Beloved music playlist hosting service Muxtape‘s gone offline to “sort out a problem with the RIAA,” but if you’ve got some web server space, you can host, stream, and share your own digital music mixes Muxtape-style with newly-launched PHP web application Opentape. Opentape isn’t affiliated with Muxtape in any way, but it’s wildly similar, boasting a sparse, easy-to-use interface with drag-and-drop song rearrangement. To run Opentape, you’ve got to have a web server running PHP5 (or set up your own at home), and install Opentape on it. Let’s take a closer look.
If your love for Safari has kept you from making the jump to Google Gears, you’re in luck: a beta version of Gears for Safari has just been released. It’s a Mac only beta, so expect bugs if you download it. Thanks Josh!
Mac OS X only: The free iPhone jailbreak application PwnageTool has updated to support the latest and greatest 2.0.2 iPhone software update. The PwnageTool jailbreak process hasn’t really changed since we showed you how to jailbreak your iPhone with PwnageTool the first time around, so head there if you want to follow along. (Just make sure you choose the 2.0.2 5C1 firmware.) Once jailbroken, your iPhone should hold two new apps—Cydia and Installer—both of which allow you to install apps on the iPhone that aren’t available through the App Store. Courageous Windows users eager to jailbreak can try out the QuickPwn release candidate, also available on the PwnageTool download page. PwnageTool is available for free from the iPhone dev blog or through your old version’s built-in update, Mac OS X only.
Swatting… [blog.iphone-dev.org] Jailbreak iPhone 2.0 with PwnageToolFriendFeed introduces a new feature on their beta site: a “Pause” button “fake following” mode, which lets you follow someone without seeing their updates. In a similar vein, productivity guy Merlin Mann proposes that all social networks build in a “Pause” button, which would protect you temporarily from a stream of unwanted updates for a certain amount of time without de-friending folks. Along with a “Pause” button for social networking, we also want a “Snooze” button for email, tasks, and reminders.
Add mood lighting to this weekend’s evening backyard soiree with some jars, LED lights, and coin cell batteries. The Evil Mad Scientists DIY site describes how to make your own temporary outdoor lighting with cheap supplies and easy assembly. Tape the LED cell to the battery to light it up, then mount that inside the jar top and set it out. This setup is temporary (and will burn out eventually if you don’t disassemble) but it looks like an easy way for even beginner do-it-yourselfers to light up a dark pathway without investing in a pricey outdoor system. Quick, easy, temporary, and beautiful LED garden lights [Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories]
You’ve seen how the built-in scheduler for Linux/Unix systems, Cron, can help you automate tasks to make things like auto-switching wallpaper easy and simple. Incron, a scheduling tool available in most Linux repositories, works on the same principles, but from a different starting point—it watches files and folders for changes, then launches actions when they do. Linux.com’s guide shows how you could have a sound play every time a file is created in a certain directory, or have files be auto-deleted when other files are created, or do pretty much anything your imagination can dream up. The scheduling app is limited to command line functions, but it’s only a matter of time until someone hacks up a helpful GUI front-end to it. Hit the link for a guide to getting started with Incron. Scheduling jobs based on filesystem activity with incron [Linux.com]
