Free your music from your ipod!

A neat little article from wired.com will tell you how to do it a number of different ways, which can be found here. Here is how to do it on a mac:

1. Launch the Terminal by going to Applications > Utilities and double-clicking on Terminal.app.

2. Paste in these lines of code:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

Source: wired.com

Waste Away @ These Sites Today! Vol. 1

Maxed out on DaxFlame videos and Chocolate Rain mashups over at YouTube and can't find anything to do on the web, think again! Here are some sites that you can waste a few hours of your life on:

Cameroid - A web cam app, that allows you to add special effects to live web cam shots, its pretty much like a web version of apple's photo booth. (web cam not included).

Viscosity - Modern art generator. Become the next Picasso without leaving your home.

Fake Photo - Yes you read that correctly, create your own fake photos. This site has a bunch of stock photos that are just waiting for you to add your own witty tag lines and crappy slogans .

Blabberize - Do yourself a favor and just click the link for this one.... you will be glad you did.

Instructables - Want to get rid of your old floppy disks? Instructables can help you with that and a lot more. User generated step by step instructions to make all kinds of stuff.

BubbleSnaps - Oh snap! It's bubble snaps, upload your own pictures and add talk bubbles to them.

Soundboards @ Ebaumsworld - This is more like the last resort if you have maxed out on the above links.

Detail Blind Consumers

Unless you dismiss all sources of media, it is hard not to have seen some sort of advertisement for Dell's new Inspiron Notebook series. Dell's new notebooks come in what seems like a thousand different colors well its only 8 so called "vibrant colors". Yet where are the stats for this damn notebook? All the ads want you to chose a color to meet your personality, even Dell's website goes to great length to make a flash window to help you find the optimal color that will help express yourself. Dell's most recent catalog hides the stats in a small removable booklet within its center pages. Even on their website, on the Inspiron page only a few details are listed: Bluetooth, webcam, wifi, blueray. Well, blueray is nice yet what kind of processor is going to process all that blueray data? After digging deeper into this Dell conundrum I found the Dell Inspiron notebook series sport (by default, without any customization) an Intel Core Duo 1.5 GHZ or in the two cheaper models an AMD Athlon 64 2X Dual-Core 1.7 or 1.8 GHZ processor. That sounds decent yet chugin blueray data... I would have liked something with more muscle. Oh wait! no blueray, only DVD/CD combo drives come with the basic models. Then why the heck on the main Inspiron page they list blueray right above the prices of the various models? If you look closely there is no blueray drive that comes with the basic packages nor webcams nor bluetooth. Yet maybe that stuff doesn't matter to the average Dell consumer, how could it matter? The damn thing comes in 8 vibrant colors.

Edgar Wright interviews Superbad cast

If you don't know who Edgar Wright is, google him and become enlightened.

Funny Back2School MasterCard Ad

High Rez Wallpapers and more @ InterfaceLift

InterfaceLift.com was been around for some time now. They offer high resolution wallpapers up to 2560x1600. InterfaceLift's offerings don't end there, they also have mac icon sets, windows themes and many more interface enhancements. As of recently they have just offered high resolution iPhone wallpapers, check it out.

Apple releases new products 08.07.07

Here it is plain and simple:

New iMac:

20-inch Intel 2.0GHZ Dual Core/ 1GB RAM/ATI Radeon HD 2400 -XT 128MB/ 250GiG HD
20-inch Intel 2.4GHZ Dual Core/ 1GB RAM/ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 216MB/ 320GiG HD
24-inch Intel 2.4GHZ Dual Core/ 1GB RAM/ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 216MB/ 320GiG HD
24-inch Intel 2.8GHZ Dual Core/ 2GB RAM/ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 216MB/ 500GiG HD




New Mac Mini:

Intel 1.83GHZ Dual Core/1GB RAM/ 80GiG HD
Intel 2.0 GHZ Dual Core/1GB RAM/ 120GIG HD










New Mac Keybord

Ultra-thin anodized aluminum enclosure with low-profile keys







iWork and iLife '08

Your Music Anywhere You Can Get Web Axx

Mp3Tunes offers unlimited space to for your music for free, as long as each song is under 10 megs. Once your tracks are uploaded you can stream them to any computer with internet axx. You can upgrade $39.95 year for Premium features which includes unlimited file sizes and unlimited streaming (which leads me to think that streaming your tunes down the pipe is limited under the free account). Mp3Tunes also directs you to sites that offer music, one for free: sideload.com which finds music that is already posted on the internet and adds it to your "music locker" and the other site Mp3Tunes/store allows you to buy DRM free indie tracks for 88 cents.

Jean-Yves Blondeau aka Rollerman - Extreme

pay-as-you-go-has-got-to-go

Both Microsoft and Google have released pay-as-you-go software subscription services. Google has released "Google Apps Premier Edition" for $50 a year you get, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, Page Creator and Start Page with more space (10gigs), no adds, 24/7 assistance and many more small perks. According to arstechnica.com Microsoft has started testing subscription based software in South Africa, Mexico, and Romania. $15 a month can get you use of Office 2003. In an industry that is all ready hurting due to piracy is a pay-as-you-go business plan going to work, or are most companies and schools going save money by purchasing old copies of Microsoft Office at a discounted price and using it until it is obsolete. Or are other open source ideas like Openoffice going to catch on with major companies and education institutions? In a world full of subscription based technology (internet, TV, Tivo, cellular service, electricity, netflix) is there anymore money left for the consumer shell out at the end of the month for the most up-to-date Microsoft Office? Or does the consumer just care about getting the cheapest deal at Newegg.com?

TV Service For Xbox 360

Microsoft is going to introduce an IPTV service for Xbox 360 March 5th-7th at The Connected Home Expo in London. The IPTV can act like a Tivo and record TV shows while you are pwning on xbox live. Users will also be able to chat to friends via live while watching their favorite shows. [More...]

Dusting off the HiFi Five Blog

The next couple of days I am going to clean the HiFi Five Blog and add some new features so we can start blogging again. You will notice when you try to sigh in to your old blog account that blogger has been upgraded and merged with you google account.

More to come ...

Updated 02.23.07

Label Tags have been added to 80% of all the posts on the HiFi Five Blog and a navbar on the side has also been added so you can easily get to the label sections. The labels that are in place now are subject to change according to public opinion.

Channels To Watch on YouTube

• renetto - (paul robinett) : a 39 year old guy from ohio who is "self employed" yet embraces the youtube community as a whole, makes funny videos (under one of his alter egos), comments on important happenings going on at youtube, tracks down other "youtube celebs" and interviews them, starts contests and gives away free web cams. He is a must add to your subscriptions.
• watchman55 - The watchman (a cross between the grim reaper and judge judy) picks apart the video comments posted on youtube on a case by case basis. He is honest, to the point and always right.
• geriatric1927 - 79 year old grandpa from the UK who lived through WWII and wants to share his life stories with everyone willing to listen. He is the British grandpa you never had and a must add to your subscriptions.
• Love The Chad (The Chad) - he is annoying, loud and a poor dresser yet a entertaining at the same time. This 25 yr old east coast guy has created a show all about .... himself. His stunts go from dressing up as a bear at John Mayer concerts to trying to get on to American Idol.
• papadizi (aleksandros) - 46 yr old sheep herder from Greece who desperately wants to sleep with American women. He makes his videos on location and they are quite hilarious.
• okgojorge (The Band Ok GO) - This group has used youtube to its fullest extent, they unveil their newest music videos on youtube hold contests and promote others to do the same, hands down the best music channel on youtube so far.
• LisaNova - Entertaining film shorts defiantly produced by film students. All the videos star Lisa Nova. Her shorts consist of poking fun at other youtube users to addressing social problems. Probably one of the better professionally produced channels on youtube.
• virtualmagician (Marco Tempest) - A self proclaimed "camera phone street magician" what ever the hell that is, his tricks are not about magic yet more about figuring out how he pulled them off.
• blamesocietyfilms - best shows and short films on youtube, home of "Chad Vader - Night Shift Manager" darth vader working as a manager at a small grocery store, this is a must see.

Just Saving the world.... / Peter Jackson + Xbox

1. Here is a link to a set of stories about 20 nuclear (pronounced: nu·cle·ar ) mishaps that might have destroyed the world. Luckily there are some sane people that stopped this from ever happening.
2. King Kong director Peter Jackson has agreed a deal with Microsoft to create what he describes as a "new form of interactive entertainment". (more...)
   

Improv Everywhere

Very funny! Improv Everywhere, causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places, their last "scene" took place at a Best Buy in New York where 80 people dressed up in blue shirts and khaki pants (the best buy employee outfit) entered the store to cause nothing but chaos.

Watch Lost For Free

ABC is allowing free streaming of all their new tv shows, which are ad-supported online. The service is currently free and does not require any registration but is limited to US users only.

The service currently allows a user to stream full episodes of Desperate Housewives, Lost, Alias, or Commander-In-Chief for free. The videos are delivered in a Flash format and are not available for download. Each show currently features 2 30 second advertisements.

WATCH

Oil Vs. Ethanol

With record high prices at the pump, more and more people are starting to look at alternate fuel sources. Ethanol, also known as ethyl alcohol or grain alcohol, it is a flammable, colorless chemical compound is being looked at as a realistic alternative. Ethanol is produced by fermenting and distilling starch crops that have been converted into simple sugars. Feedstocks for this fuel include corn, barley, and wheat. Can you imagine being able to grow your own fuel? This is what scares major oil companies into trying to pass legislature to slow down the process of making ethanol cars and fuel readily available. Some people say the Ethanol is a net loser and will make little profit thus making it pointless to produce, yet new technological breakthroughs have made the production of Cellulosic Ethanol (produced from a great diversity of biomass including waste from urban, agricultural, and forestry sources) easier, cheaper and profitable. Right now on the east coast of the U.S., gas stations are making E85 available at the pump. E85 is a fuel blend of 85 percent ethanol and just 15 percent gasoline. This is a small step forward yet still leaves us dependent on oil, which is a source of energy that you can't just grow more of when it runs out.

More Links:
http://www.ethanol.org : American Coalition for Ethanol. ACE is the grassroots voice of the ethanol industry
http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/ : The Alternative Fuels Data Center is a vast collection of information on alternative fuels and the vehicles that use them
http://www.e85fuel.com/index.php : National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition
http://www.gm.com/company/onlygm/ : GM's Trendy Ad campaign for E85, They like to call it "going yellow".

HiFi Five Website

After 3 weeks of waiting for a googlepages invite, I finally got one. Now the HiFi Five blog has a website that will run along side it, helping do things it cannot.

Here is a link to the main site:
http://hififive.googlepages.com/home
Here is a link to the H5 internet video award list (with now clickable links):
http://hififive.googlepages.com/videolist

Note: new sidebar on the blog that links you to main pages on the hififive site. --->

Apple - Boot Camp

Apple released today Boot Camp (beta) which allows users to boot mircosoft's windows xp or Mac's OS X on any intel based Mac computer. This is very cool allowing Mac computers to run any operating system. Apple again staying one step in front of microsoft.

The First Video Awards List

Yes, that is right! The first H5 Internet Video Awards list has been compiled. There is still some categories that can use some more videos, so please post more under the comments section of this post.

Double Click on the list to see it close up.
OR
Look in the comments section of this post for the text version of the list.