Adobe Soundbooth Beta

Edit sound files, create loops, record running sound, add multiple effects and do much more with this simple to use sound editor

Adobe has come up with a feature-rich and user-friendly sound editor, Soundbooth (Beta 2). It is so simple that even an amateur can use it. However, it is still in the Beta stage and you can expect to do much more with it in the full version. The Adobe Soundbooth interface has lots of Windows embedded, which can be fully customized.

Just like in Photoshop, Adobe has introduced the 'History' window that lets you go back and forward to any desired editing step. The sound timeline can be zoomed in and out with the mouse scroller, which makes it simple. All the basic buttons of a sound editor like play/pause and record buttons are included on the lower panel of the interface. If your interface workspace gets too cluttered or confusing, you can simply click on the reset workspace button that takes you back to the default workspace settings.

Multiple sound files can be opened in the same interface and you can copy and paste a portion from one to another

Soundbooth supports most of the sound and music file formats like WMV, WMA and WAV, but sadly you cannot edit or save in MP3 format. Among others, one good feature is noise reduction. It gets rid of the noise in the backdrop of a recorded music piece. Other common tools are fade in/ fade out, louder tool and the record tool. The latter lets you record running sound/music from your Windows media player or via a mic. Other than the basic copy/paste feature of sound, Adobe has added a 'Mix paste' feature through which you can increase or decrease the volume of the sound part which is being pasted or the track on which sound is being pasted on. This is a good option because if you are working on 2 different tracks, they might be having different volume levels, so via Mix paste you can adjust volume accordingly.

Lots of effects can be found such as the vocal enhancer with which one can enhance the male, female sound or music volume. These effects are available as basic effects and also on the advanced level (with extra features) on the 'Effects' menu. Markers can be added for easy references with which you can keep track of those important key points where editing needs to be done.

As compared to other sound editors such as Song Sound Forge, this one's catching up with new features like Mix edit and History. But more work is needed in terms of getting support for sound formats.

Vista now in use on less than 1% of PCs

Windows Vista may yet prove to be an unstoppable juggernaut, but statistics released today by a market research firm show that the new operating system hasn't even licked its nine-year old ancestor.

Vista was being used on less than 1% of PCs tracked in February by Aliso Viejo-based Net Applications Inc., making it the sixth most-popular operating system. That puts it behind Windows 98, which is still used on 1.5% of computers.

Vista's exact share was 0.93%. Windows XP continued to lead, with 84.3%, followed by Windows 2000, with 4.8%. Mac OS X on PowerPC machines had 4.3%, while newer Intel-based PCs running OS X had 2.1%.

Net Applications collects its data from the browsers of visitors to its network of more than 40,000 Web sites.

Vista's February share of PCs connected to the Internet -- a month after its consumer release and three months after its release to businesses -- represents a big leap over January, when it was used by just 0.2% of PCs. At the time, it lagged behind Windows ME, the 13-year-old Windows NT and various flavors of Linux.

"The big question is if and when are the masses going to switch?" Net Applications analyst Vince Vizzacarro said in a newsletter accompanying the statistics. "While Microsoft was late to market with Vista, Apple's taken advantage and is now up to a combined 6.38% market share. It looks like the market is buying Vista on new PC purchases, but there isn't a significant percentage of people upgrading existing PCs. I expect this trend to continue through the rest of 2007."

Some analysts have predicted that despite Microsoft's intention to spend half a billion dollars marketing Vista, conversions from XP won't be the norm until 2009.

Statistics for the first week of February -- Vista officially launched Jan. 30 -- were mixed. Current Analysis found sales of PCs -- with Vista preinstalled -- were up 173% from the week before. PC sales were also up 67% from the same time frame in 2006. But Current Analysis itself pointed out that the sales leaps were exaggerated partly by slowing sales as retailers and OEMs wound down their XP-based inventory.

By comparison, NPD Group Inc. found that first-week sales of boxed copies of Vista were down 60% compared with first-week boxed copies of Windows XP five years earlier.

Neither group has released statistics of Vista sales in subsequent weeks, though NPD analyst Chris Swenson is expected to release first-month retail sales of the new OS soon.

Article post : Computerworld

What's wrong with Microsoft Windows Vista?

by John Sullivan
Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system is a giant step backward for your freedoms.
Usually software is supposed to enable you to do more with your computer. Vista, though, is designed to restrict what you can do.Vista enforces new forms of “Digital Rights Management (DRM)”. DRM is more accurately called Digital Restrictions Management, because it is a technology that Big Media and computer companies try to impose on us all, in order to have control over how our computers are used.

Vista Screenshot:


DRM enables Microsoft and media companies to:

• Decide which programs you can and can't use on your computer
• Decide which features of your computer or software you can use at any given moment
• Force you to install new programs even when you don't want to (and, of course, pay for the privilege)
• Restrict your access to certain programs and even to your own data files

DRM is enforced by technological barriers. You try to do something, and your computer tells you that you can't. To make this effective, your computer has to be constantly monitoring what you are doing. This constant monitoring uses computing power and memory, and is a large part of the reason why Microsoft is telling you that you have to buy new and more powerful hardware in order to run Vista. They want you to buy new hardware not because you need it, but because your computer needs it in order to be more effective at restricting what you do.
Microsoft and other computer companies sometimes refer to these restrictions as “Trusted Computing.” Given that they are designed to make it so that your computer stops trusting you and starts trusting Microsoft, these restrictions are more appropriately called “Treacherous Computing”.
Even when you legally buy Vista, you don't own it.Windows Vista, like previous versions of Windows, is proprietary software: leased to you under a license that severely restricts how you can use it, and without source code, so nobody but Microsoft can change it or even verify what it really does.

Microsoft says it best:

The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.

To make it even more confusing, different versions of Vista have different licensing restrictions. You can read all of the licenses at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx.

It's painful to read the licenses, and this is often why people don't object to them. But if we don't start objecting, we will lose valuable freedoms. Here are some of the ridiculous restrictions you will find in your reading:

If your copy of Vista came with the purchase of a new computer, that copy of Vista may only be legally used on that machine, forever.
If you bought Vista in a retail store and installed it on a machine you already owned, you have to completely delete it on that machine before you can install it on another machine.
You give Microsoft the right, through programs like Windows Defender, to delete programs from your system that it decides are spyware.
You consent to being spied upon by Microsoft, through the “Windows Genuine Advantage” system. This system tries to identify instances of copying that Microsoft thinks are illegitimate. Unfortunately, a recent study indicated that this system has already screwed up in over 500,000 cases.
Free software like GNU/Linux does not require you to consent to these absurd licensing terms. It is called free software because you are free to make as many copies as you want, and to share it with as many friends as you want. Nobody will be monitoring your actions or falsely calling you a thief.
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