Free Music from 50FootWave

Those of you into the alt-rock scene in the 90s will remember Kirstin Hersh and The Throwing Muses. Hersh has a new band called 50FootWave and they are offering their new EP free online under the Creative Commons Music Sharing license. Both MP3 and FLAC format is available on the site and you can also print out CD sleeves if you plan to burn them. Cool band, cool music. And it's free.
Link

Simplifying Your Life

There seems to be this trend of folks trying to get rid of clutter and to simplify their lives. So if you share the same philosophy and want to make your life simple, you can head down to this web site where you can read this e-book called "Live Simple: Radical Tactics to Reduce the Complexity, Costs, and Clutter of your Life". A PDF version is available for a small price and if you want to keep it simple, you can read the hypertext version for free.
Link

Reuters' Top 40 Pictures of 2005

A picture is worth a thousand words. Some of the most powerful images are taken by photo-journos around the world documenting some of the most important events happening today. Reuters has put together the 40 of their most important and interesting pictures of 2005. See history captured in these wonderful pictures.

read more | digg story

Star Wars: The Best of 2005

2005 is the year that the Star Wars movie saga comes to a close. We finally found out what and how the young Anakin turned into the most feared lord of the Empire. This year has to be considered a really important year for Star Wars and the official web site has come up with a list of the 10 best things to happen Star Wars this year. Some of the items which made the list include the release of Star Wars LEGO video game and the fever over Clone Troopers. Great read for Star Wars fans.
Link

Ultima V is back!

If the mere mention of Ultima brings back fond memories of the days where you spend your time fighting your way through a fantasy world where imagination prevails with none of the fancy 3D graphics you have today, you'll be glad that you can now revisit the world of Ultima. This time, it is with all the fancy 3D graphics, no less. A group of fans have remade the classic Ultima V using the Dungeon Siege engine. Called Ultima V: Lazarus, this rebirth of a classic shows how powerful a dedicated community of fans can be.
Link

Open Source Software for Mac

Open Source Mac is a web site that collects a number of the best OS X open source software that is available. Some of these are really gems and I would be at a lost to do some of my computing work without them.

How Narnia works

With the movie adaptation of C S Lewis' Narnia Chronicles hitting the big screen, there's a renewed interest in the wonderful world that Lewis has created. The crew at Howstuffworks.com has also got into the act and provided background information on the world of Narnia. If you think you're a Narnia expert or you're just getting into the world, here's a good place to start to find out things you don't know about Narnia.
Link

Roger Ebert's 10 Best Movies of 2005

It's time for top ten end of the year lists for everything. If you're a film buff, you'd be taking note of what film critic Roger Ebert is choosing as his 10 best films of the year. It's also a good starting point to pick out what are the films you need to catch before the year ends.

read more | digg story

Music Lessons on the Net

Want to learn music? Do it on the Net! This is a flash-enabled site that teaches you how to read music, and it even has a ear trainer to help to learn that perfect pitch. Perfect for those who want to be a self-taught musician.

read more | digg story

P2P on record high

Slyck News is reporting on the popularity of the P2P networks. You'd think that RIAA's actions will have an impact, but it seems that those strong arm tactics are not really working.

The RIAA may be winning over the courts and legislators, yet these victories are proving hollow. Their courtroom and legislative successes are yielding little in the way of tangible benefits as the P2P population continues to grow. If there's one message associated with the continued growth of file-sharing, it's that people continue to want unencumbered (DRM–free) access to music. Many have argued that Napster and Rhapsody, and to a lesser extent, iTunes, simply do not provide that.

It’s interesting to note the file-sharing population is continuing to march forward despite the rapid decline of the FastTrack network. As corrupted files and lawsuits continue to plague this network, the P2P population has grown aware of these concerns and taken refuge in a multitude of other communities. Smaller private networks, eDonkey2000, Gnutella, BitTorrent and Ares Galaxy have all benefited from FastTrack’s decline.

read more | digg story

Photoshoping a photo

We know that with digital photography, it is easy to retouch pictures. Here's a flash movie showing you the various ways that a photo can be altered. It shows a model and then how "virtual" surgery is done to make her have bigger breasts, smaller hips and even fuller lips. Bottom line? Don't believe every picture you see in magazines.

History of video games lawsuits

Not happy? Sue. Send in the lawyers, damn it! 1UP.com has a piece that looks at the history of lawsuits filed in video games history. If you legal eagles have an interest in the game battle fought in the courtroom rather than in the virtual world, read the article before you get sued.

Alternative search engines beyond Google

The wonderful Lifehacker site has a list of top 10 alternative search engines that you can make use of to find the things you want on the web. Some of the search tools on the list include Isohunt for torrent files, FoodieView for recipies, and Ditto for image search. Search and ye shall find...

2005's top Web 2.0 Apps

Web 2.0 seems to be the buzzword these days. So it's no surprise that the folks at ArticleDashboard.com has a list of the top innovative Web 2.0 apps this year. Some items on the list are items that I'm already using like Digg. Most of the others are still new and sounds like items that I should try. Web 2.0 sounds exciting.

Update: There's another top Web 2.0 apps list available on Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog. Plenty of web-based apps that you can try out, including to-do lists, online file storage, etc.

Google into searching for music

On the Google Blog, the folks at Google have announced that they are introducing Google Music. The service will allow you to key in the name of a band, album, or song and you'll get info relating to the music you're searching for. You can already do that using the normal Google searches but this helps you to narrow down the search significantly. Great for music fans.

Drum session

Caught it at Orchard Road, a bunch of drummers drumming in the festive season. And a curious uncle looking on.

Treo 650 Boots Linux!

This is another feather in the cap of the Linux OS. A hacker has managed to get the Penguin to boot on everyone's fave smartphone-the Treo 650! Pictures are included so it is really cool.

read more | digg story

Factual errors in Wikipedia abd Britannica: Almost a tie.

The scientific magazine "Nature" has compared 42 articles in both the encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Experts in their field were given the task to check for factual errors. To the surprise of nature, both encyclopedias were containing similar amounts of errors, at least for science related articles. Interesting... maybe traditional print is just on par with the collaborative effort of Wikis?

read more | digg story

War video made in ASCII

ASCII art is pretty neat. ASCII video is even better. This is a music video-like piece of flash animation made with ASCII and it's all about war. With the rocking Rammstein track, it's pretty cool.

read more | digg story

iPod fan bumps iPod mini to 8GB

The now-defunct iPod mini tops out at 6GB. However, this guy has changed that and upgraded his iPod mini to 8GB. Well, if you're into DIY and are not worried about the warranty of you device, follow the links to perform your own iPod surgery and give your mini more storage space.