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It's another Sound Sunday.
This week's mix is full of soul, rhythm and blues, electronic and ambient elements, as well as some metal and jazz. It's a killer edition with very little mainstream. I hope you are ready to open your ears to something new today; it's a good workout for the brain.
Questions, suggestions, feedback? There is room for comments at the bottom and you can always eMail me [tina at makeuseof dot com]. Enjoy the music!
Anoop Desai is a former American Idol participant. In February he released his debut album All Is Fair. Zero.0 is the first of three EPs to be released this year. Anoop about the album: "The whole concept of 'Zero' is talking about the power of music to describe a moment in time, not necessarily a singular emotion."
Download Zero.0 one song at a time from SoundCloud.
The Weeknd is a mysterious new band from Toronto, Canada. As MTV writes, tThey just signed a record deal with Drake's label Young Money. The Guardian reveals that the men behind the project are Abel Tesfaye (vocals) and Jeremy Rose (production).
Download House Of Balloons from The Weeknd's Homepage.
Kollketiv Artists is an online platform for electronic music artists. At musickollektiv.org anyone can discover electronic music. Pioneri, the Moscow Sampler, is an all Russian sampler from artists from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The above track, however, is from Kollektiv Artists' previous free album, a sampler called Volume Four.
Download Pioneri from Kollektiv Artists' Homepage.
Being, also known as The Wee DJs, The Buttmasters, Dave Parton, and many other names, is a band from the UK. On their Bandcamp page they write, the album Naptime was "recorded during the precious hours of naptime between 12pm and 3pm over a couple of weeks."
Naptime is a name your price download from Bandcamp.
From the artist's Archive.org profile: "With my songs I tell about the people who no-one normally sees: the forgotten, the outcast, the silenced ones: their feeling, their dreams and memories, their fears and hopes. Their eyes and souls are full of stories and feeling no-one seems to notice, or care for: they are like ghosts, lost into the darkness and light of the city."
Preview the full album and download Ghosts Of The City from Archive.org.
From their Archive.org profile: "Adveniat Hiems formed in 2008 and are based in Milan, Italy. The band is dedicated to the production of short concept albums about northern mythology and themes from the North-European folklore.The basic lineup consists of three people and is integrated with session singers/musicians when needed."
Preview the full album and download Loki from Archive.org.
D�a De Los Muertos is a Los Angeles based metal band that offers 'metal para las masas', i.e. metal for the masses, 100% free. The band was founded from members of several other bands. As they say on their Facebook profile: "Bringing a latino tribal concept where brothers in metal come together to create uninhibited and uncompromising heavy music to the world."
Download Sat�nico-Dram�tico from D�a De Los Muertos' Homepage.
Jir� Vedral is a Czech musician, who even Indies Scope finds incredible to categorize. He started his musical career as a songster and moved on to playing jazz, traditional and ethnic music. Bueno was recorded live in the Barrandov studio.
From their Facebook profile: "BSO is (�) an unconventional company that plans on leaving a lasting impression on those who choose to involve them in a cooperative project. We produce ambient, chillout, lounge, deep trance, sound design and house. The goal is not only to deliver quality music but qualitative surroundings well. We here at BSO continue to live by the simple Tantra: Chill The Planet�"
Preview and download dozens of BSO's songs free from Last.fm.
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SplashTop, the company behind the instant-on operating system features of many current netbooks has recently released their Chromium-based complementary netbook OS for anyone to install. It's lightweight, with Chrome built-in, and is pretty darned fast.
If you're already running Windows, perhaps it's worth taking a look as it's designed to run alongside and get you booted into an Internet-ready session in seconds. You'll also get the power of Chrome web apps.
Download & Install
Head over to SplashTop and down the latest SplashTop OS. It's a small 2MB installation file, but once you launch the application it'll download a further 312MB over your Internet connection.
When THAT installation has finished, you'll be given the option to import either IE or Firefox favourites as well as your Wi-fi settings, which is a nice touch. Restart the machine, and your boot menu will now show you a SplashTop OS option too. The boot-up is hardly instant, but it's certainly faster than Windows.
Features At A Glance
The Internet, with Google Chrome.
Chrome Apps.
A sandboxed environment.
That's it, basically. It's not designed to replace Windows. It's a simple no-frills approach to using the Internet. So why would you use it then?
Faster Boot Time
So you don't have to wait for the bulk of Windows to load. It's not just the time taken to show you a desktop either � once you've loaded the desktop, you often still have to wait for various drivers, anti-virus software, automatic update checks � all of which prevents you from doing your simple 2 second Internet search. If 90% of your netbook use is using a browser, then you really don't need all the bloat of Windows. SplashTop provides a simple alternative.
Snappier Response
If you are running lots of background apps in Windows when you really just need the Internet, it's a pain to close them all after a Windows restart just to get a quick speed up. On limited netbook machines, every ounce of computing power that you can squeeze out is important.
Sandboxes Security
You can't download files to your hard drive, only to USB drives. While this might be annoying, it does provide a great deal of security by preventing browser based attacks � of which there are none for Chrome anyway.
Easy Reset
For security reasons or anonymity, there is a Restore Defaults option under the Enviromental Settings -> General screen. It will wipe everything, and restore the initial OS image.
Making Use Of An Old Computer
Okay, so you need to install Windows first, but then you can install the lightweight SplashTop OS for daily use as a basic Internet station.
Although I wasn't able to make screenshots within the OS, here's a short video from SplashTop to tempt you.
If you're worried about trying this out on your main machine then bear in mind it unfortunately won't work on a virtual machine (at least it wouldn't for me). Don't worry though, an uninstall option is added to your Windows installed programs list so it's easy to get rid of if you don't like it.
Conclusion
Despite apparently being powered by Bing, all my test searches using the browser bar defaulted to Google, so don't let the Bing branding scare you off. It's simple, lightweight, perfect for a quick browsing session on a netbook. It's not going to replace your main Windows installation, and it's not supposed to � it's complementary. If you're living in the cloud though, it's a great way to simplify your computing experience.
Let us know in the comments what you think of it.
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Nancy Messieh 27 Mar, 2011
It's another Sound Sunday.
Nancy Messieh 
Nancy Messieh