Net Sieve

While we’re on the topic of free things …

Duane Shinn, who allegedly has “more fun teaching piano than should be legal,” is offering free course of Piano lessons & piano chords. Just sign up for the newsletter and you’ll get 101 free lessons in your inbox. They arrive about every five days, so you have time to practice before the next one comes in.

And if you like what you hear, Duane has tons more available. You can learn jazz, gospel, improvisation and more. Have fun!

Cool. But are we ever going to get to the point where “hand held” conjures up images of the banks of whirling thimgamajigs that used to make up a single computer?

I’m not saying that I don’t think an MP3 player embedded in my brain is a bad thing. I want that and I’ll put out for nano technology any day.

It’s just that it starts looking ridiculous when your ear bud is larger than your player. Already it’s a joke to try find my iPod in my pocket between the pack of gum, my nail clippers, my Pilot pen and the clump of lint.

Zune? What is this Zune of which you speak?

What? I can’t hear you over my DRM compliant iPod … Well, it’s enough to know that if it’s Microsoft “it’s got to be good!”

*will you please take the gun from my head now?*

Hot! This is one of the best free downloads I’ve found in years. It’s made life with Windows and mp3s - and that sweet Chinese iPod knock-off - a breeze. Now I can listen to my favorite Indie artists just as if they were actually available for purchase somewhere online. (!)

Let’s allow the developer Jackie Franck a few words:

Audiograbber is a beautiful piece of software that grabs digital audio from CDs. It copies the audio digitally-not through the soundcard-which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals. It can even perform a test to see that the copies really are perfect. Audiograbber can also automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and/or end of tracks, and send them to a variety or external MP3 encoders… Audiograbber can download and upload disc info from freedb, an Internet compact disc database. You can even record your vinyl LPs or cassette tapes with Audiograbber and make wavs or MP3s of them. There are a lot more functions in Audiograbber, but to put it simply: Audiograbber has the most features one can wish from such a program!

Another great thing with this software is that it does not put a single file in your windows directories! No DLLs, OCXs, device drivers, spyware, adware or whatever else that messes up the computer. Not a single entry in the registry or win.ini. If you delete the Audiograbber directory it’s all gone, that’s it!

Product Details:
File Size: 1626 kb
Version: 1.83
Last updated: Apr 25, 2004
License: Freeware
Windows: Win (All)
Requirements: None (Note: Needs LAME encoder for quality above 56kbits/s)

Download Audiograbber free from SnapFiles.