The oddly named advanced audio player for Windows, Foobar2000 has a low memory footprint and gets the job done.  Some of the features include:

• Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND… and more with additional components.
• Gapless playback.
• Full unicode support.
• Easily customizable user interface layout.
• Advanced tagging capabilities.
• Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
• Full ReplayGain support.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.

The audio player interface can be customized to suit your needs.  This is a feature I really liked.  I just wanted an interface that would show me the standard controls and a playlist.  Kind of like the old Winamp player used to years ago.  I just dragged in the album I wanted to listen to, and I was done.  Foobar2000 keeps it simple, and I like that.

You can download it for yourself to see if you like it from foobar2000.org.

Looking for a quick and easy way to search file sharing web sites like Rapidshare, Megaupload, Hotfile, Mediafire and more?  The web site FilesBay does the job pretty well.  Like your everyday, run of the mill search engine – you type in the phrase you are searching for and hit the enter key on your keyboard.  There is no re-inventing the wheel here.

You can choose to search for CDs, DVDs, apps, pictures, documents, videos, audio, and archives.  The web sites you can search include: Rapidshare, Hotfile, Megaupload, Storage, Uploading, Netload, Depositfiles, Filefactory, Mediafire, Easy-share, Zshare, 4shared and many more as well.  When you find the file you want, just hit the download link and you’ll be taken to that specific service it is hosted through.

If you are looking for a clean and handy file search to keep handy, FilesBay.net gets the job done.

Do you find the sound of rain to be relaxing?  Being from Texas, thunderstorms in the Spring are like second nature, so I really do like the sound of rain.  You can now though add that gentle sound of rain to your environment with Rainy Mood.

This web site is simple, and to the point. You have a big ol’ play button in the middle of the web page, and when you click it – the rain sounds stop or start.  The web site plays a 15 minute high quality loop of rainy sounds.

So if you feel like you get your best work done with the rainy noises in the background, be sure to check out RainyMood.com.

This has to be the trippiest use of Twitter I have seen yet.  TweetRad.io will let you listen to what others are tweeting about, using what they call “tweet-to-speech” technology.  Pick one of the options they have featured across the top of the page, tech, news, sports, funny, featured or search for any phrase then wait a few seconds.  Soon, your browser will be displaying and reading tweets out to you.

Not sure how useful this is, unless you need to read a lot of tweets and your hands aren’t free? Other than that though, it at least makes for a cool site to show off to your friends, or maybe even a way to hear what is popular in the morning while you check your e-mail, drink your coffee and mindlessly navigate around the Web, till you get fully awake.

Check it out over at TweetRad.io, then let me know what you think of it.

I have a great love for useless web sites, and this one might rank up there as one of the most fun useless ones out there, (sorry InstantRimshot.com).  KissTunes.com lets you become a grand piano, acoustic guitar or electric piano player right from the comfort of your own keyboard. 

The interface here is pretty simple.  You can use your keyboard or the mouse to click the buttons, and play that specific note.  You also can record your little ditty once your done, play it back, save it or load another.  Who wouldn’t want to play and record tunes online using your computer’s keyboard? 

Although it is a little slow right now (probably going to be getting really popular soon) be sure to keep KissTunes.com handy next time you feel like composing your next keyboard tune of your own.

All you need to do is browse for the file you want to convert, and then hit the “start conversion” button.  Some of the files it currently supports include:

• image/photo files (jpeg, gif, png, svg…)
• audio formats (mp3, ogg…)
• documents (doc, pdf, odt, txt, rtf…)
• programming source code (java, php, cpp…)
• web documents (html, htm…)
• archive (zip, rar…)
• video, fonts, chemical file formats and more

Once uploaded, every converted file has a unique web address created for it, so you can point others to it and share the document in question.  So if you are searching for a free way to convert any file into a web page, give them a shot at File2.ws.

Installing this script should be no problem with any shared Linux-based hosting.  They only require 1 MB of free web space, PHP 4.3 or higher and MySQL 4 or higher.  After installing, you can upload your content via the web site or FTP and then you can add and edit lots of meta information for that media. 

You can also install templates and plugins to customize your experience even more.

You can check out the demo on OpenSourceCMS if you want to give it a try.  If you are looking for a sleek and easy to use content management system for publishing a podcast, Loudblog is definitely worth checking into.

The biggest improvement over past versions is that the FLV support is much better.  So if you download a lot of YouTube (or any of the other video sharing sites) videos, you will no longer have to reload the player if you try to fast forward or rewind.  You can check out the full list of features too for this tiny player, if you are not impressed yet.  For more on this most recent release, check out the “What is cool in 0.9″ page or check out this video:

VLC media player 0.9.2 – Grishenko from Antoine Cellerier on Vimeo.

They have added a lot more video content – so they have both the video and audio aspects of podcasting covered now.  Also the new design is pleasing to the eye and very functional.  One little pet peeve for me was that it doesn’t keep me logged in.  Each time I visit the site I have to login again. 

Checking out my own page on there for the Web Hosting Show – I see another nice new addition.  They actually updated the RSS feed!  Before this redesign, it hadn’t been combed in a few months, so happy to see they are updating the podcast feeds they are watching because without it – well, you don’t have much of a podcasting service without freshness.

All in all, I wish the new Odeo the best of luck and who knows, if they can keep the feeds update this time around I might move my own subscriptions over there soon.

White noise is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal’s power spectral density has equal power in any band, at any centre frequency, having a given bandwidth. White noise is considered analogous to white light which contains all frequencies.

So that answers the what, now how about the why?  Here are some of the uses for white noise that are out there:

• Aid Sleep
• Enhance Privacy
• Block Distractions
• Mask Tinnitus
• Configure Audio Equipment
• Soothe Migraines

Getting back to the web site, Simply Noise – all it does is give you an orb to slide back and forth to increase or decrease the white noise they provide.  What exactly is the noise they use?  Think of it as the static sound you here when there is a TV channel not coming in clearly.  All in all – this site does the job in a very simple way.  Maybe in the future they can have the white noise come up via a popup window?  That way if I needed it I could have it loaded up without having to keep the URL open 24/7.