MovableBlog: Archives: Freeware Finds

A weblog about the Movable Type Publishing Platform and other geekery

February 15th, 2003

EAC and mkwACT »

Back in my live concert trading days (i.e. summer of 2001) I used the following freeware programs extensively:

* EAC: Exact Audio Copy, used to extract tracks from audio CDs to WAV format. The 'exact' part was important, because live show CDs have no gaps, so each WAV file needs to have the exact amount of audio in it (i.e. down to the milisecond) for it to be reburned without any skips or gaps. [EAC documentation]
* mkwACT: Michael K. Weise Audio Compression Tool, used to compress WAV to SHN—a lossless compression format for easier transfer of huge WAV files over the Internet—or to MP3 (which is lossy). [mkwACT documentation]

I started out getting some shows via the Etree.org, which have a policy of only facilitating trades between 'taper-friendly' bands (i.e. bands that allow fans to tape the concerts and trade them without any money changing hands) and then set up trades through my trading website (powered by MT, of course). The software above was (and is) indispensible for trading live music online.

Posted by Richard at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

February 10th, 2003

Freeware Finds »

Last night, looking for a transparent windows manager, I found the open-source Froost. The interface needs work, and I had trouble restoring it from the system tray, but it was pretty cool having a full-screen Unix shell (through Putty) while being able to see the windows in the background. Consider Froost the open-source version of Actual Transparent Windows which will set you back 20 clams.

Something I'm bookmarking for later: Foxmail, a freeware email client [via Phoenix General forum]

Posted by Richard at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)