sunglasses and trips to the farmer’s market, it’s another highly enjoyable and easily relatable collection for the proverbial kids of all ages.

And you can’t beat the price. Which is free.

Pick both up to share with your little ones during the enjoyable (if exhausting) holiday season ahead. And remember: if it’s got wings – parrot, a peg leg – pirate.

Hey, I learned something after all!

View full post on GeekDad

The magic of music that is classified as “nerdcore” is that there is no pigeon-holing of any one particular sound or theme. Nerdcore is more of a lifestyle & subject matter than it is strict genre of music. There is rock, rap, hip-hop, electronic, chip-tune and so on. The lines are delightfully blurry, which makes for some creative results. Sometimes, you get an artist like Untested Methods (Eric Ernewein) who puts several genres in a large cast iron pot, and makes some nerdcore stew. His latest release is called Alt-F4 My Life and is a perfect serving of nerdcore stew.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Untested Methods is breaking new ground here with a revolutionary album. It’s far from revolutionary, but it is good, and I think that’s more important when it comes to music that you can listen to over and over. Replay value is just as important as musical revolution. After listening for a while now, I find that Alt-F4 My Life has plenty of the former.

Taking about a year to self produce (taking some time off to become a father) Untested Methods produced and mastered all the music himself, using Fruity Loops 5. Impressive, since that’s four versions behind the current. A mix of instrumental and vocal tracks, this is the first Untested Methods album that is not completely instrumental. Feeling that he needed to stick to his roots, three tracks are fully instrumental with no vocals.

The vocals, a mix of Kenna style with a hint of synth-pop blend with the chip tune & electronica backing. Untested Methods admits that chip tunes was not originally his intent;

“Each album sort of has a lose musical thematic component that I build off of each time. My first album had a very industrial tone, Songs and Voices had a very acoustic/electronic vibe, and this one introduces a lot of chip sounding stuff. I’ve been a huge fan of chip music since I was listening to it off my Commodore 64 recording the soundtrack of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with a tape deck.

“For a long time people said my music sort of sounded like a video game and I took that as an insult until the last year or so, I’ve now embraced it completely. Which is what me going into the nerd music stuff is really about for me, embracing that side of my life completely and not being ashamed of it.”

Ashamed he is not, as most of the subject matter of Alt-F4 My Life relies heavily on the experiences of his so-called nerd life. The song “Move Out” is about leaving his parents house, “It Won’t be the Same” is about playing video games with friends, and “Hold Your Head Down” and “Nervous” are clear allegories to the struggles of holding a romantic relationship – not with a console system. My favorite track, “(The Internet is) So Dramatic” was composed in direct response to drama on a particular forum that Untested Methods was party to.

Overall, it’s a fun album and worth a couple listens. The best part is, it’s free. That’s right. Since Untested Methods was recently signed to Scrubclub records, it’s all free. So what do you have to lose by checking it out? Nothing at all. Whether you end up liking it, or not liking it – it doesn’t matter. However, I think given the right chance, this is the kind of laid back creative music that tends to get under your ear drums and hang about.

Go here to download Alt-F4 My Life absolutely free from Scrubclub Records. Then, when you find yourself singing along with the album, let Untested Methods know on Twitter.

Follow us on Twitter @cebsilver and @wiredgeekdad

View full post on GeekDad

Not everyone with 32 Gigs of music has 32 gigabytes of storage on their BlackBerry. Enter Wi-Fi Music Sync. This handy feature allows you to access all of your home music without wires. It’s dead simple to set up.

1. Start Desktop Manager 6 and connect your BlackBerry via USB
2. Click Wi-Fi music sync at the bottom of DM
3. Select "Turn wireless sync on"
4. Click OK when the process finishes
5. Click "Music" then "Sync"
6. Disconnect your BlackBerry and enjoy

Simple, right? Well…there are a few things you should know about setting up and enjoying this feature of BlackBerry OS6. Keep reading and we’ll explore all there is to know about Wifi music sync.

read more

CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. BlackBerry 101: Wifi music sync on your OS6 BlackBerry Smartphone

View full post on CrackBerry.com blogs

Some musicians have a hard time saying “no” to new (or vintage) gear, and their arsenals end up looking a lot like Rick Wakeman’s keyboard corner in Yes.

Of course, getting superb and subsonic synth sounds in 2010 doesn’t have to make you go bankrupt or make your studio look like a still life from Hoarders. Korg’s Monotron, a tiny analog ribbon controller, is miniaturization done right. Images and YouTube videos don’t quite capture the deceptively diminutive dimensions of this music box. Trust us: the Monotron is small enough to lose, but expansive enough to lose yourself in.

Like Schroeder’s pico piano in Charlie Brown, the Monotron requires nimbleness and ultra-skinny fingers to play standalone. The single octave keyboard is a flat beveled plane about four inches across, with printed lines between the keys and white rectangles to make sharps and flats visually pop out. A stylus would make things much easier, but Korg doesn’t include one in the box.

That’s actually fine, because the Monotron’s core strength comes from its innards — specifically its analog filter, nearly identical as the one in the much bulkier, knobbier Korg MS-20 (check out this video comparison). At the turn of its plastic dials, the Monotron oscillates from smooth to screeching, and pulsing to droning, rising through a built-in speaker as a sawtooth wave (named for its sharp, up-and-down modulation).

On the back of the Monotron are jacks for headphones and better yet, an eighth-inch stereo cable. During our tests, we routed in a Line 6 DL-4 stompbox to create heady loops with the Monotron, and plugged in a Vox tube amp as a preamp to turn a Fender Telecaster into a fuzz axe. An evening of wacky jamming ensued.

Since the Monotron came out, videos have also surfaced showing users routing in iPhones, iPads, the Korg Kaossilator and other external audio sources, revealing the broad analog capacity of the little synth. Some DIY tinkerers have even revealed some (relatively) easy soldering mods for the Monotron. We haven’t attempted surgery yet, but it looks fun. Replacing the quick-draining AAA batteries for an external power adapter?

Uhh, yes, please.

WIRED Analog filter is a steal for the price; minimal dials makes sound manipulation super accessible.

TIRED Granular keyboard bites for sausage fingers; battery life is what you’d expect with to AAAs: brief; we’d like to see a eighth-inch auxiliary input.

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

It was just about a year ago that I told you all how to get Zune Pass subscription music onto your Nokia N97 and I am VERY pleased to report you can now do the same with the awesome media player on the Nokia N8. It sure is nice to see Nokia maintaining support for Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM, isn’t it? Yes, that is right folks here in the USA, you don’t need Ovi Music to download thousands of songs to listen to on your N8 with your $14.99 montly Zune Pass. Also, you can build up your own personal library of MP3 files each month with your 10 free songs a month that you can use even when you stop your Zune Pass subscription.

I am a huge fan of the Zune Pass because it gives me the chance to listen to a lot more music than just a genre or two I know I like. I have discovered I really enjoy jazz, especially for playing in the background while I write. With a Zune Pass you can try out millions of songs and then make decisions on your 10 free songs or even others you can also purchase.

The steps are actually pretty easy to use Zune Pass music with your Nokia N8 so let’s walk through them:

1. Sign up for the Zune Pass (there is a free 14-day trial too)
2. Download and setup the Zune software on your PC
3. Select some music and add it to your Zune collection
4. Connect your Nokia N8 via USB
5. Select Media Transfer mode
6. Open up Windows Media Player (your Zune music should appear in the library if you leave the defaults enabled)
7. Drag songs over to the Sync sidebar for your N8 mass memory (internal) or microSD card
8. Click on Start sync to get the music onto your N8
9. Enjoy Zune Pass subscription music on your N8 with the slick media player interface

Now, let me be clear again, these are the steps for the DRM subscription tunes and not for the free ones you get to keep each month. Those free ones can be handled like any other ripped CD music or other DRM-free music, such as transferring with the Nokia media transfer tool or simply by dragging and dropping.

View full post on Nokia Experts

This cleverly designed app helps you stay safe by sounding an alarm and sending out emergency messages if you’re ever in trouble. But it’s no silver bullet. A lot of conditions beyond the app’s control have to be in place for RipCord Music Player to do its job.

View full post on Macworld