albums

SonicPics is a handy app for creating video slideshows with audio narration using your camera or photos already on your device.

Designed around a simple idea with a wide range of uses (from travelogues to presentations to real-estate walk-throughs), SonicPics has a reassuringly clean and smooth interface. You use a two-button toolbar to work with either Projects or Recordings, which are saved M4V files of finished projects. With Projects, you just type in a title and description, add in photos, using your camera or existing photos, and then set the audio recording quality--which will affect the final size of your … Read more

Focus Photoeditor emphasizes digital photography but does just about everything other graphics packages can do, with a few twists of its own. It has automatic features for quick photo fixes, but it's also easy to use it to draw, paint, and create custom graphics. It includes an advanced image browser and a Web album wizard, too.

Focus Photoeditor's menu bar features clearly labeled functions that are logically and intuitively grouped, which makes them easy to find and understand. There's the usual File, Edit, and Help menus, but most controls are labeled descriptively, such as Color, Noise/Sharpness, … Read more

Cover Stream is a standalone app designed to help you browse through and listen to your iTunes music, using a visual, intuitive, and unobtrusive interface that's similar to iTunes' Cover Flow.

You can use Cover Stream through your menu bar, in a separate window (which you can toggle to full screen, or to float on top), or both, and the app makes it easy to flip through albums and playlists, play music (including standard controls such as pause, shuffle, and volume, along with a host of system-wide hot keys), build a "Jukebox Mode" queue (including a shuffle … Read more

ScatterTunes is a Texas start-up focused on making the experience of digital music more visual and interactive. In September, the company introduced its V-Album format, which includes audio tracks in unprotected MP3 format, plus material such as lyrics, photos, videos, and links to merchandise and (where applicable) concert tickets. Although the audio portion of the download works with any software, and can be exported to any MP3 player, the video part requires downloading and installing the free ScatterTunes Player. So far, ScatterTunes has only released a couple of V-Albums, and none by artists I'm interested in, so I didn'… Read more

You know what I like? Free stuff. Especially free music, like the kind Amazon seems to have in abundance these days.

For example, right now you can score a whopping 120 MP3 albums at no charge. Gratis. Nada. Zilch. Freebie.

Note: These are albums, not songs. And they cover a wide range of genres, from classical to comedy to Indian music to pop. I particularly like the 26-track "I Love the '80s, Vol.1 (1880s)," which features works from Brahms, Dvorak, and Mahler, among others.

If this sounds a bit familiar, it's because in the past I'… Read more

Medieval CUE splitter is an easy-to-use tool for breaking long audio files into smaller, songlike chunks. It has a simple layout and fast results; its only drawback is the rare CUE file format it uses.

The program's interface is nothing spectacular; in fact, it looks and feels rather sterile. However, its commands are clearly marked, and we had no difficulty navigating it or understanding its controls. This program's biggest problem is that it doesn't support every audio format. While it's compatible with MP3, WAV, and other popular formats, these files need to have a CUE text … Read more

I have no doubt musicians will continue to perform throughout the 2010s, but they'll make less and less money from recorded music. The passion to make and sell recorded music is already starting to wane.

Big record labels will be increasingly irrelevant so I wouldn't be surprised if Warner, Universal, Sony/BMG, and EMI eventually merge into one mega-label to sell and license back-catalog music. New music, that's another story. Already established bands, like Radiohead, have already proved the point: they don't need record companies anymore. They can sell their music directly to fans.

But that model won't work for smaller groups. Recorded music for them may survive purely as a promotional tool, as fewer and fewer bands have any expectation of seeing recording as a potential source of income. Buying music, in physical form or by legal download, doesn't seem to have much of a future. So why would a band make an effort to make music people would want to listen to decades from now? The art of making albums--a suite of songs if you will--may become a rare pursuit. … Read more

PrintStation is designed to assist in the photo-printing process. You can use it to create layouts of single or multiple photos and print them out or save them as image or PDF files.

PrintStation has an attractive and modern interface. The main interface serves as a file browser. You can change the background color to gray or black, which helps you evaluate the color and tone of your photos. The file browser allows for scalable thumbnail viewing of photos that you can select for printing, or you can create new folders and organize files from it. From the Create Layout … Read more

Believe it or not, we're beginning to wind down the year here at CNET. Before your eyes is the final Download Dispatch of 2009. We've had a pretty busy year, reporting on everything from new security apps (incidentally, check out our Security Starter Kit) to complete coverage of Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system. We even launched a Windows 7 blog.

But before we leave you to the merriment of the festive season, we wanted to give you a tip about organizing your holidays photos. If you missed it, Google's free photo-organizing app, Picasa, recently received … Read more