Today, we will talk about the top 5 online radio stations to fit your musical horizons.

(Note: Check out the radio tag for more related web apps.)

Sky.fm

Sky.fm, although not necessarily a “top-dog”, certainly features the best list of online streaming radio stations out of any site.

Sky.fm does not require a “premium” subscription for any of its radio stations, although it is optional and will get you an upgrade to a 256kbps stream (which is high quality) audio. For free users, radio stations can be played at up to 96kbp (which is slightly less than the standard 128kbps). Premium subscriptions are $4.95 per month.

Sky.fm features genres ranging from: alternative rock, classic rock, flamenco, raggea, smooth jazz, and so on. One huge reason really hits home though: commercial free. This is extremely rare among online radio stations and is one of the most annoying things about traditional AM/FM radio.

Shoutcast

The most popular of all online radio directories, Shoutcast picks up streams from all across the web, organized in a number of ways that are extremely helpful. Shoutcast makes it easy to find thousands of streaming alternative rock, jazz, reggae, country, blues, etc. Shoutcast can even show you what is currently playing on any specific stream, what the bitrate is, how many listeners, and the format of the stream. I highly recommend checking it out.

Check out this post by Jason on how to start your own online radio station with Shoutcast.

Soma fm

Soma fm, with an even smaller listening audience than Sky.fm, features a great variety of Indie, Techno, Trance, Ambient, and Lounge music. Like Sky.fm, Soma fm does not feature ads, but does not have a premium feature (their only source of income is donations).

Each of the 18 stations though features a 128kbps MP3 stream for free. Another nice thing about Soma fm is that they place an entire set list/playlist of currently playing and previously playing songs, which is something that is absent on many online streaming radio stations.

AccuRadio

Another extremely popular streaming radio site, AccuRadio has its fair share of pros and cons. Like the previously mentioned shoutcast, AccuRadio offers a wide variety of hundreds of stations of multiple genres, tailored precisely for you (with more of a Pandora kind of tailored radio).

The only con that can be easily determined, is that you must have your web browser open to listen to any AccuRadio station, unlike the more popular and convenient method of downloading a small playlist file and listening through your desktop. Still a very useful streaming site.

1Club.fm

1Club.fm is a relatively popular, multi-genre, radio station directory that will not disappoint. With over 90 different channels, finding your taste is of course not a problem. Simply click a link to any of the radio stations, listen in your browser, or download a .pls streaming audio file for quick access.

The only problem I had when listening to any of the stations was the quality/bitrate of the streams. Of the stations I tested, the only stream rate I could get was 64kbps (which is about half of the average mp3 bitrate). In any case, if your looking for a specific genre you will likely find it on 1Club.

Looking at the related articles MakeUseOf published in the past, I would like to bring your attention to:

- 3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files
- The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop

What online radio stations do you listen to? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
• The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop (12)
• Lala – Really Cool New Site for Music Streaming & Downloads (14)
• Build The Perfect Music Playlist With MixtapeMe (7)
• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)

Today I discovered Fire.FM which puts a Last.FM toolbar in your Firefox browser. Normally I shun most toolbars in an attempt to keep my Firefox browser running smoothly but after installing Fire.FM, I just know that I will be holding onto this one for quite a while!

With Fire.FM, you can play Last.FM music directly from your Firefox browser without having to visit the site.  You can also get access to your Last.FM radio stations as well as finding similar artists.

The only snag is that listeners to Last.FM outside of the United States, Great Britain and Germany will be asked to subscribe for €3.00 per month ($4), after a 30 track free trial period.  But anyone in the United States, Great Britain and Germany will not face such limitations.

Let’s take a look at each feature in more detail.

After logging into your Last.FM account via the toolbar, you can access your stations by going to the drop down menu.

You can create a station via the toolbar and it will ask you what name you want to give it. Afterwards it will load automatically and start playing :

Whether you create a new station or load an existing one, the music will begin loading and start playing within seconds. You will also receive a pop up window at the bottom of your browser telling you what song is coming :

The toolbar also gives you access to your “Top Artists” and “Similar Artists” so you can discover similar new music :

And to round off the Last.FM features, you can tag, like and dislike the track that’s playing.

This seems to be a well-made Firefox extension which doesn’t slow down Firefox. I have had it running for hours and so far Firefox hasn’t slowed down at all.  It is great if you are browsing / working online and you would like to have some music playing in the background.   An extension like this brings your music to you at the click of a button and of course every song you listen to and every change you make is more or less immediately reflected in your Last.FM account.

With Fire.FM, there is practically no reason to visit the Last.FM webpage, except perhaps to approve friend requests, visit groups or view events which you can’t do with the toolbar.   But if your only use of Last.FM is to listen to music, get the toolbar.

What do you think of Fire.FM?   An essential extension or a piece of bloatware?  Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop (12)
• Record Streaming Audio with Screamer Radio (23)
• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 2) [Mac Only] (16)
• How To Broaden Your Musical Horizons Online (8)

However, I would much prefer to be ahead of things and already know all the latest music, news and new bands. So I went out to find the best sources for alternative music novelty. Are you craving to hear what I found?

Here are five different websites that will still your hunger for fresh music, video clips, tour dates, news, gossip, and new artists.

Yahoo! Adult Alternative & Alternative Rock Stations

Before we dive into the muddy reality of the music world, let’s stick around at the surface for a bit and enjoy the result of all the hard work and advertising: the music.

I value Yahoo! music because they provide high quality video clips. The Adult Alternative Station provides "a mix of pop, rock, and alternative videos without the rep, bubble gum or hard stuff" and at Alternative Rock you’ll find "all your faves, plus new bands just hitting the scene." Just what I want. The best: you can create your own playlists from this and dozens of other video stations. The only drawback: one commercial before each clip.

NME

In the music news world, NME is an authority. But the online magazine has a lot more to offer than mere news. They feature album reviews, latest video releases, behind the scenes coverage from festivals and other events, and a special section for new music.

You can browse for a particular alternative music band or musician in the Artist section and find anything that was ever published about that person on NME. The coverage also includes a Biography, Discography, Videography and Books, if available.

Free daily MP3 downloads reside on the New Music page. The Radar recommends 10 new bands you need to hear each week. If you can’t get enough or want to share your own discoveries, sign up for MyNME and post your thoughts on the message boards, while receiving access to exclusive material. The membership is of course free.

PureVolume

This site focuses on new artists and their music, with little of the other dirt. Hence it’s less cluttered than NME, but also more useful and much more novel than Yahoo! Music. This is the perfect site to listen to new tracks and discover new alternative music because the tracks are uploaded by the artists themselves!

As you see in the screenshot above, there are four main sections: Music, Videos, Events, and People. The positive surprise was finding events, i.e. shows listed for places other than North America or the UK. Dozens of shows are listed for all over Germany on each single day. Even Egypt, Bulgaria, Jamaica, and Malaysia have solid listings, including preview audio files.

The site appears to have a very big community, which actively participates in keeping it fresh and up to date. The People section confirms this assumption. The only downside is the audio playback. It’s very basic and leaving a site means closing the track that’s playing.

The video playback is much more advanced, providing social media integration, and the quality is very good, allowing full screen view. Unfortunately, videos can’t be exported to an external window either.

There is a lot more to discover on PureMusic, so dive in!

Of course these are not the only sites for awesome alternative music. An honorable mention goes out to Alternative Addiction, which probably is the US version of NME, and Bowling Stone, a Canadian Indie / Alternative music blog where Chris, Julie and Paolo recommend "new music for your iPod."

If you care for live music, also check out Will’s recent post about 3 Ways To Track Tour Dates Of Your Favorite Rock Bands.

At what places do you stop to recharge your mp3 player or discover new music, videos, news, and background information? Pandora, Last.fm, Napster or anything we don’t know, yet? Surprise us in the comments!

Image credits: greekgod

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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But how do you get a talk show? And how do you use it to make millions of dollars? Well, I can’t help with the second part (let me know if you figure it out), but I can help with the first. It’s called BlogTalkRadio, and is a fantastic Web app for becoming the host of your very own Internet talk show.

BlogTalkRadio is really two things: it’s a place to find talk and radio shows (sort of like a podcast library, really), as well as a way to create your own show. There’s tons of great stuff on BTR, but for now, we’ll just stick with creating your own show.

First things first: create an account with BTR (don’t worry, it’s both free and easy). The link’s a little hard to find at first, so I’ll help – it’s the “Register” link, at the top right of the home page screen.

Once you’ve created an account, you’ll see your Account central; it’s probably pretty empty at the moment. No worries, we’ll fix that. Click the “My Account” tab, and then select “Become a host now!” on the left side. Then, create your Host account – give it information like your Twitter account, Facebook account, show category, and all that jazz.

You get to personalize your show like crazy (though it’ll still be hosted by BlogTalkRadio) – add a logo, a link to a website, lots of links, and an audio clip to play at the beginnig; you can also change the link to the show (http://www.blogtalkradio/somethingorother) which lends to much more branding and personalization.

Show created, go back to the “My Account” page, and select “Add New Episode.” Add information about your soon-to-be-hit show’s first episode, as well as a time and date for the show. There are even a few ways to make some money with the episode, like showing related Amazon books. Once you’re done setting it up, you get a link to the show to share with the world.

When you’re ready to begin the show, the real beauty of BlogTalkRadio shines through. To get the show started literally couldn’t be any simpler. Every show has a phone number. You give out that number to one person, or a million, or make it public – totally up to you. During the show, people call the number to get connected to the show. You, as the host, can, with the press of a button, allow them to talk. Otherwise, they just sit in the queue, listening to the show and waiting for their turn. When you allow someone to talk, they’re connected with you as if you’re in a studio together – until you mute them again. Then they go away.

People can listen to the show either by calling in, subscribing by email or RSS, or just hunting you down and listening on your BTR page. After the show is completed, it gets archived on your page, where people can still listen to it or download the show.

BlogTalkRadio probably isn’t going to be your one-way ticket to super-stardom. But it’s a great place to create a show, talk about what your interested in, and get some real experience being a talk show host. And hey, who knows? Maybe you’ll be the first “straight from BTR to Late Night” story.

Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!

Are you already an Internet radio star? Have you tried anything like this before?

Photo: John Edwards 2008

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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We’re going to show you how to start your own Internet radio station with SHOUTcast – and help you set up a player on your website.

To start off your own Internet radio station, you’ll need the following:  SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server, Winamp, and the SHOUTcast Radio DSP Plugin.

Also note that there are various legal implications for playing copyrighted works, which you can read at the bottom of the SHOUTcast download page.

Setting up the SHOUTcast Server

• Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server.
• Browse over to C:\Program Files\SHOUTcast\ and open sc_serv.ini in your favorite text editor (I prefer Notepad++).
• You’ll need to edit a couple values:
  • On line 21, edit the MaxUser value. The comment above it tells you how to calculate your possible number of listeners – take the upload rate of your connection in kbps and divide it by the bitrate you intend to broadcast at.
  • For example, my upload speed is approximately 993kbps, and if I wanted to broadcast at 96kbps, I could fit in roughly 10 listeners at once.
  • On line 29, choose a password for the Password value. This will be used so Winamp can connect to your server, and for the web administration.
  • On line 37, PortBase can be left alone unless you have an existing server that utilizes port 8000/8001.
• Download and install Winamp. Make sure to uncheck any offers to change your search engine, etc.
• Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DSP plugin.
• Open Winamp, head to Options > Preferences, then scroll down to DSP/Effect under Plug-ins. Click on Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP and a small window should open:



• Switch to the Output tab and under Address put “localhost” without the quotes. For Port use 8000 unless you changed the value in step 2, and Password uses the password you configured in step 2:



• On the same tab, click where it says Yellowpages and configure the settings, which should be fairly self explanatory:



• Switch to the Encoder tab. Set Encoder Type to MP3 Encoder, and choose an Encoder Setting. Keep in mind the number of users you intend to be able to broadcast to at once – multiply the number of users you chose in step 2 by the bitrate you select and make sure the resulting number doesn’t exceed your upload speed:



• Start the SHOUTcast DNAS. Make sure to let it connect to the Internet.



• Switch back to the Output tab on the Winamp SHOUTcast window, and hit Connect. Head back to the Winamp library, and pick a random song. The SHOUTcast plugin under Status should start showing a quickly increasing number. You’re free to close the plugin window now that it’s connected:

Broadcasting on the Internet

At this point, your server is accessible anywhere on your local network. You’ll need to port forward to make it Internet accessible, and there are a few solutions to get your broadcast playing on a webpage.

• You’ll need to port forward ports 8000 and 8001 to your local computer. If you need help port forwarding, select a router from this list, and select ShoutCast when choosing an application. To find the port you need to forward to, follow the first step of Ryan’s FreeProxy article here.
• To verify that your server appears on the Internet, switch to the SHOUTcast server window, and wait for the following to appear:
  

  [yp_add] yp.shoutcast.com added me successfully

  If it fails for any reason, see the error it provides, double check the steps, and consult this forum thread if all else fails.

Embedding in a Webpage

Assuming everything has worked perfectly up to this point, we’re assuming you need a way for people to listen from a webpage. For all of this to work, you’ll also need to grab your external IP address, which you can find at WhatIsMyIP. There are a couple of solutions at this point:

WaveStreaming Player: This player requires you give them a name and an email address – but it’s pretty straightforward and requires no editing of code:

Once they give you the code, just copy and paste anywhere you want the player to appear.

StreamSolutions.co.uk Embedded Player Generator: Another simple solution, but doesn’t ask for your name or email. Simply give your station URL and port as directed, and select a version of the player. Note that this player is rather unwieldy in Firefox if the appropriate plugin is not installed.

Minicaster: Download Minicaster and unzip the archive. Edit minicaster.xml in your favorite text editor. Replace all the code in the file with the following, replacing your_ip_address, your_port, your_website_url, and Your Title Here:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”iso-8859-1″ ?>
<config version=”1T” xmlns=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/config/ns/1T/”>
<mp3cast>
<mount>http://your_ip_address:your_port/;</mount>
<website>your_website_url</website>
<title>Your Title Here</title>
</mp3cast>
<init autoplay=”0″ volume=”80″ reload=”5″ xfade=”0″ />
</config>

Upload minicaster.xml, minicaster.swf, and to be utterly simple, EXAMPLE2.html. You could alternatively embed the following code in a web page that shares the same directory (or edit the parts in bold to reflect directory structure):

<object id=”fmp256″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”minicaster.swf” width=”180″ height=”70″>
<param name=”movie” value=”minicaster.swf” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />
<div>
<h4>Minicaster Radio Playhead</h4>
<p>To listen you must <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/”
title=”Click here to install the Flash browser plugin from Macromedia”>install Flash Player</a>. Visit
<a href=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/mp3player/minicaster/” title=”Draftlight Networks”>Draftlight Networks</a>
for more info.</p></div>
</object>

That’s about it to starting a basic SHOUTcast server. If you have any comments or questions, please direct them below.  Also, let us know where to find your newly created radio station so we can come over and listen!

Image Credit : LoopZilla.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Produce Your Own Internet TV Show (23)
• How to Host Your Own Talk Show Online (4)
• Build The Perfect Music Playlist With MixtapeMe (7)
• 5 Online Radio Stations To Get Your Music Fix (18)
• 10 Really Cool Free Blackberry Applications (38)

With the list of free players growing all the time (iffy companies are cropping up all over the web like raging teen acne – awful to behold and tough to stamp out) it’s time to narrow your choice down to the best available players.

I’ve listed 3 really good free online radio players for your desktop (Windows, Mac and Linux).

For PC

Screamer Radio

This free radio phenomenon is described in detail here. Screamer is simple to use and can handle just about any streaming format.

• Shoutcast and Icecast MP3 Streaming
• Icecast OGG Vorbis Streaming
• WMA Streaming
• AAC Streaming

Best of all, it’s ad free and virtually indetectable (sound aside, of course). Your computer won’t even feel it, and the player window itself is teeny tiny.

By searching the Screamer radio directory, you can build a presets list – this is the collection of stations the app has collected for you. You can search by genre, language, network or region. The selection of genres is very broad and gets quite exotic, from Anime Music to something called ‘Reggaeton’. There’s also a section called ‘Salsa, Bachata, Merengue’ and a category of Nerd Music. Nerd Music!

The sheer extent of the radio database is the best thing about Screamer. But if that doesn’t impress you, maybe you’ll be moved by its handy< a href=”http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/record-streaming-audio-with-screamer-radio/”>extra functions. Screamer doubles as a recorder and encoder!

Features include:

• Recording buffer: start recording in the middle and still save the entire song!
• Direct MP3 Audio stream saving, no loss of quality.
• Direct OGG Vorbis stream saving, no loss of quality.
• Or encode OGG Vorbis as MP3 using Lame
• Encode WMA or AAC to MP3 using Lame

Lame has an awful name. It’s anything but! This is considered one of the best mp3 encoders at mid to high bitrates.

To select the destination folder for your recorded tracks, go to the Screamer Preferences window and select the Recording tab. You can also define file name patterns and buffer sizes here.

In the General Preferences window, you can set Display and Startup options. For example, hide Screamer Startup if it annoys you and make this little player as inconspicuous as possible.

For Windows or Mac

Musicovery. This one is highly interactive and customisable – very easy to use. It was good enough for our editor Aibek, who mentioned it as one of his favorite online music services! Commentators gush that Musicovery is great for discovering new music because of the plethora of ways you can define your tastes, do searches and get recommendations.

Most famously… it’s mood-searchable!

What you do is define the mood you want on the north-south-east-west compass, which reminds me those political compasses where you answer some questions about your social attitudes and get placed on a spectrum: welfare state proponent vs. free market capitalist (up and down scale) AND socially liberal vs. socially conservative (left and right scale).

Musicovery does the same with mood by getting you to place yourself between Dark and Positive, and Energetic and Calm.

Once you’ve clicked somewhere on this 2D chart, you must limit yourself to an era and a genre.

This is what you see when you ask for dark, energetic electro!

For Mac users: Musicovery has a plugin that lets you listen via iTunes. A simple .dmg download will let you use this incredible popular streamer.

For Linux

Rhythmbox

Originally inspired by Apple’s iTunes, Rhythmbox is based on the powerful GStreamer open source framework.  Linux users will get:

1. An easy to use browser

The Rhythmbox tab list (on the far left) allows you to view your Play Queue, Library, Podcasts, Radio preferences and Last.fm streams. So, you get a lot more than radio streaming. And people whinge about the poor player options on Linux!

2. Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer

GStreamer is a multimedia framework written in C which allows the programmer to create media-handling components like audio and video playback , recording, streaming and editing. The popular Entertainer media center for Linux (mentioned in this article) uses this technology. It’s tops.

3. Options to transfer music to and from iPod, MTP, and USB Mass Storage music players

The iPod tab will appear on the left when you connect your device, just like on iTunes.

4. Direct access to Jamendo

Jamendo is marketed as a ‘new model for artists to promote, publish and get paid for their music’, and Simon previously covered it in his article about the best sites to download music.

With Rhythmbox, you get access to the immense range of Jamendo downloads. These are free and legal music downloads shared under Creative Commons licenses.

5. Last.fm streaming

Find the Last.fm plugin here and import a lot of the things that  made that player great. Build a Last.fm station straight from Rhythmbox!

6. Plugins

There is an impressive list of third party plugins available on the Rhythmbox Developer page. You’ll also find desktop art, ripping/recording devices and a plugin called Remuco that lets you control Rhythmbox remotely from your cell phone!

Besides Rhythmbox, you can also find a bunch of alternative here, as Damien has listed out.

What are you favourite desktop radio players? Do you use an app that wasn’t listed here? Do share them with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 5 Online Radio Stations To Get Your Music Fix (18)
• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)
• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
• Stream Quality Internet Radio Stations to Your PC or Mobile (17)
• Stream Music For Free With Spotify (+ Invites) (218)

Without wasting any time, let’s start it off! Here are 10 really cool free Blackberry applications.

1. Pandora Mobile

Pandora, reviewed in the past by MakeUseOf, has a great free Blackberry application which allows you to do almost everything you can do on the desktop version except right on your phone. You can create new stations, listen to already created ones, rate songs and more. Download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.pandora.com.

2. Neosistec CarFinder

Can’t remember where you parked your car in that large parking lot? When you leave your car, open CarFinder’s simple menu and mark your location through your Blackberry’s GPS. When you need to find your car (or another specific point) again, pull up CarFinder and it will guide you back via a compass or the Blackberry Maps application. You can also send your marked location to a friend. Download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.neosistec.com/carfinder.

3. Qik Mobile

As I’ve reviewed before on MakeUseOf, Qik, which allows you to stream live video from your phone to the internet for free, has a great mobile application for Blackberry. With it, you can stream video online from your device for anyone to see, or limit access with a password. But as the service implies, your Blackberry must be a model with a camera for Qik to work. You can download Qik by going to their website on your Blackberry’s browser here: http://qik.com/m/dl/brands.

4. Google Maps

Just like the popular online maps site, Google Maps offers a great Blackberry application which allows for most of the same features on their site, except again, its running on your phone. You can get directions, get maps in satellite view and watch traffic and see your location (which can work even if your Blackberry doesn’t have GPS, but works better if it does). View a real-time online demo of Google Maps Mobile here or download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://m.google.com/maps.

5. Palringo

If you like instant messaging, you’ll love Palringo. It is a mobile instant messaging client which supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk and more, all in one piece of software. You can also chat with other users of Palringo (on a desktop, Android, iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile or Symbian phone) via text chat, voice or pictures. Palringo’s voice capabilities make it a great almost push-to-talk (PTT) software and a great piece of software to talk to your friends online or on their mobile phones due to its wide compability. Download Palringo from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.palringo.mobi.

6. Boopsie

Through way of different “channels”, Boopsie lets you intelligently search for content or articles on sites like IMDB, Wikipedia, Amazon and more. When you use the application, you can pull up your favorite channel and then search for content on it and live results will appear on your screen for the content you selected. You can view an online demo at their website, or you can download Boopsie from your Blackberry’s browser by going here: http://www.boopsie.com.

7. Viigo

Viigo is a feature-rich application which lets you view news & RSS feeds, audio clips & podcasts, stocks & money data, weather and more. From the one application, you can do a lot of things and browse many blog RSS feeds, see sports scores, view local weather, and even read books. Viigo also bills their software as “the one app you’ll never want to be without” because of its wide range of features it makes available to you. You can download Viigo from your Blackberry browser here: http://www.getviigo.com.

8. Blackberry Appworld

Made directly by Blackberry, Appworld allows you to browse through a wide variety of many other Blackberry apps and download and install them on the spot from the application. Many different developers contribute their applications to the library that’s available for download. The limitation to this application is that you must have a free PayPal account in order to get through checkout of some apps. You can download Appworld from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.blackberry.com/appworld

9. Facebook For Blackberry

We all know what Facebook is- the online utility which lets you share pictures, messages and online applications with friends.  Well, now they have a handy Blackberry application which lets you do almost anything you can do on their desktop site, on your Blackberry. A really neat feature of this app is their recent update which allows you to automatically link Facebook profile pictures of your friends with their contact entry in your Blackberry’s address book. You can download Facebook for Blackberry on your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.facebook.com/blackberry.

10. Twitterberry

If you use Twitter and have a Blackberry, then Twitterberry is for you. With it, you can send out Twitter updates quickly and easily as well as see your friends timeline, view replies to your Tweets and direct message your friends. Download Twitterberry here: http://orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/.

Almost all of these applications require an unlimited data plan from your Blackberry data/phone provider due to the amount of bandwidth they consume while in use. You may also read other MakeUseOf posts on Blackberry here.

Do you have a favorite Blackberry App? Let us know in the comments, or share your experience with any of the ones posted here! MakeUseOf also has a mobile site where you can view this article and more at http://m.makeuseof.com.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Simply said, GKrellM is a single process stack of system monitors that allows you to monitor your system resources easily and quickly. Apart from monitoring your computer’s status it comes with lots of plugins bringing lots of useful featureslike radio tuner, weather lookup, reminder etc.

In case you are wondering why is it called such a wierd name, the word GkrellM is actually make up of three words G-Krell-M. The G stands for GNU (some call it GTK) while the word Krell is an inspiration from the flim “Forbidden Planet” (the native in the show is called Krell). The M stands for Monitor.

When you install GKrellM, it comes with a default set of monitors, including

• Hostname/system name display.
• Clock/calendar.
• SMP CPU monitor that can chart individual CPUs and/or a composite CPU.
• Temperature, fan, and voltage sensor monitors
• Process monitor with a chart for load and forks and a display of number of current processes and users.
• Disk monitor that can chart individual disks or a composite disk.
• Internet monitor (http, ftp, …) that displays current TCP port connections and charts historical port hits for over two days.
• Net interface monitors with charts for all routed net interfaces.
• Memory and swap space usage meters, and a swap page in/out chart.
• File system meters which show capacity/free space.
• A mailbox monitor which can launch a mail reader, a mail fetch/check program, and a sound notify command.
• APM laptop battery meter with a configurable alarm and warning for low battery time left.
• Uptime display.

Configuration

Configuring GkrellM is as easy as scrolling through the options menu and checking the boxes of the options you want.

On your Gkrellm window, right click your mouse and select Configuration (alternatively, press F1 on the keyboard). This will bring up the configuration window.

In the General option, under the Properties tab, this is where you can configure Gkrellm to be on sticky mode (always show on desktop) and/or get it to dock to the panel so that it won’t show up as an active window in the window list.

The configuration window also allows you to change settings for almost every built-in monitors. In the event that you are confused by the settings, you can click on the Info tab to read the related information and documentation.

One thing that I like about GKrellM is that its give you the ability to customize and personalize the settings, yet doesn’t require you to be too technical.

Themes

Being an application based on GTK, GKrellm supports themes and is able to integrate well with all the desktop environment. The default installation comes with 5 different themes, but seriously, they are not the outstanding type that you want to keep on your desktop for long. To download new theme, go to http://www.muhri.net where you can find a great collection of attractive third party themes.

Interested users can also create your own theme by following the documentation here.

Plugins

The best thing about Gkrellm that truly distinguishes itself from its competitors is its large collection of plugins. Just a quick peek at my Synaptic Package Manager shows a page full of GKrellM’s plugins available for installation, and that’s only include those accepted in the repository. There are still plenty of unknown, yet useful third party plugins available at the Gkrellm plugins site. Some of the useful plugins that I have tried and used include gkrellm-reminder (remind you of important stuffs), gkrellm-weather (find out the weather of your area), gkrellm-xmms2 (control your XMMS2 from the desktop), gkrellm-radio (FM radio tuner) and gkrellm-mailwatch (watch your mailboxes in multiple panels).

Cross-platforms compatibility

Gkrellm is available for Linux and Windows. FreeBSD, Mac OSX, NetBSD/OpenBSD and Solaris users may have to compile from source to get it working. Mac users can check out the darwinport for instructions to port GKrellM over to Mac.

Are you a user of GKrellM? We would like to hear your experience with GKrellM in the comment.

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With Mixtapeme, an awesome new site, I can do all of those things. Mixtapeme lets you make, share, and listen to playlists from a vast library of music on the Web. And that’s really just the beginning of the features.

The key draw to Mixtapeme is sharing. As the site says, “The internet makes it easy to share anything with anyone across the globe in a heartbeat; it’s about time music joined the party.” To that end, Mixtapeme has made sharing individual songs or playlists easy and fun – but we’ll get to that.

The easiest way to get started with MixtapeMe is by creating a quick playlist. Search at the top of the page for artists, albums or songs, and when you find the one you want (based on an internal library, plus songs from Seeqpod, a huge music engine), drag and drop the song into the box on the bottom left of the page that says “Quick Playlist.” Rinse, and repeat. When you’re done adding songs, click on the Quick Playlist box, and up comes your playlist. Play one song or all of them, and enjoy!

If you don’t want to create your own playlist, feel free to listen to others’. There’s a list of Popular Playlists on the front page of Mixtapeme, as well as a list of Recent Playlists. Pick something that sounds interesting, and you might discover some awesome new music.

Once you’ve created a playlist (or found one you like), you can comment on it, share a URL to the playlist, or send it by email. You can also embed the playlist into a website, which I’ve done here with a playlist of my current favorite songs:

Beyond just making playlists, Mixtapeme offers a ton of great features. For every song or artist you find, there’s a lot of cool information to be found. In the song’s right-most column, you’ll see a bunch of icons. These let you buy the song, find more information, delete from your playlist, and more.

The “i” is my favorite, though – it brings up a submenu that lets you see artist information, song lyrics, relevant YouTube videos, and playlists that contain that particular song (really good for finding new music you’ll actually like). Mixtapeme is way more than just a music player, and does a great job of giving you all the music information you could want.

That’s about all you can do (which is, frankly, a ton) without creating a free account. Once you do create an account, more and more features are open to you. You can listen to the Seeqpod results, making your search results larger; you can create a library of saved tracks, saved playlists, and saved listening data.

You can make friends with other Mixtapeme users (I’m davidpierce, if you want to find me), and share playlists with each other, as well as track what other people are listening to.

Mixtapeme is still new (only a couple of weeks old), but is already making some noise in the music world. It’s making songs and playlists easy to create, listen to and share. Features are growing rapidly, and it’s already becoming one of my homes for online music listening.

Where do you listen to music online? What do you think of Mixtapeme?

Photo credit: theshinjukueffect

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While we’re always looking for neat web applications and such here at MakeUseOf, recently I found this little site called Filtermusic and it really has made my enjoyment of music that much greater. There’s tons of other great music apps/web apps here on MakeUseOf, but here’s yet another.

I realize that there are some great other web apps out there, what with LastFM really grabbing some market share of streaming music and the great Pandora, but there’s just something about hearing something “fresh”. And that’s exactly what I feel that I’ve found in Filtermusic.

What is it?

Essentially, Filtermusic is a listing of Interweb radio stations that stream in high quality (128Kbps) and feature uninterrupted play. That’s one of the greatest features. To listen to their streams, they just require that you have either iTunes, VLC, or Winamp. With some additional tools you can record streaming music as MP3 files as well.

Currently, this site is translated into a ton of languages: Greek, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Turkish, Serbian, Polish, Dutch, Hebrew, Danish, Albanian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Slovak and Swedish with more coming as listeners offer up appropriate translations.

Styles of Listening Pleasure

Filtermusic’s got all kinds of styles. Here’s a rundown of what’s out there:

• Easy Lounge, Groove tunes
• HipHop, R&B
• Funk, Soul, Disco
• House, Dance
• Progressive, Techno, Trance
• Electronic sounds, Industrial
• Breaks, Drum ‘n’ Bass
• Downtempo, Dub, Ambient
• Independent, Freestyle
• Hits, Mainstream
• 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s
• Rock, Alternative
• Popular, Eclectiv
• Jazz
• Classical
• Reggae, Dancehall
• Latin, Salsa, Tango
• International, Ethnic

Each one of these sections has tons of available stations to listen too, that’s the beauty of it. It seems like just about whatever your preference of music is, they’ve got you covered.

Mobile Access

If you feel the need to jam out on your mobile, they’ve got a page dedicated to that too with direct links to the playlist files for easy grabbing and play. That makes it easy to streamy internet radio stations on iPhone, BlackBerry or Windows mobile phones.

Just insert the “pls” file into your mobile phone streaming music app and you’re in business.

Love it? Hate it? Sound off in the comments and let us know if there’s more out there that we’ve just not covered yet.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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With access to several hundred channels worldwide you’ll barely ever run out of something to watch. And the best is yet to come since ProgDVB is offered for free!

ProgDVB supports various types of data sources:

• Internet TV and radio
• DVB-S (satellite), DVB-S2, DVB-C (cable), DVB-T,ATSC
• IPTV
• Analog TV
• Playback from a file

Key functions:

• High Definition TV support including H.264/AVC
• Picture-in-picture support as well as independent simultaneous recording/playback of several channels from one or more devices
• Support for the majority of DVB and ATSC devices including DiSEqC and CAM interfaces support
• Support for all digital TV audio formats: MPEG, AC3, AAC,…
• Time shifting functionality using the RAM or disk buffer of unlimited size
• 10 Bands equalizer
• TV and Radio channels recording
• Playback from disk based files
• Electronic program guide (EPG) from Digital TV or XmlTV.
• Teletext
• Subtitles (Teletext, image-based and closed captions)
• Support for VR, VMR7,VMR9 and EVR renderers including OSD (except VR) independently from channel type or signal presence
• Network broadcasting
• Skins for OSD and GUI
• Both Win32 and full-fledged Win64 versions are available
• Interface Language Localizations

Setting up ProgDVB

You’ve read the above main features (or a portion of it). Now comes the moment when you’ll quickly become knowledgeable on how to download it and set it up. Despite the complexity level that this new software may seem to have acquired, it is actually quite simple.

First off, click here in order to download your .exe file, and to begin installing the application.

Once you’ve completely downloaded and installed ProgDVB, you’re now ready to begin watching Digital TV through satellite. All you have to do is click on your desired country within the left hand side and scroll down to your desired channel. Once you’ve located and chosen a channel you’d like to watch simply click on it and it should momentarily begin to load on your ProgDVB TV screen.

Setting up ProgDVB to make scheduled recordings

There are three different ways to record content in ProgDVB. These is immediate record, scheduled record and selected program record (like a Sky+ box).

Note that when making scheduled recordings, no two schedules can overlap!

Immediate Recording

To make an immediate recording, simply select the channel to record from the left column and press the record icon. Press the record icon again to stop the recording when desired.

User set time based scheduled recording(s)

To set up a simple scheduled recording, tune to the channel to record from. Click the ‘Service’ menu, select ‘Scheduler’ and click ‘Add’ on the scheduler box. Select a date to record (if not today), enter a time in 24 hour format (e.g. 20:00 for 8pm), select ‘Start Record’ from the drop-down field and click ‘OK’. Click the ‘Add’ button again, select the date to stop recording (if not today), enter a stop time in 24 hour format, select ‘Stop Record’ from the drop-down field and click ‘OK’.

To make two or more recordings from independent channels, follow the above steps to schedule the first recording, then do another ‘Add’ on the scheduler box, enter the date and time one minute before the second (or later) recording and choose ‘Change Channel’ from the drop-down field and enter the name of the channel in the channel name field. Then follow the steps above for making a simple schedule for the second recording.

Recording a program using EPG (Electronic Programming Guide)

Choose the channel from the left column to schedule a recording for. Click the ‘i’ EPG icon to bring up the TV Guide for that channel. If no information is shown, then this channel does not use EPG. In this case, follow the steps above for “User set time based scheduled recording(s)”.

Select the program to record, click ‘For Record’ and click ‘OK’ to confirm. To record other programs (even from other channels), repeat these steps for each recording.

To cancel a schedule, click the ‘Service’ menu, select ‘Scheduler’ and remove the three entries (change channel, start record and stop record) for the schedule to cancel.

Summary

ProgDVB is a powerful and creative way to watch satellite TV all from your PC with the use of a few mouse clicks. The only real complaint or “critique” I have for ProgDVB is the quality of sound. Depending on which channels you decide to view the quality of sound and mainly the quality of picture may vary. Hopefully in the future this can be fixed as technologies via satellite advance.

Let us know in the comments what you think of ProgDVB and if you think this is a good replacement for normal regular TV.

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Soundflavor combines well known music discovery formats with a few more features to make it even more interesting. Basically it is Last.fm or Pandora spruced up with videos, advanced discovery options and easy social network integration. Does that sound good? Let’s dive in and see how it works.

The website is very clear cut and easy to use. On the start page you can enter an artist or song to find music the traditional way. Alternatively, you can browse music by genre, lyrics, decade or go through a list of songs that can be downloaded for free.

Let’s say we’re browsing music by lyrics, which seems like the most unique option. You can select music by lyrical subject or mood. Mellow sounds good. Once you made your selection hit Go.

In the next step Soundflavor will present a list of matching tunes and even more filter options. To fine-tune the results you can now really go into details and combine all sorts of specifications. I specified the genre, instrument and mood. Et voilà, the tool came up with one of my favorite songs from Coldplay as its number one suggestion.

Once happy with the result, click “Play This Page” and Soundflavor will launch its Video Jukebox (Flash required) in an extra window and begin playing the playlist you still see on the website.

The videos are streamed via YouTube. Hence they can be anything from homemade video clips, live recordings, to the actual, original artwork. Nevertheless, all videos appear to be of high quality and most are in fact original music videos or at least live recordings of the original artist.

Should you like a song, you can make a one-click playlist based on the sound of that song. Should you dislike a video, you can simply skip it. Thankfully there are no limitations as to how many times you can jump straight to the next song. Besides, you can play a song directly from the playlist on the website.

Should you decide to sign up with Soundflavor you can add songs you enjoy to your favorites or save playlists. Within your profile you can access this information and replay the songs or playlists later on. Additionally, you can upload your iTunes playlists and Soundflavor will convert it into video playlists.

You can connect with other users, browser their favorites and playlists, leave comments on their profiles and add them as friends. And you can “Grab Widget”, implement it on your homepage, blog or social network profile and share it with your existing friends.

Certainly established services like Last.fm and Pandora retain unique features and are not endangered. However, Soundflavor opens up a new niche and enhances music discovery by several more options and degrees of freedom. Definitely a great tool!

Try it and let us know what your impression is.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Record Streaming Audio with Screamer Radio (23)
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Today, it doesn’t take a lot of time and effort to obtain legal MP3’s, but it does take some good tools. Here are three different programs to record streaming audio (i.e. from online radio).

1. ClipInc 4

ClipInc is available for Windows in five different languages, although its German base keeps surfacing. It comes with hundreds of preset internet radio stations, and with the free version you can record up to three audio streams simultaneously.

So let’s get started. First you will want to add some stations through Ctrl+F6 or >File >Add station… or the + button in the bottom left of the main window. You should only pick a station that comes with StreamTags, else your tracks will remain unnamed. A high bit rate is to be preferred, although low bit rates will produce smaller file sizes.

Once the three slots are filled, right-click on each station in the bottom left and select >start recording. This is also where you can remove a stream to add a new one. Songs are saved temporarily and can be viewed for each stream separately (click the respective station in the bottom left) or for all streams collectively (the button with four squares in the bottom left).

What I love about ClipInc is that you can listen to each stream while it’s being recorded or you can listen to any of the previously recorded songs inside the program while it’s still ripping up to three stations. The program keeps a timeline of when which song was recorded, and additionally you can view the lyrics and the matching video as far as available.

The correct recognition and subsequent cutting of separate tracks depends on the selected stream. When recording from regular radio stations the DJ’s will talk into the songs or a song will fade out straight into a jingle or the next song and the program may not recognize that.

To finally save recorded songs, pick the ones you like from the list, right-click the selection and click >save as…

2. Streamripper

Streamripper is a plugin for Winamp and as such it’s platform independent.

After being installed it will load with Winamp per default. Click ‘Start’ to launch a recording session. Streamripper automatically detects ID3 tags and saves them accordingly. You have full control over the output file pattern through the options button. A folder is created for each new stream, but not for artists or albums.

The drawback is that in some cases tracks are not recognized perfectly. As a result, previous or following songs, commercials and jingles blend into the recorded song or make it end abruptly. That’s very annoying. However, it does depend on the station, so select your stream wisely.

3. TheLastRipper

TheLastRipper is available for Windows, Linux, and in a beta version for OSX.

In my eyes, this is by far the best audio recorder, although it is limited to recording streams from Last.fm. Using the tool you log into your Last.fm account and then search music the way you would on the Last.fm website.

Recording will start instantly into the default folder /My Documents/My Music, which can be customized. Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear anything because the tool is not meant to stream the music to your ears. Not being able to hear what is being recorded kind of makes the Love, Hate and Skip buttons pointless. The good thing is that even while the program is running, you can log into the Last.fm website and listen to a different stream, which of course will not be recorded.

Now what really makes this tool a winner is that you don’t have to deal with commercials, badly cut tracks or alternating quality. Furthermore, all tracks are ID3 tagged and neatly sorted into folders by artist and album, including the displayed album art. That way you can collect whole albums of your favorite artists, without any hassle whatsoever. Very simple and quite perfect!

We have previously covered two possible alternatives.

First of all there is Audacity, with which you can record any sound that passes through your sound card and edit it to your likings: Record audio files with Audacity written by Mark, available for Windows, OSX and Linux.

Then there is Screamer Radio, which works more along the lines of ClipInc, but can only record one stream at a time: Record streaming Audio with Screamer Radio written by Aibek; available for Windows.

How do you increase your music collection or do you spare your hard drive and thrive on what is being streamed to you?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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My passion is concerts and although I love music, I hardly ever find the time to just sit down and listen to an entire album. Usually, I have material of the bands I like best or am going to see next on my mp3 player to listen to while I’m on the way.

So how do I find out about new bands and releases I like? It’s a five step process…

1. Radio

A good radio station provides more than just good music. In case there is not a good one in your area, you can switch to online streams or podcasts for the same features.

My choice is MotorFM, the radio station of the record label Motor. They mostly play rock, pop, alternative, few mainstream tunes, few commercials, quality news broadcasts, and segments on all kinds of topics. That combination is extremely convenient for me.

They do provide an online stream (however it’s a German radio station.)

Talking about radio stations also reminds of me the program called Screamer which can record and save playing radio tracks to your PC. Check it out.

2. Newsletters

When a band releases an album, they take it on the road for promotion. Since I love concerts, I kill two birds with one stone by simply following tour dates to find out about shows in my area and new releases.

Renee wrote a great article on Keeping Track of Live Music In Your City. Unfortunately, some of the services described are either exclusive to the US or, when community driven, they don’t cover all artists or venues. I found that to be true for all online services I tried, including the Last.fm concert calendar.

Hence, I decided to subscribe to a few major tour management and ticket service newsletters, which keep me up to date on who’s touring my country (Germany). In my case these are MLK, TrinityConcerts, Eventim, and Hekticket .

3. MySpace

For a quick glance at a band’s type of music, MySpace Music is an excellent source!

So when I see tour dates for a band I don’t know yet, I search for them on MySpace to see whether or not I like their music. It also gives me the chance to learn some more about the artist at the same time.

MySpace recently changed the interface of their music player, which not only looks much better, but is also a lot easier to control now.

On MySpace Music they also have a section for concerts. However, even though the profiles are managed by the artists themselves, they are not always up to date. Currently, I have three tickets for three different shows that are not (yet?) listed on the respective artist’s MySpace site.

4. Napster

Once I’ve found an artist I like, I usually buy a ticket for their show and download their music. Since I don’t have the time and patience for semi-legal or bad quality downloads, I use Napster. It’s no longer free, but the monthly plan is reasonable. While I have the program open I also scroll through the latest releases.

For a free and legal alternative I recommend ClipInc, one more tool that allows mp3 capturing from hundreds of preset radio stations.

5. Random Discoveries

Now and then I do find the time to listen to music online. Then I like to use Last.fm, musicovery or StumbleAudio.

Musicovery plays music based on genres combined with mood or tempo and it has an amazingly creative interface. Switching from one song of the current collection to another is easily possible.

While Last.fm certainly is the most popular tool with a huge database and some exclusive material (currently a preview of the new Keane album “Perfect Symmetry”), I like the simple interface of StumbleAudio much better. Besides, it uses OpenID.

If you’d like to know more about Last.fm, I highly recommend Dave’s article Using Last.fm to Improve your Audiovascular Fitness.

How do you discover new music and how do you know who’s playing in town? Any hot new band you would like to share? Comments are much appreciated!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Now, I know there are still some people out there who haven’t listened to many podcasts, and I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for those people because they are missing out on so much. So, I’ve decided to make a list of my favorite podcasts so that new listeners can have some suggestions while sifting through the thousands of new podcasts each day.

I’m also always looking forward to getting new podcast suggestions, so why don’t you all post a small (or large) list of the podcasts that you listen to?

Here are 10 podcasts that I can’t live without. Everyone interested in technology should give them a try. Plus if you’re looking for a suitable software app to subscribe to the podcasts, check out Nick’s article on 3 good podcast apps worth trying.

The following five podcasts are part of the Revision3 network :

Diggnation (Weekly)

Those of you who are familiar with Digg will have heard of this podcast. Each week, see Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht get drunk and discuss the latest stories on Digg, adding in their own hint of humor. Nothing better than two drunk guys talking about tech.

This is a great podcast if you’re a big Digg fan or for those of you who don’t visit Digg as frequently as you’d wish. Listening to Diggnation is a great way to catch up on the stories of Digg.

A word of warning; the podcast’s humor is a little bit vulgar but I doubt you guys will be offended that much.

If you really enjoy Diggnation and Digg, you should also check out The Digg Reel which covers the most popular videos on Digg each week.

Tekzilla (Weekly/Daily)

Hosted by Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont, Tekzilla is a weekly dose of technology where users are extremely important. Tekzilla thrives on its users. Each week, they “Tackle Tough Tech Questions” as they call it and spend the time answering the questions.

Tekzilla also has a daily show that they call ‘Tekzilla Daily Tips’ where a cool trick, app, or website is introduced in a minute to two minute segment. If you ever have a question about technology, just send an email to the folks at Tekzilla and your question may be answered on the show.

Hak5 (Weekly)

Hak5 is relatively new to Revision 3 but it has been popular ever since August of 2005.

The host Darren Kitchen talks all about technology and do-it-yourself-hack-projects as well as a little bit of tech humor mixed in.

Great for those of your interested in modding, and DIY projects. Get your hack on.

Systm (Weekly)

A more of a technical show than any of the others, Systm is for the serious modders. Hosted by Patrick Norton, this show is all about making things better.

Want to build cool things but don’t want to spend too much money? Do you enjoy making all sorts of tech gadgets? Systm is the show for you. Check it out …

ScamSchool (Weekly)

I don’t know about you, but I really love getting free drinks at the bar. Brian Brushwood’s show ScamSchool is all about “social engineering at the bar and on the streets” to get yourself free drinks. Even if you’re not a big fan of getting drunk or if you’re not at the legal drinking age yet, ScamSchool is still one of the coolest podcasts about magic tricks. I know it’s not really tech related, but we all want to amaze our friends with cool magic don’t we? Getting a free drink would just be a bonus.

The next five are from Leo Laporte’s TWiT network :

TWiT (Weekly)

Possibly the most popular tech podcast. Everyone who considers themselves a geek should have heard about this. This is the main show in Leo Laporte’s TWiT network. TWiT is short for “This Week in Tech”, and the title says all. Each week, Leo Laporte gets together a panel of famous tech people and discusses the latest news topics in technology.

Previous people in the TWiT panel have included John C Dvorak, Patrick Norton, Veronica Belmont, Kevin Rose, Wil Harris, Ryan Block, Jason Calacanis, Adam Curry, Robert Heron, Roger Chang, Steve Wosniak, Alex Lindsay, and many more.

This podcast is so epic I can’t even describe it. Though this podcast is supposed to be all about tech news, it has been known to go off on some tangents and end up as a debate about tech ideas. Definitely someone every geek should listen to.

Net @ Night (Weekly)

In this show, Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur start by talking about things that are going on in the tech world. After a few stories about tech, they introduce a guest who is usually related to an interesting new beta website. The interviews aren’t very long and Leo and Amber always seem to pick great sites to talk about.

If you’re one of those people who are interested in being the first to try out new websites you’ll be very happy that you subscribed to Net @ Night.

Security Now! (Weekly)

This podcast is for anyone interested in keeping themselves safe on the internet, securing their computer from intruders, recovering data, and anything else related to security. Leo Laporte talks with Steve Gibson the creator of GRC and the man who coined the term ’spyware’.

This man is a genius and knows pretty much everything about security. His site (GRC) has the famous ShieldsUp! tool as well as many other security applications/downloads. If you’ve ever been afraid or curious about the bad things going on with the computer industry, Security Now! is a must listen for you.

Windows Weekly

As the title suggests, this podcast is all about Windows. The latest Windows news, tricks, updates, flaws, you name it, Windows Weekly should cover it. Paul Thurrott and Leo talk all about Windows on this podcast.

There is also a part of the podcast where great software is introduced. It’s worth a listen, even if you aren’t much of a Windows fan.

MacBreak Weekly

As you’ve probably guessed, this podcast is all about the Mac. However, unlike Windows Weekly, MacBreak Weekly has a much larger panel of Mac people to discuss things about Apple.

The panel usually consists of Leo, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, Andy Ihnatko, and Alex Lindsay. They just spend an hour to an hour and 30 minutes talking about Apple, the Mac, iPods, Steve Jobs, and anything else you’d come to expect from Mac fans.

So if you’re a mac fan this one should be definitely in your feedreader.

Other Goodies:

A random sprinkle of great podcasts.

MakeUseOf Podcast (Weekly)

I know, I shouldn’t be promoting the MakeUseOf podcast because I blog for MakeUseOf, but I’ve always been a big fan of the podcast; even before I was a writer here. Although the MakeUseOf Podcast is quite new and is always looking for user comments and recommendations, it’s still a great podcast that covers tech news and even the stories that have been submitted to MakeUseOf.

Those of you who are frequent MakeUseOf readers should add our podcast to your list to hear some inside info from the authors themselves. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

DL.TV (Weekly)

In this podcast provided by the Ziff Davis network, host Robert Heron covers just about everything tech. DL.TV has segments for gadgets, games, websites, tech pictures, tech help, and much more.

It’s like a big box of tech wrapped in a neat little package. A great podcast about general technology, and a great place for reviews.

Cranky Geeks (Weekly)

Hosted by John C. Dvorak, this is the thing to listen to if you want to see geeks complaining about the latest trends. Like TWiT, Cranky Geeks also has a panel of unique tech people, most of whom are pretty cranky themselves.

Each week, John and the rest of the geeks discuss the latest tech news and complain about everything along the way. I love being fed news by cranky old people. It’s such a delight.

GeekBrief.tv (Daily)

Cali Lewis gets her geek on in this very short daily podcast. She covers news, projects, gadgets, unique websites, and whatever might have caught her eye that day.

Though it may be a short (only 3-5 minute) podcast, there is enough content in there for you to learn something. Quality is always better than quantity.

WebbAlert (Daily)

Hosted by Morgan Webb, this is basically a daily news podcast. Nothing special, nothing extra. Just your daily dose of news. While many might think this is stupid, I can tell you that it’s a big help on catching up on what you’ve missed after a day of work. It’s not like everyone has the time to read up on their favorite blogs.

WebbAlert is something that you should set to automatically download. Then, after a day at work, you can turn on your TV and see all that you’ve missed. Though most of the shows are only about news, there are certain episodes where Morgan decides to discuss a certain topic (like YouTube videos or the TED Conference). Think of this as the CNN Nightly Broadcast for tech.

MAKE Podcast (Weekly)

As a geek, I really enjoy making things. While I have podcasts like Systm and Hak5, there are some days where I don’t want to spend too much time making something. MAKE Magazine’s Weekend Projects does just the trick. Most of the projects on the MAKE Podcast are easy to create, and it seems like they’re a lot of fun to make.

The usefulness of a project is just an added bonus. Previous MAKE projects have included making a Soda Bottle Rocket, hard drive wind chimes, Mint Tin Amps, a Bullwhip, and much more. I know you guys will love this podcast. Now if only I had the patience to make all these things….

So that was a list of my favorite podcasts. What are your favorite podcasts? Make a list and share your thoughts in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Make Use Of Podcast #48: How to Podcast Pt. 3 (7)
• Make Use Of Podcast #43: How to Podcast (5)
• Make Use Of Podcast #25: Geeky Fun – iSong (0)
• How to Host Your Own Talk Show Online (4)
• Welcome to the MakeUseOf.com Podcast #1 (19)

First, you’re going to need some gas (even if you’ve got one of those classy hybrids). Well say no more:

Gas Bag (iTunes Link)

Gas Bag is a nifty little gas pricess app that will show you local gas stations on a map, prices included. It’s a social network, so coverage may be really good or really bad in your area. It all depends on how many locals use the network and actively record their purchases.

Even so, it has a great interface, is easy to use, and many commenters on iTunes seem to think it works very well for them.

The thing I like most is that it has Google Maps integration. While this isn’t a novel feature, it’s been implemented well. Gas Bag can either determine your position with GPS (or pseudo-GPS) or you can manually search for your location. After it has your location, it displays the six or so closest gas stations. You can zoom in or out for more or less options.

Once you decide to purchase some gas somewhere, there is the option to enter your purchase into the network. I won’t go into the specifics of exactly how that interface works, but I’ll say it’s much better than the webapp I used to use to track my gas consumption. I stopped using that webapp because the interface was a bit too tiny and when you’re in a hurry, entering gas data isn’t something you always have time for. Let’s see if this one lasts any longer on my iPhone.

[rating=3]

Now that you’re all gassed up, you’re going to need some traveling music. Well obviously you’re carrying around an iPhone/iPod, but just as the last App helped you pick a gas station, the following one will choose some music for you.

FlyCast (iTunes Link)

FlyCast is a pretty decent iPhone radio application. Usually I use Pandora’s iPhone App whenever I need some impromptu tunes, but sometimes I crave the discretion of a DJ and a mix of music that doesn’t necessarily match my exact taste.

Over the course of my life, I have been generally disappointed with internet radio because either the selection is way too limited or the player is really difficult to use. On both counts, FlyCast makes up for all that lost time.

The lists of stations for each genre isn’t terribly long, but everything is still pretty well represented. Also, FlyCast pulls from several different radio sources so if one doesn’t work out, you can try another. They are still expanding their line-up, but it looks like they already have over 1000 stations.

The interface is the part I like best about FlyCast. After you select a station (which admitedly can be a bit confusing), it takes you to the main player. From here you can play/pause the music as well as adjust the volume.

I’m a bit confused as to why there is a separate slide for the volume (alongside the iPhone’s volume controls), but I assume it has something to do with the incoming stream needing to be controlled differently.

When the stream is building up a buffer, the WiFi logo blinks blue. The number next to that indicates how much music is buffered ahead of where you’re listening. This is a great feature because it tells you how long you can get out of sync with your signal and still have an uninterrupted experience.

Most stations pull in cover art and song information along with the signal. Because it’s just a regular iPhone page, you can double-tap any cover art to blow it up to full size. If you want to surf the web (especially to find out about the songs you’re listening to there is an integrated browser that should keep the music running as you surf.

The rest of the features are a little confusing. I had trouble labeling anything as a favorite and most of the other options didn’t seem to have any function. Detractors aside, the core function of this App is solid and in a world of terrible internet radio players, this one does remarkably well.

[rating=2]

With music in your soul and fuel in your vehicle, it’s time to fill your body with food!

Urbanspoon (iTunes Link)

Urbanspoon is probably the best App on this list. First of all, Urbanspoon is already a really great food review site that lets people rate their local eating establishments socially.

On their network you can have friends too, so you can see who likes what. The iPhone App is partially an extension of that network because you can sign in and benefit from having an account. On top of this, though, there are a few terrific features that can help jazz up your night on the town.

Above is the “shake” interface, which lets you lock in location, style, and/or price and then give your iPhone a hearty shake. This starts the unlocked sections spinning (complete with some fun sounds). Where it stops nobody knows! After the selection is made, you can either shake it again for a new one, or click the item for information. The App can give you the address for directions or simply show you ratings and pictures to help you make the best choice. If this interface isn’t for you, a more low-key “browse” window lets you search all the places near you by rating, style, or closest proximity.

[rating=4]

Hopefully at least one of these Apps will make your next trip a little more fun! … Oh and, in case you’re travelling abroas make sure to check previously posted 10 Travel Websites that should be Bookmarked.

Let us know if you have any other favorites for traveling.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• MakeUseOf Your iPhone: Wikipanion (Wikipedia App) (5)
• MakeUseOf Your iPhone: Set Up Voice Dialing With Cactus (8)
• MakeUseOf Your iPhone: iPhone as a Remote Control for iTunes (7)
• Google’s Mobile iPhone App Now With Voice Recognition (3)
• BrightKite On The iPhone Tears Up The Location-Based Ballgame (9)

Whenever I tune into something exciting, I hit the REC button and the output mp3 file is automatically encoded with the artist and song data. Using this information, I can track down the song or album and add it to my shopping list.

The installation file can be downloaded here. Apologies Mac and Linux folks but so far it’s only been available for Windows. After a quick and hassle-free installation procedure, you’ll get a notification: “Presets successfully updated from server!” In Screamer speak, presets means the list of online radio stations the app has collected for you.

How to Listen

I know you just can’t wait to get some music going so let’s explore the options on the Presets menu first:

By Genre : anything from Anime through more exotic stuff like Nerd (!?) and Soundtracks to Trance.

By Language (NOT NATIVE) : Here you’ll find stations streaming in a language which is not native in the country where the station is based. A great opportunity to brush up your Croatian

By Network : a selection of stations like BBC and Virgin Radio whose different channels are available from the respective submenu.

By Region : stations arranged based on their continental geolocation – from Africa to Second Life. Now’s your chance to check out what the folks at Radio Maria in Burundi have been up to!

When you’ve found a station and you’d like to add it to your favorites, simply go to the Favorites menu and select Add to Favorites. To delete items, go to the File menu and choose Edit Favorites. The lines of code that open in Notepad are not a pretty sight if you’re not familiar with HTML but with a tiny bit of help from a friend and/or this tutorial you should be able to remove the unwanted items. Usability improvement in this area should definitely be at the top of the developer’s list.

Let’s dive into some deeper functions. Say you’d like to enjoy your audio at a consistent loudness level regardless of the output signal of the many different streams you might be listening to. Selecting the Settings menu, then Effects, and Compressor will do the trick.

If the balloon-delivered artist and song info before each track gets a little in your way, you can silence it by going to Settings, then Preferences, General tab, and Balloon Tooltips (un-tick).

At the time of this writing Screamer is available in twelve languages. To check if your language is on the list, go to Settings and Language.

More about Recording

Before you start stream-ripping, you might want to change the default folder where your mp3 files will be saved. You can do this by going to Settings, Preferences and then Recording tab.

While in recording mode, the Rec button displays the all-uppercase REC. To stop recording, hit the REC button and it will revert to Rec without stopping the stream.

Screamer automatically packs all your newly recorded files into folders with the title of the relevant radio station. Inside the folder your files are encoded at the kbps rate of the captured stream.

Another nice feature is the continuous recording option where each song is automatically recorded and tagged with the artist and song title in a separate file. On the other hand, if you’d like to record only the current track, just go to the Recording menu and choose Single Track Mode.

Happy streaming!

(By) Nik Simov is a composer, new media producer, English language tutor, and personal development guide. You’re more than welcome to visit his temporary base camp at Juliani Language Adventure.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files (13)
• How To Broaden Your Musical Horizons Online (8)
• Discover Music & Videos The New Way With Soundflavor (2)
• 3 Ways To Access Your Music from Mobile (11)
• 10 Really Cool Free Blackberry Applications (38)

IMPORTANT: All listed services are FREE, however depending on your mobile plan data transfer fees may apply. I recommended that you contact your mobile carrier and find out about your ‘data transfer’ charges before going with any of the below listed music applications.

SimplifyMedia

SimplifyMedia is a one of a kind application (Mac, Win) that lets you easily share your music library with friends and allow them to access and stream your tracks without leaving their iTunes player (screenshot). The best part about it is that it works even if you are NOT in the same network. You can also use it to access your own music library from other computers and most importantly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

How To install SimplifyMedia on iPod Touch or iPhone:

• 1. Download SimplifyMedia client to your computer (Win / Mac) and complete sign-up process.
• 2. Download and install SimplifyMedia Mobile on your Apple device using the AppTap Installer.
• 3. From your device: Sign in with your Simplify Media username and password.

If you’re interested in seeing video demo go to SimplifyMedia : Share Music With Friends

Nutsie

Nutsie brings your iTunes library to your mobile phone. It takes a copy of your iTunes library file (get it from File->Export) and creates an identical online copy of it. Although sometimes it may take a while (1-2 days) to generate your library, it’s totally worth it.

Once your library is ready, you will be able to access it both from your mobile phone or any web-connected PC. Unlike SimplifyMedia, Nutsie streams music from their own servers and NOT from your PC so there is no need to keep it up and running.

When you access Nutsie online you also get an option to share your playlists with friends and access hundreds of shared playlists created by other Nutsie users. For more details and video demo go to Nutsie Review on MUO Directory.

Mundu Radio

Mundu is all about mobile radio. Basically, it’s a tiny mobile client that allows users to access hundreds of digital internet radio stations from several phone models.

Features include: browse radio stations by name or music genre, bookmark favorite stations to ‘favorites’ list, manage station lists online, and more. Sound quality may vary depending main only on your network speed.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in comments. Enjoy!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Music Sharing with Mojo (18)
• Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16)
• Synchronize MP3s To Non-Apple Devices with doubleTwist [Mac] (0)
• Sync iTunes Library to iPod and your Music Folder (Windows) (10)
• Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist (12)