Ideas for getting music for your iPod.

By Brian Fuller

AOL Radio and Yahoo! Launchcast listeners are now building their iPod music collection for free thanks to iGetMusic, a new recording tool.

Traditionally building a free iPod music collection has been a tedious task. The most common method would be ripping tracks from a CD and then convert them to MP3s. As a final step, title and artist information would be added by hand or by using a download service.

This traditional approach has changed more recently as more and more users are downloading tracks from online retailers such as iTunes or P2P networks. Aside from P2P downloads not always being legal, downloading individual tracks takes a significant amount of time. Having to manually enter track information, searching and then downloading individual tracks for hundreds or even thousand tracks will take a large amount of time. In addition, the record industry, plagued by ever falling sales, has flooded P2P networks with fakes in an attempt to slow illegal downloads.

Another method which does not require downloads is using internet radio rippers, such as StreamRipper, which will record tracks from online radio broadcasters. This method would appear to save a lot of time compared to downloads. However, the biggest problem with internet radio rippers is the cross-fading between tracks which makes creating cleanly cut tracks impossible for rippers. When splitting tracks, rippers rely on the title information which is broadcast along with the songs to determine where to split tracks. Online radio broadcasters, however, are deliberately varying the time when the title information changes in relation to the beginning of each track. As a result, a user will have to manually edit each track in order to get properly cut tracks. This will take a significant amount of time for a larger number of tracks.

Recently Amphony, a company that makes audio and software products has released iGetMusic which is an application that will extract music from free online radio services such as AOL Radio and Yahoo! Launchcast. The program will run in the background and save each track that is broadcast by these online radio services into a directory of choice. These songs are automatically tagged with title, artist, album and genre information which will make organizing them later on in iTunes or other music organizer software a snap. Also, this allows easy playback of songs from a particular album or artist on an iPod. All the tracks ripped by iGetMusic are full-length, i.e. don't miss anything at the beginning or end which is a big plus compared to traditional internet radio rippers.

When using iGetMusic, a user would launch the application and then open up one or several browser tabs at the same time and tune into any channel of the supported radio services such as AOL Radio. iGetMusic is actually able to grab songs from several browsers running in parallel. In practice this means that the software can rip several thousand tracks in a single day. The recording speed is in practice only limited by the speed of the internet connection and the computer. iGetMusic will check which songs already exist in the music collection and not record duplicate of songs.

As an added bonus, iGetMusic has a feature that automatically saves the album cover of each song which is pleasing to the eye when playing back songs on a computer with a media player such as Winamp or on an iPod. A user can set up a blacklist which contains names of artists that iGetMusic should not record.

Since iGetMusic is able to produce a large number of tracks, storage capacity of the iPod becomes an important consideration. An iPod nano offers up to 16 GBytes of memory and can hold up to 4000 MP3s depending on the sound quality or bit rate. iGetMusic will produce the songs in the AAC Plus (M4A) format which in comparison to MP3 cuts the size of the tracks in half without sacrificing sound quality. Thus an iPod nano can store up to 8000 tracks created by iGetMusic depending whether or not album covers are stored as well. Since some older MP3 players do not yet offer AAC Plus support, iGetMusic recommend using a free 3rd party batch converter to convert the tracks to MP3.

About the Author:

Get additional information about finding free iPod music in addition to iGetMusic from Amphony's website.

READ MORE - Ideas for getting music for your iPod.

Make Use of Webinars to Build Your Online Income

By George J. Rodman

With all of today's technological advancements, the manner in which we market and sell services and products on the Net, specifically in the IM niche, is always shifting. Not that long ago, sales letters were composed mostly of text. Today's sales letters utilize fancy graphics applications and first-rate copywriters. One of the chief problems is keeping abreast with all these advances; lately, it's the arrival of the video sales letter with which we need to deal with. One more challenge that face internet marketers is the rising awareness of the public to all of these methods and it has become more challenging to keep potential clients from clicking away from what you have to offer. This article takes a look at a new and more effective approach to online sales, the "webinar".

A vital component in becoming a soccess online is for people to trust you and to know who they are dealing with. As more people compete in the internet marketing niche, that trust has become threatened with the release of a few dubious products and the claims that come with them. However, there are still numerous ethical marketers who offer good value but they need to have a medium where they can present this. For many Internet marketers, the webinar is an important tool. In essence, a webinar is an online presentation to which you are invited by the product developers themselves or one of their representatives.

Webinars are scheduled for a certain day and time, and are live online events. The format usually takes the form of providing priceless information that demonstrates that the person presenting is knowledgeable and reliable. Sometimes there is more than one presenter, with different individuals showing their diverse areas of expertise. Once the presenter has presented his expertise and earned your trust, you can expect some kind of special offer towards the end of the webinar.

Finding a time for a webinar can be tough , since you may be dealing with people from all parts the world. It is possible to schedule more than one time for the live webinar but today it is typical to post a replay of the webinar for people who could not attend. One way to increase the number of folks who attend the live webinar is to offer something special to those who do, something beyond what will be available through the replays. Indeed, the idea of providing replays of live presentations is new to the world of webinars, and would look like a good idea. While these do not benefit from live interaction, you can have these set up to sell for you on a regular basis without the need for you to be there. Also, this overcomes any worries you may have in presenting live or any technical problems that can come up at a live event.

No question about it -- webinars are a priceless tool for any internet marketer, and if you take the time to understand the technology, you can look forward to more sales and conversions.

About the Author:

Christina P. Mitchell writes about Earn More Cash Online with Webinars along with Mother of the Groom Speech.To know more about Mother of the Groom Wedding SpeechesClick here.

READ MORE - Make Use of Webinars to Build Your Online Income

A quick look at the newest wireless earphones.

By Gunter Fellbaum

Are you overwhelmed by the flood of regular and wireless headphones? You never heard of the terms open and closed headphones or dynamic and static transducers? This overview will help you select the perfect model.

Headphones come in many styles and designs. The smallest type of headphones are so-called in-ear headphones. These headphones are plugged inside the ear. Some models have a bracket that wraps around the ear. In-ear headphones often come with iPods or MP3 players. They are light-weight. Also, they easily can be stored in your pocket. Another type of headphones which are larger than in-ear headphones sit on the ear and have an elastic frame which either sits on the head or wraps around the neck. If you are on a tight budget then you should consider one of these headphones, some models are designed to absorb external noise.

If you are looking for better sound quality then you should take a look at medium-end headphones which have soft ear cushions that depending on the model will be located either on your ear or around your ear. The second design eliminates the pressure on the ears and is preferred by many people. Next you will have to decide whether you want to go with an open design where the audio can penetrate from the transducer to the outside or a closed design. Some people think that an open design will sound light and more natural. A closed design on the other hand will not allow the audio to escape and also block exterior noise.

Most of today's headphones are so-called dynamic headphones. Dynamic refers to the type of transducer that is used. The second more expensive type which requires special headphone amplifiers are static headphones.

Wireless headphones eliminate the headphone cord. Bluetooth headphones are another option to consider. Bluetooth headphones are a type of wireless headphones which are designed for Bluetooth-enabled devices. Such devices include cell phones. The operating range is typically only 30 ft or less. Bluetooth headphones do normally not offer audiophile sound quality.

Other wireless headphones include FM type models which normally work at 900 MHz and digital wireless headphones which work at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. FM type models are the least expensive option of wireless headphones. The main drawback of FM headphones is a noticeable hissing, audio distortion and fairly high susceptibility to interference which I caused by the transmission.

Digital wireless headphones, such as Amphony headphones, encode audio data prior to the transmission. This makes this type of headphones superior in terms of sound quality. Digital wireless headphones are also fairly robust against interference. Some digital wireless headphones work at the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band. This band offers less competition from other wireless devices compared to the 2.4 GHz band.

About the Author:

Gunter Fellbaum has been developing audio and electronic products for over 10 years. You can get further information about wireless headphones from Amphony's website.

READ MORE - A quick look at the newest wireless earphones.