YouTube is reportedly planning on launching its own on-demand music service, something said to be similar to Spotify but with video tossed into the mix. Furthermore, there won’t be much of a wait for the service if the leak pans out, with the sources saying that the music service will launch sometime towards the end […]
According to Billboard, YouTube is aiming to make its own Spotify-like subscription music service. There’ll be a free streaming service (which, uh, should differentiate from free YouTube) and a premium tier that’ll be like Google Music’s All Access streaming service. Basically, every company wants their own music streaming service!
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Hey remember Twitter Music
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This article was written on May 12, 2008 by CyberNet.
Microsoft/Mac Monday
Today we’re taking a look at Apple’s Front Row vs. Windows Media Center. We’re not really sure if Front Row can be compared to Media Center because right now, they serve different purposes. Front Row is more of an interface for controlling the media already on your computer while Media Center will do that in addition to recording television shows. They’re both media hubs though, so we thought it would be interesting to see how they compared.
Before we dive in, we thought we’d first mention the fact that while we may be using MacBook Pro computers for our everyday use, we do have a PC dedicated to running Vista’s Media Center. It has 3 tuners and enables us to record 3 shows simultaneously, and was one of the best investments we’ve made.
Front Row is an application for Apple computers that is similar in some aspects to Windows Media Center. The first time it was announced was back on October 12, 2005. It now comes shipped on all new Mac computers.
Windows Media Center originally debuted in 2002 for Windows XP. Now it comes with Windows Vista Ultimate and Home Premium versions of Windows Vista.
One thing that Apple did really well with Front Row is transitions. These transitions start the moment you open up Front Row because it nicely fades-in to display the menu. Their interface is nice, but I noticed it’s missing a few things. First I should say that a lot of people use the Apple Remote to navigate Front Row, but for people who don’t want to use the remote, they’re stuck using a keyboard. There’s not a way (that we know of) to use the mouse which is pretty inconvenient. Navigation with a keyboard is a little more difficult, and you’ll end up using the Escape key frequently.
The biggest downside to Front Row if we’re comparing it to Windows Media Center is that there is no way to watch or record live TV.
Content that you can access via Front Row include:
Overall Front Row is nicest for watching movie trailers or maybe listening to your music but really it’s just a remote-friendly, fancy interface for iTunes. If they’d allow you to rent movies from iTunes via Front Row, that would be fantastic, but they don’t. They also don’t allow you to watch YouTube videos from there which is something that can be done on Media Center through an add-on, or even using Apple TV.
One of Media Center’s best features is the interface. Microsoft really did a fantastic job here. Another thing they did a great job with is packing a lot of features in under the hood. Not only does it come loaded with a bunch of features, but there are many add-ons that give you even more features like commercial skip and WebGuide which we’ve mentioned before. To Apple’s defense, because they don’t provide a way to record and watch live TV, there’s really no need for add-ons like commercial skip.
Another awesome thing about Media Center is that they’ve got quite the community surrounding it. There’s a website at www.thegreenbutton.com where you’ll find thousands upon thousands of people who are there to post and answer questions. There are even members who work on the Media Center Team that will stop by to help answer questions. While Apple does have a developing community out there, a lot of them are for Mac computers in general and not specific to Front Row.
Features:
Unlike Front Row, users are able to navigate through Windows Media Center using a mouse, and in fact, when they use a mouse or a keyboard, other navigational buttons appear on screen to make it a little easier.
If we were asked to decide which was better, Front Row or Windows Media Center, without question we’d choose Windows Media Center. This is one of those things that Microsoft really has done a great job with in multiple aspects. Maybe Apple will “borrow” a few of their ideas to improve Front Row in the future?
While Windows Media Center may be superior, it also depends on what you’re looking to do. If you don’t have a tuner card and you don’t have any intentions of getting one for your computer, there’s no reason why you can’t get most of the same functionality out of Front Row as you would with Media Center.
Those of you looking for a nice way to manage your media, graphically both applications look nice and get the job done. If you’re looking to record TV, Media Center is the only way to go. So now our question for you is, do you think Apple will go the route of recording television, or will doing so distract people buying episodes of TV shows from iTunes which ends-up bringing in money?
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
An exciting thing happened in the world of dinosaur bones this week: News broke that a rare Diplodocus longus skeleton will go to the auction block next month. This must have thrilled everybody’s favorite beat jockey, Diplo, who took his name from the dinosaur.
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Jabra is back with another extension to its wireless stereo line of products: the Jabra Solemate Max. With the latest offering comes a decidedly Jabra-centric design customers will recognize following closely on the heels of the Solemate Mini unveiled in early September, as well as the original Solemate we got our hands on earlier this […]
This article was written on March 05, 2008 by CyberNet.
One of our favorite options for listening to music for free online with no strings attached is Songza. We did a review of it back in January and one of the things we liked most about it was its simple interface and the option they offer to create playlists. As you may recall, Songza really is just a nice-looking front-end for YouTube and a handful of other sites but it works, and thus far, they haven’t really run into legal issues. Just recently the founders of the service were interviewed by Download Squad and they talked about some of the improvements that they’ve made over the last several weeks.
First on the list of improvements is that users who have signed up for an account can now actually save playlists. Previously playlists could be created, but users were not able to save them. When you go to add songs to the playlist, just be sure it’s a good copy before you actually add it. Some of the songs fail to load or have other issues which is a problem that I ran into while creating my playlist. To access the songs that you have saved, just click on “My Profile” (assuming you’re logged in to your account) and then your playlist will be shown on the right side of the page.
Other changes you’ll notice are with the interface and the new opportunities to make sharing songs with friends even easier. When you click on a song and the menu pops-up, the share options include to link to the song, twitter it, embed it on your site, or email to a friend. The addition of being able to Twitter a song is great and gives you yet another reason to have a Twitter account. 🙂
Overall the changes they’ve made are welcome, although I did come across what seemed like a lot of songs that failed to load. I don’t remember have as many issues when we initially reviewed it back in January as I did today. This is just one of those issues that comes along with the service because of the way they get their songs. For a free service with no strings attached though, I’m still impressed.
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
This article was written on December 04, 2007 by CyberNet.
We’re all familiar with the basics of how a search engine works – you type in a query and it retrieves relevant links to places around the web. It’s simple, easy to use, and helps us find what we’re looking for. Given this, I think you’ll enjoy a site called BeeMP3. BeeMP3 is a search engine for finding MP3 files on the Internet. Much like a regular search engine, they don’t host the files but direct you to them. This makes finding songs that you want easy.
Whether you’re looking for a song, an album, an artist, or you want to browse between all three, searching takes just seconds. When you visit the site you’ll see a big search box where you’ll enter in what you’re looking for. I typed “Kanye West” into the search field and it returned 322 different results. Several other searches turned up the results I’d expect as well.
BeeMP3 certainly isn’t unique – there are a few similar services out there. What is unique though is that they will show you the bitrate of the file which some of you will really appreciate. A bitrate over 128,000 (128KB) tells you that the quality of the song will be good. Just yesterday when I tried the service they weren’t providing the link to the download, you’d just click on the file and the “download file” box would appear with your option to save it. When I checked back today, they now provide the link so that you can paste it into a new window should the download not start automatically.
As you might expect, there is loads of copyrighted content that it aggregates, so download at your own risk.
Source: Lifehacker
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
Until now, augmented reality has been mostly used as a way of giving you more information about the world around you, but a new iPhone app uses your surroundings to remix the music you’re listening to.
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Last week, Spotify turned five years old, and to celebrate, the company released a batch of impressive data. But buried within the fun facts is a tidbit that’s just as depressing as it is surprising: 20-percent of Spotify tracks have never been streamed.
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