Here’s the beatsinspace playlist, great stuff! Streaming and download.
http://www.beatsinspace.net/playlists.html

A new addition to the MP3 mini-player market is SecondhandMonkeys. The site lacks detail; for example some more detailed tech specs would great. But nonetheless at $49.95 you can’t beat it. The come in a myriad of styles, and as the site says there are the size of a Pez dispenser.

Here are some specs for the M128 model.

Plays MP3 music files
Can be used as a USB drive to store any kind of data
Digitally Records voice memos
Organize your music in folders/directories
5 Equalizer Modes
Backlit LCD Display
128mb flash memory
SNR:85db
Output Frequency: +5MW(32ohm)
Frequency Response: 20HZ-20KHZ
Power: 1 AAA battery (included)
Size: 55mm x 22mm x 23mm
Weight: 25g (without battery)
Windows 98 driver included (no driver needed for Win2000/ME/XP)

The Rave MP is coming close to breaking the $100 barrier for a reasonable Mp3 player. It’s a 2.5GB MP3 Player/FM Tuner/Voice Recorder. Not bad at all. Here is where we found the deal.

This is great a “acid” version of Power Station’s Robert Palmer Some Like It Hot. Thanks dsico!

:MP3:

I was really hoping the new beatport.com MP3 website would be a welcome change to the previous version. However, sadly, it is not. The site is 100% Flash making it difficult to navigate and interface with. It’s really too bad, because they have been providing cutting edge independent music released in a non-DRM format. Hell, they’ll even let you download it as a lossless WAV file. It’s pay per download, and the music is well worth it, I just hope they don’t stay with Flash.

As you may already know LokiTorrent has ceased to exist instead the website has been replaced with an ominous warning, depicted below.

There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them.

This website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures. The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity. Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop.

A Dallas federal court has ordered file-swapping site LokiTorrent.com to shut down and provide Hollywood lawyers with access to its full server logs, including data that could expose hundreds of thousands of people to copyright lawsuits.

The Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it had won a quick court victory against LokiTorrent, and was launching a new round of actions against other online piracy hubs. The data provided by the onetime file-swapping hub would provide “a roadmap to others who have used LokiTorrent to engage in illegal activities,” the trade group said.

Hard numbers on the site’s traffic are hard to come by. However, according to researchers at the Delft University of Technology, LokiTorrent was responsible for more than 800,000 downloads in the month of October alone.

MPAA executives said the information could “quite possibly” lead to lawsuits against individuals.

The Barrons are best known as the original pioneers of electronic music. In the 1950s, Louis and Bebe were considered part of the avante-garde performance art scene, making much of there own musical equipment and circuitry. After composing an amazing 4 minute electronic audio montage, they caught the eye of MGM studios, and landed a job as composers for an upcoming film. They were given only three months to come up with a soundtrack for Forbidden Planet. They headed back to there NYC studio and home to put together most of the audio production. The final post production was done here in Los Angeles (Culver City) and delivered to the studio in April 1956.

Bebe and Louis Barron

Here is an update on the Houston incident. We found this very graphic photo of an eye injury, we aren’t sure if it is a photo of Houston or of the Geto Boys rapper who was shot in the eye. Please comment if you know. WARNING: THIS PHOTO IS VERY GRAPHIC.

PSOFT produces a new kind of pitchshifting tool. We don’t have a demo, but it looks pretty good. The prices appear to be in Yen; I imagine you can buy it in the USA. It claims to be able to shift the audio stream in realtime.

New CHRONOStream is the new sonic software that based on the world-class high-quality time and pitch scaling sound technology “PHISYX". It provides the natural and superior time stretching and pitch shifting effect as you likes to all kinds of audio file.

:Link:

Well from time to time we like to take pictures around here. The problem is they always need resizing before the are posted. Along comes the extra nifty ViewNResize, a kick-ass JPEG resizing program from Mr. Xavier Poulain. Requires the .NET Framework.

ViewNResize v. 3.0 by Xavier Poulain
Size: 386k WinXP 02-Feb-2005

ViewNResize is a multilingual Jpeg file viewer that allows you to easily resize images by resizing the program’s main window. Once the image’s size suits you, you can save it, send it directly by email without changing your original or put it in an image basket to send it later with other pictures. Requires the .NET Framework.

“The devil made him do it", representatives for R&B singer Houston said in a statement explaining how his eye was seriously gouged. Houston’s publicist issued a statement Thursday night denying reports he tried to take his life by jumping from a London hotel window last week. The statement said Houston “found himself in the midst of a spiritual battle against the evil that runs rampant in the entertainment industry.” Houston, whose 2004 single I Like That was used in a McDonald’s commercial, was found in his London hotel room with a serious eye injury. He was briefly in hospital.

“I went to check on him before going to bed and I saw blood on the floor,” Houston’s bodyguard, Marco Powell, said in the statement. “Houston was lying on his bed with a towel over his face and I removed the towel to find his eye hanging out. He said he had to get the devil off of his back and that’s the only way he could kill the devil.”

Houston, whose full name is Houston Summers, is a Los Angeles resident. He was raised strictly Christian and was “constantly at odds with the temptations that come with success in the music business,” the statement said.The incident prompted a statement from Bushwick Bill of the rap group The Geto Boys. In 1991, a severely intoxicated Bushwick forced his girlfriend to assist him in a suicide attempt. She shot him in the eye but he miraculously survived.

“Fame will make you crazy,” Bushwick’s statement said. “I want Houston to know that he is in my prayers and that I will ask God to give him peace of mind and peace of heart and I hope his eye heals as well as his mind and his emotions.” Houston was recuperating Friday at his Los Angeles home. The condition of his eye was not known. “I still love all my fans. Please pray for me and know I’ll be back with some more hits,” Houston said.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The recording industry sued Gertrude Walton, accusing her of illegally trading music over the Internet as “smittenedkitten.”

But the lawsuit was filed more than a month after the 83-year-old woman died in December, and her daughter says Walton hated computers, anyway.

A group of record companies named Walton as the sole defendant in a federal lawsuit, claiming she made more than 700 songs available for free on the Internet.

Walton’s daughter, Robin Chianumba, lived with her mother for the last 17 years and said her mother objected to having a computer in the house.

“My mother wouldn’t know how to turn on a computer,” Chianumba said.

She said she faxed a copy of her mother’s death certificate to record company officials several days before the lawsuit was filed, in response to a letter from the company regarding the upcoming legal filing.

“I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park (where she is buried) to attend the hearing,” Chianumba said.

A Recording Industry Association of America spokesman said Thursday that Walton was likely not the smittenedkitten it’s searching for.

“Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago,” said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy. “We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case.”