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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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Amazon's Linux answer to iTunes is a winner
2 months, 1 week ago
"Are you a Linux user suffering from iTunes store envy? If so, Amazon has a deal for you. While any good Linux media player, like my own personal favorite Banshee, will let you rip music from CDs, there hasn't been a good source to buy music online for Linux players ... until now." -
NCAA to bloggers: Don't post too often
4 months, 3 weeks ago
"In a move already drawing harsh criticism, the NCAA is setting strict limits on how often bloggers at college sports events can post updates from championship games .... " -
Accessibility mashups: AxsJAX fun with XKCD Comics
4 months, 4 weeks ago
"Earlier this year, I blogged about the potential presented by accessibility mashups with respect to delivering web interfaces that are optimized to a user's special needs. More recently, my office-mate Charles Chen and I blogged about our work on AxsJAX as a framework for leveraging Web-2.0 for injecting accessibility enhancements into web applications. -
User Friendly turns ten
6 months ago
"It seems that the User Friendly comic is now ten years old .... " -
Bruno Coudoin on GCompris: 8.4 release imminent, reorganization underway for 8.5
8 months, 1 week ago
GCompris is a fantastic educational program aimed at children. I installed it for a family some time ago, and found myself getting caught up in it as I showed them how it worked. I caught up with the lead developer, Bruno Coudoin, to ask him a few questions about the widely-used GCompris project. -
Congress urges peace talks in Net radio conflict
10 months, 3 weeks ago
Controversial new fees Webcasters say would cripple them are supposed to kick in July 15, but Congress is reluctant to intervene, at least not yet. -
Gonzales: It's time to punish 'attempted' piracy
10 months, 3 weeks ago
U.S. attorney general makes another pitch for a dramatic new rewrite of criminal copyright laws. -
Supernova and the Centrality of Paris Hilton
10 months, 4 weeks ago
Paul Kedrosky writes: "A year ago we would have heard Web 2.0 non-stop, two years ago Wikis, and three years ago Google. Today, however, all of those were most noteworthy by their (almost entire) absence.Fellow panelist Josh Kopelman commented, with some chagrin, on the remarkable number of companies whose demos mentioned Paris Hilton. While I generally agree with Josh on most things, on this one we were on opposite sides.
Sure, I have diddly use for Ms Hilton and the 24x7 coverage of her brief jail visit, but there is a deeper import here. A bunch of blogs that I don't read, like TMZ, are newly winning the traffic wars."
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Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying
10 months, 4 weeks ago
A proposed amendment to the current copy protection license governing DVDs would completely ban all DVD backups, and prevent DVD playback without the DVD disk being present inside the drive.
Linux.com : Entertainment
Building a glossier front end for MythTV
Josh Stewart loves MythTV -- so much so that he is building his own front-end app for it as a drop-in replacement for MythTV's default. The replacement is called Gloss, and although it isn't ready for prime time yet (no pun intended), its OpenGL effects and GStreamer bindings show plenty of promise.
Play multimedia content with style using Entertainer
Every major operating system has more than one media center solution for users who can't spend a day without watching a movie or listening to music. In Linux we're all familiar with MythTV and Freevo, two media center applications that are so appreciated they even have got their own distributions. Freevo is highly configurable, and Freevo 2 SNV builds look promising. MythTV has everything a personal video recorder needs, from scheduled recordings to weather plugins. The thing is, many people need a media center application just to watch Xvid files, listen to their favorite music, and watch family pictures on their television. If this is the case for you, give Entertainer a try.
Enhance your music player with Rockbox
In order to carry samples of my audio and video work to tradeshows, I need to be able to play a wider variety of audio and video formats than is available on any of the pocket devices out there. Fortunately, the open source Rockbox operating system doesn't require sacrificing nifty features like FM tuning and recording or voice recording and playback. And format compatibility is not the only reason one might want to install Rockbox. In fact, Rockbox was developed primarily with another purpose in mind: improving sound quality.
Watch and explore outer space with Stellarium, Celestia, and Xplanet
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth spent about $20 million to go into space, and he never got farther away from Earth than a few hundred miles. Using three free software programs, you can look at and virtually travel to places millions of miles away without leaving your GNU/Linux desktop or paying a dime.
Linux crossword puzzle
We know our readers are a multifaceted lot, so when crossword puzzle author Myles Mellor offered to create a Linux-themed puzzle for us, we thought at least some of you would enjoy it. You can complete the puzzle online, but you must have Java enabled in order to see it. Let us know what you think with your comments.
Com One Phoenix Wi-Fi radio rises from embedded Linux platform
Com One's Phoenix Wi-Fi radio is a home music appliance built on an embedded Linux foundation. Phoenix lets you stream music or play podcasts as easily as you can listen to a car radio, once you tell it what you want to hear. Its ability to play Internet radio is nice -- but is it worth its price?
Making music with M-Audio on Linux
M-Audio has supplied hardware and software to computer-based musicians for 20 years. Its new "make-music-now" line of products, aimed at musicians just getting into computers or PC users with an interest in music, includes a microphone, speakers, drum machine, and DJ mixer deck. Unfortunately, its bundled software, called Session, is for Windows only. Our challenge was to try out this hardware -- specifically the KeyStudio MIDI keyboard and Fast Track audio interface -- with Linux applications. We were half successful.
Album Cover Art Downloader makes iPod a touch nicer
When ripping CDs from my own collection or (shh) my friends', I didn't always bother to include the cover art. Personally, I never considered album art for my iPod all that important. That has changed now that we have an iPod touch in the family. If I'm missing a lot of album art, the experience of virtually flipping through my music collection, something Apple calls "cover flow," is diminished. iTunes doesn't always offer art for albums I didn't purchase from iTunes. Thankfully, a little GPL-licensed application called Album Cover Art Downloader (ACAD) solved my problem.
The original SimCity is now the open source Micropolis
Think you're smarter than the meatheads on your local city council? Now you can prove it -- without running for office -- courtesy of the original city simulation game. Electronic Arts (EA) has released the source code to SimCity under the GPLv3. The newly freed game is dubbed Micropolis, and it is playable in most major Linux distributions.
Free software goes Hollywood
As the Writers Guild of America's strike enters its fourth month, one of its key issues -- the sharing of profits from online distribution -- is encouraging the rise of new production companies that are exploring alternative methods of production and distribution. Along with Hollywood Disrupted and Founders Media Group, these new companies include Virtual Artists, whose goal is to bring free software developers and Hollywood writers together to experiment.
Linux.com's 2007 holiday gift guide
Admit it -- you put off your holiday shopping this year and now it's crunch time and you don't know what to get everyone on your list. Because we feel your pain, we've put together a last-minute shopping guide with ideas for some of your geekiest friends.
Watch some TV with TED
Has the television writers' strike left you with hours of spare time and no way to fill it? Well, put down that book and put the running shoes back in the closet, because TED is here to help. TED is the torrent episode downloader, an open source, cross-platform tool that simplifies the tedious process of searching for torrent files.
Get a daily dose of comics
When I first started learning to read, my primary motivation was to gain the ability to read the comics in my local paper. I had no idea at that time that there were so many comics in the world. Now I know that there are comics all over the Web, but who has time to go to each site each day and read the latest strip? Thanks to the world of open source software, you can gather all your favorite comics on one page automatically, ready for you to read each morning.
Three MythTV Linux distros compared
My Series 1 TiVo is getting old, so I am planning an escape route based on MythTV, a free software system that turns an old computer into a personal video recorder. This week I tested three MythTV-specific Linux distributions: KnoppMyth, MythDora, and MythBuntu. I found MythDora the best overall fit for my needs -- but there are important distinctions between the three that may lead you to a different decision.
Bringing the free software message to TV
As a former course designer and academic, I used to be experienced in talking in front of people. However, one thing I hadn't done until now is appear on television. That, more than anything, is why I agreed to appear on the computer show Lab with Leo Laporte in a five-minute spot about the GNU/Linux desktop. The show is scheduled to appear October 11 on G4TechTV in Canada and the How-To Channel in Australia, with my spot being posted to Google Video on the same day. I won't know if I look savvy or imbecilic until I see how the segment is edited, but the experience taught me several points about appearing on TV in general, and evangelizing for GNU/Linux in the studio in particular.
MythTV users to regain TV guide info -- for a price
The free electronic program guide (EPG) data that Zap2it Labs currently provides to many MythTV users is scheduled to shut down on September 1. Today MythTV users learned how much a replacement service offered by Schedules Direct (SD) will cost.
Editing music scores with free software
Not everyone needs to work with music scores on their computers, but if you're someone who does enter, edit, or store sheet music electronically, you can choose among many free software options.
Battle for Wesnoth is a ton of fun
Battle for Wesnoth is an amazingly addictive 2-D turn-based strategy game with some role playing game elements thrown in for spice. It runs under Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Wesnoth can be played solo, using one of the several single-player adventures (campaigns) available, or over the Internet with other people.
Linux poker online
Poker is everywhere nowadays, from television to books to poker rooms popping up in almost every casino -- and of course, you can play poker online. Unfortunately, many of the most popular sites say they require Windows. However, as with most software strings that bind you to a particular proprietary operating system, these bonds are easily cut.
Why UserFriendly went private again
For many in the computer industry, the UserFriendly comic strip is the first Web page they open in the morning. However, only its most loyal readers are aware that, over the past five years, the company behind the cartoon has wandered into the public equity market, only to return to the status of a private company. Recently, I talked about this journey with JD Frazer, the creator of the strip, and David Barton, vice president of UserFriendly.org. Their account is a practical lesson in the difficulties involved in such business maneuvers -- to say nothing of a testimony to their collective ability to keep their business, ethics, and audience intact.
