Archive for: free
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The iTunes software will throw an error message if the gift certificate or coupon is no longer valid.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!
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.
