Digital Music: Last.fm releases a cross platform audio fingerprinting ...

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Last.fm releases a cross platform audio fingerprinting application designed to aggregate a database of proper metadata for your music. In time, the application hopes to clean up your music's metadata similar to MusicBrainz

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Browse the Web Without Installing Anything with ioSwiftFox

from Lifehacker by Kyle Pott

Linux only: Run a browser directly from RAM with open source "app" ioSwiftFox. ioSwiftFox requires absolutely no installation and doesn't even require root privileges to run for the first time. ioSwiftFox is a simple script that after some chmod foo you can use to browse the web. It runs faster than Firefox and even works with your existing Firefox extensions! If you want to get technical, ioSwiftFox is a recompilation of Firefox 2 for Infodomestic Objects. To get ioSwiftFox up and running, download the file and enter the following three commands into the terminal:

chmod +x ioSwiftFox2.0.0.6-pentium4_Infodomestic0.8.5 mv ioSwiftFox2.0.0.6-pentium4_Infodomestic0.8.5 ioswiftfox ./ioswiftfox

Make sure you do not have Firefox open when you run ioSwiftFox for the first time. ioSwiftFox is a great portable app for your thumb drive—talk about badass! ioSwiftFox is a free download for Linux only.

ioSwiftFox [via Ubuntu Unleashed]

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Featured Windows Download: Sync Photos to Flickr with FlickrSync

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Windows only: Free, open source application FlickrSync monitors any image folders of your choosing and syncs their contents to your Flickr account. We showed you a simple command line method for automatic Flickr uploads, but FlickrSync brings an entirely new level of functionality to keeping desktop folders in sync with your Flickr account—allowing you to do things like match folders to Flickr sets and create new sets for new folders.

It takes a little getting used to, but with FlickrSync you can basically manage your photos locally and ensure the results are replicated perfectly on Flickr (which makes it an exceptionally good photo backup tool). FlickrSync is a free, Windows-only download requiring .NET 3.0. If you need to recover photos in the other direction (i.e., from Flickr), try previously mentioned Migratr.

FlickrSync [via CyberNet]

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How To: Boost Your Wireless Signal With a Homemade Wifi Extender

from Lifehacker by Kyle Pott

Popout It's amazing what a few sheets of tinfoil can do for the strength of your wireless signal. As shown above, by carefully folding tinfoil into a parabola, you can boost your wireless strength tremendously. The fellas in the video saw gains from 82% to just under 100%, though I only saw boosts of around five percent, so your mileage may vary. This project should only take about three minutes and will hopefully leave you with impressive results. If you don't want to attach unsightly parabolic boosters and you're using the same basic router as the fellas in the video, you can also upgrade your firmware to DD-WRT—a free hack that will turn your $60 router into a $600 router and allow you to boost your Wi-Fi signal from your router's control panel.

Deep Dish Cylindrical Parabolic Template [FreeAntennas.Com]

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Meridian's iRIS iPod dock upscales videos to 1080p via HDMI

from Engadget by Darren Murph

If you're having a flash of déjà vu, fret not, as this device certainly isn't the first from Meridian to output 1080p content from your iPod. Unveiled today, the iRIS universal dock for iPod claims to pump out your stored videos in resolutions as high as 1080p via HDMI, all thanks to the "high-end video upconversion processing." Of course, we're admittedly skeptical about how well this thing truly walks the talk, but nevertheless, users who opt for component outs instead of HDMI can purportedly witness 720p / 1080i content straight from their Pod. Notably, the Qdeo technology is said to "further incorporate advanced DSP for per-pixel, motion-adaptive video processing that corrects both color and contrast losses," and while there's no word on whether this thing plays nice with the new family of iPods, users will enjoy the coaxial / optical audio outputs, headphone and line-level outs, and the HDMI input for external sources. We know you're intrigued, so look for this bad boy to land in November for $379.

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