The problem is that our wireless connection would keep dropping for no apparent reason. I would reset the router, reset the wireless adapter on the laptop and reset the DivX device. That would work for awhile and then it would happen again. So I fired up the Xirrus Wireless Wi-Fi Inspector that I wrote about awhile back, and went through troubleshooting my weak wireless connection through that. Turns out I forgot that a lot of my neighbours have the same crappy modem/router combination my ISP assigned me and they all like to talk on the same channel at the same time. Now, I would change the channel on my router manually to one that wasn’t being used.

But the weak wireless connection problem still continues. Sometime I forget that I am a college-trained computer technician. Once I recalled that little tidbit, I started digging into how I could manipulate my wireless adapter to work better, hopefully.

Keep in mind that my wireless adapter is a an Intel device. Yours may differ, however the principles should be the same.

I opened up my Intel wireless adapter by clicking on the Start button, then the Connect To link and then the Wireless Network Connection link. Up pops the Wireless Connection Status window.

Then I clicked on the Properties button. Voila! Here’s the Wireless Network Connections Properties window. Now we’re getting to the meat and potatoes, or tofurkey and potatoes for our vegetarian friends.

Clicking on the Configure button took me to the Intel Pro Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection Properties window. Try to say that 3 times fast!

Notice that I highlighted the Intel Throughput Enhancement option in the Property select box. The default value of this is Disabled. When it’s disabled, the adapter uses a packet burst mode known as Wi-Fi Multimedia mode (WMM). This mode is ideal when you use your computer in a wireless network with other computers doing ordinary uploading or downloading of music, video, text and any other type of file. Hence the name – multimedia.

When the Intel Throughput Enhancement is enabled, this packet burst method is meant more for streaming video and audio. Hmmm, I’m trying to stream audio and video to my DivX Connected device! So, I enabled it. Now, if you enable it, and there are other computers using the same router as yours, you will be hogging the bandwidth! Make sure that’s okay with your other users. If you’re the Dad, like me, you just go ahead and do it. After you get Mom’s permission, of course.

Then I checked on the Power Management mode. Mine was defaulted to the Lowest end of the slider. Well, that’s great if I were using my laptop without it always being plugged in. However, I always have it plugged in, so power management is not an issue. By setting it to maximum, I’ll get higher performance! This should assist in noisy environments as well. I don’t mean kids and dogs, I mean lots of other Wi-Fi signals, like the ones from my neighbours. Darned noisy neighbours!

I scrolled down a bit further and found the property Roaming Aggressiveness. Mine was set to be as aggressive as possible. What that means is that if my router has a weaker wireless connection than another signal in the area, the adapter will try to jump to that. For me, that means it tries to connect to a neighbour with a stronger signal. Well, I don’t want that so I dialed it down to lowest.

The last thing I did was to check the Wireless Mode property. Originally, it was set to 802.11B and 802.11G mode. I don’t think changing this will make that significant a difference, but since my router, adapter and DivX device are all capable of 802.11G mode, I saw no sense in leaving it mixed. So I changed it to that exclusively.

Did it work? So far, so good! Unless the microwave is on, the connection hasn’t been dropped between my laptop and the router. Sometimes it gets dropped between the router and the DivX Connected device… but that’s another article!

How do you usually troubleshoot dropped wireless connections? Do you have a solution of your own? Share them with us in the comments!

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

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More and more, media is making the switch from digital storage to the cloud. Away with digital storage, here comes the internet!

This change is becoming ever more apparent with online music stores and streaming audio portals springing up all around.

There’s a musical buffet waiting for the internet audiophile, but if you aren’t properly informed, you can be sure you’re missing out.

MakeUseOf is proud to present The Internet Music Guidebook, a manual for the internet audiophile. An introduction to the World Wide Web of Sound!

In fourty illustrated pages, Will Mueller from willm.me tells you all you need to know about free internet listening to music, streaming audio to your computer, and free download music sites to get all your favorite songs and albums in a whim. Learn how to share music with others and track a band’s performance and album releases!

Don’t wait, download the Internet Music Guidebook now in PDF, to view it offline and on your computer, or read it online on Scribd.com.

No strings attached, this free eBook is entirely for you to enjoy! If you liked this release, you should also check out our other MakeUseOf PDF Manuals.

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)
• How To Move Your Music Library Online with Moof (11)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A UPnP AV Server (Part 3) (5)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (20)
• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)

Livestream, originally known to some as Mogulus, is a free video streaming host that provides a live stream solution which allows you to create your own internet TV channel for broadcasting on your website through their player or on your channel page with them, 24/7. Livestream provides the “studio”, an elaborate flash app on their website where you can create a team of reporters, cue webcams, manage your library, record shows, control an “autopilot” that manages your channel, and manage a video-on-demand for your viewers.

The Studio of Livestream provides a sophisticated titling engine where you can make TV-like titles for your free video stream, either full screen or a “lower third” for naming people. You can also add a scrolling ticker for your channel that runs at the bottom of the screen and even include live RSS feeds on it to include over your video.

Each channel also includes a library area where you can add videos from files, YouTube videos and more and then arrange them into storyboards and folders for playback on the channel when you’re not live.

Embeddable video players from Livestream can be downloaded to allow you to post your channel’s live feed and/or your channel’s chat feed on your own website, MySpace or even as a Facebook application. Livestream’s Studio also allows for Twitter integration, which will automatically send out tweets on your behalf when you’re live.

You also have the ability to invite other contributors to your channel and then host a web show with multiple people in different places.

Although Livestream is free, they do insert their own video overlay ads on your channel to make money to cover bandwidth fees, but they do offer a somewhat pricey premium account upgrade which lets you remove their branding, broadcast in widescreen HD, add your own ads and more.

Finally, Livestream provides a free software download called Procaster, which enables you to broadcast directly from your desktop, and show your screen or camera. The software also allows for 3D video mix effects, Twitter integration and also chat capability with others on watching your channel.

Procaster also allows you to broadcast feeds of computer games, which makes it perfect for gamers looking to show their skills to all.

Also check out other MakeUseOf articles on how you can stream live to the web from your phone and how you can stream video live through Twitter.

Do you use a similar service to Livestream to share or host a live, streaming video feed? What do you think of Livestream’s service? Let us know in the comments below.

Image Credits : Dryicons

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For those of you that do not know what NCAA stands for, chances are this post is NOT for you! The National Collegiate Athletic Association has some great college basketball going on and you want to watch NCAA games online for free do you?

Well there are a bunch of free alternatives to watching the games on the old boob tube. We will take a look at two of them.

Our first option is NCAA.com. That is the NCAA’s on demand site.

If you browse on over there you will see this:

So if you want to be emailed and have access to all the NCAA games starting from the first round all the way to the NCAA championships simply fill out the form above. Once you do that you will see this confirmation:

You can click here to forward this information on to your buddies.  Seeing as I can’t show you this year’s games as they have not started yet, here is a peak at what the service has looked like before:

You get the full action on your computer or mobile device and best of all you can hit that magic boss button at the top right hand side of the screen to minimize your action and display a fake Excel-like spreadsheet. I don’t think that would satisfy my boss but hey maybe you work for a pushover (or a dummy!)

Here is what that boss key brought up last year. Maybe it will stay the same, maybe it won’t. But their press release has already stated that the boss button will still be present.

If you look closely you will see it is a spreadsheet with details about NCAA’s Video On Demand service! How funny is that? Why not a chart of women’s breast sizes? That would be just as relevant wouldn’t it

And if we take another look at the video window we will also see a perpetual score at the top of the video, buttons to hide the video or audio, a stats button (this is something every fan will love!) and a button to share the video with others.

Another advantage to watching online instead of regular television, besides the fact you can do it at work, is that you can click around the web while you are doing it. You can look up facts or even save the video for another viewing.

I wonder if the option is available for Pro games? Not likely huh? They need to make their money somewhere right? How about advertising online on the side of the game? That has to be a viable option. Maybe we will start to see that soon.

Another option for catching NCAA games online for free requires a little technical knowhow and a sling box. But if you have a Sling Box at home chances are you don’t need me telling you how to use it! It allows you to watch your TV at home over the internet.

Do you know of any other ways to watch sports online? If so, let us know in the comments.

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

• Watch YouTube Videos on Your Large Screen TV (4)
• The 3 Best Sites To Watch Your Favorite Classic TV Movies For Free (26)
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Hidden in dusty attics and in dark corners of your movie rental store, old treasures lie hidden. Of course, a lot of these can also be purchased on a shiny new DVD disk.

These great classics have slipped from under copyright over the years, and can now be found on the internet, entirely legal and 100% free! Watch classic movies right from your browser, or download them to your computer via the following great sites.

Internet Archive – Moving Images

You’ve probably heard of the Internet Archive before, they’re the guys who brought us the Wayback Machine, a tool to watch internet pages from way in the past. But archiving the internet isn’t limited to static HTML. If you take a closer look at the website, you’ll see that they’ve also collected a ton of audio, text, software and – moving images.

At the moment, a stunning 214,402 pieces of film can be found on the website. Once you browse over to the ‘Movies‘ category, you’ve still got 2,855 full-length feature films waiting for you. Of course, Whatever Works and G.I. Joe won’t be found here, but it’s a great place to watch your favorite classic movies all over again. Honestly, with the Internet Archive in the picture, you’ll rarely need to look at another site.

Movies can be browsed by subject, keywords, language or popularity. Once you’ve found your flick, you can stream it directly from the page, or download it in MPEG2, Ogg or MPEG4 – all in incredible picture quality.

Classic Cinema Online

Classic Cinema Online is another place to find your classic flicks. I especially like it because of the site’s interface, and use it to uncover ‘new’ titles that I haven’t seen before. The ‘Now Playing‘ bar shows – in cinema style – some of the newer, featured films. Alternatively, you can browse by popularity or film genre.

Unlike the Internet Archive, Classic Cinema online doesn’t host any of the films locally. Instead, they embed from popular video sharing sites like YouTube or Google Video. This means that – even though the streaming rate is very fine, the availability of classic movies to watch is less stable. If one of the video hosters decide to get rid of a film, you won’t be able to access it anymore on Classic Cinema Online.

Archive Classic Movies

Last but not least, Archive Classic Movies, abbreviated ACM. They’ve also got an impressive film archive, though noticeably smaller than the two preceding sites.

Archive Classic Movies does appear to host most of its movies locally. You can stream them at a decent rate, or download them as a surplus. The videos are encoded as MP4 files, and average around 400 MegaBytes.

As well as classic movies, we have also previously discussed where to get your horror movie fix online, how to choose new movies and where to find old movie trailers.

I hope you’ve had some use of this post and earned yourself a few new bookmarks. Do you know any other sites to watch classic movies? Tell us and your fellow MakeUseOf readers in the comments section below!

Image Credit : MarinaFoto @ deviantArt

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

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Today, I will show you how to put your old otherwise junky desktop to great use as a Home Media Server. Lets begin!

(For more cool articles on how to build home media servers, check out these articles by Damien on how to set up a Media Server [Part 2] using Linux. Or if you are ready to invest some cash check out our PDF guide on How To Build A Great Media Center For Your Home.)

In this installation guide on how to build home media servers, I am using an old, reinstalled version of Windows XP SP3 with a 1TB Hitachi hard disk drive. (Note: This should work equally well on Windows Vista with User Account Control (UAC) off and an Administrator account set up on the server.)

Start by clicking “Start” and “Control Panel.” Select “Network Setup Wizard.” Press next twice and then select “This computer connects to the internet thorough a residential…” and then select “Next.”

Enter a name and description for your server and then click “Next.” In the next window, leave “MSHOME” as the workgroup name and then click “Next.”

Now, select the “Tun on Windows File and Printer Sharing” option and click “Next.” Make sure the info is right and click “Next” again. On the following screen select “Just finished;” and then click “Next” and “Finished.”

Since we now have your home server connected to your home network we need to actually start allowing for the storing and sharing on files on the network. To do this, find a directory, for example, C:\ and then create a new folder called whatever you like. Now, right-click on the folder and click “Network Sharing and Security”. When the Security and Sharing window loads, select “Share this Folder on the Network” and “Allow Network User to Change My Files.”

Now that you have a shared home server directory set up you need to be able to start sharing your files! To do so, simply go to your other computer(s) that you wish to access these files at and click on “Start” and then right-click on “My Computer” and select “Map Network Drive.” Now, click “Browse” and select the name of the home server and click the “+” beside it to expand the options and click the folder that we just created.

To access your newly established home media server, simply go to “My Computer” and double-click on the drive you created and your in! You should now be able to copy and paste files to your hearts desire! (If Windows asks you for a username and password, enter your username and password for your home server account.)

Do you use a Home Media Server? What do you use it for? 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/

• Using Your Linux Computer As A UPnP AV Server (Part 3) (5)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (20)
• Total Media Domination – Your TV, Video and Audio on any Device (12)
• Orb – Free File Sharing and Streaming Program for Your PC (9)
• Manage & Share Your Media Files With One Terabyte Of Free Oosah (15)

Other times you just want to share with yourself. If you ever needed to transfer your files to another computer to read, carry, or print them — you know what I mean. And when that sharing has to be done wirelessly, you’re in for a lot of trouble.

Initiating the sharing (whether by email, uploading, or enabling a P2P connection) is the biggest bother, simply because you have to do it time and time again.

The most simple solution would be to put all of your files online, or at least those you’re thinking about sharing. This sounds strange, a bit scary even, but if you do it right, it can spare you a ton of trouble.

Orb 2.0

Orb is an free file sharing program that allows you to share all of your stuff over the internet. All that needs to be done on your home computer is install the program and a simple indexing of your files. It’s evident you’ll want to monitor the latter – you don’t want all of your personal stuff to wind up on the internet. Once that’s done, you can access the data from any computer or other device with an internet connection.

The application uses P2P to share your data. This means your home computer must remain turned on if you need to access the data. When you’re at home, this poses no problem, but if you want to keep accessing your files over long-distance, you better prepare for a seriously large electricity bill.

All Types of Media

After you’ve spent some time indexing your computer, the amount of media you can share with this free file sharing program is close to limitless. Apart from the conventional file sharing, like music, video and – very importantly – documents; Orb offers a ton of additional sharing functionality.

If you’ve got a TV tuner installed on your computer, you can even broadcast live and recorded TV programs. You can read more about this aspect of Orb in Dave’s article about Total Media Domination – Your TV, Video and Audio on any Device.

Sharing Possibilities

Once you’ve decided what to share, there are a few different ways to do so; email, hyperlink, flash widget and Orb’s public page. They all have one thing in common – the recipient needs nothing more than an internet connection and a web browser!

A simple hyperlink is one of the easiest ways to share your data — text it to a friend, or paste it in an IM window, Orb takes care of the rest. If you share your stuff over email, a hyperlink is used as well, but this time the recipient gets a personal Orb account, so they’re the only ones to access the data!

A few of the more interesting features that Orb provides are the flash widgets and Orb Public Place. The flash widget can be embedded on any HTML-enabled website or blog, and allows visitors to quickly browse music, pictures and videos. The Public Place is a personal blog-like site, on which you can post text entries, as well as share your media – it’s unlimited. Here, everyone can browse through the different kinds of data that you’ve made available.

How do you use any free file sharing programs to share your media and documents? Tell us all about it in the comments section below.

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

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I’m still debating that issue and I’d sure be glad to hear what you think. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at Moof, the newest attempt at moving your music library to the Internet.

Moof addresses the segment of the market that prefers to stream music from a web-based service rather than storing songs locally and using software like iTunes. The convenience factor cannot be ignored – I’ve noticed many people, and students particularly, would prefer listening to Spotify rather than downloading songs from via P2P or online music stores like iTunes Store and its cheaper alternatives.

It’s easier, just open it and have some background music while your work. Or instantly search and listen to an entire album that a friend recommended.

While similar streaming services, notably Mixtape, incorporates some social networking features, Moof sticks to the basic functionality of playback and playlists creation.  There’s another quite striking difference between Moof and other similar services – it uses YouTube to provide playback. If your song wasn’t uploaded to YouTube, you won’t be able to play it back.

Personally, I think that the API did a great job of retrieving songs – finding even some of my most obscure artists. Unfortunately for hard-core indie music fans, there’s no feature that allows manual uploading of songs, something that the Lala Music Mover does automatically.

To sum it up in a sentence, Moof is basically a front-end to YouTube, with an interface that resembles a desktop media player.

It’s worth mentioning that Moof also allows you to import your iTunes Library XML file – which means you will be have a sort of a backup of your music. You won’t be able to use the service to re-download the songs in case your hard drive crashes, but at least you could listen to them online.

The interface resembles iTunes although it doesn’t provide the same feature set. Some more picky users will notice that there’s no way to rate songs or view track numbers. I do prefer this layout to Groovesharks’s Apple-esque cascading menus.

While Moof doesn’t bring anything groundbreaking to the equation, as the idea of a cloud music library was already implemented some time ago, it’s definitely worth checking out. Visit Moof and don’t forget to tell us what you think 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/

• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)
• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
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Another bonus is the support for a Linux client, but today we’ll be focusing on Windows to Windows streaming.

A couple of limitations:  one, you’ll have to pay to use resolutions higher than 640 x 480 while streaming. Two, the graphics quality will be reduced quite a bit as you’re streaming the game and you’ll be limited by your network. Three, they also ask you to pay to stream over the Internet beyond a trial.   You can see here what you can do with the free version versus the paid version.

Setting up the Server

• One of the first steps is that you’ll have to register an account to download their server and player software. They’ll ask for an email, username, and password.
• Download the server/player installer to both the computer that will run the actual game (server) and the computer that will be receiving the stream (client).
• Install the software. It’s a pretty straightforward installation, and all the options can be left as is. You’ll have to reboot your computer at the end of it.
• There should be a new icon in the system tray – a red circle with an S in it, and a green checkmark – this is the Streamer Server. To begin, we’re going to add a game. Right click the icon and hit Add Games:

  

• In the Add Games and Applications window you have two options – you can have the software scan your entire Program Files directory looking for applications, or you can add them manually. Since the scan is not particularly fast, we’ll be using the Select a Game or Application.
• I’ll be adding the game Crysis, which happens to store the game executable (by default) in C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis\Bin32\Crysis.exe. Double click it, and the name of the executable will be added to the list.  At this point, you can either select more programs, or you can click on whatever you added and hit Add Selected:

  

Using the Client

• On the client computer, browse over to your Your Games page. The game you added in step 6 under Setting up the Server should be listed.
• To play the game on the client computer, click on the second icon from the left under Start Streamer Service, which displays a house and the StreamMyGame logo in the corner. The tool tip should say Stream Game At Home:

  

• You’ll be directed to a page where you can choose the various settings, including video bandwidth, audio bandwidth, and resolution. For free accounts, the max resolution is 640 x 480. You should experiment with the various video/audio bandwidth settings – my laptop on a wireless network operates at 5Mbit/s for video bandwidth.  Hit Save Settings once you think you have acceptable streaming settings:

  

• To play, click the big button above the Local Area Network Streaming Settings (the house with the StreamMyGame logo) and allow your browser to start the application:

  

• A window should pop up asking for your login details and an option to save them. Login with your StreamMyGame account, and the game should start on the host computer, while the client computer receives a stream. That’s about it to stream games from one computer to the other:

  

  And a view from the host:

  

Few Notes

• If the game has a noticeable lag between the input and what is shown on the screen, you may need to reduce the allotted video bandwidth, or make sure that no other applications are taking up your network bandwidth. Switching from a wireless to a wired connection will also help.
• No sound? You’ll need to enable Stereo Mix or “What U Hear” or other similar recording functions on the host computer. Head to Control Panel, double click Sounds and Audio Devices, and on the first tab under Device Volume, click the Advanced button. In the new Master Volume window go to Options > Properties, and change the Mixer Device to “Line in/Mic in” (if you do not have this option, browse for the selection that allows you to adjust volume for recording). In the selection below, make sure that the box for Stereo Mix/What U Hear/similar terminology is checked, and unmuted. StreamMyGame has a little quick tidbit on this if you need more help.

Image Credit: shanewarne60000

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

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Instead of attempting to circumvent the school’s computer system to access YouTube, you could always make use of that cool little Windows Mobile device you were able to convince your parents to buy you for your last birthday. No matter where you are – sitting on the bleachers at the football game, riding the bus, or sitting way in the back of the class during an exceptionally dull lecture – just enable your wireless Internet connection and start watching hilarious YouTube videos on your phone!

How to Get on YouTube at School with Your Mobile Device

If you have a mobile device that’s installed with Windows Mobile, and you’re lucky enough to have a decent mobile Internet plan, there are a number of methods you can use to post YouTube videos, such as this MUO review of Cellspin – an app you can use to post to eBay, Facebook and YouTube. However, YouTube itself now offers the ability to both play videos and broadcast your own videos from your mobile phone. This feature now allows anyone to instantly stream realtime videos directly to YouTube.

No more waiting until you get home so you can load it onto your computer and upload it to the website. With this feature, you can instantly post witness accounts of a natural disaster or government atrocities no matter where you are or where the nearest computer is. If there’s a cellular provider with a mobile Internet plan, this YouTube feature turns you into a walking online witness through which the whole world can see the sort of things that you see every day. Start telling your story through video images streamed directly up to YouTube from your phone.

Whether you choose to “play” or “create” on YouTube from your mobile phone is up to you, but both features offer very cool opportunities. Now you can watch videos while you’re sitting and waiting for your name to be called at the restaurant. Capture a video of a crime in progress (don’t get too close) and feature it at your YouTube account before even the local media has any clue what’s going on.

How to Play YouTube Videos On Your Mobile Phone

Playing YouTube videos on your mobile phone is easy. All you have to do is open up your mobile web browser and visit “http://www.youtube.com.”  If you visit from a mobile device, you are automatically redirected to the mobile version of the site. This mobile version of YouTube will work whether you have Windows Mobile of just an Internet-enabled cellphone.

You can search through videos or browse the front page of the newest ones. Watching videos from the mobile version of the website includes two technical requirements that you need to be aware of. Your mobile device needs to support RTSP streaming, and your cellular carrier needs to allow streaming video on your device. Now, if it doesn’t work on your mobile device, don’t despair. As you can see, there’s an option to download the YouTube application to your mobile device. If you do have a Windows Mobile device, then you’ll want to consider clicking on that “download application” link, as the mobile application version of YouTube is much more functional (and better looking).

Within the YouTube mobile application, most of the videos play clearly and with very little skipping – especially if you’re connected onto a Wi-Fi network.

If you’re only on the cellular data line, you may need to give the videos some time to download to your device before you click the play button.

Uploading Your Mobile Videos Directly to YouTube

Now, uploading the videos you recorded with your device is almost as easy as downloading videos to watch. All you need to do is sign up for your own YouTube account (you can connect it with your Google account). Once you do, YouTube will provide you with your own mobile email address ending in “m.youtube.com” where you can send your videos to get instantly published under your YouTube account.

Setting this up takes just a matter of minutes. Then, turn on the video capture feature of your mobile device, send the video file to your mobile YouTube email account, and you’ve just instantly posted your own mobile email to the Internet without the need for a computer. Now that’s sweet. To test it out, I took a 17 second, blurry video of my skinny cat who was lounging in bed. In less than 5 minutes of emailing the video from my phone to my mobile YouTube email account, the fuzzy video of the silly little critter was up live on YouTube!

All I’d have to do is increase the resolution of my video capture and I could become the next online Oliver Stone! Just imagine the “compromising” situations that you could capture your friends in at school – and then publish it on YouTube instantly for the world to see!  Now, no corner of the world is safe from the snooping video-camera eyes of the mobile phone crowd. Be afraid… be very, very afraid.

Have you ever used any other tools to instantly post video from your mobile device to the Internet? Share your own tips in the comments section below.

Not using a Windows Mobile device? Grant shows you how to stream live video from almost any cellphone or you could check Qik out.

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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Won’t it be great if you can listen to the whole songs (or CD) before you buy? iTunes store and Amazon has the preview feature, but they only come with a 30-second preview, which is not enough to sample a song.

We need some alternatives, great alternatives. So, here are my favorite websites where users can listen to CDs before buying them.

1. AOL music

AOL music is one of the best place in the Web that offers free full length songs and music for listening. It has a huge database of songs. You simply pick the songs you want. If the song is not available, AOL will search for it in the web and playback (from the remote location) the song on the fly.

In addition, AOL music always have a “New music releases” section where you can listen to new CD releases for free in their entirety every week.

This is not only a good way to sample the CD before you buy, it is also a good way to discover new CDs in the market.

2. Youtube

At Youtube, you won’t be able to sample the whole CD at one go, but surely you will be able to find most of the tracks (in music video and other forms) in its database. When you search for the songs/artists/albums in the search bar, there is a high chance that you will find what you want in the search result.

Furthermore, with all the YouTube and other video conversion tools previously highlighted by MakeUseOf, you can also convert and download the music video to your desktop, even though the music quality differs a great deal from those in the music store.

5. Rhapsody

With Rhapsody, you never have to worry about a lack of songs. They have more than a million songs in their database and there is a very high chance you will find what you want. Rhapsody operates on a subscription model (only available in US), that is to say, you pay a subscription fee every month ($12.99) and you have access to all the songs in their database and you can listen to them again and again, unlimited times.

With the subscription account, you can also download the software and access to your favorite songs from your desktop.

If you are not willing to pay the subscription fee, Rhapsody also allows its users to listen to 25 songs for free. That should be enough for you to sample two and a half CD of songs before you make your purchase decision.

4. Imeem

Imeem is a social network that enables its users to share media, including music, video and photos with each other.  In here, you are likely to find the songs/CDs that you want. Some of the music are restricted by the label/artists and features only a 30-second preview, but there are still a great deal of them that are full length and you are able to listen to the full CD.

5. Baidu MP3

This may not be suitable for everyone, but if you are a Chinese song lover, like I am, then this is the place to listen to free songs.

All you need to do is to perform a search with the search bar and it will fetch the required songs from the artists. You can then scroll to find his/her current album or previous albums. You can click on the link beside the song to hear the full song.

Other alternatives that did not make the list

MySpace

I am sure some of you will swear by MySpace. I am not an active user of MySpace and I don’t have much love for it. Personally, I find the layout very messy and it crashes my browser (and computer) very often.

Last.fm

While there are plenty of songs and information in Last.fm, you seldom have the chance to sample the full CD of your favorite artists. I do use it for occasional listening, but when it comes to CD sampling, I guess there are better sites out there.

If you are interested in purchasing music online, Simon listed out 3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives to the iTunes Store. Check it out.

What other websites do you go to listen CD before buying? Do you prefer digital copies or physical CDs? Comment away!

Image credit: SChristineBrink

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

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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.

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

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Recently, they released a desktop application designed specifically take advantage of viewing videos and movies on your large-screen TV. Using this application, aptly named Hulu Desktop, you can now watch all your favourite shows from Hulu without using a browser! Here, at MakeUseOf, we like to properly test applications before writing about them. After three days of testing, I examined how Hulu Desktop compares to other media solutions such as Boxee.

This standalone application offers better integration, including remote control support and a full-screen TV-friendly interface. Although it is still in beta, the application proved to be very reliable in my tests:

• The interface was responsive and fluid even on low-end laptop graphic cards. The frame rate was adequate and stable even for watching, even in close proximity to the screen.
• The stream was not interrupted even when browsing with a video playing in the background. All the thumbnails and descriptions appeared without a glitch.
• Minimizing and restoring the Hulu window did not have any adverse effects on the playback.
• Navigation is simple and intuitive, a slightly better implementation compared to Boxee. Browsing the Hulu catalog on the TV provided an adequate user experience.
• The same selection on the Hulu website is also available in the desktop application, you’re not missing anything.

Overall, I am impressed with the quality of this release – not even a single crash or bug in three days is quite a feat in my book. And believe me, I did my best to make this thing crash. I ran it every night for about 3 hours, testing all the functionality available.

Hulu Desktop is not a complete media center application yet. Unlike Boxee, you can’t use this application to view content stored on your computer, be it music, photos or videos. You’re also limited to Hulu’s catalog: no Jamendo, BBC, Netfllix, YouTube or Revision3. That doesn’t mean that Hulu is not worth having; Family Guy, Stargate, and The Simpsons are just a few of the top notch material available. The best thing you can do at the moment is install both Hulu and Boxee and switch between the two when necessary.

Linux users will have to stick just to Boxee for now because there’s no version available for the penguin lovers. Windows and Mac users can download Hulu Desktop for free from here. You can also choose to sign in to your account and view personalized recommendations and subscriptions. This service is only available in the US. If you are trying to access Hulu from another country, try reading our article on How To Watch Movies and Shows on Hulu & Sling from Abroad.

Hulu Desktop is all about the lean-back experience. It’s adapting the platform to compete directly with old distribution models such as cable. At this point, why would you want to pay $100 monthly for a service you can get for free? Granted your ISP doesn’t implement bandwidth caps, with Boxee and Hulu, you can enjoy more content than was ever available on cable TV, on demand and with less commercials, on your big screen TV in the living room.

I’d love to hear what you think about Hulu Desktop, Boxee and switching for cable TV? Are you happy with the selection and user interfaces? What needs to be changed? Have your say 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/

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I’m sure you have noticed that YouTube is far from optimized for your huge display. Google has heard all your bellyaching and ultimately super-sized YouTube for your TV!

So, if you’ve been itching to play some YouTube videos on your TV, now is as good a time as any to try it out. YouTube XL is another interface for accessing YouTube, except everything is huge!

As you can see above, the site’s format gives you a much easier time to click on icons or links that actually fill up the entire screen. When I tried this out on my tablet connected to my Toshiba 52” flat panel it was a breeze to navigate and play videos. It was love at first site!

I did a quick search by selecting the search box in the upper right hand corner away from all the other links and typed in Eminem.

My results were shown in an easy to choose format and playing a video was just as easy. I selected the top result and I was on to watching my video.

The controls are easy to use as they are also large and in charge.

You can do anything here you can do on YouTube and it is a great user experience for us big screen YouTube watchers! Thanks for listening Google/YouTube! Any one have any other requests? Shout us out in the comments!

Be sure to check out MakeUseOf’s popular posts about YouTube:

• Watch Full Star Trek Episodes Online on YouTube
• 10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About
• My Top Ten Favourite Funniest YouTube Videos Ever

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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However, what is the point of having all this sweet content at your fingertips if you can’t watch it on that nice big TV you’ve got sitting in the living room? The makers of TVersity Pro have the answer. Today, I’m going to walk you through adding feeds and shows to your TVersity library, and how to connect your gaming system to your home PC in order to watch these shows. TVersity will also stream most types of audio and video files from your My Documents folder. The extensive list of supported devices includes Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo Wii; TVersity’s interface is also accessible through any Web browser.

Before I proceed, I should explain something very important. There are two versions of TVersity, the Free and Pro versions. The Pro version supports many premium-video websites including Hulu, Joost, and TV.com, which are not supported in the Free version. Both versions of TVersity are free to download. However, if you enjoy your experience with the Pro version, I highly encourage you to pay for a license in order to support development of future versions. Payment again, is optional but encouraged.

First up is to download and install the Tversity Media Server. You’ll need to provide your email address in order to download the Pro version. After installing and opening the program, you’ll be at the Guide. From the Guide, you can add the feeds for many suggested shows. The real meat of the program is in the Library, which is where you can add feeds and shows as Media Sources. You’ve already likely added two media sources, your Hulu queue and YouTube channel, during the installation.

In the first example above, I’m adding a Hulu search for “daily show” as a Media Source. You can also add lists of popular videos and videos about to expire. Adding a Joost show isn’t quite as simple. In the center screenshot, I’m on Joost’s page for Transformers and using Firefox’s auto-discovery to obtain the show’s feed address. I’ll use this address to add a “Video RSS” media source. In the last example, I’m adding the This Week in Tech podcast feed. Watching this show on my TV wouldn’t be very satisfying, however it’s handy to have audio feeds for streaming via the PSP.

For streaming audio and video to the Xbox 360 or PS3, the console should recognized the TVersity server as a network-attached device. You’ll be able to browse TVersity’s menus through the console’s native interface. For streaming to the Wii or PSP, you’ll need to use the built-in browser and connect to your PC’s server. Follow the instructions here for the Wii, and here for the PSP.

TVersity, in both Free and Pro versions, is an excellent piece of software for accessing audio and video throughout a networked home, but there are alternatives. If you have a setup such as this, let us know about it 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/

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While older devices weren’t able to transmit large amounts of live video in the bandwidth that was available to them, new 3G and 4G cell phone networks are supporting the ability to be able to transmit live, legible video from something as small as your cell phone, Smartphone, or Pocket PC.

Through some software you install on your phone, you can direct friends, family or others to a link where they can view the live video you are sending. But there are a few different services that do this, and we’ll take a look at each one and some of the features that separate it from the others.

Qik

Qik allows for streaming on the most devices of any available service that we could find and it also has an easy-to-use but feature-rich software application that allows you to put the video online.

The mobile application (which supports the devices in the graphic above) allows you to quickly change privacy settings, mute audio or the other options in the screenshot below. When you make a video, not only do you stream it, but you also archive it on their site for future viewing so it plays when you are not streaming. While streaming, information like the data speed, estimated delay (in seconds) of your stream and other useful infomation are overlayed on top of your video when you stream to their site.

You can create your own profile page online (similar to a YouTube profile page) where you can showcase your videos, allow downloading of them in flash or MP4 format and put up some information about yourself.

Videos can be embedded or linked to, commented on and the site even allows for a simple live chat window for your page/videos so users can chat on what you’re streaming.

And whenever you are streaming live, you can always see your video by giving viewers your profile page’s custom URL (www.qik.com/username).

Livecast

Livecast is second to Qik in the number of devices supported and has other useful features that other streaming services don’t have.

Livecast also has a desktop client so you can stream from a mobile device, or a mobile platform and supports GPS on select phones that can support it so viewers can see where you in a Google Map next to your stream.

You can also set a list of contacts that get notified when you start any stream. Livecast also allows for notification that you’re broadcasting to Twitter, Wordpress, Typepad and YouTube.

Livecast also has a customizable profile page where you can add your own logo, photo and other information about yourself and your streams.

Your viewers can also choose to view your stream in either a Windows Media or QuickTime format. Also, GPS information is easily viewed next to your live stream.

Finally, when you’re not streaming anything, a Livecast “teaser” plays on the streaming window.

Stickam

Stickam, while not fully designed for mobile use, has developed a client for only Symbian/Nokia phones and offers it on their website. While the client is simple to use, it only has a few features but connects your phone to the wide network of Stickam, one of the most popular video streaming/sharing sites online. Normally, Stickam allows you to stream from a desktop, but their mobile clients allows for use from anywhere.

From the software, you can adjust the settings of the stream (as with other clients). Just as Livecast and Qik do, you can also customize a profile page with a picture and archive of previous media.

As Stickam is primarily for desktops, instructions on how to download and install the mobile application are on the Stickam Blog here (software screenshot courtesy of the Stickam blog).

Do you ever use services like the ones above to stream live videos from cell phone to friends, family, etc? Let us know what service you use, for what occasion and how it went.

Photo Credit : 96dpi

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Recently, I’ve been looking for a way to stream the movies and music in iTunes library to my iPhone. It can’t be that hard, I thought. Turns out, it isn’t. A simple hack discovered by Embraceware (the folks who brought you Awaken) turns your Mac into a server that is easily connectable from your iPhone (or iPod Touch or any other device for that matter).

Yes, I realize that there are some applications that are able to stream music and/or video to the iPhone. Simplify Media is a great app for instance, to stream music over the internet but personally, my music library is too large and I find that the Simplify Media server can’t take the load. I’m not totally sure if it can stream video too, by the way. Remote Buddy is an option if you want to stream video to your iPhone but it’s not free. Heck, it isn’t even cheap at 20€ ($25). Audiolizer is another service that lets you listen to iTunes library over the internet, but it requires you to upload the songs to its server.

Allow me to explain what this hack is all about. It enables a function on your Mac to turn it into a personal web server. You can then share anything you want on the local area network (LAN) – movies, music, files. It can also be accessible outside your LAN over the internet (be careful about this). It doesn’t have a gorgeous, graphical interface; it merely presents a list of your files.

What can this hack do? It can stream your iTunes library to iPhone. It can also stream your Movies in iTunes which are properly encoded (not the .mov reference movies) in h.264. They don’t even need to be formatted for the iPhone. It can also allow access to any folder on your Mac, serving you with documents or pictures you left at home.

OK, let’s get started. I’m writing this tutorial based on Leopard. Navigation in Tiger and previous OSes may be slightly different.

First, what we need to do is enable “Web Sharing” or previously known as “Personal Web Sharing”. Head over to System Preferences located on your Dock in Leopard. Tiger users can get to System Preferences by clicking on the Apple icon at the top-left corner. Once there, click on ‘Sharing’.

Check the box next to “Web Sharing” to enable it. Note your IP address shown on the right side. This is your internal IP if you have a router. Depending on whether you are connected via DHCP, your IP may change. If it does change, all you need to do is find out what your new IP is.

The server folder is located at /Library/WebServer/Documents/ in your root folder (that’s the folder with a hard disk for its icon). In order to share your music, videos and other stuff, you’ll need to create symbolic links to them and place them into this folder. Symbolic links differ from aliases created with Finder.

Leaving the server folder alone for the time being, open up your Music folder and delve down until you see the iTunes Music folder. Now, you need to create a symbolic link for this folder in order to share it. There are 3 ways of doing this.

The easiest way is to download and extract this droplet [Create Symbolic Link]. Drag and drop the iTunes Music folder into the droplet and it will produce a symbolic link for it with a .sym extension back to the same location. Take that link, drop it into the /Library/WebServer/Documents folder and remove the .sym from its name.

An alternative for that is to download SymbolicLinker. It adds a contextual menu that can easily create symbolic links by right-clicking on any folder. Mount the SymbolicLink DMG image file and drag the plugin into ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items/ then restart Finder by holding the Option key while right-clicking on the Finder dock icon. Then select ‘Relaunch’.

After Finder relaunches, right-click on the iTunes Music folder, scroll down to ‘More’ and select ‘Make Symbolic Link’. A new symbolic link appears with a “symlink” added to its name. Drag that link over to /Library/Webserver/Documents/ and remove “symlink” from its name.

If you’re a DIY-er, the Terminal method is the hardest and most complicated but I’ll show you how to do it anyway. Since you’re following these instructions instead of the above two, I’ll assume that you’re not a novice. That said, launch Terminal. Navigate to the server folder by typing:

cd /Library/WebServer/Documents

Then create a symbolic link to your iTunes Music Folder and name that folder Music

ln -s “/Volumes/[Your HD name]/Users/[Your short username]/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music” Music

Replace [Your HD name] with the name of your hard disk volume; and [Your short username] with your short username as seen in on the right side of the “Web Sharing” screenshot above, after the internal IP address but without the tilde. Check if the symbolic link has been created.

Now that you have the symbolic links, we need to make the iTunes Music folder web-accessible. Using Terminal, type:

sudo chmod 755 ~/Music

You’ll be asked to for your user password. Please note: You need to make the main folder of any sharing folder web-accessible or else, you’ll get an error. For example, in this instance, we’re sharing the iTunes Music folder within the iTunes folder which is in the Music folder. So, we make the ~/Music folder web-accessible. Now if you want to share a folder called “X” which is located in your Downloads folder, you need to make ~/Downloads/ web-accessible using the {sudo chmod} command. Since you’ve already made the ~/Downloads folder web-accessible, any other folder within this folder for which you decide to create a symbolic link in the future will be web-accessible automatically.

Okay, symbolic links – Check. Web-accessibility – Check. Let’s try it out.

In your browser, type in http://[Your internal IP address]/iTunes Music/ and you should be presented with a page containing a list of your artists.

That was just a taster. Now comes the sweet part – streaming movies to your iPhone! The movies can be stored anywhere as along as they are formatted in h.264. To be safe, I’ll just show you how to share your iTunes Movies folder. All videos stored in iTunes can be played on the iPhone or iPod Touch even if they’re not formatted for portability. Remember that .mov reference movies cannot be played.

If your movies aren’t formatted in h.264, iSquint is a great application for conversion. It was developed by TechSpansion (which has shut down) but iSquint is still available for free. Download it here and convert your files into iPod format to add into iTunes.

The iTunes movies folder is located within the iTunes Music folder, which means essentially it was already shared. Just scroll down the list of your artist until you see Movies. But to make it easier to call, we shall share the folder as well.

Create a symbolic link for ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies and place it in the server folder then rename it to Movies.

Test it out. In your browser, type http://[Your IP address]/Movies/

Great! Now whip out your iPhone, connect to your home Wi-Fi network and launch Safari. Enter your internal IP followed by /Movies/ like above. Click on any video, wait for it to buffer and it will start playing!

But what if you’re not connected to your local area network? You will still be able to access your music and movies from the internet if you allow port 80 to be forwarded to your Mac. There are a few variables here. For one, your internal IP needs to be static for your router to forward port 80 consistently to your Mac. Port forwarding varies depending on your router’s make and model, for instructions, go here. Second, even if your internal IP is static, your external IP may not be. If it isn’t, then you’ll need to sign up for DynDNS. If your external IP is static, then great – find out what your IP is by going to whatismyip.com then copy that IP and type it in your browser in this fashion:

http://[Your external IP address]/Movies/

You should be presented with the same list of files as when you entered your internal IP. If you received an error then check the variables: IP address, port forwarding, firewall.

Allowing access to port 80 on your Mac brings up security issues and unwanted intrusion. Be sure to have your firewall enabled and allow port 80 to come through. Also, be cautious when sharing your external IP address.

Like I said before, this is not a new tip. I merely wanted to simplify the process for Switchers and new iPhone/iPod Touch owners to follow. I hope you find this tip useful and you’re glad to finally stream videos to your iPhone.

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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This shows that YouTube has come a very long way from laughing baby videos and it is now being considered by the major studios as a serious platform for full length TV shows.

You can find and watch Star Trek shows online by going here. There is a complete playlist.

If Star Trek is not your thing or if you’re looking for something else to watch after all 70 episodes are finished, CBS has also uploaded other full-length TV programmes. As you can see, this includes MacGyver, Jericho and Beverly Hills 90210. If you keep a watch on that page, I’m sure they will upload other TV programmes in the future.

However, if you are outside the US, you will not be able to watch full Star Trek episodes online and will be greeted by this message when you try to click on one of the videos :

Typical of CBS to be spoilsports! However, fear not because you can easily bypass this restriction by downloading and running Hotspot Shield which suppresses your IP address and makes YouTube think that you are in the US. Then click on the YouTube link again and you will be taken straight through to the desired video. MakeUseOf had a thorough guide on how to set it up in How To Watch Movies and Shows on Hulu & Sling from Abroad.

Do you know of any other legal full length TV shows on YouTube? For instance, a while ago we also showed you that Youtube is a great place if you want to watch standup comedians online. Tell us the links in the comments and we’ll check them out! HBO’s channel seems to be just programme highlights and there doesn’t seem to be official YouTube channels for Fox, ABC and NBC.

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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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/

• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
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• How To Move Your Music Library Online with Moof (11)

Much like phone companies became complacent with their position of power before the world of VoIP started capturing more of the telecom market, cable TV providers are complacent and oblivious to the rising popularity and reach of Video over IP.  More and more people are getting fed up with the exorbitant rates these companies charge, and they are looking to the internet for alternatives. Here, I will introduce you to some websites that lets you watch tv on your computer over the internet.

Finding the Best Tools to Watch TV on Your Computer

While the world of VidIP has a long way to go before it can capture a large portion of the video broadcasting market, it has made a great deal of progress over the past few years.  Most people don’t realize that there are now enough options available online so that you can permanently trash your cable TV subscription and still have access to some of the best entertainment video content available.  The only prerequisite is that you have an excellent broadband connection and a computer or laptop.  To get free content, you have several options available – either Video On Demand (VOD), streaming Internet TV, or standalone PC applications that connect via the Internet.

Movies and Network TV Shows

There are a whole range of websites that provide the ability to access cable TV online. Some offer more content, and some have higher quality streaming video. My own experience is that streaming quality is far more important than quantity, since there’s nothing more annoying than trying to watch sports when the screen keeps freezing up every minute or two.  Luckily there are plenty of options available.

Hulu is a popular website that offers the option to legally download full episodes and video clips of your favorite network shows and major motion films. Browsing through Hulu, I discovered an episode of my favorite show, “The Office.”  The quality of the video is smooth and clear.  Hulu has organized the selection of shows based on categories like “Comedy,” or “Action and Adventure,” so finding your favorite show is easy.

Sling offers popular channels like FX, CBS, NBC, FOX, and SciFi. The variety of shows Sling offers is impressive, with full length episodes identified by a TV image next to the show title.  Were you a fan of the 1980s hit show, “The A-Team?”  Well, on Sling you’ll find 61 full-length episodes.  Similar to Hulu, Sling also offers an impressive list of popular movies for free.  I fired off one of my favorite movies, “Behind Enemy Lines,” and within less than a minute the Sling player launched the movie in amazing detail and virtually no skipping, even in full-screen mode.

Hulu seems to offer a little bit more in content, but slightly lower streaming quality than Sling.  Unfortunately, both Hulu and Sling are US only sites. However there are ways you can watch Hulu and Sling videos from abroad.

Popular TV Channels and Programs

One of the biggest hurdles to turning away from cable and using Internet TV for video entertainment is that many people have favorite channels or programs that they like to watch. Luckily, there are websites available to solve that dilemma. For example, TVChannelsFree is one of the largest collections of TV channels in one place on the web, featuring over 3700 channels from more than 60 countries around the world. You’ll find Animal Planet, TTV Asia, and even Game TV from Germany. The site requires a variety of plug-ins, however, so be prepared to install SopCast, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player if you don’t already have it.

Another great website that offers on-page TV viewing of  popular programs is TidalTV. The navigation is in the standard TV Guide table format. The site design is excellent and the video quality is absolutely stunning.

In the process of testing this web app, I realized that there was an episode of Jericho on, which I’ve been wanting to watch! Other channels on TidalTV include Discovery, Food Network, National Geographic, HGTV and other great content.  The full-screen mode for the viewer works well, and the quality remains sharp enough for display on a big screen TV.

One other great website where you can locate all of your favorite TV shows is InnerLive, one of the few online TV websites with enough of a selection so that I could find Nickelodeon – the one channel my kids need if I’d ever switch from cable to Internet TV.  InnerLive is also one of the few TV sites that cleverly combined social networking with the TV viewing experience by integrating a chat room alongside the viewer.

One other honorable mention on the list of TV viewing websites is TVWeb360, which uses the same viewer technology (without a chat room) as InnerLive, but it has slightly fewer channel choices.  I did notice slightly more skipping with these two websites, but if you make sure to optimize the speed of your Internet connection, you shouldn’t experience any problems.

Sports Channels

One impressive website that offers more sports channels than any other site on the web is MyP2P.  While this website offers a short list of live TV channels, its real strength lies in the “Live Sports” section.

The cool thing about MyP2P is that you can click on the sport category you’re interested in and view all of the live games that are scheduled for broadcast.  MyP2P features broadcasts covering 11 major sports, and even an “other” category with sports like darts and snooker!  The list of live sports content is impressive, the football section alone currently lists 18 scheduled live games from across the world over the next two weeks.

Watch News Channels Online

While other websites where you can watch TV typically list popular channels like Discover or HGTV, they are often lacking when it comes to quality news broadcasting from the major news organizations across the world.  Providing the best news content from across the world is where the website LiveStation is a powerhouse.  Of all TV viewing sites I tested, LiveStation had the best quality by far, and its interface was far more aesthetically pleasing.  LiveStation offers a few popular channels like MTV and Sci Fi, but it’s news offering is the most impressive, including Al Jazeera, BBC World Service, ITN, Russia Today, France 24, and CNN.  Watching NASA TV in full-screen mode, with the channel carousel around it, absolutely blew me away.

Make sure to read Mark’s two stories on Livestation here and here.

While video over IP technology still has a long way to go, the technology and the associated broadband speeds have advanced far enough at this point so that if anyone is fed up enough with the overpriced monopoly of cable TV, switching to the Internet for your video entertainment needs isn’t all that painful.

Have you switched to the the internet solely for your television watching?   If so, what applications do you use to receive your programming?

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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Although not covered in this post, Oosah has versions available for the iPhone and Google’s android mobile phone operating system. With this software you’ll be able to access your media files remotely, for example to stream up to 1TB of MP3’s to your iPhone. Sadly, no option is available for Windows Mobile, yet. Anyone?

Now let’s have a look at the details, shall we?

Below is a snapshot of the media platform. It basically resembles the file explorer most of you will know from Windows.  Thankfully, it also works a lot like it, meaning many of the typical shortcuts will work. If a file went into the wrong folder, you can simply drag & drop it into another or mark several files by holding down the [Ctrl] key or batch select by clicking the [Shift] key. Right-click does not work. Using the respective buttons you can create, rename and delete folders, and more about editing single files will follow further down. Let’s do some uploads first.

As mentioned previously, Oosah only permits media files. There is a detailed list of supported file formats here.

Uploading is straight forward. Hit the green Upload button in the top left, choose your files and go. Unfortunately, you cannot upload an entire folder, but you can select a great number of files at once, which will be uploaded one after the other. I tried it with over 400 files from different folders which worked just fine.

Apparently, video and RAW files require some additional post-uploading processing until they are ready to be displayed. You should receive an eMail from Oosah once they are available. This may take some time…hours, days? Nothing had come in when this post was submitted.

When you scroll over a file you’ll see a small green box with a white arrow, as seen on the top left image in the screenshot below. When you click the arrow, a menu appears as shown on the right. The printing option is very well done, although it doesn’t seem to work in Macs, yet.

While you upload files you can decide whether or not you want them to be public. Later you can go back and look at some more share options through the individual file menu. You can change the share status of a file and even set a password for it. Additionally, you can copy the direct link and the HTML code or eMail the file to your friends.

Unfortunately, only individual files can be shared or edited this way. Also, Oosah appears to have difficulties recognizing international keyboards, as the @ sign wasn’t recognized, however, copy & paste worked fine. What can be done though, is select all files and delete them all or filter for certain file types, including photos, sounds, videos and Oosahs.

Oh wait, what are Oosahs?

Oosahs are personal compositions of media files or let’s say slideshow presentations. You probably noticed the orange Widgets button next to the Upload button. Clicking it will bring up a list of options: Slideshow, Playlist and Gallery, while only a slideshow is referred to as Oosah. By the way, the term playlist is misleading, since only photos, videos and slideshows are permitted, no audio files. You can add a background sound to an Oosah slideshow, though. I will not go into details of how you can create these media compositions. Basically just follow the instructions on screen and you’ll be fine!

Here is an example of an Oosah:

What’s the Connect button for?

You may have spotted the YouTube, Facebook and Picasa logos on the previous images. The folders for the respective services don’t become available until you log into those accounts. That’s what the Connect button is for. You can log in and then view or upload media files through Oosah. Very convenient! Oosah also offers a connect option for Flickr, which opens a pop-up window. Logging in didn’t work for me, the window went blank.

And that’s it. Now you’re all set up to share your media files and there is a lot more to discover on Oosah. Just follow the links from the Oosah Homepage.

I should mention that just recently Tim introduced a similar file storage platform called Hordit. That service provides unlimited amount of space for anything you may want to store, backup or share. However, there are no streaming options for your mobile device. For more information, check out Tim’s article Hordit – A Digital Packrat’s Best Friend. Oh, and meanwhile Hordit has entered public beta, so you won’t need an invitation.

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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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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By setting your Linux computer as a UPnP AV server, you will be able to access your collection of music, photos and videos that reside in your computer wherever you are within the house.

Below are some of the applications that can turn your Linux computer into a UPnP AV server:

1. MediaTomb

MediaTomb is an open source (GPL) UPnP MediaServer with a nice web user interface. It can be easily installed and configured and is compatible with a variety of UPnP compatible devices.

Some of the features that I like about MediaTomb is the ease of use and the simple Web interface. There is not much configuration required. On my Ubuntu machine, I installed it via the repository and got it running in less than 5 minutes.

It supports a variety of file formats including mp3, wma, wav, flac, ogg, avi, mp4, jpg, png and gif and is able to transcode the media files from one format to another.

2. Fuppes

FUPPES stands for Free UPnP Entertainment Service and is one of the most popular UPnP server around. If you have tried MediaTomb, you will find a great deal of its features and media support are also available in FUPPES. It also supports on-the-fly transcoding and is able to stream to various devices, including your PS3 and Xbox 360.

One thing to note about FUPPES is that it is not included in the repository and one has to compile it from its source to get it working in your computer. Alternatively, you can download the deb file (for debian-based Linux only) and double click to install.

The initial configuration will require you to manually edit the config file. After that, you will be able to make all changes via the Web interface. Once you get it running, it will be a great software with a lot of versatility and tweaking options.

3. GMediaServer

GmediaServer is a UPnP compatible media server that receives no or little love. While it is not as feature-rich as FUPPES and MediaTomb, it is lightweight and readily available in most Linux repositories. Although it has stopped development for the past year, it still has a small group of Linux fans who loved its simplicity and stability.

There is no Web interface for GMediaServer and you’ll have to use the command line interface to configure and get it started. While most people are put off by the command line interface, most seasoned Linux users still find that the CLI is still the best way to get things done quickly and efficiently.

GMediaServer only serves audio and video files and does not support transcoding.

4. GeeXboX uShare

uShare is a UPnP and DLNA server that is designed to provide access to multimedia content to GeeXboX. It can also be used as a standalone media server for most UPnP devices.

GeeXboX uShare is lightweight and is able to provide access to images, videos, music or playlists files. It supports a wide variety of file formats, including the following:

[Video]: asf, avi, dv, divx, wmv, mjpg, mjpeg, mpeg, mpg, mpe, mp2p, vob, mp2t, m1v, m2v, m4v, m4p, mp4ps, ts, ogm, mkv, rmvb, mov, qt, hdmov

[Audio]: aac, ac3, aif, aiff, at3p, au, snd, dts, rmi, mp1, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpa, ogg, wav, pcm, lpcm, l16, wma, mka, ra, rm, ram, flac

[Images]: bmp, ico, gif, jpeg, jpg, jpe, pcd, png, pnm, ppm, qti, qtf, qtif, tif, tiff

[Playlist]: pls, m3u, asx

[Subtitles]: dks, idx, mpl, pjs, psb, scr, srt, ssa, stl, sub, tts, vsf, zeg

Installation of uShare is easy as it is included in the most Linux repository. There is a Web interface that you can use to add media folders and view your share details. It is also fully compatible with PS3 and Xbox360.

5. VUZE

If you like to download a lot of media files via torrents, Vuze would be a great choice of uPnP software that you can use to share your files. Vuze is previously known as Azureus and it is a bit-torrent client as well as a media server. On the first look, most people will not realize that there is actually a uPnP media streaming component built into the software. Only when they venture deep into the backend (also known as the Options page) then can he/she discover the configuration to set it up as a media server.

The server module does not support any transcoding, but I found that the streaming speed and stability is rather good when I stream my music to a computer in another room.

This is the end of the Linux media series. If you missed the first two parts, here they are :

- Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1)
- Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2)

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

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• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (20)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1) (66)
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There are many ways of doing this, probably the most reliable way being to have your own media server. This though may be impractical for smaller archives of music or for sharing music on a limited scale. Thus, today I intend on showing you some of the best sites to access your music on-the-go with limited effort.

(There have been other posts on this subject on MakeUseOf here and here.)

MediaMaster

MediaMaster is one of the best sites for setting up your own streaming music online. The amount of features are immense and, fortunately, signing up is easy.  Once you are in, you have the ability to view recently uploaded music, community related material, as well as the ability to upload your own music.

Formats currently supported include: MP3, M4A, non-lossless WMA, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV, Musepack V7 and FLAC. Once uploaded, music can be viewed through your library, edited, or added to a radio station and played whenever you like.

One cool feature of MediaMaster that most sites similar to it don’t have, is the social-networking aspect. You can add friends, listen to friend’s radio stations, rate them, etc. MediaMaster goes even farther to give you the ability to customize your profile, which adds more options. I highly recommend trying it out.

blueTunes

blueTunes is quite similar to MediaMaster, with an extremely simple user interface. With such a simple interface though, are not as many features. Such as the ability to only upload MP3’s, a larger array of options need to exist that do not yet. If all you need to do is listen to a small amount of music or don’t really intend on sharing your music, blueTunes may be your best option.

While features are limited, blueTunes is improving and adding more features, such as recommendations based on your songs, blueTunes facebook app, $.01 per song requirement (after your free 100 songs), playlists, etc.

MP3tunes

MP3tunes is another extremely feature filled online streaming site that really is paving the way for the future of online music. One thing that sets MP3tunes away from many other online streaming sites, is the ability to sync your music on nearly any electronic device connected to the internet.

With such a wide array of devices come even more options, such as: recommendations, auto sync with a computer, plug-ins, etc. Uploading is easy with their new BETA drag-and-drop uploader, and listening to your music is, obviously, even easier. With a free account, you receive 2GB of space for music (approximately 400 songs), yet you can also upgrade to a premium plan for 50GB of space (approximately 10,000 songs.)

Another extremely neat feature of MP3tunes is their webload feature. Webload allows users to upload any song from around the web with a URL, obviously saving time when downloading songs and then uploading them. There is even a developer API if you would like to go even further and get your music onto devices that aren’t compatible. If features and access to your music virtually anywhere is what you are looking for, then MP3tunes may be your best choice.

Hopefully this helps some of you find the best place to store your music online! What do you use to access your music everywhere? 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/

• Search the Internet for Music with Clickster (10)
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This part of the Linux media series will cover the various software that you can use to convert your Linux machine into a media server.

1) Sockso

Among all the media server software, Sockso is the easiest to use. There is no installation or any configuration required. You just need to download the file, double click the application to launch it and there you go, your media server is up and running in less than 5 minutes.

Sockso comes with all the necessary tools to allow you to enjoy your music over the air. It does not support video streaming as yet, but for audio files, it supports MP3, WAV, FLAC and Ogg. There is also an on-the-fly transcoding feature that converts the audio file from one format to another while streaming.

For those who want a click-and-go solution, Sockso is the best for you.

2) Jinzora

Jinzora is a Web-based media server written completely in php. It supports both audio and video streaming and is able to play a huge library of audio/video formats, including AAC, M4A, Midi, MP3, MP4, Ogg Vorbis, RM, WMA, AVI, WMV, MPEG and MOV. It also supports on-the-fly transcoding.

Since it is Web-based, that means you have to set up and configure your own LAMP server before you can get Jinzora to run on your Linux machine. Installation is not as straightforward and there are quite a number of steps that you have to do. Luckily, all the steps are well documented and you simply need to follow the instructions to complete the installation.

Some may find it difficult to install and configure Jinzora, but I can assure you that it is all worth the effort. Once you get it running, you will appreciate its slick interface and the extensive features that it supports.

One thing good about a Web-based software is that it can be easily customized for the Web 2.0. When playing a track, Jinzora does a great job in retrieving the meta-data (such as lyrics, album covers and ID3-tags). There is also a social-networking module which you can use to build a social music site.

If you are willing to shell out that extra effort to set up and maintain the LAMP server, then Jinzora will be a great choice for you.

3) SqueezeCenter

SqueezeCenter (formerly known as Slimserver) is originally a software from Logitech to power their SqueezeBox devices, but it is now an open-source software that you can use to stream MP3 music from your machine.

Configuration is easy. Once you have it installed, go to your browser, type in http://localhost:9000 and follow the instructions to configure it. You should be able to get it started in less than 5 minutes.

The interface of SqueezeCenter is like your local music player where it displays the songs on one side and the playback on the other side. I find this setting familiar, simple and nice.

At the moment, SqueezeCenter only supports mp3 streaming and can be listened to from any computer using a MP3 software player, such as Winamp, iTunes and Totem movie player. You can also get it to play in your browser via a hack by Charles. You will need a Netvibes account for that.

4) Simplifymedia

If you have heard of Orb, then SimplifyMedia is something similar, just that it works on Linux as well as on Mac and Windows platforms. What SimplifyMedia does is to create a shared path from your local machine to the remote computer that you are on so that you can access your music files easily.

For the Linux version, there is no installation required and running the application is as easy as double-clicking the downloaded file.

To use SimplifyMedia, you will need to install the application on the remote computer that you are working on and sign in to your account. It does not have its own player and uses your system’s music player (Rhythmbox, iTunes and Winamp) to playback music. If your version of Linux does not come with Rhythmbox pre-installed, you will have to install it before you can playback music from SimplifyMedia. Read more about SimplifyMedia and see its features here.

5) Gnump3d

Gnump3d is a MP3 and OGG streaming server mainly for the Linux platform. Although the development stopped 1 year ago, by far, this is still one of the best native Linux media servers around.

Gnump3d is simple and easy to use. Some may find it limited in features, but if you only have MP3 files and need just a simple server. Gnump3d could be a good choice. If you are using Ubuntu (Hardy and below), Gnump3d is found in the repository, which makes the installation a breeze.

In part 3 of this series, I will discuss using your Linux computer as a Universal Plug and Play (uPnP) AV Server.

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/

• Using Your Linux Computer As A UPnP AV Server (Part 3) (5)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1) (66)
• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
• Top 5 Free Media Players For Windows (57)
• Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16)

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/

• Record Streaming Audio with Screamer Radio (23)
• Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16)
• Search the Internet for Music with Clickster (10)
• How To Broaden Your Musical Horizons Online (8)
• Free MP3 Downloads: 7 Websites That Make It Really Easy (20)

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/

• Record Streaming Audio with Screamer Radio (23)
• Find Out Where Your Favorite Artists Are Playing With Jambase (0)
• Discover Music & Videos The New Way With Soundflavor (2)
• 3 Web Apps For Staying On Top Of The Music Scene (15)
• 3 Ways To Track Tour Dates Of Your Favorite Rock Bands (4)

The most significant difference between Fancast and other video streaming services is its all-encompassing nature. Hulu makes specific deals with providers in order to bring in content and lets you watch full episodes of your favorites TV shows for free. Fancast isn’t as concerned with specific partnerships and brings in legal video from wherever it can. 

On top of this, Fancast learns your location and preferences in order to sync up with what you normally watch on TV. In a sense, the site tries to amplify your current usage habits instead of making you switch over to digital completely.

Normally I would try and walk you through the process of using Fancast, but it’s really much too vast for that approach.  Each user will have different features they like the best, so I’ll try to point out the most important ones here:

Show Listings and Access Options

The thing I’ll probably be using the most is the TV listings guide.  While these are easily obtainable at TVGuide and the like, Fancast will remember your location permanently (as it is tied to your account), and always bring up the television schedule according to your local channels.  Also, from your preferences and your ratings of individual shows, it brings up a likely nightly schedule for quick access.

Another rather innovative thing about Fancast is its access options.  Each episode specifically displays tags for the different ways you can access it.  If it is a current show, it tells you the next time it will be on TV (along with channel info).  If it is part of their strong streaming video library, there’s a link to it.  It’s also possible to find the show on DVD or On Demand through their paid download service.

Streaming TV Shows (Legally)

As I said, the number of streaming videos they have is pretty staggering. Many of the newer shows are directly from the networks or other similar sources. The older shows, like the Highlander episodes I’m working my way though, are simply ports from Hulu.  The interface for the player is fairly simple.  The slider is fairly blocky for some reason, the volume controls are incredibly basic, and generally it’s very hard to switch away from the awesomeness that is the Hulu player.

One episode that I watched and then returned to later did ask me if I wanted to start from the beginning or pick up where I left off.  This scored some points with me as I’ve had browser windows crash on me frequently during streaming.

Movies and Trailers

Another interesting aspect of Fancast is the movies section.  Their list of full-length movies isn’t incredibly small, but it probably won’t replace your Netflix subscription any time soon.  The player is essentially the same and will remember your place.  I would say more about the video viewing itself, but 1984 decided it wasn’t going to play any video for me at all, only the sound track.  Clearly there are some bugs to be worked out.

I do like the fact that they have trailers on the site because it might help with their community building.  While full-length movies don’t generate much discussion, trailers provide a lot of fodder for bloggers and users alike.

Fan News and Blogs

The blogs that live on Fancast are pretty decent reading.  They clearly have a staff of dedicated fans.  In fact, it’s evident in the way the site is designed.  Instead of locking everything down from the start and slowly expanding, Fancast has tried to give you everything and will hopefully improve their quality over time.  The blogs are few in number, but I assume that will grow over time.

Gripes

There were some things about Fancast that I didn’t particularly like.  First of all, the service not only prompts you for your location to customize it, but also because it wants to limit you to the content you’re already able to receive from your provider.  In fact, if you’re outside the United States, you’re not allowed to view the videos on Fancast.

Another gripe for me was the video player and the way it was formatted.  The player is simply too basic to compete with its competitors.  It’s obvious that they either wrote their own player and didn’t put a lot of time into it, or they bought one that was pre-constructed.  Either way, it is generally very short on features and the playback didn’t seem very stable at all.  In fact, the player even does that irritating thing where the slider bar will jump back to the beginning if you pull it too far to the right.

My last gripe is the overall page layout.  It is a fairly attractive website, but it has too many elements on the page and it is consequently very slow to load.  The page architecture is simply too complex and even the simplest flashblocker or adblocker completely breaks the functionality.

Overall, I think Fancast has a ton of potential.  They already have the content, the channel integration, and the seeds of a community base.  The main areas for them to work on are the player and the page layout.  While it’s a nice design, it’s always a mistake to choose form over function.

[rating=3]

What do you think?  It was you, the commenters, who suggested Fancast, so please defend or defile it as you see fit!

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/

• Clicker – The Complete Guide To Online TV & Movie Shows (0)
• Watch Free TV Channels On The Go With KitePlayer (18)
• INTERVIEW with Top 5 Free Movie & TV Shows sites (14)
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• How To Find All The Great New TV Shows Online (10)

First of all, you’ll need to identify which shows you want to watch. If you’re still reading this article, I’m going to assume that you at least already know what you’re missing. Even if you’re not aware of every new show, we’ll get to how you can find new ones in a little bit.

Once you know what you want to watch, you might do some research.  The best place for this is The Internet Movie Database or IMDB.  Contrary to the name, the IMDB has expanded its scope to encompass just about anything to grace big or small screens.  For our purposes you might want to use it to look up which shows are on which networks.  The benefit to using IMDB is that it will also clue you in to show stats like who’s playing who and the concept behind the show.  Another reason to use the database is that they are fairly good about keeping spoilers out of their listings.

If you have determined the network that owns your shows, you can move on to the process of finding them online.  Of course there are less than legal methods of doing this, but nowadays there are fewer reasons to because most of the major shows are already available for free from the networks themselves. 

Finding them on their flash-heavy websites can be tricky, so I’ve compiled a handy list that should (fingers crossed) take you through the fog and straight to the steaming goodness. 

[Note: Some of these sites heavily divide the videos so that each show has its own page.  The links as close to the videos as possible.]

• NBC
• CBS
• FOX
• ABC
• USA
• Sci Fi

Of course not every show will be encompassed by this list because there are a number of really great shows on the smaller networks.  Unfortunately these are a little harder to track down because the digital rights agreements may not have been drawn up for them beyond DVD sales and the like.

There is another option at your disposal.  If all the flash menus are starting to get to you, you can switch over to Hulu, which has largely the same content as the network site, but also has a wide range of other agreements, including entire catalogs of older shows. In fact, here’s the direct link to their alphabetical television listings.

Personally, I love Hulu.Their player is fantastic, with several notable features and neat style choices.  First is the interface. With a translucent simplicity, the player is soft on the eye and doesn’t clash with the video.  Once you’ve got the show started, there is a “lower lights” button that casts a dark filter over the rest of the window. This little add-on, which probably required three lines of code, makes the entire experience a lot better and reduces eye strain.

Even the ads, dreadful as ads are, remain fairly unobtrusive. They stay within the original box, tell you exactly how long they are going to last (so you might grab something in another room if it is a long one) and they are clearly experimenting with new ad models. Whenever an ad comes up, you can actually rate whether or not you like it. Also, occasionally Hulu will prompt you as to whether you want to see one long ad (usually a movie trailer) at the beginning or the normal intermittent ads. Unfortunately the latter option tends to show the same ad over and over throughout the show.

(If Hulu says that you it’s not available in your geographical area then you might want to check out our post on how to watch Hulu episodes from abroad)

Hopefully one of the above options was able to help you find that new sitcom or the season premier of The Office. If it didn’t work out, you’re one of many, struggling to find an easy way to access television online. At this point, rips on YouTube and torrents are the only technological option and they are usually illegal. Even so, keep your hopes up, because sooner or later every network will get on board with online distribution sites like Hulu.

You might also want to check out the MANY past posts on Make Use Of covering online television.   Here are a selection :

Watch Television on your Desktop with Livestation

Internet TV: A Closer Look at JOOST

Socialize Your Television Experience With TIOTI

Ditch Your Cable Company With Free, Legal Alternatives

The only TV and Movie Websites you Need

What are your favourite methods of watching television shows on the internet? Are you a Hulu fan? A Joost watcher?   What shows do you watch?

[Images from papermag.com, NBC, and Hulu]

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/

• Fancast – Get TV Listings & Watch TV Shows Online Legally (14)
• Watch Full Star Trek Episodes Online on YouTube (20)
• Watch Free TV Channels On The Go With KitePlayer (18)
• INTERVIEW with Top 5 Free Movie & TV Shows sites (14)
• Ditch Your Cable Company With Free, Legal Alternatives (232)

So where do you watch stand up comedy online? Well, the only website you’ll ever need for that is Youtube. You will be able to find tons of hillarious clips from the best stand up comedians there. No need to register or pay for anything. It’s free. Search, click and watch.

To make things easier we listed some of the best stand up comedians out there along with the links to their videos. Check them out. In case we missed one, just lets us know in comments.

UPDATE: MakeUseOf put together an excellent list of the best websites for watching movies, TV shows, documentaries and standups online. Download it here. Enjoy!

Russell Peters
Dane Cook
Mitch Hedberg
Dave Chappelle
Katt Williams
Robin Williams
Chris Rock
Jerry Seinfeld
George Carlin
Steve Martin

Katt Williams – Weed

So as you can see Youtube is a great website for standups. In most cases you should be able to find all performances right there.

If you would like to download some standups and carry them on your MP3 players or mobile phone try Anjo.to.

Are you aware of any other video website dedicated to standups? Let us know in 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/

• Watch YouTube Videos on Your Large Screen TV (4)
• Watch Full Star Trek Episodes Online on YouTube (20)
• Top 7 Things To Do Online When You’re Bored (10)
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