mp3 on S Anand

How to extend Markdown with custom blocks

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 09:37:48 +0000

One problem I’ve had in Markdown is rendering a content in columns.

On Bootstrap, the markup would look like this:

<div class="row">
  <div class="col">...</div>
  <div class="col">...</div>
</div>

How do we get that into Markdown without writing HTML?

On Python, the attribute lists extension lets you add a class. For example:

This is some content
{: .row}

… renders <p class="row">This is some content</p>.

But I can’t do that to multiple paragraphs. Nor can I next content, i.e. add a .col inside the .row.

Enter markdown-customblocks. It’s a Python module that extends Python Markdown. This lets me write:

::: row
::: col
Content in column 1
::: col
Content in column 2
::: row
::: col
Content in column 1
::: col
Content in column 2

This translates to:

<div class="row">
  <div class="col">Content in column 1</div>
  <div class="col">Content in column 2</div>
</div>

Better yet, we can create our own custom HTML block types. For example, this code:

from markdown import Markdown
from customblocks import CustomBlocksExtension

def audio(ctx, src, type="audio/mp3"):
    return f'''<audio src="{src}" type="{type}">
      {ctx.content}
    </audio>'''

md = Markdown(extensions=[
    CustomBlocksExtension(generators={
        'audio': audio
    }),
])

… lets you convert this piece of Markdown:

md.convert("""
::: audio src="mymusic.ogg" type="audio/ogg"
    Your browser does not support `audio`.
""")

… into this HTML:

<audio src="mymusic.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
  Your browser does not support <code>audio</code>.
</audio>

markdown-customblocks is easily the most useful Python module I discovered last quarter.

Streaming audio to iOS via VLC

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:50:59 +0000

You can play a song on your PC and listen to it on your iPhone / iPad – converting your PC into a radio station. As with most things VLC related, it’s tough to figure out but obvious in retrospect.

The first thing to do is set up the MIME type for the streaming. This is a bug that has been fixed, but might not have made it into your version of VLC.

Go to Tools – Preferences.

Click on “All” to see all the settings.

Under Stream output – Access output – HTTP, set Mime to audio/x-mpeg.

At this point, you should restart VLC.

As I mentioned earlier, you might not need to do this if you have new enough a version of VLC that auto-detects the content’s MIME type.

Re-open VLC, and go to the Media – Stream menu.

Click Add and choose the file you want to stream. Then click on Stream.

Click Next.

Select HTTP and click Add.

Select Audio – MP3 and click on Stream.

At this point, the audio is being streamed at port 8080 of your machine. You can change the port and path in the menu above. (To find your local IP address, open the Command Prompt and type ipconfig.)

Open Safari on your iPhone or iPad, and visit http://your-ip-address:8080/

I haven’t figured out the right codec and MIME type to do this for videos yet, but hopefully will figure it out soon.

Comments

Shibu 19 Sep 2014 10:12 am: You should try out any of the light weight DLNA servers….

Audio data URI

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:41:29 +0000

Turns out that you can use data URIs in the <audio> tag.

Just upload an MP3 file to http://dataurl.net/#dataurlmaker and you’ll get a long string starting with data:audio/mp3;base64...

Insert this into your HTML:

<audio controls src=”data:audio/mp3;base64...”>

That’s it – the entire MP3 file is embedded into your HTML page without requiring additional downloads.

This takes a bit more bandwidth than the MP3, and won’t work on Internet Explorer. But for modern browsers, and small audio files, it reduces the overall load time – sort of like CSS sprites.

So, on my bus ride today, I built a little HTML5 musical keyboard that generates data URIs on the fly. Click to play.

Comments

Fabio Mazarotto 9 May 2013 8:07 pm: Can you confirm that it no longer works in Safari >= 6.0?

Downloading songs from YouTube

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:11:36 +0000

Five years ago, I built a song search engine – mainly because I needed to listen to songs. Three years ago, I stopped updating it – mainly because I stopped listening to songs actively, and have been busy since. For those of you who have been using my site for music: my apologies. These days, I don’t really find the need to download music. YouTube has most of the songs I need. Bandwidth is pretty good too even when on the move. But when I do need to download music, this is my new workflow.

Find the song on YouTube. (Misspellings are still an issue, but you’ll usually find what you need)
Download the video. Keepvid is the simple option. youtube-dlis the geek’s option (for multiple downloads)
Use VLC – the swiss-army knife of media – to convert the video into an MP3.

That last step requires a bit of explaining. It’s very simple once you know how, but it took me a few months to get it right. So here goes. Select the Convert / Save option in the Media menu. Click on Add to open file you want to convert. You can pick a track from an disk as well if you want to rip an audio CD or a DVD. Choose the file. Click on Convert / Save. Type the destination filename. Make sure you type the full file name, and not just the name of the folder. Select the output format you want under Settings – Profile. You can tweak the bitrate with the settings button, but I usually don’t bother. When you click on the Start button, the file will be converted or the CD will be ripped. You’ll see the position marker move fairly fast.

The only problem I have with this method is that I can’t seem to do batch conversions easily enough with the GUI. Does anyone have any other workflow they like? Update (31 Jul 2012): Aditya Sengupta suggests the following: (should’ve guessed VLC would have something up its sleeve)

vlc -I dummy $FILENAME --no-sout-video --sout "#transcode{acodec=mp3,5Dab=<wbr>AUDIO_BITRATE,channels=2}:std{<wbr>access=file,mux=raw,dst=$NAME.<wbr>mp3}" vlc://quit

Comments

408wij 15 Mar 2012 1:48 pm: Coincidentally, I just ripped a bunch of MP3s from AVIs last night. I used a Windows program called Format Factory. It supports batch conversion. Some AVIs failed on first past, so I reset their status in the queue and reran.
vB 16 Mar 2012 5:31 am: Hey Try using freemake. The best as per me. You paste youtube URL and select the format you want to save on your machine and it does the rest. btw - found your website pretty neat, do not remember what was i looking for when i discovered it couple of days back, but now have put it on my reader.
Ramanujam 24 Mar 2012 1:18 pm: Alternatively, you can skip all the steps and use one of the numerous sites that will directly give you the mp3. Here is one that works pretty well. http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
Pravin 16 Mar 2012 5:50 pm: I’ve been using this nifty little freeware for a long time and i would suggest it to you if you are interested in an all-in-one video downloading and format conversion. The feature set is really impressive for a freeware. It has also got support for GPU acceleration which might prove use full for those who want to work while conversion is on. http://bit.ly/aayV0
Pravin 25 Mar 2012 12:48 pm: @Sanketh normally flv’s have ~32kbps audio bit rate if you could go for 480p mode you will get ~128kbps(Audio CD Quality) audio bit rate
Pankaj 10 Apr 2012 8:57 pm: Seems you take a lot pain in getting few MP3s. :P Try freemake software (freeware) or even simpler this one http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
Sanketh 20 Mar 2012 3:49 pm: Roughly what bitrate are the youtube flv encoded at?
Ganesh Kondal 4 Apr 2012 4:54 pm: youtube-dl works like a charm. Thanks dude. Using it in Ubuntu 11
Chaitanya 20 Mar 2012 9:01 am: Hey Anand This blog post has been very useful. I just used Freemake and it’s cool and easy. Also, converting few videos using VLC Player. Does it take as much time as the length of the video? Or conversion is slow because I am doing it on my pretty old spec’ed laptop.
Sendhil 17 Mar 2012 6:18 pm: I heard of this one-step workflow from my colleague: http://www.singyoutube.com/
Deepak 17 Mar 2012 7:11 am: I have used Listen to Youtube (http://www.listentoyoutube.com/). Works very well, especially for my son and his nursery rhymes and we dont want to see the computer screen for a long time.
Ganesh 29 Mar 2012 10:50 am: If listening to mp3 is what you want then there are several free mp3 search sites. I use www.mp3skull.com You get a lot of options with various bit rates, and can listen to the song before downloading it.
Vishal Dalmia 24 May 2012 6:46 am: http://musicable.com/ is a simple site that does the download easily with no downloads or installation required.
Vijay Gnanaraj 30 Sep 2012 12:29 am: The next best option wud be IDM, internetdownloadmanager, which can download any video (almost from any website) playing on ur screen
Streaming audio to iOS via VLC | s-anand.net 13 Oct 2012 4:51 pm (pingback): […] listen to it on your iPhone / iPad – converting your PC into a radio station. As with most things VLC related, it’s tough to figure out but obvious in […]

Recording online songs

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000

In the 1980s, we rarely used to buy audio cassettes. It was a lot cheaper to record songs from the radio. It’s amazing that in the 2000s, this technique seems to be less used than before.

If you wanted to record a song that was streamed online, you could go through the complex procedures I’d mentioned earlier to download online songs, or you could use the 1980s technologies. Get a tape recorder, connect the headphones of your PC to the tape recorder’s microphone using a stereo cable, and record to your heart’s content.

Except, of course, that tape recorders are rather outdated. And with the right software, your PC can act like a tape recorder. Here’s how you can go about it.

Download Audacity and install it
Download Lame and save it
Open Audacity and select “Wave Out” as the source
Play a song online and click on the Record button. Press the Stop button when done
File - Export as MP3. (The first time, you need to tell Audacity where you’ve saved Lame)

That’s it. You can convert anything your computer plays into an MP3 file. (The general rule in digital media is: if you can see / hear it, you can copy it.)

OK, lets’ do this more slowly.

1. Download Audacity and install it.

Audacity is a program lets you record and edit music. Just visit the link above (or search on Google for “Download Audacity”) and install the program. This is what it looks like.

2. Download Lame and save it

When you record something with Audacity, you’ll usually want to save it as an MP3 file. Lame is another software that lets you do that. Go to the link above, download the ZIP file, and unzip it in some folder. (Remember where you unzipped it.)

3. Open Audacity and select “Wave Out” as the source

You can choose which source to record from in Audacity. Do you see the “Line In” in the screenshot below? That’s the source from which Audacity will record sound from. Usually, your PC will have a “Microphone” socket, and may have a “Line in” socket. It may also have a built-in microphone. Depending on what sockets and capabilities your PC has, you may see different things.

One of these sources will probably be “Wave Out”. That lets you record any sound played by your computer. So if you want to record a song your computer’s playing, what’s what you should choose.

Not all sound cards have the “Wave Out” option, though. Many laptops that I have used don’t seem to have this option. If that’s the case with you, there’s a fairly simple solution. Just buy a stereo-to-stereo cable (shown below) and connect your headphone socket to your microphone socket.

This transfers everything your computer plays back into the microphone, and you can select “External Mic” as your source.

Buying this stereo cable has another advantage. Rather than connect one end to your computer’s headphones, you can connect it to anything: your old cassette player, your radio, a microphone, whatever. So that means you can now:

Convert your old tapes to MP3
Record songs on the radio as MP3
Record songs from the TV / DVD player as MP3
Record live conversations as MP3
Record phone conversations as MP3
etc.

4. Play a song online and click on the Record button. Press the Stop button when done

That’s easy. The Record button is the red circular button that’s third from the left. The Stop button is the yellow square button that’s second from the right.

5. File - Export as MP3

When you’ve stopped recording, you can actually do a bunch of useful things with Audacity.

The first is to adjust the volume level. Go to the Effect menu and select Amplify. Then you can try different amplification levels to see how it sounds.

The next is to trim the audio. Unless you’re really fast with the keyboard, you probably have some unwanted sound recorded at the beginning or the end. You can select these pieces by dragging the mouse over the wiggly blue lines, and go to the Edit menu and pick Delete.

Lastly, you’ll want to set the sound quality. Go to Edit - Preferences and under the File Formats tab, set the bit rate under the MP3 Export Setup section. (If you don’t know what rate to put in there, 128 is a safe number. If you want better quality, increase it. If you’re short of disk space or want to mail it to someone, decrease it. Based on my experiments, even a good ear can’t tell the difference at 128. I use 64 or 96. My ear is pretty bad.)

All of the above was optional. If you just wanted to save the file, go to the File menu and select “Export as MP3”. The first time you do that, you’ll be asked to mention the folder where you saved lame_enc.dll (which is where you unzipped Lame.) Show Audacity the folder, and that’s it.

Comments

Vivetha 26 Sep 2008 4:03 am: Hai Anand,

Thanks lot for your technical supports and guidlines. Still I couldn’t able to understand what have to do for recording my skype conversation. Can you help on this?

I use Acer 2413 laptop which has one headphone port and another microphone port. I have Stereo to Stereo to cable. Can you tell me what the next step to proceed for recording Skype conversation, and next for recording online songs?

Thanks & Regards
Vivetha
Madurai
S Anand 26 Sep 2008 12:51 pm: @Vivetha: This link explains how to record Skype conversations:
http://www.voip-sol.com/15-apps-for-recording-skype-conversations/
Preet 27 Sep 2008 10:12 pm: Hello Anand,

Thank you for the updates.
Can it download all Online songs from all sites?
The Lame site says as follows: “Once you have unzipped the archive, you will have a file called LameLib or libmp3lame.dylib”
However after downloading I am not getting the above files in the zip folder. There are 2 notepad files and one dll files in the zip folder.
Could you please advise me what to do next.
Thanks and Rgds,
Preet
Chennai
Preet 28 Sep 2008 3:39 am: Also Anand one more help…

The wave out option is not appearing in the Audacity version 1.2.6 which I downloaded.
Thanks and Rgds,

Preet
Chennai
S Anand 28 Sep 2008 4:48 am: @Preet: You need to copy the DLL file (lame_enc.dll) to your C:\Windows\system32 folder. (Or any other folder would be fine, as long as you remember to tell Audacity where the file is.

If “Wave Out” does not appear as an option, your sound card doesn’t support that option. Your only option is to use the stereo cable.
Ashwani 18 Nov 2008 4:54 am: hi anand
thanx for ur support
i have a proble, no any option highlighted in ‘‘SELECT COURCE’’ area

plz told me solution
here i see recordind & save that but without sound

Thanx & rtegards,

Ashwani Shukla
ssr 3 Dec 2008 2:14 am: how to download songs from www.devotionalsongs.com
It is a challenging job?
>kk; 9 Dec 2008 9:58 am: hi anand,
great site and very helpful.
My sound card does not support “Wave Out” so i bought a stereo-to-stereo cable, exactly as the pic you’ve put.
After connecting the ends to my headphone and mic slots, i tried to record, but no positive results.
The options shown by audacity both before and after plugging in the cable are “Front mic, Mic Colume, CD Volume, Line Volume”.
I’ve got a Logitech webcam,which is the “Front mic” i think, and it does record my voice when i record after chosing that as the option.
How do i go about recording playback of whatever songs i play on my PC using audacity using the cable ?
Any help is greatly appreciated. (….u’re on vacation..)
keep up the good work !!
-kk
S Anand 9 Dec 2008 8:35 pm: KK, try plugging the cable into each slot (line out / mic) and try all
options: “Front mic”, “Mic Volume”, etc. I usually do this hit-and-miss, and
something eventually works.
tk 29 Jan 2009 10:59 am: Hey

My audacity doesn’t even have that drop down menu. Its just a gray box…any ideas?

Thanks
S Anand 31 Jan 2009 5:57 am: In that case, the sound card probably doesn’t support it. I’m afraid
you may have to do it the old-fashioned way: play it on one computer,
connect the headphone socket to another computer’s mic socket, and
record it on the second computer.
swapna 6 Mar 2009 12:32 pm: Hi, Am Indian classical Music singer . I would like to sing and record my songs which people must be able to listen it on internet. Can you please tell me how it is possible . Thanks
S Anand 6 Mar 2009 2:25 pm: Swapna, just record your songs on to a tape recorder. Then connect its headphone socket to a PC’s mic socket. Install Audacity and select “Microphone” or “Line in” as the source. Play the tape and press the red record button. When done, press the stop button and save the file from Audacity. You can upload the file to sites like odeo.com
Purushothaman 8 Mar 2009 1:38 pm: Hi, How can I record the conversations and online-music class in skype?
S Anand 8 Mar 2009 4:06 pm: Here are some ways of recording Skype conversations: http://www.voip-sol.com/15-apps-for-recording-skype-conversations/ I haven’t tried any of them myself. If they fail, you could always download Audacity, select “Wave Out” as your input and press the Record button during the class.
S Anand 23 Mar 2009 7:44 am: This might be because MusicIndiaOnline is down. That’s where I’m getting this songs from, ultimately. It’s a pity that MusicIndiaOnline is down quite frequently these days. Could you please try again when their site is up?
Valavan 23 Mar 2009 12:16 am: Hi Anand, I’m unable to download the songs of “Dance of Shiva” by Sudha Raghunathan from your website s-anand.net/carnatic. I’m using latest ver of firefox. I’m getting the error “Couldn’t match M in” after saving the file name in local disk. I tried in i.e. 8 also and got the same error. Please help me in downloading the songs…….
Kapil India 13 May 2010 5:17 am: Ahaan…why record that way … simply using windows Sound Recorder and double clicking Volume Icon in taskbar with Recording Device selected as Stereo Mix will do the job and by default it can support mp3 at 56Kbps or else download Lame or other Mp3 encoders and use it in sound record…also some WinAmp Plugin will do that for you too. Simple Kapil

Playing sounds backwards

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000

You can play a video backwards and still recognise the scenes quite well. Can you do that with sound?

I tried it on this Bryan Adams clip of Summer of ‘69 (mp3). When played backwards (mp3), it almost sounds like Arabic!

Instruments sound weird backwards too, like the guitar played backwards and drums played backwards.

It’s seems obvious once you see the wave file. The picture below shows the guitar. The sounds are clearly not symmetric left to right.

Whereas this guitar is a lot more symmetric, and doesn’t sound too different backwards.

So how come we can’t recognise sounds played backwards, but can recognise video played backwards? (Initially, I thought it was a trivial question. But I couldn’t find a trivial answer. The question may be subtler than it looks.)

Comments

B anand Prasad 25 Sep 2006 12:35 pm: its nothing to do with the technology Mr. Anand let me give an example dnana ….you just spell it… it sounds something like (d-na-na) now if we know that reversing it could(possibly) result in Anand — dnanA, then we could recognize all backward sounds its just that we r not acustomed to hear sounds backward. now practice daily some words which are often used like “good morning” “thanks” now say them to someone in a correct situation…90% of them will recognize it.. thats it my friend….sorry for reversing “Anand” name….its my name too
S Anand 25 Sep 2006 1:48 pm: Anand, if I’ve understood you right, we don’t recognise sounds backwards because we’re not used to hearing them. Agreed. My reasoning was: we’re not used to seeing things backwards either. How come we’re so much better at recognising those? A part of the answer is, we recognise sounds mainly by their movement in time, but images by their spread across space. But I wonder if there’s more to it…
ND 26 Sep 2006 3:07 am: I think this may have to do with the fact that seeing consists of detecting multiple facets like motion, pattern etc. The brain may have more data points decompose and “meaningfully” analyze backward. While hearing consists of analyzing the frequencies and amplitude implying lesser data points to “meaningfully” analyze backward with the same speed as visual stimuli. Caveat - Just my guess!
S Anand 26 Sep 2006 6:23 am: Hmm… ND, that’s a possibility! Certainly, in terms of information content, there’s more coming in visually than aurally.
ND 27 Sep 2006 12:42 pm: I asked three intelligent folks (an american, a german and an indian) to read “eye”, “racecar”, “malayalam” and “never odd or even” and waited for their reaction. Got blank stares! But it was sitter when explained. Guess some humans find it difficult to recognize a palindrome while reading and speaking. Taking a few million huge steps to infer humans normally normally don’t even try to process sound or reading alphabets backward. Is it easier to recognize a popular word like one’s name or a tune like Happy B’day when spoken or sung backward? A related front and back concept - I have always wondered why the bar showing s/w installing moves from left to right. And the same when uninstalling also. Is it convention? Why not show something more perceptive like a container getting filled or getting drained?
Sudeep Nair 20 Nov 2006 5:40 am: Anand, I feel that the fundamental difference between a reversed text and reversed sound is that the text is still completely visible to the eye at once, and so there is a subconscious process where the brain is able to decipher the text by trying out some permutations, whereas in case of sound, the individual notes reach the ears and disappear. They do not remain “static” or “stationary” for the brain to be able to try some reverse permuations of individual notes and identify the original sound. This reminds me of another observation that in case of English text, the reader is able to decipher the words if the first and last letter of every word is kept fixed and all other letters in between are jumbled. Msot raeedrs wlil be albe to udnreatsnd tihs snetncee atlohugh the lteerts are jbulmed.
Anonymous 20 Nov 2006 6:15 am: If we extend this logic from text to video, I think there is some degree of “persistence of vision” which allows the brain to “refer back”, unjumble and make sense of video images, but there is no persistence of sound. So in addition to anand prasad’s point about “familiarity of words”, and ND’s point about “more meaningful data points”, I would think that “persistence of images” is a major factor helping us understand visual images better than sound.

MP3 bitrates and sound quality

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

At what bitrate should you encode your MP3 files? Listening tests show that at 256kbps, you can’t tell the difference. But that’s with 2 amplifiers and big speakers. What about headphones?

I tried an experiment with my cousin, who has the best ear for music that I know. We ripped a good audio CD of his at 128 kbps. He put on a pair of headphones (the kind that fit into your ear) connected to my laptop. I played the first half a minute of the original and the ripped version 10 times, in a random order, asking him to guess which was which. Result: 5 correct and 5 wrong. He couldn’t tell the difference.

We tried again, ripping at 64kbps this time. Same experiment, and surprisingly, same result – 5 correct and 5 wrong.

Conclusion: With a pair of headphones, even a good ear can’t tell the difference between a 64kbps MP3 and an original CD. So, if you want to cram in more songs into your iPod, just re-encode them at 64kbps. You’ll easily shrink the size in half, as most of them are at least 128kbps.

Comments

Madhu 13 Feb 2006 5:05 am: How good were the headphones? Also i think the sample size is a little small:0
S Anand 13 Feb 2006 7:54 am: The headphones were cheap ones I bought in Bombay. Besides, this isn’t a sampling thing… if he can’t tell the difference, I’m pretty sure no one I know can. I certainly can’t! What I should’ve done, though, is cut the same encodings back to a CD and played it on his system. THEN we’d have really know.
Venkat 14 Feb 2006 5:42 pm: U’ll find out if played in the system. But, the purpose here is to compress in a mp3 player, which anywhich way we are using with headfones right?
sLaSh 16 Feb 2006 9:41 am: A Short History of Nearly Everything…. is that really a “English Fiction”?????
S Anand 16 Feb 2006 10:04 pm: Sorry – corrected that.
Dhar 11 Mar 2006 12:09 am: Err, was this a variable bit rate encoding or a constant bit rate encoding that you and your cousin experimented with?
S Anand 24 Mar 2006 3:42 pm: Constant bit rate. I don’t know how to encode VBR.
Milind 9 Apr 2006 12:27 pm: 1] What headphones you used? [2] What music you listened to? [3] What Soundcard was there? [4] Finally Wat is your cousin’s qualifications as far as music engineering is concerned? Please don’t feel bad, but almost any person when explained the difference, after that can tell the difference. Still you are correct somewhat in saying this. Caught off guard they almost sound same.
Vaduvur Kumar 26 Feb 2007 12:38 am: Ya,its correct. I too tried on this some time. I do not care much on this as I have a good size of harddisk.
Skip Kite 25 Mar 2009 2:48 pm: This is probably a dead topic but here goes: The whole purpose of mp3’s is so you can take them with you on small players… not so you can reburn cd’s out of them to playback on your 1000 $$$ home stereo system. I’m a bit tired of reading post after post from snooty Audiophiler’s who say “Excuse me but there is a difference in quality” when I think that most of these AP’s are not listening to Baroque, Classical or even something from the late Renaissance…(where sound quality really matters) but are probably listening to Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Lil Wayne, or any number of punk bands out today… I listen to everything between Renaissance music to Late 90’s and haven’t noticed a big deal of difference… so what’s the point of having mp3’s if you are going to encode every piece of music at 160 or higher. Shouldn’t we try and find the right settings that balance quality and size. I also did various tests with different bit rates and didn’t notice much depreciable difference so now I just encode everything at 80kbps so that I save on space and it is still pretty good to ok quality. good post S anand
M 20 Sep 2009 10:03 pm: My friend swears that on his headphones (while they are excellent quality, they can’t be better than a good stereo system), even 256 mbps is not even a high enough bitrate. I’ve never believed him. This further reassures me.

Windows Media Player 8

Thu, 05 Apr 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Windows Media Player 8 lets you convert audio & video files into its new format. It compresses better than MP3, apparantly.

Legality of illegal MP3s

Mon, 22 Jan 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Sweden has ruled that it’s OK to have links to illegal MP3s, so long as the server is in a country where illegal MP3s are legal. That’s in stark contrast with France vs Yahoo. In fact, the norm is that linking even to the front page of commercial sites needs permission sometimes. A court in Utah ruled that providing links to copyrighted material could constitute copyright infringement. Better check out cyberlaws and ensure compliance with copyright rules on the Internet.

Violation is often in the eye of the beholder. “Anyone who makes derogatory references to others (or their sites, products or services), however it is done, invites trouble.”

CD-Recordable FAQ

Thu, 07 Dec 2000 12:00:00 +0000

Want to record downloaded MP3s into an audio CD? Want to take home software? See the CD-Recordable FAQ. Rookies, see Josh’s page