Anthony Baxter pointed us to Deezer.com (formerly Blogmusik.net) – a free music download site which he said offers tracks at twice the quality of the new DRM-free tracks you pay to buy on iTunes.
The site is fully legal and promises to “pay artists and their producers through a revenue share based on our advertising revenues”. It was created by the folk behind French site Blogmusik.net, which looks have to folded earlier this year under copyright “issues”.
Along with free music, Deezer lets you create and share track lists and music through their embedded players. But for a music site to work for you, they have to offer music you like, so check it out and see what you think.
Thanks Anthony! :) More »
Here’s one for the foodies out there. Dan Warne has discovered a website called WebMenu, which he describes as a Digg for restaurant menus.
One of the nicest features, which made me laugh out loud, is the concept of “your fridge” — if you like the menu of a particular restaurant you can “stick it to your fridge”. That is gold.
The site allows restaurants to upload their menus, which can then be rated and commented on by users. It also has handy stuff like restaurant opening hours and maps.
This website is like Digg for restaurant menus
Thanks Dan, I can’t wait to start bagging out crap service at my local eateries perusing the recommendations of other users! :) More »
If your workplace is using Microsoft’s portal based collaboration and document management system, Sharepoint, this may be of interest. Pia Waugh, FOSS advocate and one half of the Waugh Partners consultancy, made an interesting post which rounds up some links to articles discussing Sharepoint lock-in issues, and looking at some open source alternatives.
Sharepoint is scary. People that use it quite like it and are blissfully unaware of the sticky technology and licensing trap they’ve allowed into their environments. It provides some useful functions that could be found in many applications or bundled applications, however the trap is that once you deploy it, Microsoft have you pretty much under their thumb. You have to use their technologies, you have to use their office suite, their operating system, their data formats. It is very hard to move away from.
She also followed up with a link to a ZDNet story: Jive goes head-to-head with Microsoft’s SharePoint More »
You will have seen our post about Yahoo! Mail finally leaving beta and rolling out some new features. I’ve just noticed a story on Computerworld (New Yahoo Mail exits beta, rolls out improvements) which seemed to suggest that we might not get the SMS feature here in Australia. They’ve announced a few places which will get it, and said the rest are dependent on deals with local service providers. I’ve put a call in to Yahoo! Australia to try to get some clarification on whether they’ll launch the SMS service locally. I’ll keep you posted! More »
eBay’s testing out new features, including better search results and product listing email alerts. More »
Yahoo! Mail’s set to get a bunch of new features tomorrow, including built-in SMS capabilities. More info with screenshots as soon as they flip the switch on our accounts. More »
Older people are using brain-building software like Brain Fitness Program 2.0, MindFit and Brain Age2 to keep their minds sharp. More »
PC World reports that fantasy football is a top online time-waster at work, but that blocking it could “hit morale.”
AU – I’ve heard of footy tipping, but fantasy football? I thought that was just something that the Poms and Tony Wilson on RRR talked about! :D Do we really do it here too? More »
iGoogle users: You can track exactly how you spend your day from your iGoogle homepage with Activity Tracker. Activity Tracker acts as a virtual punch card. You enter the activities you want to log time to, and each entry gets two buttons: “in” and “out.” When you begin working on an activity, push the in button. When you stop the activity or switch tasks, push the out button. Activity Tracker takes care of everything else. You can view your activites as a log, as a graph or export your values in CSV format. If you forget to punch out, Actvity Tracker will allow you to go back and edit your values. If you have your Google homepage open in your browser all day (like many of you do) then this is the last time-reporting gadget you will ever need. If iGoogle isn’t for you, we’ve got a bunch of different ways to track time.
Activity Tracker [ScreeperZone]Join me in saying “HOWDY!” to our new guest editor, Tamar Weinberg. An active commenter at Lifehacker US and our sibling sites, Tamar blogs at techipedia and is one of digg’s top users. When she’s not diggin’ and commentin’, Tamar works at web design firm RustyBrick and also blogs at Search Engine Roundtable. Tamar will be pitching in a few posts each day from the US East Coast. Welcome, Tamar! More »
