2003.11.16 tidbits:
i was kind of surprised to receive an email the other day from MP3.com stating that, since they'd just been purchased by CNET Networks, Inc., they'd be shutting down their service on Dec. 2nd. now, it'll be replaced by a new service of some kind, though what that entails remains to be seen.
the reason this surprises and shocks me is because it seems that so many independent artists used MP3.com as their primary "website", or at least as a hosting server/controller for their online MP3 tracks. from what i can tell from the email, none of the existing information will be transferred to the new mp3.com, forcing thousands and thousands of artists to completely re-create their web presences and to track down and ensure that anyone linking to their former mp3.com pages updates to the new links.
my first thought when i read the email was "whoa, it's going to be a firestorm!" subsequent searches for info indicate that the storm hasn't been as big as i thought so far, but it's only been a couple days. we'll see what happens.
sticking to the music theme, WinAmp 5 has slithered out of the dark hole of the pseudo-public beta (AOL users only) with beta version 2. WinAmp 5 is small and resource conservative like WinAmp 2.x was, but incorporates some of the better features of the (largely) failed WinAmp 3. unfortunately, one of the things 5 has dropped is the WinAmp 3 plugin APIs, so i've had to switch back to DoSomething as my plugin of choice for the "MP3 of the moment" feature that closes the most recent post (and which is also viewable in the "remote" webcam windows).
finally, you might remember me mentioning way way back when about the SyncIT utility i'd found. it was and always remained the single most awesome tool i've yet used on a computer. it fulfills its purpose without compromise or extra unnecessary crap. well, unfortunately, this tool also ended up switching from being a freeware thing to a subscription based thing, and i was just kind of morally opposed to it. especially considering that when they started charging for it, they'd not updated the client in over a year. so, i had to quit using this awesome piece of software. well, now, as it turns out, after struggling with their economic model and hardware problems for a while, they've decided to release it into the wild world of open source. the new bookmarksync project has updated the client and the server software, and is providing a version that can be run on php/mysql setups. i managed to get it set up on x13design.com in about 30 minutes, and am now, once again, quite a happy camper. a happy camper with impeccably synch'ed bookmarks.
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| categories :: | Computers/Tech - Cool Links - Music - Pleased/Like |
Seth said:
Somebody went to the trouble to write yet another bookmark-only synchronizer? Don't even get me started…
rsync, man, rsync. And if you want something pretty, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
m@ said:
well, syncit's been around for more than three years, so it's not like they've *just* gone out and written it.
also, unison and rsync are both simple file syncronizers. actually, rsync is an even simpler "mirrorer" if the unison site is to be taken at face value.
syncit has the advantage, for windows users, obviously of being able to keep in sync both the IE favorites directory (which are URL filesystem objects) and Netscape/Mozilla bookmarks files on a single machine, as well as allowing syncronizing to a central server.
so, if i make a change to or add a bookmark in Firebird, IE will automatically get that change or addition propagated to it's Favorites directory. The change will also be propagated to the central server, where any other client (that logs in with my user info) can get the latest changes. By this method, i have NS/Moz & IE bookmarks syncronized across three different machines. All without me even having to think about it.
unison would be a good replacement for the current batch files i have running on my machines now that upload and download other pertinent files to & from a central server, but it couldn't replace syncit without adding some cross-browser aware, bookmark specific functionality.
it would be interesting to see if they could add some functionality to the client that would allow *direct* syncronization… i.e. not having to use a central server, rather going in a P2P fashion.
of course, then i wouldn't be able to log into the syncit server software to access my bookmarks from any ol' web browser.
Jennifer said:
Yeah – we just found out about the mp3.com BS a few days ago. Sucks, but it's just as well, it was getting to be an ugly site anyway. Seems vitaminic (Iuma-related?), garageband, and soudclick.com (apparently the fave) are all better-than replacements. FYI, one member on a music-related forum I frequent said (about soundclick):
"They don't limit the amount of songs you post, they allow flash on their site, pictures, lyrics, stats, charts. You have full and instant control over the content on your pages, no waiting for apporval from staff or anything for mp3 uploads like mp3.com or garageband. The only thing is no song can be larger than 10mb. I've used it for years."
m@ said:
sounds like soundclick is the way to go. i figured there had to be some alternate sites out there, and i'm sure they're all going to get more business soon.
i've been to IUMA or some related sites before, and from what i can recall, it was pretty crap. mp3.com wasn't all that great (it constantly pissed me off that there was no easy "login" link, and that it tried to make you put in your email address every damn time you wanted to listen to a track) so i'm really not all that sad that it's gone. but it is certainly going to send some artists scrambling to get their stuff together and up somewhere else.
i've had the luxury of running my own websites since i've been in a band, so i've been able to host my own stuff. makes it much easier, and you can't go wrong with your own domain name.
Seth said:
The whole idea of using rsync is as one part of a system, integrated with a fifteen-minute perl script, you can do all the stuff that your bookmark syncing software does. It's true, though, that I wasn't thinking in terms of keeping bookmarks in different browsers. The way my workflow is, it seems totally alien to keep bookmarks in anything other than my full-time browser. (As an aside, Mozilla and Firebird will use the same bookmarks file, as well as the same cache, if you tell them to.)
m@ said:
yeah, under normal use i suppose it wouldn't be all that necessary to have the cross-browser sync features, but, as a web developer, i've got different browsers running all the time, so sometimes it's nice to be able to just pick the "closest" open & available browser window and to be able to access all my bookmarks without having to think about it.
in fact, the simple DOS & CuteFTP scripts i put together to upload stuff to the server were working fine, but i missed having my IE Favorites mirror my Moz bookmarks.
and i knew about the "bookmark" sharing abilities of Moz/Firebird (in fact, Netscape 4.x would let you open up and use a bookmarks file outside of your profile, so it would even "share" bookmarks files with Moz/FB, though 4.x's bookmarks file format is a little elderly and not as featureful).
In fact, on my machines here in the office (i've got two on my desk, one for dev, one for testing (bog standard windows & browser installations), and i'm actually using the "My Documents" folder on the testing machine (shared over the network) as the "My Documents" folder on my dev machine, and the bookmarks.html file sits in that folder and is shared between Firebird (dev) and Netscape 6.2 & Netscape 4.76 (test). it's a little cooky, but it works!
I *didn't* know about the cache sharing thing however… that's a pretty nifty idea. of course, since we've high speed 'net connections, i typically set my cache to 5MB or less. don't really need the cache if the pipe's thick enough.
brian. said:
There's a good joke about pipe thickness there, somewhere, I'm sure. I just can't force myself to make it…