Pressing F5

For a few months now I’ve been using streamripper, a plugin for Winamp, to rip and save to disc tracks played on Shoutcast radio.

The great thing about streamripper is that the plugin slices the files properly and even embeds the ID3 tags. With the exception of the odd spill over from the previous track, it’s perfect! A great way of getting the latest tracks for your MP3 player.

Thanks to the above technique I’ve discovered a whole bunch of artists I would never have come across otherwise. Here are just a few examples:

Both awesome tracks…

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Ban the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies for digital content.”

Details of petition:

“Recently APIG has performed a public inquiry into the use of DRM which has recommended clearly labelling DRM infected products (among other recommendations). We want the government to go one step further and ban the use of DRM in digital content. We believe DRM removes the freedom of choice between competing products and locks users into using a particular service. We do not believe that digital content should be cost free, but it should be provided in such a way that a person who has purchased a copy of it has control over that copy.”

As I mentioned a few weeks back, the first HD-DVD rip was made available via bittorrent thanks to the work of muslix64 (available at doom9.org).

Now, torrentfreak.com is reporting that the first Blue-Ray movie is also available for download via bittorrent.

It would seem that despite not actually breaking the AACS protection mechanism muslix64 and friends have achieved the same as Jon Johanson back in 2001 for DVDs.

Now for the score update…

Pirates/Common Sense 2 – Hollywood 0 … oh dear!

Technorati Tags: Blu-Ray, torrents, high definition, HD-DVD, muslix64

It seems all you need these days to get 4 million euro funding is to copy somebody else’s idea, have a good graphic designer and buy a cheap dedicated server.

… on that note I’m off to build dating4bikers.com

http://www.techcrunch.com/

I personally use the following tools to convert my DVD collection to smaller compressed version for media players. Personally I own a Sandisk Sansa e270, Orange C600 smartphone and Sony PSP.

All of the above devices only play videos encoded in certain ways.

I recommend the following tools:

It bugs me that people spend $25 on some shady tool sold online that does a worse job than the tools above. Worst of all, the tools are mostly repackaged versions of open source tools! Arrrgh!

Tutorials on how to use the tools will follow shortly.

Found this site via google whilst looking for a password decoder for Filezilla. It has a huge collection of apps that will help you retrieve a lost password.

http://aluigi.altervista.org/

Technorati Tags: password, password recovery, filezilla, security

Lee Stranahan got me thinking the other day about selling stock footage online. I’ve been keen to explore the options available on the Internet for a while.

It all started when I created some IDs for One World Week at Warwick University. Specifically I created some funky intros to One World Week TV which Warren, Tom and I produced. It was the first time Warwick University had a TV show!!!

The kind of things that are hot at the moment are 720p and 1080p high definition footage for DVDs and corporate videos. Loops for backdrops are also sought after.

How to create your own stock footage? Tools you you need are as follows:

Your options are to sell simple film/video footage, stills or something you’ve created with the help of any combination of the above tools.

Currently I’ve found the following site which allows you to sell your material easily:

I’ll post some examples once I’ve had a chance to get creative. :)

Here is a video on my close friend Tom Carter working hard on the first version of Presetcentral.com. It was recorded at our student digs in Coventry… ooh how I miss it!

[flv:/video/tompsc.flv 320 240]

Technorati Tags: Lightwave 3D, 3D, Graphics, Presetcentral.com

I found this excellent article on ArsTechnica earlier today. It talks about how DRM isn’t about preventing piracy, but rather about minimising your rights as a consumer and maximising and creating new revenue streams for the publishers.

www.arstechnica.com

Technorati Tags: DRM, iPod, music, piracy, Apple, Microsoft, Hollywood, P2P

As they say in South Park… Screw you Apple, screw you!

Some technology loving guys over at Modaco create a nice little theme for Windows Smartphones that looks like the iPhone interface. Innocent right? Well not in the eyes of Apple Inc. They’ve sent the guys a cease and desist letter and asked them to kill the downloads and screenshots.

Why am I blogging about this? Because it sucks. Apple’s stance on these kind of things just don’t make sense, even from a business point of view. So unless people blog about Apple’s shitty attitude and behaviour they’ll simply get away with it!

The original story from TechCrunch.com

Update: Ok, so I kind of missed the point here… the key point is that Apple are pursuing bloggers that are linking to the Smartphone theme and even the screenshot.

If I can find it I will link to it myself.