11/30/09

CARDBOARD SCULPTURES


Intricate and detailed cardboard scultpures.  You have to see them to really appreciate such craftmanship. 

11/17/09

The History of the Internet


I feel this article is exceptionally good at explaining the story behind the  internet. Enjoy.

11/6/09



Whether you’re working with things like video, music, animation, games, or any other media, sound is critical. The use of sound effects can make or break a project, but sometimes finding that right, good-quality piece of audio can be difficult.

Before you open up your wallet for expensive software or try to make your own sound effects, you may easily be able to find free sound effects on the Web. There are plenty of great resources available online. Best of all, it doesn’t have to cost you anything!

Have your headphones ready? Here’s the top 5 websites for free sound effects downloads.
Flash Kit’s Sound FX page is one of the best places to download free sound effects. The site has over 7,000 royalty-free tracks available for download.





You can search the collection manually or browse various categories, like nature or transportation, for the sound you’re looking for.


If you come across a desirable sound effect, all of its information, including length, quality, and size, are available and you can easily preview the track before downloading. All tracks are downloadable as WAV, MP3, or Flashtrak files.




Feel free to also contribute to the archive yourself by submitting your own original sounds.

Soungle

While Soungle may look and feel like just an audio search engine, it really isn’t. The website is touted as a mega online library and it only searches its impressive growing database of sound effects.



Soungle keeps everything easy and straightforward. Search results simply include a preview, description, clip information, and if you like the sound effect, just download it. It’s as easy as that.

Soundboard




Soundboard has a massive supply of thousands of sound effects to choose from. You can either search the collection by keyword or explore the slew of soundboards, with everything from airplanes to circus animal sound effects.



Once on a soundboard page, you can listen to the playlist and download whichever tracks you like. All sound effects are MP3 files.

SoundBible

Offering thousands of sound bites and effects, SoundBible is the encyclopedia of free sound clips. The site divides its content into free sound effects or royalty-free sounds.



All the sounds are plainly listed with a preview listen button and what license each falls under. Royalty-free sounds consist of Creative Commons and public domain works.
Learn more about SoundBible in the MakeUseOf Directory.

Freesound Project

The Freesound Project is a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. It’s a huge collaborative database of just sounds, so you’re bound to find what you need.



You can search through all the content by keyword or browse the popular tags. Of course, you can always contribute to the database by adding your audio samples released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

Still can’t find what you’re looking for? Try out FindSounds, a great search engine just for sound effects. MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has also got the scoop on SoundSnap, yet another resource for sound effects, however, keep in mind that the site is not entirely free anymore and you’re limited to only five free downloads a month.

Do you have a favorite website for downloading free sound effects? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Fe Ilya

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11/5/09

Webisodes

According to Mashable, the Top Ten Most Watched Webisodes have a combined online audience of more that 93 million views per month.  That's a lot of viewing!!
                                                                                                          Current
   Rank            Series                  Studio              Genre           Monthly Views 


1
Fred
-
Comedy
21,495,367
2
The Station
The Station
Comedy
14,752,342
3
Smosh
Deca Tv
Comedy
13,087,921
4
Autotune The News
Next New Networks
News Parody
10,139,318
5
24 Hours News
The Onion
News Parody
8,647,653
6
In The Know
The Onion
News Parody
6,573,752
7
The Guild
-
Comedy
6,429,317
8
Red Vs Blue
Rooster Teeth
Animation
5,570,787
9
Hardly Working
CollegeHumor
Comedy
3,566,738
10
Jake & Amir
CollegeHumor
Comedy
2,895,205


Play


*The Visible Measures Top 10 Webisodes Chart focuses on digital studio-driven Web series that appear on Internet video-sharing destinations. Each Web series is measured on a True Reach™ basis, which includes viewership of both studio-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million Internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations.