Crenk

Smashing Magazine has just released On Stage icon set. The set contains 49 free vector icons including PSD which can be useful for both corporate and personal setting. You can use the set for free without any restrictions whatsoever.

The icons are available in the .png-format in the resolution 128×128px. 100% pure shape-based layered PSDs are also included in the package.

Download: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/27/on-stage-a-free-icon-set/

I am an avid user of Firefox’s add-on Fireshot, especially since most of my work is design related. In my search for a Skitch like counterpart for the PC, Fireshot was the answer.

Fireshot is simply an add-on, not an entire program, which makes it’s ease of use appreciated. Once added to the Firefox browser, a Fireshot symbol is placed next to your search bar. Unlike other screen capture software, Fireshot allows you a multitude of options the first two being whether to capture just the viewable portion or the entire page.

Once captured Fireshot offers a bevy of tools to make edits to the screenshot. This advantage sets it apart above and beyond the competition. The capture can be edited to include highlighting, circling, adding text to point out information, and other such annotations. Numerous file formats are available when saving the captures (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP)

This add-on is most useful for testers and designers, but even more useful for those writing instructional copy. Photo inserts can now be marked up and labeled to further increase the effectiveness of the material.

Fireshot can be downloaded here!

Picapp is a new product that allows bloggers and website owners to use some of the worlds best stock images on their sites for free. Simply use their search tool to find the images that you are looking for, then select the image and click embed, then you will be able to embed the images straight into your blog. Very simple yet very effective.

Picapp has only been in the marketplace for the last few months and every month it seems to be really rising in traffic according to compete. Picapp is a free service that is definitely worth a try!

Yesterday we wrote about Firefox 3 and potential themes that you can download, but today we are going to talk about one of the most popular add-ons on Firefox 3, Foxytunes. Foxytunes is currently owned by Yahoo and improved a lot in the last 6 months or so.

Foxytunes lets you control almost any media player and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more with a click right from your browser.

Foxytunes can either be download from their website or via the Firefox add-on section. Either way this free download is a must for all web users!

Crenked Out! has just launched. Crenked Out! is our new service which will be providing our readers with invitations to preview and use some of the most exclusive applications on the web. These invitations are of course going to be free and you can use as many services as you would like. However, there will be of course a limit to the amount of invites we are able to give out, so make sure you get in fast. Each time we add a new service to Crenked Out! we will also write a review about the service and detail how many invitations we have available.

If you are launching a product and would like to have your company featured in our Crenked Out! section, then please contact us. All placements in Crenked Out! are free, but the products need to meet our high standards.

GroovesharkLite is a self-contained flash based application which lets you search, listen and purchase mp3’s online. It has a library of over 6 Million songs covering everything from tiny Indies to all the Majors.

It’s a peer to peer music service in the same vein as Limewire, which also allows users to stream and purchase songs.

Users are not required to register or login to their account in order to search and play songs. You are only required to login to your account when you want to purchase a particular mp3. Otherwise you are free listen to songs as much as you want.

You can also get free mp3’s with GroovesharkLite, for example if someone purchases a song that you seed, you would receive a credit that can be used to purchase more songs from the network.

Check it out: http://listen.grooveshark.com

A couple of weeks ago we wrote a very popular article that looked at several music communities from around the web. Today, I thought I would take this opportunity to let you know about another music community that wasnt mentioned, that being Jamendo.

Jamendo is a large resource for creative commons licensed music. Jamendo has created a platform that allows artists to distribute their music freely and legally, while earning royalties through a percentage of the advertising revenue.

The site itself currently has over 8500 albums available and rising. The design is very simple with a basic white background and has a distinctive colour scheme. On the home page itself I would definitly like to see more artists and not just one large artist promoted on the left hand side, but this is just a personal preference. I think the idea behind Jamendo is quite a good one, creative commons are becoming a lot more common and their is definitely a gap in the market for a music community like this. The advertising payment model is a good one, and is similar to Imeem and what are they are try to achieve. That being said, im not too sure about the Google ads on the site, im think that the click thru rate is quite low, due to the nature of the Jamendo business, a CPM model would be a much better idea.

Overall, Jamendo is a good idea with the right business model in place. I would like to see better advertising on the site itself, but im sure that will improve over time. Features within the site are rich and the design is unique and well done. Jamendo should become a great place to find new music from up and coming artists who are looking to promote their first few albums to gain some exposure.

Crenk has long been a part of the Insomnia Media Group, which today is launching our music initiative.

RouteNote is a user driven music distribution service, allowing indie artists to get access to major online retailers and make their music available to film, radio and other media producers for quick, easy licensing.

The site is launching into public beta which involves our distribution section. Distribution through RouteNote will allow unsigned artists and independent labels from all over the world to sell their music in some of the worlds largest online stores. RouteNote is a completely non-exclusive music distributor that has some of the best rates in the industry. Artists are able to sign up for FREE, uploading as many tracks as they would like and being able to keep 90% of the revenues from download sales.

What RouteNote offers:

• Retain 100% Ownership of your tracks
• Non-exclusive
• Worldwide Exposure
• No Signup Fees
• Receive 90% from all download sales
• It wont stop you from signing up to a record label in the future
• Forward looking partnerships and marketing expertise

RouteNote is a unique service that can help hundreds of thousands of artists all over the world. So why not signup today.

Stay tuned for more features to also launch over time.

A couple of weeks ago Spiral Frog claimed that they were the third largest legal music download store, now they are reporting some very interesting news. SpiralFrog has announced a licensing agreement with RoyaltyShare to add its independent label customers to the free ad supported service.  Indie label MPress has also been added to the SpiralFrog catalog which now tops 1 million tracks.

Back in early November of last year, I preempted the launch of Spottt. Spottt is a free link exchange between sites via a 125 x 125 widget. Spottt is developed by the guys over at Adbrite, so they have a product that needs to work and actually launch into something worthwhile. Since Adbrite has had a lot of VC Funding, they will be really expected to not just launch a product for the sake of it, and actually turn it into a commercial entity.

This brings me to the all important point, is Spottt actually going anywhere? Currently, the site is so simplistic and has a lot of competitors doing exactly the same thing. So where is it unique selling point? If I was the VC in Adbrite who put in a slice of the money, then I would expect an out strategy for Spottt and within a year or two at the most. Will this actually happen? and what features are really missing from Spottt or sites like Spottt?