Roku and MP3tunes have formed a rather interesting partnership, which will allow users to upload their iTunes music to an MP3tunes locker, and you’ll be able to play your entire library, including the playlists, on your TV via Roku player. This was achieved by using Roku’s open SDK to create a channel that will in turn make good use of the MP3tunes API. A limited time offer is currently available which allows you to get $20 off a Roku HD or Roku HD-XR, along with a free, premium 50GB MP3tunes locker.

(Via Ubergizmo.)

We know you’ve been waiting on pins and needles, and at long last, the gap between announcement and ‘now shipping’ has been closed. IK Multimedia has just revealed that its AmpliTube iRig adapter is shipping, enabling iPod touch, iPad and iPhone users to jack their guitar or bass directly into their iDevice and access all sorts of effects. From there, users can pipe the audio to a pair of headphones or a guitar amp, theoretically allowing your handheld to supplant your mess of pedals. Were also told that the iRig can be used with line level signal sources such as synthesizers, keyboards or mixing consoles, so theres that. Its available as we speak for $39.99 (or €29.99 overseas), and users can expect an iPad-specific version of the AmpliTube app to be released in the near future.

(Via Engadget.)

As a blogger and a researcher, I have to conduct a lot of interviews. Some months I’ve conducted two or three interviews a week, and many of those are recorded interviews, because many people don’t have time to answer questions via email. One of the nice things about recorded interviews is that they work well as an audio podcast either available for download from your own blog, or distributed as a podcast at any podcast directory.

Regardless what you intend to do with the interview, one thing that’s for certain is that you want to develop a reputation as a professional interviewer that produces high-quality, interesting conversations with fascinating people.

Only part of the recipe for this is developing interesting and thoughtful questions for your interviewee to answer, but the other significant part of the equation is how well you’ve edited the audio interview into a high-quality, professional show. Many avid audio enthusiasts may find some of the edits below somewhat simple, but for the blogger or podcaster with little audio editing experience, these tips are critical to know.

3 Tips To Enhance Your Interview Audio With Audacity

I use the Audacity audio recording software to record and edit all of my interviews. My recording setup is about as simple as it gets – an Olympic earpiece that doubles as both a microphone and an earphone, so that I can hear the person on the phone while the microphone feeds the conversation into the laptop and Audacity. This works well, and produces high quality conversations, but like anything, there are flaws in the setup that produce less than optimum conditions.

The beauty of Audacity is that you have the capability to ‘fix’ those flaws. The three most common problems that I’m going to touch on in this post are removing background noise, amplifying voices, and integrating quality introduction with music.

Before we start doctoring the audio file with the Audacity audio recording software, let me first introduce the patient. Above is a snippet of an hour-long audio interview that I conducted last month. The two most common flaws are background noise, shown in the center of this clip, and low voice volume (my voice) as shown on the right. You can see that the amplitude when I was talking is about half of that of the voice on the phone – which is to be expected when recording with such an earpiece.

How To Fix Quiet Voices

The first tweak for the common interview issue of quiet voices is also the easiest. The volume of the voice is equivalent to ‘amplitude,’ so all you have to do is use Audacity’s Amplify tool to increase the quiet voice just a little bit.

To perform this task, just highlight the section of audio track with the quiet voice, and then select ‘Amplify’ from the Effect menu option.

In the amplify tool, you’ll need to select an amplification that is just enough to increase the voice volume to a level that’s equivalent to the other person speaking. It may take some trial and error the first time, so just undo the change and try a new value until you get it right.

In my case, I found that an increase of 5 dB did the trick. Once you know the right value, the only tedious part of this fix is that you’ll need to find every place in the track where the quiet voice shows up, and do the highlight/amplify routine to fix it.

How To Remove Background Noise With Audacity

The second most common flaw in an interview audio file is background noise. Maybe you left a fan on in the other room, or there are cars going by just outside the open window, and you realize once you listen to the audio that the sound is terribly annoying and distracting.

The first step in this technique is to identify an area in your file that features nothing but the background noise alone. When you find such an area, highlight that section of the audio track, and then go into the ‘Noise Removal’ tool in the Effects menu option.

Once you’re there, click on ‘Get Noise Profile‘. Doing this captures a snapshot of the background noise itself. The software uses this to ‘erase’ that sound profile from a section (or all) of the audio file. The next step is just to highlight the area where you want to remove the noise (most of the time you’ll just select the entire track), and then go back into this window and select ‘Remove Noise‘.

As you can see, Audacity does an amazing job at cleaning up the noise. There is one caveat, and it is this – carefully gauge the amount of noise that you want to remove. Removing too little won’t do much good, and removing too much will make the audio sound over-digitized or artificially quiet. One thing I noticed is that the middle to lower middle setting is usually ideal.

Integrating A Musical Or Voice Introduction

Have you ever heard those cool podcasts with a great musical introduction? Well, believe it or not, you can do the same exact thing in Audacity in just a few simple steps. The first step, obviously, is importing the music file that you would like to use (make sure you don’t infringe on any licensing issues).

The next step is just highlight the block of music you’d like to use as your introduction (select the correct number of seconds) and then do a simple Copy. Then place the cursor at the start of your audio file, and select Paste. The copied music clip will get inserted into your track, pushing the entire interview to the right.

While this is cool, it’ll sound weird because at the end of the clip, your music will just end abruptly. Instead, you want to taper off the music as you enter into the interview itself. You can do this by highlighting the very last part of your music clip and selecting Effect -> Fade Out from the Menu.

You’ll see the amplitude of the music clip taper off as it approaches the end of the clip, and in effect producing a very nice fade into the interview itself.

By using these three simple tips, you’ve just equalized voice volume, removed background noise, and embedded a professional music introduction into your audio interview. With just these few simple changes, you’ll transform amateur sounding interviews into well produced, professional sounding conversations.

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

Recently, I started taking guitar lessons. One of the benefits of learning how to play the guitar is that you finally have something to do to entertain people when they visit. The downside of playing guitar is that you have to maintain the thing, which most of the time just means learning how to tune it. Luckily, there are numerous websites that offer the guitar tuning tones you need to get your guitar sounding perfect again.

In my search for the best sites, I came across some pretty simple ones and some that are fairly unique. Ultimately, the function is really simple – you press a button and the computer should play the right note for that string. What I discovered is that a majority of the sites that offer guitar tuning tones play tones that aren’t quite ‘right’ or at least they aren’t very clear.

So, if you want a quick tool to tune your guitar as quickly as possible, and you left your convenient electronic tuner at home, here are 5 awesome websites that will do the trick.

A Guitar Tuning Tone For Each String

The premise of these five sites is very simple. They just play the guitar tuning tone for that string. While the tone is playing, you just play the string and turn the tuning key until the sound of the string matches the computer tone.

The first online tool I’d like to cover is the Gieson tuner, because it appears to be the most popular. This is probably because the tool also offers an embed code where people can place the guitar tuner right on their website or blog.

The front panel is creative. The little device features the five guitar strings, but you can choose to hear the sound as a tone instead (the tone option didn’t work on my computer though.)  You can manually flip each switch by clicking on it, and the sound of the guitar string for that note will repeat. When you’re done, turn off that switch and flip the next.

If you’re very fast at tuning, you can flip the ‘Auto Advance’ switch, and the device will play the sound for each string a few times before moving on to the next note automatically. This allows for hands-free operation so you can focus on tuning your guitar.

The next guitar tuner is offered by ChordBook. This well-designed guitar tuner provides a variety of options to customize the tuner depending on the type of guitar you’re working with.

There are a lot of features here. You can turn the tuning keys to adjust each note depending on how you want to tune your guitar, like turning D into D Minor, or E into E minor. Or, select one of the common alternative tunings from the list if you want to use something other than the standard. When you’re ready to tune, click on the ‘R’ next to each key and the tone for that key will repeat until you’re done.

HotFrets offers a stylish little online guitar tuner app that isn’t quite as feature-filled as the first two listed above, but it does have some entertaining animation.

Just click on each string and the note will play. Alternately, you can just press the number for that string and it’ll play as well. There aren’t any nifty features with this one, it’s just the standard tuning and what you see is what you get.

The next site with guitar tuning tones is actually one of the favorites, only because the designers used a unique style for the thing. It’s offered by Tune My Bass.

The presets tab lets you choose what type of guitar you’re tuning, such as a 5 string bass or a 7 string guitar, and custom tuning lets you choose your sound types and also save your presets to a file on your PC. When you’re ready to tune, just hover the mouse over the string and as the tone plays it also displays the note. While you’re busy tuning, the app plays all sorts of animation for you. Yes, those are underpants flying in from the right side of the screen.

The last site that I’d like to cover is aptly called Online Guitar Tuner. At this website, the first thing you’ll want to do is select the type of tuning that you require from the menu list on the right side of the main page.

In my case, I’m going to go for the Open G Tuning. Once you click on the tuner type, the next screen opens up with the strings and the tuner keys displayed graphically.

Just click on the note, and the tone plays in clear, crisp audio from your computer speakers. The only drawback with this tool is that the sound doesn’t keep playing automatically. You have to keep clicking on the button to hear the tone. If you are somewhat slow at tuning your guitar, this could become annoying – so you might want to consider using one of the online tuners above that offers a more hands-free approach.

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

In this article, I’m going to outline some of the top resources that I use to find guitar chords for songs that I want to learn how to play. Recently, I decided that I needed a way to relax and get rid of stress – something that is somehow unconnected with the computer.

I remembered playing around with my mother’s old guitar when I was a kid, and realized that I’ve always wanted to learn how to play guitar. My daughter was already taking piano lessons from a local older couple who give lessons, so I decided to take guitar lessons while waiting for my daughter to finish her piano lessons.

Within three lessons, I found myself playing a John Denver song using just three chords. Of course, I was immediately hooked. Practicing every night, I’ve mastered the song in about a month. However, once I was able to play the one song, I wondered how many others I could learn that use just those three or four chords.

So, a hobby that I took on in order to get off of the computer and take a break from the Internet, ended up bringing me back to the Internet in search of guitar chords for songs that I really want to learn how to play. I’ve found a few excellent websites that do a tremendous job in cataloging the correct chords for the most popular traditional and contemporary songs. Today, I’d like to share those discoveries with other guitar players out there.

Chordie – A Massive Library Of Accurate & Inaccurate Chords

I think Chordie has to be one of the largest collections of guitar chords and tabs that I’ve ever found. I’ve yet to think of a song that doesn’t have a corresponding Chordie listing. At Chordie, you can search for either song or artist listings that are organized in a long alphabetical collection. This way, if you don’t know the title of a song, you can search for the guitar chords by the artist name instead.

Chordie is actually a huge community of guitar players who love music so much that they spend time trying to figure out the chords to music, and then list their findings on Chordie. Most of the time, you’ll discover that the chords listed here are actually pretty accurate – and you’ll be playing the coolest songs in no time.

If you can’t find guitar chords for songs that you’re looking for anywhere else, then I’d suggest going to Chordie as your last resort. Why as a last resort? Because at least half the time, you’ll also discover that members posted chords or lyrics that are just totally wrong.

For example, one of the first songs I tried to learn on my own was Losing My Religion, by R.E.M. I found that the chords seem correct, but the lyrics are completely messed up. Some sentences are completely wrong, and others are just plain silly. This is only representative of about a third of Chordie chord listings from members – most of them are pretty accurate. The best part of Chordie listings is that the chord is displayed at the upper right hand corner, so you don’t have to go flipping through your guitar book to remind yourself how to play an ‘F’.

Ultimate Guitar – The Ultimate Resource

Although I started out using Chordie, I got frustrated looking for accurate contemporary songs, so I was very pleased to stumble across Ultimate Guitar. The first thing you’ll notice when you arrive is that the layout is very clean and very cool. There’s music news, reviews, articles and interviews. You’ll find a forum and a full community of guitar playing music lovers just like you.

This is seriously a huge community where you can not only discover the guitar chords for songs, but you can absolutely immerse yourself into the world of music as you’re learning to play new songs.

My favorite section of the site is the Top 100, where you’ll discover some of the greatest songs that you hear on the radio and wish that you could learn how to play.

I was very happy to discover the song Hey There Delilah, by the Plain White T’s – it’s a song I really want to learn how to play.  Unfortunately, this page brought the discovery that it requires both F minor and B minor – two chords I’ve yet to master yet. Maybe some day soon…

Another thing I like about this site is that in most cases you’ll find both the chords and the tabs. Many self-taught guitar players like tabs because it shows which string and which fret to play for each strum. However, taking lessons I’ve learned the chords, so really prefer just the lyrics with the chord changes listed above. Luckily, at Ultimate Guitar you’ll find both.

E-Chords – An Online Application For Learning Guitar Chords

While my favorite online sport for popular guitar chords is Ultimate Guitar, E-Chords is a very close second. I love how functional the site is. From the main page, you’ll discover that you can search for songs by artists, albums, composers, song titles and even using just part of the lyrics, which is very useful when you just can’t remember the title of a song.

This site isn’t so much as community as it is an awesome online application that helps you learn how to play any song using whatever format you’re most comfortable with. The coolest part of e-chords is how you can customize the display of the song and the associated chords with a click of the mouse.

The guitar chords for songs that you’ll find here are displayed exactly how I like them – the lyrics with the required chord listed above them. The menu bar on the left offers all kinds of cool features, including auto-scroll (really nice when you’re trying to play and need to scroll down for the lyrics!), increase or decrease the font size, hide chords, play simpler chords (if available) and even switch the chord display from the letter to the chord drawings (awesome for beginners).

Overall, I’d have to say that guitar chords for songs that I want are at e-chords, then this is where I prefer playing them because it’s so convenient and easy to use.

Heartwood Guitar Instruction – Chords For Learning Guitar

While Heartwood Guitar isn’t a giant library of thousands of guitar chords for songs, it is a place that you’ll want to go for some amazing free resources to learn how to play the guitar – with a hundred or so great classic songs, including the chords you’ll need to know to play them. Major kudos to Rob Hampton of Seattle for creating this impressive and useful online resource. To find the chords, from his main site just click on Chord Charts. You’ll find hundreds of great songs listed alphabetically.

These chord listings are nicely laid out with strum and rhythm information noted throughout in some spots. Now, while the chord listings are really fun to go through and play, I have to say that my favorite part of this website are the guitar lessons that Rob has written up and that he offers for absolutely free on his blog.

On his blog, he’ll show you tips and techniques on how to strum, tuning your guitar, fingerpicking and much more – often including images and always including detailed and clear instruction. It’s obvious that this is one instructor who is an excellent teacher, and that he really loves the art of guitar playing.

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

We’ve discussed numerous methods for making a cup from a glass bottle, but I don’t recall seeing anyone use the neck before. Brookelynn from CRAFT has us covered, though, with this guitar slide made from a wine bottle:

One interesting historical example of upcycled crafting is the bottleneck guitar- or as it is now widely known, slide guitar. The unique resonant sound of slide guitar was originally formed by playing with a glass bottleneck over one finger and running the slide up and down the strings. While the materials for making slides have evolved, bottles are still a popular choice of material. We were given one, and as it has been used over the years, the piece has developed some lovely scratches that give the glass beautiful character. Slideplayer.com has two great ideas for making your own, including a ‘Burning Twine’ method that sounds really cool (and drunkenly dangerous).

Read more

(Via MAKE Magazine.)

Music and technology aren’t unfamiliar bedfellows, but the i-Tab offers a unique method for enhancing your guitar with gadgetry: clamp it on. Like a TomTom for tunes, the electronic songbook prompts players with chords and lyrics for thousands of songs.

For hundreds of years guitarists have mastered their instrument with patience and practice. But this is 2010—who has time to practice? The i-Tab accelerates the learning process by offering thousands of dynamic tabs, scrolling chords at any tempo while you stumble your way through the song.

The device has a 5′ touch screen—using your guitar pick as stylus is encouraged—and 4GB of memory to hold the songs, which can be downloaded through a tab store. The company claims there will be 5000 tunes available at launch.

On some songs you can accompany your noodling with backing tracks that can be played over speakers or headphones. And youll probably need them—having the i-Tab clamped to your guitar isnt likely to win you many bandmates. Sure itll fast-track your fingerpicking, but at what price.

Well, the price of $199 and looking like a dweeb, as it turns out. Pre-orders are slated to be filled first week in March. [i-Tab via Oh Gizmo]

(Via Gizmodo.)

Looking for a fun, functional, low-cost project to knock out during the holidays? Check out this clever repurposing piece from the pages of MAKE Volume 10, offered up by David Battino with help from George ‘the Fat Man’ Sanger.

The Sweet Sound of Particleboard
Beef up the tone of open-back amps with a little thrift shop help.
By David Battino

After transforming a record player and some plumbing parts into a spinning speaker (see MAKE, Volume 05, page 24), George ‘the Fat Man’ Sanger is back with a new way to enhance your guitar sound.

His Goodwill Amp Enhancer is a DIY version of the commercially available Enhancer, which beefs up the tone of open-back amps by redirecting the ‘lost’ sound to the front.

The nicely finished commercial versions start at $150 (soundenhancer.com), but the Fat Man built his enhancer out of a $15 computer desk he scavenged from a thrift shop. ‘It took just an hour or two,’ he reports, ‘and adds wonderful tone to my amp.’

How It Works

The Sound Enhancer site details the science involved, but in general, the Fat Man explains, an open-back amp is a design compromise.

‘In theory, a perfect speaker box would be a speaker mounted in the middle of a wall of infinite size, because that would let the sound from the front reach your ear without having been partially cancelled by the inverse sound from the back,’ he says. ‘Mom won’t let us build anything infinite anymore, not after what happened last time, so we approximate the infinite wall by putting speakers into sealed boxes, also known as infinite-baffle enclosures.

‘Unfortunately, infinite-baffle enclosures make it really hard for the speaker to move, so the sound is quieter. And of course, quietness is not very rock ‘n’ roll, is it? So designers make a lot of amps louder (and a little funny-sounding) by opening the backs.

‘This speaker stand bends the back sound around a corner, which makes it even less like the front sound, and then sends it out the front, where its slightly altered power is added to your already Majestic Volume in a rich and tonally pleasing way.’
In addition to reinforcing the sound, the Goodwill Amp Enhancer points the amp at your head, letting you hear yourself louder than, and before, your bandmates do. That helps you play better, and your bandmates don’t hate you for playing too loud.

MATERIALS

Donor furniture with big sides (e.g., a printer stand or computer desk, ideally with casters), taller than your amp (hip height is great), and 1¼ times your amps depth
Other wood (possibly salvaged from the donor), several pieces cut so their lengths match the width of your amp minus about 1′. Their widths must add up to approximately 1 amp depth plus 1 amp height. They need to be thick enough to take a ½’ screw.
Particleboard screws about 1½’ long
Saw Circular is good, but a handsaw will do.
Screwdriver
Caulking gun and caulk
Hot glue gun and glue
Weather stripping twice the amp height, twice the amp depth, and once the amp width
Weather-stripping adhesive

DIRECTIONS

Step 1: Ready the donor. Pull the sides off the donor, place them on the floor, and lay your amp on its side in the tipped-back position you want it to sit on the stand. The back of the stand needs to rise above the opening in the back of your amp to seal it off, but it mustn’t block any essential controls. The bottom-front edge of the amp will come right to the front of the stand.

Step 2: Make the side panels. Mark the outline with a Sharpie, and saw along the resulting L-shaped line. Now your side panels are done, and they should look something like that one particularly odd block
in the game Blockhead!

Step 3: Make the floor and back wall. Make a floor and back wall for the amp by hot-gluing the other wood between the two side panels. You may need one additional narrow piece to bridge from the top of this back wall to the spot on your amp where the open back stops and the controls begin. Don’t worry if you mess up; hot glue can be broken free and redone easily.

Step 4: Make it permanent. Once it looks right, make it permanent by sinking some screws in from the sides. Caulk up the cracks, then glue the weather-stripping to the edges that will touch your amp. ‘This stand will make your amp sound so much better,’ the Fat Man promises. ‘It has to be heard to be believed.’

Sound comes out the back of the amp and is forced out the front of the stand. Beyond that, the shape of the barrier isn’t too important. Be sure that the horizontal bit hits the amp’s back above the speaker opening and below any controls.

Hear the Goodwill Amp Enhancer: makezine.com/10/diymusic_amp

More from the Fat Man: fatman.com

(Via MAKE Magazine.)

Web television has matured significantly in 2009; we’ve seen the introduction of the Streamy Awards, Dr. Horrible seized control of the Emmys, and the launch of more internet TV-related startups than we can count. TV-over-IP is starting to hit television sets thanks to set-top-boxes, TVs, and disc players with built-in streaming capabilities, and like print media before it, traditional broadcast television is beginning to grapple with the inevitability of an Internet-driven future.

Here are several companies that believe they are well-positioned for the transition — big and small, old and new. This isn’t a complete list by any stretch, but these samples will give you an idea of where the industry is headed in 2010.

1. Hulu

Along with TV networks’ own websites, Hulu has been one of the de facto destinations for users seeking network television programming on the web. It’s a joint venture between NBC, FOX, and ABC, and while it still isn’t profitable, it’s arguably the best example of giving users what they want from a site that streams professional content.

At the 2009 Digital Hollywood conference NBC executive Mark Graboff said, ‘Hulu is basically an anti-piracy move.’ If you’re a major TV studio, it’s better that viewers are getting the content from you with minimal advertising than from BitTorrent and RapidShare pirates with no advertising at all.

In addition to shows from participating broadcast and cable networks, Hulu distributes some programming that originates on the web. You can’t be sure where Hulu is ultimately going to go — though premium subscriptions have been discussed — but at the moment it’s a strong proof of concept.

2. Apple

Never mind the fact that the Apple TV set-top box has been a niche success at best, iTunes is the world’s largest online distribution platform for pro-quality videos. You’ll only beat its variety of programming by subscribing to cable or satellite television.

The downside is that it’s expensive — $2.99 per episode if you watch in HD. But insiders have said that Apple is approaching TV studios to sign them up in a new plan: $30 per month for an all-access pass. If you have a set-top box or home theater PC to watch all those HD shows in your living room, getting cable or satellite for twice the price suddenly seems pointless. Oh, and you’ll be able to watch those shows on your iPhone or iPod, too.

If Apple succeeds in convincing the producers of content to cooperate, it’ll be a red letter day for Internet TV.

3. Boxee

Boxee doesn’t produce video content, and it doesn’t distribute anything on the web, either. Instead, it provides an interface for watching the stuff other people have made and distributed on your television set. Boxee software is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux home theater PCs, and you can run it on an Apple TV box too.

Using Boxee’s media center, you can browse videos from all over the Internet in an interface that is usable several feet away from the screen with a remote. Boxee also offers social networking features; you can rate everything you watch and recommend stuff to your friends.

Getting web TV into the living room is critical for the medium’s future, and Boxee is near the front of the line.

4. Clicker

At launch, web TV guide Clicker indexed 400,000 episodes from 7,000 TV shows. It lists content from distribution channels like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon, and numerous smaller sources. There’s not a better place to search for professionally produced content to watch online and the company has also partnered up with Boxee.

The size of the database isn’t the only draw — Clicker also provides tools for browsing shows without typing in text searches; that will be a big deal when and if the service makes its way to tablets and other mobile devices. The database is organized by network, genre, and several other tags. The idea is that you can go to Clicker thinking, ‘I’m in the mood for a science fiction comedy produced by the same people who made that other show I like,’ and find something to satisfy your craving.

5 & 6. Revision3 and Next New Networks

The Revision3 network was founded in 2005 by several TechTV alums, including Digg founder Kevin Rose. The network produces, distributes, and markets several shows for niche audiences. (Most of them are tech-related talk shows.) Just over a year ago, Revision3 began distributing and marketing shows produced out-of-house.

Next New Networks launched in 2007, and it operates several websites that each push out videos on specific themes. For example, Barely Political focuses primarily on politically satirical music videos, and Indy Mogul runs several film-themed programs.

These two ventures are included here as examples of bona fide TV networks on the web, delivering regularly scheduled programming just like NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, or The CW do. Both Revision3 and Next New Networks employ a super-distribution strategy — that is, they send their content to as many outlets as possible, including BitTorrent, YouTube, iTunes, and numerous others.

Revision3, Next New Networks, and other networks produce shows for niche audiences that mainstream television can’t afford to reach due to limited over-the-air shelf space. The New York Times thinks that might be the strategy that will win the race.

7 & 8. Mutant Enemy and Gary Sanchez Productions

Some Hollywood celebs are trying their hands at this, too.

Joss Whedon’s Mutant Enemy Productions was behind the broadcast TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse. It’s listed here because of just one web project: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. From the Hollywood camp, the three-act show starred Doogie Howser and Barney Stinson himself, Neil Patrick Harris. Opposite him was Felicia Day, Internet-famous as the creator and star of the web TV series The Guild (though she has appeared on TV, including an 8 episode stint on Whedon’s Buffy).

Dr. Horrible won seven Streamy Awards, became a minor pop culture phenomenon, proved that people are willing to watch long-form content on the web, and — as we mentioned earlier — briefly took over the Emmy Awards ceremony when Neil Patrick Harris hosted.

There’s also Gary Sanchez Productions. The company is owned by Saturday Night Live alums Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Their flagship product, Funny or Die, is a site that streams short comedic videos made by recognizable names like Judd Apatow and Zach Galifianakis. Users vote ‘Funny’ or ‘Die’ when watching each video, and the videos that get good reviews inevitably go viral.

Mutant Enemy and Gary Sanchez have demonstrated that figures from traditional TV media can make a big impact on the web. We’ll see how many more celebs successfully follow in their footsteps.

(Via Mashable!.)

Apple’s acquired online music streaming service Lala, and ‘people familiar the matter’ are confirming that Apple is planning on bringing a web interface to iTunes—we want to know: would you use it?

Currently, Lala allows for 89-cent MP3 downloads and 10-cent stream-forever purchases (per song, that is). It’s unknown at this time whether this business model would change, but it is likely that it would allow you to use iTunes without downloading the software, store your music in the cloud, and stream music to your Apple devices (such as the iPhone).

(Via Lifehacker.)