Entries tagged with “hacks” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

I just set up my best-sounding podcast playback system ever, but there was one problem: I missed the first ten seconds during the time it took me to hit Play and then scamper down the stairs to the kitchen. AppleScript and speech synths to the rescue....

My favorite electronic instrument this year is the Korg Kaossilator, a pocket-size synth with built-in loop recorder. I bought one after spending some quality time with it during a magazine review. But what really loosened my credit card was a secret hack I discovered during fact-check.

With close to a thousand forest fires fouling the air, it was time for some indoor creativity. Making a digicam spy movie revealed some cool QuickTime tricks and ridiculous workarounds.

What is the new iPhone Hacks really hacking?

Whoa. I typed Command-Option-Control-8 and my Mac's screen inverted. The inverted image didn't persist in the screenshot I took, so I had to invert it manually to produce this image, but this could be a timesaver. What wacky key commands have you discovered?...

I got an interesting question from a student recently. She'd read my article about making surround-sound DVDs at home and wondered about one step, which apparently required the high-end BIAS Peak audio editor. I gave her this recipe, which should work in many programs.

One of the hallmarks of amateur podcasts and screencasts is extraneous sound in the voiceover. Here are two DIY solutions for making quality recordings on the go and on the cheap.

I guess I've been reading Make too long, but when I wanted to hear Internet radio in the spare room the other day, I quickly devised this wacky solution: The Apple AirPort Express receives the Wi-Fi music signal from iTunes, converts it to analog, and then injects it into the old boombox through a car cassette adapter. The belt raises...

Mmm...gadgets. At last year’s Project Bar-B-Q computer-music conference, sponsor C-Media surprised the attendees by giving each of us an impossibly small audio interface. With its protective cap in place, this tiny digital-to-analog converter is less than 2.5 inches long. Yet plugged into the USB port on my crusty Dell laptop, it made a dramatic difference in sound quality. (The Dell's...

Wireless Hacks, 2nd Edition is now available!

The little USB plug protectors packaged with my new Mac were so over-engineered that it seemed like a shame to throw them away. Then I thought of this hack.

Exciting things are going on in the PSP homebrew world now that we have a downgrader that tricks a 2.0 PSP into thinking it is running 1.0 so that you can run an "upgrade" to 1.5 and thereby unlock the whole world of homebrew once again...

The word is out. PSP Hacks is on its way.

An article about making free phone calls with an iPod led me to a site with downloadable telephone touch-tones. Then I found another use for them....

Two of my MP3 players have built-in FM radios, but the reception was so awful I never used them. Then I discovered a silly way to get a great signal.

The last day of ETech had some great sessions that focused on how people work and how the mind works from a designer's perspective. These great insights into my own mind will leave me with lots of thoughts to ponder as ETech winds down.

You mean you can do more than play MP3's on it?