The First Step of Many

In light of the outcome of the RIAA’s lawsuit, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, I figured that now would be a fitting time to post a review of RIAA Radar. It’s a simple web app, nothing fancy, that’s designed to help you, the savvy consumer, determine which CDs you own (or are thinking about purchasing), are from record labels associated with the recording industry. With a variety of ways to access the site, RIAA Radar makes it easy to figure out exactly which CDs are recording industry related.

The main tool associated with RIAA Radar is the website itself. There’s a short list of frequently asked questions and the bread and butter of this app - the search box. You can use it to search for keywords, artist names, record labels, and even the UPC code of the CD you are pondering over. The search is speedy, often taking only a few milliseconds even for artists or labels that have hundreds of CDs available. Really, the only problem that I can see is that there is no way to tell the search engine to show more than the default ten results at a time.

Moving along, there is also a nifty bookmarklet that you can save to your bookmark toolbar for easy searching through the RIAA Radar database when you are browsing Amazon’s music store. Find a CD you like, click your trusty bookmarklet, and RIAA Radar will tell you whether or not that CD you were considering is RIAA safe. Like the traditional search function on the site, the bookmarklet works well and quickly.

For those of you who still buy your CDs in stores, RIAA Radar is even available on your cell phone. Find the UPC code from the back of the CD, type it into the RIAA Radar mobile UPC lookup page and the web app will tell you the status of that CD. I’ve not tried this service, but I suppose that it works just as well as everything else on the site (though likely not as fast).

Despite the different ways to go about searching for non-RIAA music on RIAA Radar, there are a couple of issues. The first, which the website clearly states, is that the information on the site may not be entirely correct. Membership in the RIAA changes all the time, so it is impossible to be 100% certain that the CD you are about to purchase is not from a record label affiliated with the recording industry bigwigs. This is more of a problem with the RIAA’s structure and record keeping than the RIAA Radar site itself.

The other issue I had was the inability to customize the search output to include more than ten results per page. No big deal, though, and certainly not a reason to stop using the site. I highly recommend RIAA Radar for those of you who are looking to stick it to the man, as it were. Even if you don’t care one way or the other, RIAA Radar is still a fun little web app that you can use to see exactly how much control the RIAA has over the music industry.

And for all of you nosy types out there, my CD collection consists of only 10 to 15% RIAA affiliated discs.

Click here to check out RIAA Radar

- Eric Norton

All We Need is Faster Internet in America…

Joost has been one of my favorite programs to play around with since I first got my hands on an early beta copy. A lot has changed since then. Modified user interface, advertisements, new logo, and a hell of a lot of new channels, but the core of the program remains the same. The program instantly sucks you in. From the instant full screen mode to the fancy moving “loading” light swirls to a GUI that reminds me of several Mac programs, the 1.0 Beta version of Joost hooks you from the minute you fire it up.

One of the things that I’m happy to report on with the new version is that the channel selection seems to have grown by a large margin. It is still missing my favorite show, Top Gear, but I suppose I can settle with Fifth Gear, Audi TV, and the various other car shows and music video stations that Joost currently offers. As more networks start to get involved, hopefully Joost will continue to grow, but there’s a little something for everyone even now.

Although each one of you is likely to find at least one program to watch on Joost, the question is will you actually be able to run the program. Joost is not exactly a small order, streaming and rendering full screen video, after all. It works pretty well, and I was able to install it on a variety of computers including a dinosaur of a Gateway with 512 MB RAM and an early model Pentium 4. It’s mighty slow on that one, but it still manages to work somehow. On faster computers like my desktop and MacBook, Joost runs smoothly with the occasional hiccup when I’m running too many programs at once on my Apple laptop.

I’m continually impressed with the Joost’s responsiveness. Menus open and channels change with very little lag time. Joost is actually faster at changing channels than my current DirecTV HD receiver. And, much like my DirecTV HD receiver tends to do, Joost crashes every now and then. Also, when closing the program, I’m never surprised to find that Joost’s process has failed to respond according to my Mac’s activity monitor.

So Joost looks good, it responds pretty well with a few kinks - but what about the advertising? How intrusive is it? It’s certainly less annoying than traditional commercial breaks that can last three to five minutes. I’d love to see regular television adopt some kind of bottom of the screen advertising and skip out on the majority of the commercial breaks they use now. On the flip side, commercials do give us an opportunity to stretch our legs or grab some grub. And with Tivo, I’ve not watched a commercial in months.

I see Joost as the first step in the eventual demise of television. I’m not saying that TV is going to be gone in a year. Not even five years. But now that we see Joost hitting full stride and Adobe’s new media player entering the market, we have two very significant players in the whole internet TV movement. With faster connection speeds, better processors, and cheaper LCD monitors becoming more and more popular, traditional TV may be on the way out sooner than we think. Hopefully the guys behind Joost will develop a Linux version before that day comes.

Click here to try out Joost for yourself.

- Eric Norton

And I Thought CSS Was Already Simple

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets for those of you with minimal web design experience, was something I always though of as pretty easy. The language is straightforward, everything is well defined. All you have to do to make a decent looking site is plug in the values you want to line up your elements and choose a color palette that will make your site stand out. There are tutorials galore if you get tripped up along the way. I was pretty surprised to see a program like Simple CSS out there when CSS itself is actually pretty simple.

Simple CSS is a program that is made possible by a web hosting company. And no, you don’t have to sign up for their hosting plan in order to get a copy of the program - it’s totally free of charge. Pretty good advertising if you ask me. A web hosting company offering a free program to help build websites.

Anyway, Simple CSS does a nice job making the style sheet creation process as simplistic as can be. Everything in the program is based on drop down menus, check boxes, and text boxes to enter your digits. There’s even a live preview at the bottom so you can see what your changes are doing as you’re making them. And if you’re not sure what’s going on and you need to see some cold hard code, you can view the actual CSS source file with the click of a button.

As easy as Simple CSS tries to be, there is one big problem here. While you can import and export CSS files to your heart’s content, which is great for someone learning CSS for the first time to try and reverse engineer another person’s code, Simple CSS left out what I consider to be a necessary feature. There is no direct editing of the CSS allowed in Simple CSS. I can view the source code - but I can’t change it. That means I have to take an extra step to export my CSS file, open it in a text editor, and then add the stuff that Simple CSS can’t.

This issue limits Simple CSS to only the most basic CSS tasks: text decoration, background alignment, and the occasional relocation of some element on your page. For everything else, it’s much easier to code the style sheet by hand.

If you’ve ever wanted to make your own website and learn CSS, download Simple CSS right now. However, if you have any skill at coding style sheets or you know of some great tutorials out there on the internet, use those instead. Simple CSS is a nice tool, but it is only for beginners.

Click here to check out Simple CSS.

- Eric Norton

Click here to check out FeedHub

Solution to Too Many Feeds? Or Just Adding to the Mess?

FeedHub, a new service which analyzes your RSS feeds and then turns them all into one, easy to use feed which supposedly only displays items that you want to see, sounds like a great idea. How cool would that be to have a service that filters through all of the junk in your RSS feed and only give you news clippings that you would want to see. In execution, however, FeedHub is not exactly all it’s cracked up to be.

I, like most of you out there, suffer from an overload of feeds. As I’m sure is the case with most of us, I barely have enough time in the day to sort through each and every little news story that comes my way. After all, I’ve got coding and Photoshop tutorials, news from sites like Download Squad, a variety of topics from Digg, some software update sites, and a couple of Web 2.0 repositories. Yeah, nearly 1,000 new items a day in my reader is way too much to handle. And after hearing about FeedHub last week, I figured that I would be the perfect candidate to give it a go.

So I signed up, sent them a copy of my OPML file (that’s the file that your feed reader uses to keep track of all of your feeds) and in a couple of days, I was gifted with a shiny new feed that only showed items based on my personal preferences. Except for one tiny problem - it didn’t seem to know what I wanted at all.

Now, FeedHub tries. It does get a story right every once in awhile. But most of the time, I find that it simply does not choose stories that I find even remotely interesting. And it doesn’t send them often enough. I get one item an hour from my FeedHub personalized feed - maybe. From over 100 items, FeedHub chooses one. That’s not exactly what I was looking for. I know FeedHub is trying to make my feed reading life easier, but only showing 1% of the news when I have the app set to “Show Me the Most Interesting” is a bit of overkill.

As it stands now, my FeedHub feed is sitting there in my RSS reader, ever so quietly, even with hundreds of new stories appearing from my other feeds every time I hit the refresh button. Although there is a bit of tweaking that can be done on the FeedHub site if you want to really tune your custom feed, it doesn’t really seem to do much. Just adds one or two extra items based on your selections every few hours.

I think I’ll stick with FeedHub for a couple more weeks to see if it gets any better. It is still a new service, so I don’t want to ditch it completely. At this point, I am not going to recommend FeedHub. If I can squeeze some kind of benefit out of it I will certainly change my tune, but not at this point.

On a positive note, the FeedHub website is nicely designed. Everything is easy to find, the colors are appealing to the eyes, and it is obviously designed for one task and one task only.

Click here to check out Feedhub.

- Eric Norton

Although Most Of Us Type Faster Than We Write

There’s just something about a clean website that really draws my eye in. Simple colors that harmonize well together, a straightforward layout, and a look that demonstrates the simplistic function of the web app itself. NoteSake is Web 2.0 in every sense of the word, from its layout to the function it performs. It does one task, and it does it well. However, it’s a real shame that it cannot be put to good use simply because it is a web app.

Now I’m one who’s all for web apps. I love the things. They’re just so simple, so stylish, so easy to use. But NoteSake, though it is all three of the features I enjoy - it’s not really useful. This web app is relatively new, so I’ll try not to be too hard on it, but NoteSake is one of those programs that fills a niche that never needed to be filled in the first place. Here’s why.

NoteSake is a web app that makes it easy to take notes. School notes, notes from a meeting, whatever. And it does a great job of making the task easy. I rarely get to see such masterpieces of simplicity. But here’s the problem. Since NoteSake is an online app, you have to have an internet connection to use it. That’s all well and good if I’m taking notes in a meeting in an office with a wireless internet connection, or someone decides to have a meeting right at my desk - but if I’m sitting in a college class, NoteSake quickly gets devalued.

As an example, say you have four college classes in a day, all back to back. That means you’re going at least four hours without charging your laptop. Even if I dim my screen and turn off every other program, my laptop can’t last that long with Firefox [review], Airport (for internet access), and a PDF viewer (for the professor’s notes) running continuously. And I doubt your computer can either.

Even worse, there are still quite a few colleges that don’t have internet access in every classroom, much less every lecture hall. UCLA, my alma mater, didn’t have WiFi in most lecture halls when I attended, and they still don’t if I’m not mistaken. That means that even if your computer’s battery can hold out for a hell of a long time, you may not even be able to use NoteSake in the first place.

My last issue with NoteSake is that it’s too hard to correspond with other people in your “groups”. You have to either be invited to a group or create one yourself. There is MySpace integration, but a Facebook app or some kind of find a friend by email feature would be a welcome addition.

If it weren’t for those glaring issues, I would recommend NoteSake. It’s easy to use, can do complex mathematical equations, and is a lot of “fun” when it comes down to it. I love the simplicity, the text editor they used, the fact that they backup everything on a regular basis, and that NoteSake can easily export PDF or DOC files. I just think that some things shouldn’t be turned into web apps. And NoteSake, unfortunately, is one of those programs. What we really need here is a desktop program that can export to NoteSake’s servers. That would be the perfect solution, and I hope to see something like that in the near future.

Click here to check out NoteSake.

- Eric Norton

…If I Listened to “Popular” Music

I stumbled across this handy tool today that I think is pretty fantastic. Despite being two years old, I’d never heard of it until today. Named Josh’s iTunes Album Art Grabber, it does exactly what it’s title says - grab album art for nearly any CD you throw at it. Nearly because it failed to find quite a few of my CD covers, but I listen to pretty obscure music anyway, so no big deal.

The site is easy on the eyes, very minimalist indeed, quick to use, and outputs a very large JPG image of whatever you find. These are massive, clocking in at a base size of 1425px x 1425px and going up from there. They will likely fill up your screen and are certainly large enough for an HDTV with an AppleTV hooked to it. And despite the huge size, the images are rather small, hovering in the 150KB range.

Aside from the lack of a few of my favorite CDs, this really is a nifty little web tool. The fast speeds, large image size, and downright easy to use layout make this a real gem. It’s the perfect tool for anyone looking to enhance their music collection by adding cover images. Highly recommended.

Click here to visit Josh’s iTunes Album Art Grabber.

Edit: It looks like the iTunes Album Art Grabber has been thwarted by Apple. The site’s search function is down for now, but according to Josh, it may be back eventually.

- Eric Norton

Brings Back Bad Memories of Geocities and Homestead

Online web designers seem to be the hot new Web 2.0 applications. Maybe it’s because people are growing tired of social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook - and they want their own full fledged websites. Or perhaps it’s just a fad, a craze, or some Silicon Valley millionaire’s idea to increase his profits. Whatever it is, one of the biggest online web designers is Freewebs. But just because it’s the biggest - does it mean it’s the best? You’ll find out soon.

Freewebs offers it’s users free, easy to use website building tools to build practically any site they can think of. However, those tools are not nearly as easy as some of the competition offers. While they can piece together a pretty good site, they take some getting used to and may be difficult for people to jump right in for the first time. However, after getting used to them, they become second nature and work pretty well. I would never recommend using them on anything slower than DSL internet connection speeds though, as many of the site building tools have significant loading times.

Along the lines of building sites on Freewebs, let’s talk about the templates. There are quite a few, although most are simply derivatives of other templates with header picture changes or slightly modified colors. That’s fine, so long as I can modify my theme’s CSS. So off to modify the CSS I go - only to be horrified to find that only one theme allows CSS modification! If you want a free website that looks original, Freewebs is not the place to go. There is a major lack of variety unless you put in a lot of work. And apparently you have to “downgrade” your account if you want to edit any HTML too.

The large amount of options available through Freewebs’ site builder is what really keeps the site strong. I haven’t come across too many free services that automatically add a blog, a forum, various forms, and image slideshows at the click of a button. And I’ve certainly never seen a free web design site that has multiple file upload capabilities. These are some pretty cool features - but they’re not enough to make me rate Freewebs highly.

In essence, Freewebs reminds me of the old days. The days when Geocities and Homestead (remember those) were the biggest free website brands. Other online web building tools like Weebly [review] have grown out of the ’90s - but Freewebs seems trapped there. They’ve got decent tools, but there is not enough customization ability behind them to make them of use to anyone with even a slight knowledge of HTML, CSS or the other web coding languages.

Compatibility is also a problem with Freewebs. While it works on every browser I tried, there were functional issues, especially with the paragraph editor, in Webkit based browsers and Opera [review].

I can’t end this review without discussing Freewebs’ ridiculously obscene prices for “premium services”. Taking a look at “Best Value” Enhanced Package, for $8.33 per month, you get a whopping 750 MB of storage, 25 GB bandwidth, a domain name, and five email addresses. Give me a break. There are plenty of web hosts that give out 300 GB storage, 3000 GB bandwidth, 2500 email addresses, and a free domain name - for a buck and a half less. Who cares if you get free web building tools from Freewebs with the deal? There are better free programs, like Nvu/KompoZer [review], out there.

To answer the question I posed at the start of this review, no, Freewebs is certainly not the best online web design platform. It’s not even close to it. Do yourself a favor and forget about Freewebs if you have the hankering to build your own website using web based tools.

Check out Freewebs Here.

- Eric Norton

If you liked this review, please consider subscribing to the free Software Battle! feed.

It’s Like Dreamweaver - But Free. How Could That Be Bad?

I’m a big fan of free programs. Thanks to open source software and developers who just want to give back to the community, I’ve been seeing more and more free programs released that are actually extremely useful and well designed. This is a review of Nvu/KompoZer, one of those free programs that is very well designed and a great option for those looking to avoid the costs of Adobe’s web designer, Dreamweaver [review].

As a WYSIWYG web design program, Nvu is great. It has a fairly intuitive interface, works quickly thanks to Mozilla’s Gecko engine, and is perfect for web designers of all skill levels. From basic HTML to CSS to JavaScript to various other web coding languages, Nvu can support a multitude of formats. And it does so with ease. The program is responsive, accurate, and does exactly what I want it to - help me code a website on a tight budget.

I’ve used Dreamweaver a lot in the past, so I’m rather used to its interface. Luckily enough, Nvu has taken a few pages from Adobe’s (Macromedia’s) design pages and constructed a somewhat similar layout for this free program’s interface. While there are quite a few buttons and toolbars that are in different locations than in previous versions of Dreamweaver, I was able to get accustomed to the program in mere moments.

When it comes to building extras into Nvu, the designers really took out all the stops. It’s nearly as full featured as Dreamweaver. Inside you’ll find an FTP client, an HTML validator, tabs to keep track of different files, an integrated CSS editor, and a spellchecker that actually works pretty well. I love programs that allow me to do nearly everything from one location - and this accomplishes that task without a hitch.

Of course, free software like this always has problems, and Nvu is no exception. The most major problem is it’s compatibility, or lack thereof. While it works fine under Windows and Linux - it is shackled to PowerPC on the Mac - and it runs slow when it actually gets started. There is no excuse for the Mac version not to run as a Universal Binary since Apple has been using Intel chips now for a year.

Another problem is with the ease of use. Yes, Nvu is easy to use once you learn where all of the tools are located, but it can be argued that Dreamweaver is a far more user-friendly program. Of course, Dreamweaver is also at least four hundred dollars more.

In the end, I do recommend Nvu - but only for those using Windows or Linux. I cannot support a program that is stuck with PPC binaries on the Mac. If you’re looking for a WYSIWYG web design program, this is a great one to try out. There are lots of fantastic features here and it is just as easy to build a site by clicking toolbar buttons as it is to build one with a professional knowledge of HTML using Nvu. It truly is a program for anyone who wants to get into web design but doesn’t have the cash on hand for the programs the pros use.

KompoZer is a community version of Nvu, since Nvu’s development has halted. It features bug fixes and other goodies that Nvu does not contain. Unfortunately KompoZer is not Universal Binary either.

Try Nvu for Yourself.
Try KompoZer for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

Like this review? Show your support by subscribing to the free Software Battle! feed.

Unexpected Joy from a Web App

The coolest thing about writing these reviews is that I stumble across a program that really blows my mind from time to time. These programs are extremely well designed, highly useful, have huge amounts of customization, and are just a joy to use. Weebly is one of those programs. A web app that I didn’t expect to be so amazingly cool and fun to play around with. Not only that, but Weebly is as useful as it is enjoyable to use - the sign of a fantastic piece of software.

Weebly’s fun filled web design experience begins with the creation of a unique username and password. After signing in, all that’s left to do is create a name for your site and begin the actual placement and site design work. And that’s where the fun begins.

Like other “What You See Is What You Get” web design programs, Weebly is incredibly easy to use. There are a number of built in themes, most of which are very attractive, that can be selected at the press of the mouse button. A professional looking website is literally at your fingertips and can be crafted in just a couple of seconds on Weebly’s site.

The difference between Weebly and so many of the WYSIWYG web design programs like Sandvox [review], Dreamweaver [review], Rapidweaver, and Nvu [review] is that Weebly is so much easier than any of the competition. I’d even go so far to say that I’ve never used a point and click web design program that was this simple to use. Oh, and it’s completely free too. Paragraphs, pictures, maps, even advertisments, Youtube videos, and personalized HTML can be added by dragging the respective element right into the page. Don’t like it’s location - move it elsewhere. Didn’t want that element after all - just click the “x” to get rid of it. It’s a piece of cake to build an attractive site.

But once you’ve got a nice looking page all set up, what is there to do? Add a few meta tags, keywords, and all of the other header and footer scripting that a normal site would have and hit the publish button. The site will be whisked away to the internet on Weebly’s own servers.

What if you want more than that? What if you have your own modifications that you couldn’t do within Weebly’s click and drag interface? What if you want to host the site on your own server at your own domain? Piece of cake. Weebly lets you download a zip file of all of the information from your site. The graphics, HTML, CSS, it’s all there. Tweak it, host it, do whatever to it. Simple as that. Otherwise just type in your domain name and hit the host button and your website will be sent right off to whatever server you use.

Normally I like to end off with a few drawbacks of a program. The only problem I could come up with is that it’s restricted to Firefox [review]and Internet Explorer and it tends to slow down from time to time on larger projects. If you’ve always wanted a website, but you had no idea how to go about making one - now is the time. Weebly is for you. Even if you have designed websites before, check Weebly out. It may be able to cut your design time in half on your next project. It really is that good, and totally worth a look.

Check out Weebly for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

Did you like this review? Please subscribe to the free Software Battle! feed.

Developer: N/A
Version: N/A
Price: Free
Operating Systems: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Check out Finetune Here.

Lots of Potential Squashed By Draconian Regulations

I would listen to music all the time if I could - I’m that addicted to it. My tastes are broad and my styles diverse. There are countless artists in my playlist and nearly fifteen gigabytes of my favorite songs on my Macbook (far more on my desktop). However, despite my relatively large collection, I’m always looking for something more, something fresh, something unique. And that’s where the web music/internet radio sites like Finetune come in.

Finetune is one of those social music websites where users can listen to their favorite tunes right over the internet. Think of it like internet radio that the users actually have some control over. Make a playlist, select some songs, and have a blast. It’s a lot of fun until you realize that there are a few major problems with the service.

My gripe with internet radio sites like Finetune is the vast amount of restrictions that the music industry has placed on them. For one reason or another, the music industry has heavily regulated what sites like Finetune can and cannot do with their music - making it annoying for the end users. Right off the bat, you can see the recording industry’s grasp on Finetune with restrictions that require playlists to have over forty five songs, consist of fifteen artists, and contain a maximum of three songs per artist. Hell, I can’t even listen to a previously played song in the same sitting. Talk about cutting down on my freedoms.

Luckily, finding forty five songs from fifteen different artists shouldn’t be too tough. I made a playlist of that length in about ten minutes. However, being very choosy and selecting the three songs per artist was a real pain in the ass. Especially because Finetune makes its users navigate through all kinds of crap just to remove a song. Why can’t I remove a song right from the same page that I added it on? Oh, that’s right, the recording industry would probably deem that too easy for us users.

OK, so Finetune lets us craft our own playlists, and that’s pretty much it. There is some social networking kind of stuff involved. Sharing playlists, adding fans, joining groups - all the typical stuff. But there is one thing that sets this site apart from its competitors. Finetune can be whisked away to the desktop of anyone running Windows or Mac OS X (and Linux soon).

Without Finetune Desktop, the Adobe AIR [review] powered desktop application, Finetune would just be another music website where you can create and share playlists with your buddies. However, once that desktop application starts up - that’s where the fun really begins. Nearly everything that can be done on Finetune’s website can be accessed via the desktop application. It’s slow, but it gets the job done without resorting to the browser. Finetune Desktop can even play random songs from artists in your iTunes library.

This all leads me to the necessity of Finetune. It is any good? As a music discovery tool, Finetune is only marginally useful since you pick your own playlist. Can’t discover too many new songs when you’re selecting songs you already like and the library of songs to choose from is limited in many genres. As a portable media player, you’re better off with an iPod or Sansa. As a desktop music player, there are hordes of better options out there.

I cannot recommend Finetune for anyone at this point. If the recording industry lightens its grip on internet radio, Finetune would likely become an amazing web app overnight. Until then, it just doesn’t do anything for me. Yes, the design is nice, the social networking is so-so, the easy addition of playlists to MySpace and the like is cool but can be found elsewhere, and the desktop player is original - but with so many rules and regulation regarding which files I can and can’t play, I see no reason to ever visit Finetune again.

If you live outside the United States, could you please let me know if Finetune is accessible to you? Several other internet radio sites have had to go America only due to restrictions, and I’m curious as to whether or not Finetune is the same way.

Check out Finetune for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

Find this review useful? Want to read more? Subscribe to the free Software Battle feed.