Wednesday, November 22, 2006

playing music over skype, israeli beauty queens

i was using skype for the first time yesterday, and it suddenly occurred to me how cool it would be to be able to play music off your computer in the background (or foreground) of the conversation so that both parties could hear it.

true to form, if you can think of it, someone is bound to have already done it. ideally i wanted a plugin for itunes, so that whatever was playing in itunes would also play in the background of the conversation. i didn't find anything like that, but i did find a software mp3 player that plugs into skype. called tunesup for skype (beta). it calls itself freeware but it does launch its own website in the background. also it displays an error message when you shut it down on my system - probably something to do with the "beta" bit...

but the program itself is pretty cool. there are mixer sliders for mixing the level of music compared to the microphone etc. it loads mp3 files and a couple of other file formats as well, and also loads m3u playlists.

unfortunately itunes doesn't save playlists as m3u. but more trawling the net uncovered this conversion wizard: SonglistToM3U. what you do is export your playlist out of itunes as a txt file (available under the export options in itunes) and then run it through the wizard. the wizard creates an m3u list out of that. so you and i are away laughing.

now for the bit about the israeli beauty queen that you've been waiting for. this from stuff.co.nz:

Beauty queen downs arms to save legs - 17 November 2006

JERUSALEM: Miss Israel has been given permission not to carry her assault rifle during service in the Israeli army because she says it bruises her legs.

Reigning beauty queen Yael Nezri, a private who recently completed basic training, said the bruises were making it difficult for her to model in photo shoots. The Jerusalem Post reported that Nezri, 18, had been granted an exemption by her commanders during her two-year army stint.

No comments: