BlogMunch

Free mp3 search engines

Previously I am using the search primer from Lifehacker to search free MP3s from the web. Works well, but needs some time to sort out the MP3s from these apache servers. Also you are not sure of the quality of the songs.

Then I found Skreemr.com. The interface is definately better. It shows details like song time and file size. Wherever available, it shows the bitrate too. So you will be able to know the quality of your songs before you download.

As the demands for free MP3s increased, these search engines evolved. Now comes the new kid on the block, Beemp3.com. You will be able to search by Song name, Artist, Album or any keyword you type in. On its home page, you can find the various top 10 charts and also the last 200 search at Beemp3. So if you have no idea what songs to listen to, just look at what others are searching.

Of course, depending on which countries you are, downloading MP3s from the web could go from legal to illegal and all the gray areas in between. So download at you own risk.

Ah, Napster seems so long ago now…… 

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Google Reader - Discovery and Drag&Drop

(credit: Greenberg Art)

Google reader push out two new features yesterday. Apparently, both features would implemented by interns working at Google. Good job! I think the gourmet food, Segway and massage chair work their magic.

Discovery

This will help you discover new, interesting rss feeds based on what you have subscribed and your web history (I inactivated it as soon as I know about it).

So where do you find this “discover” button? It is just beside the “Add Subscription” link. You can also find it on the “Home” page, labelled “Top Recommendations”. Once you click thru, you will see a list of sites that you might be interested in. If you look carefully, you will see “x.xx posts per week” near the url. Interesting. I didn’t know Google keep track of how frequent you post.

The recommendations are okay. I know most of the sites, but for whatever reasons didn’t want to subscribed to them previously. One thing I hope to see is the title link to the site rather than to their feed. I usually like to surf a bit before subscribing.

Drag&Drop

Desktop application without drag&drop will feel very weird. So why is drag&drop so difficult to implement in web tools? Anyway, now you can organize your feeds by drag&droping into folders and reorganize the feed in any order you want. But from what I tested out, this function only within the feed sidebar.

That means you can’t drag your starred items or shared items in. Neither can you drag from the “Top Recommendations” into your folder. I hope they improve to implement the drag&drop site wide.

So is it a matter of time before drag&drop comes to Gmail, where it is needed the most?

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Use your vast vocabulary to help others get Vast amount of rice

Fancy yourself with a good grasp of the English language? Think you have the best vocabulary among your friends? Well, why don’t you use your considerate skills to help the poor and hungry people around the world. FreeRice is a site where you play a vocabulary game to help donate grains of rice to the hungry. Each of your correct answers will donate 10 grains of rice which will be distributed by United Nations World Food Program (WFP). Go to the WFP website to learn more about how they plan to reduce and eliminate hunger.

You might think 10 grains of rice is pretty insignificant, but at the moment FreeRice have donated, through this program, 3,664,079,450 grains of rice. To put it in perspective, suppose a person needs 3500 grains of rice a day. Doing the maths, FreeRice is now feeding 1,000,000+ people. That’s great from just donating 10 grains per question.

The other purpose of the vocabulary game is to improve your vocabulary. There are 50 levels of difficulty for this game and for every question you answered correctly, the difficulty increase one level. One satisfying thing is that while doing the questions, you will see a bowl filled up with grains every time you answered correctly (see above). Encourage you to keep on going.

So while thinking of ways to make money online, why don’t we also help the poor and hungry if we can. So start donating grains of rice and improve your vocabulary at the same time now with FreeRice.

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Sticky Post in Blogger

I have put a sticky post on my home blog for welcoming new visitors from Problogger. To make a sticky post, you can just future date your post. So simple.

If you are using a calendar widget like mine on the sidebar, don’t future post it too far in the future, or else your calendar will only show the sticky post. One week should be enough.

If you want to make it a permanent fixture (and to avoid the mess above), you can follow the instructions here to make a “New Page Element” above your main body.

If you like my post, you can subscribe to my feed here.

Tip of the day…

For those who have change your blog at Blogger to your domain but encounter your domain parked space (Godaddy, 1by1, etc), your CNAME might not be updated to the different servers yet. Now, you could not go back to yourname.blogspot.com to change back to Blogger while waiting for the CNAME update. What do you do?

Well, you could type in WWW.yourname.blogspot.com to access your Blogger settings page. There you will be able to change back to Blogger’s free hosting services.