  Another weekend down, and finally the Pats break their 4 game losing streak! YAY! And to beat Bledsoe and the bills.. that was just icing. And to beat them 37-7... the cherry on top. Sweet. ---- Jay and I continue to make progress on HIlbilly Whack. Each time we revisit the file, we make forward steps, even when its not visible to the end player. In this last round, we implemented a indea Jay had to make labels on all our little clips so that we can access them easier in the editor.
----- Today's Link is from a friend of mine... Clay Johnson and I have a long history. Among other things, Clay has been my roomate, and my boss. Clay is also a pretty smart guy. He has a nack for coming up with interesting business ideas based on technology, and typically the Internet.
He founded HumanSearch, which I was a co-founder, and employee for some time. When HumanSearch didn't pan out, he bounced around at different places, but i am glad to say he is back in the saddle trying to make companies on Net technology. His latest brainchild is urlLink http://www.mp3newsbreak.com . This is a very neat little app. Basically it works like this: I install the MP3Newsbreak Winamp plugin. I indicate which newsfeeds I would like to know about. I listen to my MP3s as I normally would. When news breaks, the plugin inserts an approx. 1 minute news clip after my currently playing song. Plays it next.. then deletes it from the list after it is done. In essense, my normal MP3 playing habits are augmented with breaking news without me even thinking about it. Now this may seem trivial, but it is actually a very cool and powerful utility. You can easily imagine subscribing to a CNN for newsbreaks, or a some Wall Street news agency to report the latest stock news, or a Sports Illustrated channel for the latest box scores. All while I am just listening to music like I always would. The service costs money (I think about $4 a month) which is pretty cheap if you ask me.
Though I must warn you that the product is still in its early stages. It can have bugs (though I havent seen many), and probably least attractive at the moment, Clay and his other employee read the news. It will be nice when they can outsource the reading, or hire a nice voice actor :) In the meantime, other than the occasional mispronunciation or vocal flub, the service is quite neat. I encourage anyone who does listen to MP3s to check it out. 
