Refenestration Daily.
BlogAmp is a free Winamp plugin that allows the user to keep in his personal web page a list with the last songs played in his Winamp. This list is update by FTP in real time.
Hmm, it looks somewhat interesting. Of course, I don’t listen to mp3s much due to their low sound quality, but perhaps others would find this useful. So, hey, leave a comment if you give this a try.
(Link from the mailing list of WebWord, a usability website)
As mentioned at The Register, “Ogg Vorbis goes gold” today.
For music fans the hope is that major hardware vendors will back the format, which is promoted as offering higher quality playback in less space than MP3. [...]
However, the code isn’t quite ready for download by the masses:
News of the release came to us in an email from Reg reader Douglas Gore, who told us: “Ogg Vorbis officially become version 1.0 today as announced on the developers mailing list, they haven't announced this officially yet as they are preparing it for full release, but the code is in the CVS and already people have compiles of the final code floating around in the Internet.” [...]
The big-win for me is that Ogg isn’t encumbered by patents, unlike mp3.
A new version of ViRC has been released, 2.0rc3. ViRC, if you’re not aware, is one of the better IRC clients for Windows. I used to be a Klient, user, but its lack-of-development since last year finally turned me to look for other options.
And, though it may appear that ViRC doesn’t have some of the more advanced functionality that other clients have built-in (such as auto-away), there’re 3rd party scripts to take care of that (including auto-away).
A Japanese business man walks by a misspelt English advertisement for a fitness centre in Tokyo […]
(Link from WebWord’s mailing list, an online usability site)
Flex Your Rights is “a new organization devoted to teaching US residents how to exercise their remaining constitutional rights during encounters with police officers.”
And, Durham, NC, resident Maurice McKellar Jr. recently put that knowledge to work during a recent traffic stop:
Although McKellar was absolutely within his rights to refuse such a warrantless search, that’s when things began to go bad. According to McKellar's complaint, instead of accepting his refusal to consent, Hargro responded by calling for back-up. Four more troopers arrived at the scene, along with a drug-sniffing dog. McKellar three more times refused to consent, at which point Hargro placed him under arrest for careless and reckless driving and speeding. [...]
On June 12 he filed a negligence claim against the Highway Patrol’s parent agency, the North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, claiming that he was unjustly punished for exercising his constitutional rights. The state agency was negligent, McKellar argued, because it failed to properly train Trooper Hargro. Because McKellar filed his claim with the state Industrial Commission, which is set up to hear workers compensation cases and tort claims alleging negligent actions by state employees, he could be awarded up to $500,000 for “humiliation, emotional distress, physical pain, and mental suffering.” [...]
I think Steven Silverman of Flex Your Rights sums it up best: “He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so. And he is doing the right thing in filing a lawsuit. Suing North Carolina for big bucks could help reform the system. It would certainly give the state an incentive to follow the Constitution.”