If you use Roxio Toast (Lite or Titanium) to make your own CDs/DVDs from audio purchased from the iTunes music store, those days are over if you upgrade to 6.1 – “Following discussions with Apple, this version will no longer allow customers to create audio CDs, audio DVDs, or export audio to their hard drive using purchased iTunes music store content” Link.
Wow! Looks like we’re going to be getting iPodder-like functionality in iTunes 4.9 (coming out in the next 60 days). For now it seems there’s only going to be free content (not purchased through iTunes) so I’m guessing you’ll add a playlist and a RSS feed and the podcasts will be downloaded automatically. The Yahoo! Music Engine has a neat plugin that does this now, so I’m excited about seeing this in iTunes soon. Link. Update: Looks like Apple will be picking the podcasts for download.
Built as a one-man-band musical instrument- The Phoney Controller consists of a telephone housing, four Force Sensing Resistors (FSRs), an Analog Devices ADXL202 two-dimensional accelerometer, a BASIC Stamp II (BSII) microcontroller, a stupid “on-off” switch, and a cool LED! I am essentially using the BSII as a MIDI sequencer. All sounds at this point have to be generated from an external MIDI synthesizer. The FSRs and the 2D accelerometer are used to control various aspects of the sequencer. Link.
Neat photoset found on Flickr. After a crack appeared inthe case of my Sony MicroVault and it spilled all over the floor. I decided to mod it up, and spent a while looking for something cool. I found this cassette, and this is the result. B Side looks awesome. All in all, 2 hours of work and thinking, for a very simple, but I think rather cool mod for my old usb stick. Might be a fun project to add an iPod Shuffle to a tape adaptor. Link.
Fortune has a great article about the new DIY economy. Love this part- To be fair, all this amateur energy isn’t exactly a new force. When exciting technologies emerge, Americans have always pounced and created something original. In his 1936 New Yorker article “Farewell, My Lovely,” E.B. White eulogized the Model T and the creativity it inspired in its owners: “When you bought a Ford, you figured you had a start—a vibrant, spirited framework to which could be screwed an almost limitless assortment of decorative and functional hardware… Gadget bred gadget. Lots of friends of MAKE as well as the magazine was mentioned too! Link.
Mashing up Google maps and Gasbuddy = locations of cheap gas in your area on a Google map (map or satellite view). Just choose a city- then the data on the right side is updated cheapest gas prices. If you have mobile high speed access you could add a GPS and have this running while you drive. In the future, maybe our cars will do this for us. Via Robotwisdom. Link.
Over on BoingBoing there’s a post about the new Dave Mattews CD that tries to install weird stuff when inserted, crashes and all sorts of things when used on a Windows based PC. I don’t have the CD but it sounds like MediaMax from SunnComm (SunnComm tried to sue a student awhile back). The simple solution is to hold the Shift key when you pop the CD in or disable Autorun (a good idea in general) here’s how.
