Archive for: free
A couple of days ago we put together a great list of the Worlds top 10 free music streaming service. We received a comment that post that lead us to another music streaming service that I thought was worth a review, MixTurtle. MixTurtle is a great music streaming search engine very similar to Seeqpod.
MixTurtle lets users search for a song and then it provides instant results. Then users can play the single track or add it to a playlist. I couldn’t work out for a while how to view the playlist correctly, but all you need to do is right click anywhere on the page and it brings up the playlist you have created. I would suggest that MixTurtle work a bit more on this feature and really make it more predominant.
In terms of the overall design and layout of the site, I think it has great potential. I think it will be easy for them to add sponsored search results into the engine which will be a lot better to look at than display advertising. However, if they are going to go down the display route, it would be advisable to add the display add to the top of the site and have it rotate every couple of minutes.
Overall this is a great site with a lot of potential. It would be adviseable to add a business model sooner rather than later, because im sure their server costs are quite high. In terms of the user point of view, this is a great site! Simple, easy to use and give you with the results in seconds, brilliant!
Im spending a lot of time in the office recently and I’m one of those people who cant work without music playing really loud in the background. I’m sure its not just me who thinks better when music is playing loud, so I thought I would put together a quick list of the top 10 free music streaming service that are currently available. Some of these services can only be used in specific countries, but I’m sure this will change in 2009.
Pandora – Pandora is now just a USA based service. However, Pandora is a great service for those in the USA and im surprised if most people in the USA don’t already use it. Pandora is basically a music radio service which lets you listen to customised radio stations.
Last.fm – I have never really understood Last.fm myself, but they have a great service in which will let you stream music from certain artists. Some have full tracks for free to stream, but others have videos or some nothing at all.
Seeqpod – Seeqpod is basically Google for music. Seepqod is a search engine that allows users to find whatever music they want to listen too. Seeqpod can only find music that can easily be downloaded on the net, so it can be limited with some artists, plus sometimes the tracks might be corrupted and not completely work. However, it is great for making playlists.
Spotify – Spotify is a new music service that has launched out of Sweden. I have been using Spotify for several months now, even though it is in private beta testing. Though the music is streamed, it is played instantly and is partly supported by the famous P2P technology. Currently the service is only available in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and UK. Spotify has to be the best music streaming service I have used in 2008.
Myspace Music – Myspace is of course the worlds largest social network and Myspace Music is just an add-on of this social network. With Myspace Music users can search for pretty much any artist in the world and stream the music they have on their profiles. Remember it is limited to only the music the artist wants you to hear.
Rhapsody – Rhapsody has a nice “listen FREE” search option at the top of its homepage, an excellent way to entice people to sign up for its premium service. Once you find the artist you are looking for then you can play any of the songs in their catalogue for free. However, then I realised streaming is only for the USA.
Imeem – Imeem is a mixture between music streaming service and social network. On Imeem to stream music all you need to do is to search for the artist you want to listen to and then the majority of the time they will already have an Imeem account.
Deezer - Deezer is a mixture between Seeqpod and Imeem. Deezer has some social networking aspects but mainly it is just a great music streaming service that is very easy to find the music you are looking for. All music on there is legal and free and artists actually get royalties from your streams.
Skreemr - Skreemr is very similar to Seepqod and it is just basically a search engine for music online. Skreemr is a free service that picks up free music from across the internet and allows you to play it easily. However, unlike Seeqpod they don’t allow users to make playlists.
Lala – Lala is one of the new music streaming services on the block. Lala provides free streaming to only USA users. There is a limit on how many times you can listen to a track for free, but you also have the option of purchasing that stream for $0.10 so then you have can unlimited plays. Additionally, if you want to take the tracks off the site then there is an option of $0.79 for the download.
I was on Brian Gardner’s new project RevolutionTwo.com and previous there has been a lot of talk about this project, because he was offering free downloads but with paid support. This afternoon I went onto his new site and noticed that you can no longer download the themes for free and that they are now all paid themes. I find this a bit of a weird mood by Brian, is this because he was simply just not making any money from paid support?
I went back onto the site a couple of minutes ago and noticed that the site is now down due to a database error. Is this because it has been hacked or it Brian updating something? Anyone have any tips?
Apple iTunes has always been so popular and with the launch of the iPhone iTunes has gone to the next level. Every single day Apple sells millions of dollars in the iTunes store just for iPhone applications. With so many applications being launched everyday how do you keep up? Additionally, I have always wondering how much money these applications are making developers and which applications are actually popular.
Today I stumbled across a great new site called AppShopper. AppShopper is a huge directory of all iPhone and iPod Touch applications and allows users to search through apps, find out how much they cost, and find out which applications are actually selling.
Additionally on the AppShopper blog they have great insights into applications within the app store and also all kinda of application related news there is. So if you are looking to easily find applications within the App Store, dont head over to iTunes itself, head to AppShopper.
The Pirate Bay is at it again but this time they are actually offering something useful to its users. The Pirate Bay’s new offering is a ViO converters which reduces AVI, MPEG, MP4, WMV and others videos to 20% of its original size without any reduction in image quality, and claims to do it faster than any other converter.
The ViO converter is currently completely free and pre-configured for popular mobile devices.
Additionally the Pirate Bay are offering an optional toolbar that can be installed. The toolbar is a dynamic video directory guide of all streaming video sites on the net, featuring a tube site ripper, powerful media search engine and one-click access to ViO video converter straight from your browser!
Amazon has just launched their Mp3 Music store in the UK. The store can be found at http://mp3.amazon.co.uk. The simple-to-use digital music store offering over 3 million DRM-free (Digital Rights Management) songs which will work on any MP3 player including the iPod™- with top-selling albums from just £3 and individual songs from 59p.
Amazon Mp3 UK has all four major labels signed up, SonyBMG, Universal Music, EMI Music and Warner Music – and leading independents such as Cooking Vinyl, Harmonia Mundi, Beggars Banquet, The Orchard, Concord and IODA.
Greg Greeley, Vice-President of Amazon EU Retail said: “We’re excited to provide our UK customers with more ways to discover and enjoy great music. In addition to the millions of low-priced CDs available in our music store, Amazon MP3 now provides a vast selection of DRM-free albums and songs across every genre you can think of, ready to enjoy in seconds”.
After spending months in public beta and lots of changes to the ad supports music service, We7 is about to launch out of beta with a bang.
We7 have launched with a “Big Listen” campaign. This new service has some great new features including Free on-demand, unlimited access to full tracks and albums, “Search, Click & Play”, A ‘Celestial Jukebox’ with several million track, ‘Play Anywhere’ – a link and play system for blogs and websites, Users can create playlists, share with friends and buy mp3’s, Payments to rights owners and artists.
The first thing you will notice with the new site is that they have a completely new design. Other new additions include a Magazine, Blog and a much improved list of advertisers. Im sure we will be hearing a lot more from We7 in 2009!
Over at gHacks they have a great article about how to create an iTunes U.S. account without a credit card.
Here are the basics from the article!
The first thing you do is to download the iTunes software and install it. Once that is done start it and locate the Redeem link in the top right Quick Links menu.
This will load a page with a form that accepts coupons and gift certificates. All you need to is to paste a coupon code into the form and click on Redeem to send it to iTunes. Coupons can be found here or here.
The iTunes software will throw an error message if the gift certificate or coupon is no longer valid. That however is not a problem at all. Return to the homepage by clicking on the home icon in the upper left corner of the iTunes store.
Once the homepage has loaded it is time to create the account. You can do that by clicking on the Sign In button on the upper right corner of the iTunes store. It offers you login possibilities and a button to create a new account. Click on that button.
Click continue on the welcome page and accept the terms and conditions of the iTunes store in the second. This finally leads to the account creation page.
Enter your details on that page and continue to the next and final step of the account creation.
If everything went well you should now see the page where you can select a payment method and enter the address of the account. The payment method has to offer None as one option for this to work. If that is the case choose none. Now you need to enter an US address in the last step to create the account.
The zip code, state and city have to match. Everything else does not. Just select the location of a friend or relative to be on the safe side but it is practically possible to enter any information you like.
The account will be created in the last step and the contents of the US iTunes store are now available.
Blender.org is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. I dont really know too much about this sector, but the quality of images made using this software is simply amazing. Im a really big fan of open source software and companies trying to offer a great tool to users for free, and Blender is no exception.
I have attached a sample of what has been made using the Blender tool. If you are in graphic or animation design, it would be great to hear your views on this tool.
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!
