albums

Unintuitive albums

The exploding popularity of digital photography has given rise to a variety of different means for displaying digital photos. We've seen many programs that seek to reproduce the experience of flipping through a physical photo album by creating a digital version that can be paged through, just like the real thing. Normally, creating digital albums is a fairly simple process, but Seaside Book Manager makes it entirely too difficult. We like the idea of digital photo albums, but this is not the way to do it.

The problem with Seaside Book Manager is simply that its interface is a … Read more

Accessible album

As digital photography has grown in popularity, so, too, have digital means of displaying photographs. Bix Photo Book is an easy way to duplicate the experience of flipping through a physical photo album without having to print and mount your photos.

The program's interface consists of an animated photo album displayed on what looks like a hardwood floor. To populate the album with images, simply select any image in the desired folder, and all images in the folder will be included. From there, the album is fairly customizable; users can specify the color of the pages and the background … Read more

Google launches Chrome Web Store

Isn't the Chrome Web Store just an online software store? Or a SaaS store? Why don't we use the terms software or SaaS anymore? Not sexy?

Google announced the Chrome Web Store at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. It is a place to find and install programs that run in the Chrome browser, and most likely in the Chrome operating system in the near future. So it's Web-based software. Or SaaS.

Now why do we care about this when we can easily just go to a Web site and accomplish the same … Read more

Should you buy the remastered 'Exile on Main Street'?

The Rolling Stones' 1972 masterpiece "Exile on Main Street" is being re-released today in a new remastered version, complete with 10 outtakes or alternate versions that have never been released before. A friend posted the question on Facebook: "should I buy the remastered vinyl version?" The answer to this question is more complicated than you might expect: there are five different versions of the re-release available.

If you like rock music (or country or soul) and don't know "Exile," then I would start with the Original Recording Remastered. It's the original album … Read more

Live at the Fillmore East

The Fillmore East didn't last all that long, from March 8, 1968 to June 27, 1971, but a ton of great music was played there. Pretty much every legendary 1960s band--except the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cream, and Bob Dylan--graced the stage. Led Zeppelin; The Who; Pink Floyd; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; Elton John; Fleetwood Mac; Derek and the Dominos; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Santana; and the Doors rocked the 2,700 seat theater in the East Village, in NYC. Ticket prices, as I recall, were always affordable: $3, $4 and $5, and there were usually three acts … Read more

Report: Music insider site source of leaked songs

It's an article of faith in the music industry that pre-release album leaks hurt sales. I don't have the statistics to argue the case in either direction, but it makes sense on a gut level: there's less reason for fans to run out and buy a new record, when they already have the uncompressed files on their hard drives.

As if the record industry hasn't tasted enough bitter irony lately, a bunch of album leaks over the weekend apparently came from a service used by music labels to share files with radio stations, media, and other … Read more

Create videos, slideshows with your images

SonicPics is a handy app for creating video slideshows with audio narration using your camera or photos already on your device.

Designed around a simple idea with a wide range of uses (from travelogues to presentations to real-estate walk-throughs), SonicPics has a reassuringly clean and smooth interface. You use a two-button toolbar to work with either Projects or Recordings, which are saved M4V files of finished projects. With Projects, you just type in a title and description, add in photos, using your camera or existing photos, and then set the audio recording quality--which will affect the final size of your … Read more

Big fix 4 pix

Focus Photoeditor emphasizes digital photography but does just about everything other graphics packages can do, with a few twists of its own. It has automatic features for quick photo fixes, but it's also easy to use it to draw, paint, and create custom graphics. It includes an advanced image browser and a Web album wizard, too.

Focus Photoeditor's menu bar features clearly labeled functions that are logically and intuitively grouped, which makes them easy to find and understand. There's the usual File, Edit, and Help menus, but most controls are labeled descriptively, such as Color, Noise/Sharpness, … Read more

Desktop Cover Flow

Cover Stream is a standalone app designed to help you browse through and listen to your iTunes music, using a visual, intuitive, and unobtrusive interface that's similar to iTunes' Cover Flow.

You can use Cover Stream through your menu bar, in a separate window (which you can toggle to full screen, or to float on top), or both, and the app makes it easy to flip through albums and playlists, play music (including standard controls such as pause, shuffle, and volume, along with a host of system-wide hot keys), build a "Jukebox Mode" queue (including a shuffle … Read more