Jul
21
Download: Single Track Flash Mp3 Player
Filed Under Music | Leave a Comment
A while back I made a small flash animation for my band site to showcase a single off of my album. In reality the flash animation was actually a single track audio player. I spent a while trying to just download one from other sites but I couldn’t find one anywhere. So to save you some trouble you can download mine here for free. I am not a flash pro, but I did manage to program all the buttons and animations to my liking. Here is a example of the player.
- There are only two things you need to do to customize the player
- Add your music track to the “Music” layer in Adobe Flash.
- Adjust the other layers frame counts to match the length of your audio file.
That’s all there is too it! Text would be a easy add to the player as well, but isn’t completely necessary. You can download my original flash file here.
Single Track Flash Mp3 Player - File size: 5.7mb
*Note the file size of you final .swf file will be only slightly larger then your audio file. The .Fla file is larger because it isn’t encoded like .flv and .swf files.
Enjoy!
Technorati Tags: mp3, flash animation, mp3 player, download, free, music
Jul
21
Whether you are a school administrator, school principle, school teacher or just a student at a school you probably use your school’s network and Internet services quite frequently. Networks for schools are vital for communication today and will be even more so tomorrow.
A lot of schools have upgraded their networks to fast and reliable communications services, but still there are some that lag behind resulting in technical problems and unbearably slow connections. If those problems sound familiar you may want to try Trillion for your school’s networking needs.
Trillion is one of the top WAN and VoIP service providers for k-12 and above education facilities in the United States. With service to over 1,500 schools nation-wide, Trillion has the track record to prove reliability.
You can find more about Trillion’s top E-Rate team here. Erate
Technorati Tags: e-rate, trillion, wan, voip, school, networks, k-12
Jul
21
Cectic.com - A Comic for Skeptics
Filed Under Blogging | Leave a Comment
Cectic.com is a great comic strip created by Rudis Muiznieks geared specifically for those who are the questioning-in-nature type. Cectic.com is updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with a brand new comic for your explicit enjoyment. I found the site while stumbling around one day, and couldn’t find a way to stop reading. There are lots of great strips on the site about politics, religion, and science and they all capture a certain aura about the topics that meshes with me quite well.
I’ll be honest, I read all of them in one sitting, and I enjoyed them all. I really enjoy comics that take risks and push internal boundaries in the reader and Rudis’ comics are all about those two ideas. Here are two comics that I found particularly amusing and ironic from the site!
If you’re interested in reading more, there are over 150 of these great comics over at Cectic.com. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did!
Technorati Tags: cectic, comic strips, religion, politics, science, jokes, entertainment
Jul
20
Why are oil prices so hi? What are George W. Bush’s motives in drilling offshore? Where does the U.S. actually get it’s oil from? Who really is Obama? If you are interested in any of these questions you will want to watch this interview of Naomi Klien on DemocracyNow.
Naomi Klein is the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and many other books and is also one of the most informed writers I have ever read. I challenge, even if you know the answers to the questions I proposed above, watch this video and you may just fill in some missing pieces of the true story you never knew before. The interview starts at about 13:35 in the video if you want to skip the headlines for the day.
The number one supplier of oil to the United States is not Saudi Arabia, it’s not Mexico—it’s Canada. - Naomi Klien
You can Click Here for the video Or Click Here for the transcript.
Visit DemocracyNow.org for more great stories like this.
Technorati Tags: naomi klien, democracy, president bush, oil futures, drilling, capitalism, obama, nafta, free trade
Jul
17
An Alternative Business Model: No Prices
Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment
There are a few restaurants out there that have been running on a new business model - no prices. I have selected three that exemplify the idea under different philosophies. The first restaurant is ‘Just Around the Corner’, a London Restaurant in operation for more than 17 years; the second is called ‘Babu’, a New York Restaurant, running since year 2000; the third is called ‘SAME’ (Acronym for So All May Eat), a resturant in Salt Lake City, open since 2003. So how did these three restaurants make their statement with an alternative business model?
Restaurant 1: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Here’s what the owner of Just Around the Corner says about this alternative business model:
In a cheaper area the restaurant wouldn’t survive because people wouldn’t pay the money I expect and in a busier, more central area, we couldn’t build up the trust.
The model is built off of trust - a trust that people will pay what the food is worth. For this restaurant, a “price” actually exists even if its not explicitly stated on the menu. So if you can’t afford to eat there (which is about 20 British pounds a person, or 40 USD), well, they also have a way of telling a customer they don’t belong here:
We just thank them nicely and give them their money back. These people know they don’t belong here, they try you out and by giving them their money back nicely, you ensure that they never return.
There is a certain anxiety to people when they aren’t told how much they have to pay. This is where the customer has to pass a value judgment on the product that they receive; however, they do not want to offend the seller. In this case, the seller makes a profit off of this anxiety… with a friendly smile.
Restaurant 2: Now I know how much to charge.
The second restaurant, Babu, was using this model temporarily for research. Customers were told to pay what they thought the meal was worth so that the owner can see where she can improve in her service and quality. Again, geared for profit, the restaurant owner wants to ensure a good quality and service for customers.
The results of the research was not surprising - only some of the results were useful and valid. A lot of people got free meals out of it. The rest of society gave what they could afford, while the useful statistics gave meaningful advice to the owner.
Even she felt a little awkward when the time arrives for payment. Sometimes she felt some customer were overgenerous, other times she felt the self-consciousness of the customers when they weren’t given a standard ethic to follow (a price tag).
Today, her business is still running, and now the menu comes with prices. She has learned how to run her restaurant, as well as a few things about social economics.
Restaurant 3: So All May Eat (Literally)
The third restaurant, SAME, has come out with a bold vision to feed everyone as they are the “same”. People can pay what they want, what they can afford, and even donate their labor to scrub pots and pans. Ultimately, having a meal is affordable to anyone in the area, and the owners of this restaurant feel that’s the change they feel passionate about.
A non-profit organization, the owners have been able to maintain their restaurant with the amount of traffic they receive. It maintains a status of a non-profit organization. People of all sorts of varieties come in and gather at the small restaurant - teachers, neighbors, friends, children, homeless… it builds a stronger community for the town and promotes an equality between them all.
The owner admits that it takes a certain amount of faith towards humanity, and the restaurant is a kind of church for him to go to. His philosophy is “be the change you want to see”.
Conclusion
It was interesting for me to hear about the no price model. Today with standard pricing, many consumers cannot explain the reason for outlandish costs on goods that everyone should have - food, gas, housing, etc. And most people have anxiety towards the future of prices - will we not be able to afford to live someday? Prices determine who gets what in this world, and who decides who has the right to eat and who should starve?
To barter today, we would think it would lead to all out fist fights, mean-spirited sellers, and the rich inflating prices. Back in the primitive era of pre-capitalism, everyone was already self-sufficient and everything was always negotiated. Here in the no price model, we can see different ways that the no price model could work when implemented in today’s society. With anxiety, we can see that it is no different from our capitalist model, separating people by a price; with love, we can see that it builds a stronger community and promotes equality.
Technorati Tags: alternative business model, no prices, bartering, negotiate prices, distribution of normative goods, social economics, community building economics, just around the corner, babu, same so all may eat, no price restaurant
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