Thank God for NPR
You may or may not listen to online radio, but what the Copyright Royalty Board recently decided to raise the fees associated with licensed content. These new fees are so heavy that for the company Live365 internet radio would have to pay over 500 dollars per channel they offer per year PLUS a flat fee per song, per channel, per user!
National Public Radio (NPR) is stepping up to fight these new ridiculous fees. Being a multi-channel internet radio station they would be forced to pay thousands of dollars annually in addition to possibly 100's of thousands of dollars in per user fees each year!
"National Public Radio (NPR) is leading the fight back against the Copyright Royalty Board's (CRB) recent decision to raise royalty rates for Internet radio stations. The organization filed a motion for rehearing with the CRB in response to its March 2 decision, calling into question many of the decision's technical details which NPR and others argue will severely harm Internet radio." ~ Ars Technica
Fight back because what's next?
Goog 411
What can Google not make better? Honestly, it seems that everything Google does, they just do it best. Goog 411 is a new feature that they just released, it's a voice-based automated phonebook accessible by any phone for absolutely free!
You just say the city and state you want to search in, then say any
business or category. For instance I called and said: Bath, Maine.
Then said Southgate Restaurant, it responded asking me if I wanted
to connect for free. Also I was given the option to get information
about the location sent t me via text message, so for instance just
by saying text message at any time while they are talking about
Southgate, I will sent the name, number, and address of the
location.
If you're in a loud busy environment where you won't be heard
accurately, or if your in class or anywhere else where you don't
want to be loud, you can navigate everything using your keypad. The
service even has smart recognition so if you want to search for
toys you can just enter in "8697" and it will figure out that you
meant toys.
MacGourmet
Front Row Hack
Wherever you fall, you probablty don't use Front Row. I know I don't use it very often, but it's a nice thing to have as a wow factor, and on occasion it's fun to use. Well, if you fell into the last category, my newest Helpful Hack tip is a quick and easy way to get front row running on your machine in 5 minutes and you only need to get to get your hands a little dirty for this one.
Note: This hack only works if you have an apple mouse plugged into your computer.
Cluttered Dock?
Got so much junk in your dock that it's hard to keep things in
order? Well I came across this genius (pure genius!) way of
separating your apps up. Essentially all you do is take any file
and change the extension to .app and ignore the warning, apply
anyways. Then just drag the file into your dock where you want to
divide apps. Confused? Look at the picture below and you'll see an
example.
If you can handle making your dock slightly smaller or handle it
being a little longer to accommodate the separators, this is an
excellent way of dividing your dock up so that it's much easier to
remember exactly where an app is on your dock. If you would like
these and more separators, you can download them from
here.
Once you download the .zip file open it, then put the separators
file in your applications folder. Then if you have a dock on the
bottom on your screen use the v-dockseparators folder and choose
which separator you like best. Then duplicate the file as many
times you need separators. For the separators to have no name when
you roll over it on the dock just label the name with spaces. Have
Fun!
Lookin' Stylish!
Well here's a wicked cool Firefox extension,
Stylish
is to CSS (what websites look like) what
Greasemonkey
is to JavaScript (how they react), and unlike other methods of
using user styles, styles take effect almost instantly.
(Here's
a direct install link!)
Here's just an example of a user style I have installed that makes
google searches 100 times easier on the eyes...
Once you have Stylish installed if you like
this user style
you get it, and more like it, at
userstyles.org.
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