Category: Music (Page 10 of 11)

Free Today: Wondershare Music Converter

May 14, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

If you haven’t already, go bookmark Giveaway of the Day now. Right now. As its name suggests, the site offers free stuff everyday, namely software. The only catch? You have to download and install said software before the end of the day.

Today’s giveaway is something you may have been looking for for some time, or at least unwilling to buy. The Wondershare Music Converter is, again, exactly what the name suggests: a program for converting music formats, even those pesky DRM-enabled versions.

Now that the major downloadable music outlets are selling the wares DRM-free, its not such a big deal. If you’re like me, though, you’ve probably got plenty of older music you’d love to unlock, especially if it’s free. If that’s not enough, WMC also allows you to extract the audio from DRM-enabled videos. So get out of here! Go make us a soundboard from those old episodes of Dexter!

Source: CNet

Audio, Music, Websites

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X-Mini Happy Supports MP3 Playback

April 25, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

If you’re looking for a tiny, alien-looking portable speaker, look no further than the X-Mini Happy. This latest update of the funky and hyper-functional speakers includes an SD slot for hardware supported MP3 playback. Of course, you can connect your iPod, iPhone, what have you via the headphone jack on the back.

The speaker utilizes a 40mm driver to put out sound, powered by a rechargeable battery. The unit boasts up to 11 hours of use as a speaker, six in hardware playback. As you can see from the picture, it also sports some serious geek-cred. The original X-Mini retailed for under $30. We’d expect a similar price when the X-Mini Happy drops in Q3.

Mobile, Music

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New Walkman Gets It (mostly) Right

April 16, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

If you’ve been to a gym in the last decade you’ve witnessed at least one great human struggle – how to get music to my ears without ruining my workout. As iPods continue to shrink, it’s easy to strap one on your arm and forget about it. That is, unless you want to move. At 6’3″ I have yet to find a pair of headphones that will both stay in place while I’m biking and remain tangle-free while I work my dumbbell sets.

Enter Sony’s latest Walkman, the NWZ-W202. Sony took the bright yellow radiophones of yesteryear and slimmed them down to an ultralight 1.3 ounces, replaced the FM receiver with a 2GB mp3 player, and added a rechargeable battery that lasts up to 12 hours. The best feature (you almost sold me, Sony) is easily the quick charge, which yields 90 minutes of playback from a 3-minute charge. Now I don’t have to postpone my workouts while I wait on my iPod to charge. So why won’t I be buying a pair?

Apple, Music

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Sweet Site of the Week – mint.com

March 20, 2009 / Gary Fairchild

Sometimes it’s hard to sift through the millions of websites out there to find the fun, unusual, creative, and especially, the useful ones. And word of mouth can only take you so far. Well, leave it to Gadget Teaser to give you a hand in your search. Once a week, we’ll highlight one of our favorite sites that not everyone knows about. I like to think that we here at Gadget Teaser are performing a public service for you… ~~the avid gadget blog reader~~ the general public.

This week’s Sweet Site of the Week is: mint.com

If you’re looking for a place to track all your personal finances, set and monitor reasonable budgets, and find ways to save money at the same time, then try mint.com.

Mint.com is a safe and anonymous website that tracks your spending and budgets. It performs most of the tasks that you get from expensive off the shelf software in a free, accessible, and secure environment. In fact, I find it’s easier to use.

First, the setup is a breeze. Just create an account and in just a few minutes you can add all your checking, savings, credit cards, loans, and retirement accounts into the system. You can also add your assets like your home and your car. In fact, mint.com will calculate your home value for you, sum it up along with all your other assets and debts, then give you an estimate of your total worth. Pretty cool.

After the initial set up, mint.com takes over. It will give you suggestions for ways to save money. After you set yourself some budget goals, you can create all kinds of alerts to make sure you are keeping on track. Mint.com will also send you weekly or daily updates regarding what’s happening across all your finances. I even got an email once letting me know that my credit card interest rate was increasing. The email told me I should call and see what’s up and even provided me with the 800 number for that card. That sold me right there.

Oh, and for those of you wondering why I haven’t mentioned Apple in this post, mint.com has a great iPhone app too. Free, of course.

So check out mint.com. You, and your wallet, will be glad you did.

Apple, Apps, iPhone, Mobile, Music, Websites

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Product Recommendations – iPod Shuffle (3rd Generation)

March 15, 2009 / Gary Fairchild

Apple has been dominating the news lately. They just released a new iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro. iTunes recently got an update to version 8.1. The new iPhone OS 3.0 is going to be unveiled on March 17. Apple’s core OS called Leopard is rumored to be replaced by Snow Leopard in June. And there are rumors of Apple purchasing large quantities of 10” touch-screen displays for what might be there first try at a netbook.

Amidst all this, Apple just released their 3rd Generation iPod Shuffle. And the changes from the previous version are quite large for an extremely small device.

As seen from the picture on the right, the 3rd Generation Shuffle is quite small. Half that of the previous version. And you may notice from the picture that all the buttons have been removed from the device. Now you only have a port for your headphones, an off-straight-shuffle slider for turning the device on, and a clip to attach it to your clothes. That’s it. No really, that is it. Where did the rest of it go? To the headphones.

Apple moved the volume and next-last buttons to the headphones. They also added a feature called VoiceOver. The basic premise is that you can adjust the volume or change songs with a click on the headphone wire. Should you want to switch playlists (yes, the Shuffle finally has playlists) you can press and hold until the VoiceOver takes control. It will read to you the current playlist then read to you other playlists. When you hear the playlist you want to listen to, click again and it will start playing it. It does this same thing to tell you the current song you’re listening to. Also, the Shuffle now differentiates between audio books and music, so when you shuffle your songs it won’t play you a chapter of War and Peace.

My recommendation: Thanks, but no thanks. The new features are neat, but sound completely impractical. The best use of the Shuffle is when you’re active. I can’t imagine trying to navigate through songs and playlists while going for a jog. Also, if you misplace the headphones, you get no controls whatsoever. Sure it will play music, but you can’t change the volume or skip songs. What good is that?

I think Apple got a little too fancy on this one. They could have easily put some controls on the device itself. I would recommend purchasing or keeping the 2nd Generation Shuffle and treat the 3rd Generation as a novelty.

Apple, iPhone, Music, News

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