Multimedia

Multimedia

Rewriteable Song Lyrics

July 18, 2007 by 1 Comment

For the person in your life who has absolutely everything … check out this new idea from Tailored Music Group. You download a song from them and then write your own replacement lyrics for it. You then send the new lyrics back to them and they will have the original artist re-record the song with your custom lyrics.

Whilst this is something we’ve all probably tried at one time or another during our teenage year, I can see it becoming very popular and will undoubtedly make it’s way onto several Christmas/Birthday shopping lists sooner rather than later.

The words Copyright and Censorship spring to mind though…

Source: SlashDot

Multimedia - Technology

New Free Music Download Service – We7

May 11, 2007 by 2 Comments

I heard a short article on The Last Word yesterday (on Irish Radio Station Today FM) about a new music download service that claims to provide you with free music that is completely safe and legal. The service is called We7 and is being backed by Peter Gabriel.

The way it works is that when you listen to the downloaded music you also have to listen to a short advert. However, after a certain amount of time (4 weeks I think), the advert disappears and you then own the music. The music is in MP3 format and is DRM free so should play on most music players without issue. The artist gets paid by the advertiser and this is how the music is paid for. Initially, they are planning to release with audio files only but later plan to release video and other content.

Overall, quite an interesting service but not a great name as I don’t like numbers in a company name (it took me a couple of attempts to get the domain name correct).

Click here to download a Podcast of the radio piece from The Last Word. It starts at precisely 35 minutes into the show.

Humour - Multimedia - Sport

Roy meets Roy

March 26, 2007 by 1 Comment

If you get a few minutes, check out these classic interviews with Roy Keane on the Today FM Breakfast Show. They are particularly brilliant because, in the last one, the interviewer is also Roy Keane (otherwise known as Mario Rosenstock, the voice behind most of the characters from the Gift Grub sketches).

In all there were 3 interviews but the last one is the best (in my opinion):

  1. Ian and “Gift Grub” Roy talk about meeting the real Roy Keane
  2. Roy Interview – Part 1 (serious)
  3. Roy meets Roy (hilarious!)

Superb Radio!

Multimedia - Technology

Life after Research and careers in research

March 26, 2007 by 0 Comments

I heard an interesting discussion on Irish Radio last week (The Last Word on Today FM) about what it means to have a career in research in Ireland. It featured Dr. Tim Yeomans (Post Doctoral Researcher at Trinity College, Dublin) and Professor Michael Ryan (Professor of Computing at Dublin City University).

The discussion centered around the career prospects (job security, career structure) for Irish researchers and whether or not we have missed the boat in terms of the Knowledge Economy. They also talked about why very few private sector companies are willing to invest in Research & Development at present.

Click here to listen to a PodCast of the show (the article starts at around 5 minutes, 45 seconds in). I didn’t catch the entire piece but the bits I did hear were quite interesting.

Also recently published (with the same theme) was an article entitled The Post-Doctoral Research Experience in Ireland (in a recent edition of EmbarkReview, a publication by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology).

Multimedia - Technology

Taking digital video to another level

August 17, 2006 by 0 Comments

Technology just never ceases to amaze me. Just this week, I took the contents of 3 DVDs that I had produced for family and friends over the past couple of years along with the contents of 3 full length MiniDV tapes from my Digital Camcorder and converted the lot to DivX format using DivX Converter.

The total size of all of the above in MPEG2 format was just short of 14GB (Lord knows what it was in raw format) but once converted to DivX format (MPEG4) I was able to fit the lot onto a single DVD which I was duly able to play in my brand new, all singing all dancing, MPEG4 DVD player purchased from Aldi not 3 weeks ago for a mere €50!