The Null Device

2003/2/17

The Archos Jukebox Recorder is sort of like the iPod, only not quite as light, sexy-looking or fashionable, but it is considerably cheaper and can record directly to MP3 from a microphone or line in. That's right; take it to a gig, press record, and it makes a MP3 file you can copy onto your computer when you plug it in at home. (It also speaks USB, for those of us who don't have an IEE1394 card.) And now some enterprising hackers in Sweden have written custom open-source firmware for it, which adds lots of features (and extends the battery life somewhat too), which makes it an even more attractive proposition. (Mind you, it's not really firmware; more like a kernel that gets loaded off the hard disk; there's even a Lilo-like boot menu program to select from different boot options.)

(Has anybody here had any experience with Archos MP3 units? Are they as good as they look on paper?)

archos jukebox recorder rockbox 5

Coincidence or conspiracy? As anti-war protests took place in London, the city's webcams went dark "for operational reasons". Did Tony "the Smiler" Blair take a cue from his fictional counterpart and decide to eliminate unofficial accounts of events? Was it to allow Alastair Campbell to claim that only 12 people showed up, or perhaps to make any possible riot-police action justifiable as Bracks-style "self-defence"? Perhaps not; in fact, it may have something to do with Loony Left Red Ken's congestion charging starting today.

london protest surveillance uk 2

The Grauniad, a newspaper synonymous with right-on left-liberalism, on Murdoch editors' unanimity on the Iraq invasion, how every Murdoch paper from The Times to the Brisbane Courier-Mail is beating the drums of war, with varying degree of subtlety. And here are the 50 most ridiculous things about the upcoming war (via The Fix). And the Cleveland Scene has an amusing cartoon: The Muslim World: the average American's view (via Reenhead).

4

Google buys Pyra Labs, the company who brought blogging to the masses with Blogger (that's the web-based blogging tool everybody used before Movable Type) and free ad-supported hosting service BlogSpot (that's sort of the GeoCities of blogs).

blogger google software web 0