In today’s Boston Globe, Hiawatha Bray has a useful column (note: the Globe will break the link in a few days) on how to record music streams — legally and for free — using tools that record whatever audio is passing through your computer. (He doesn’t mention my favorite, Audacity, but it sounds like the ones he recommends are easier to use.) Thanks to the article, I’m now using StationRipper, a bargain at $9.95, that lets you tune into ShoutCasts. As soon as I figure out how to listen to the streams as I’m downloading them, I’ll be 100% content.

Aha! StationRipper wants me to use WinAmp for playing the stream, not MusicMatch Jukebox. (Thanks to the Web for the information.)

Double aha! Greg Ratajik from StationRipper sent me an email:

If you double click a station that you are ripping, it will launch whatever player is registered on your machine for MP3 streams and play it. It actually sets a relay up, so you are actually listing to what StationRipper is recording (e.g., it doesn’t open up a second connection to the station).

With MusicMatch jukebox registered as my MP3 player, it says it’s playing the localhost but no sound comes out.

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Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: web Date: November 1st, 2004 dw

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On Election Night, I’m setting up an open chat board for anyone who wants to kibbitz, cry, rejoice, and in general get snarky.

If you’d like to jump in, I’ll open it up at 7pm EST in Boston. Go to irc.freenode.net and join #joho. (If you don’t have a chat client, I’ve been enjoying the Open Source HydraIRC, although the fact that its main site has been down for a few days concerns me.)

See you then.

NOTE: The mood on the board will be heavily pro-Kerry. And bad language is allowed, so please protect the innocent and naive. Thank you.

Liz has a chat planned also. Go to irc://irc.freenode.net/#ritparty. (This should work if you use Mozilla. Otherwise, manually start up your IRC client.)

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Brian McWilliams’ Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements is a surprisingly good tale. I was expecting more of a survey of the field, but it’s instead a well-told narrative with bizarre characters and unexpected developments. In fact, it’s a page turner.

You can read the first chapter here.

(But what’s with the “%*@)#” in the title? Last time I looked, “penis” wasn’t a dirty word. Is it so spam filters won’t block messages that talk about the book? But won’t the spam filters also catch “porn”?)

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This Wednesay, I’m leading another session in the “Web of Ideas” series at the Harvard Berkman house (= Baker House). The topic is something like: Has the Net made a difference in politics? Will it? How can it? And possibly: Oh, crap! Crap! Crap! (But we hope: Yaaaaay!)

It starts at 6, goes to 7:15 and yes, pizza will be served. Everyone is welcome.

I start off with a 15 min discussion opener. I’m thinking of saying something like this:

It’s clear that the Net has been a great tool for organizing the troops and for fund-raising. And we get access to all the information we can eat. Beyond that, how has the Net helped democracy? How might it help? Or will it hurt democracy?

I think there are three main ways it’s helping:

First, it’s connecting us to one another. That helps overcome the alienation built into mass democracy, the same alienation built into mass marketing.

Second, it’s getting us used to the sound of our own human voice. There will come a time when spinning seems as off-putting as lying.

Third, it’s putting our democracy in a global context…not fast enough, but it’s happening.

What will a Web-soaked democracy look like in ten years? Twenty years? What can we do now with the Net to foster democracy?

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John Garfunkel flew from Boston to Florida (on his own dime) to help get out the vote. Here‘s his ground-level account. Snippet:

I ask three questions in succession: Do you know when you’re voting? Where you’re voting? And do you know you’re voting for? … Maybe a couple people out of a hundred we’ve encountered are new to their neighborhoods and need a refresher on this. And a little more than that tell me they’re still undecided. I ask if they’re leaning one way or another, and whether there’s any issues that can help them sort things out. I have “literature” in my hand, which is “literature” in the sense that the Fox News is “journalism”…

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