TECH TIPS
$20 will give Web music new pizazz
Advertiser Staff and News Services
The MP3 Editor, an inexpensive bit of software, arrives on the market just as millions of Windows computer users are delving heavily into collecting MP3 music files and using their computers to record audio files for attachments as e-mail to friends and family members.
This is $20 well spent if you're in a garage band and want to mix and match tracks you've laid down for your latest song. Likewise, if you want to create a voice e-mail attachment, MP3 Editor is just the tool.
Also, Web developers can generate clickable sound effects.
The software will load just about any size MP3 file and displays the file graphically, showing the wave form of the actual recording so that silences are shown as valleys and sound is displayed as peaks — the louder the sound, the higher the peak.
Editing is done by selecting parts of the read-out display and dragging the mouse to highlight it. Once segments are selected, they can be cut or copied and then pasted elsewhere.
Perhaps the most significant application of MP3 Editor is to clean up MP3 files that one downloads from the Internet. As files get swapped back and forth over the Web, they can develop abrupt cuts and distorted portions. With features like fade in and fade out, along with cutting and pasting, the software lets one patch these damaged files quite nicely.
- MP3 Editor $20, by Data Becker GmbH & Co.
- For Windows 95 and beyond
- Minimum: Pentium 266 MHz
- www.databecker.com
New Palm elegant but too expensive
Palm's new i705 wireless personal digital assistant at $449 is an elegant way to get e-mail, instant messages and Web access without lugging around a notebook computer.
But the required Palm.net service is too expensive, at $35 to $40 a month, and too slow for the i705 to become the breakout product that finally gives ordinary consumers a pocket-sized wireless Internet connection.
Introduced Jan. 28 and already in stores, the i705 (www.palm .com) looks much like any other Palm organizer. It has a square monochrome screen that is 2¥ inches on each side, in a unit that is 3 inches wide by 4á inches high by á of an inch deep and weighing 5.9 ounces — not noticeably bigger or heavier than Palm's current m100 family or the classic Palm III line.
The only visible difference in the i705 is a white plastic cap on top of the device, gently sloping from right to left like an ocean wave. The cap hides an internal antenna for connecting to Palm.net and holds an indicator light that can blink red or green to signal whether you're in range of the wireless network and when new e-mail is received.
Tests on a borrowed i705 show that the device itself performs well and is relatively easy for experienced Palm users to master.
However, there are problems on the service side.
Palm.net costs $39.99 a month for unlimited usage, or $34.99 if you sign a one-year contract. That's a good deal, perhaps, for what Palm sees as the i705's core market of "mobile professional" users who put the fee on their expense accounts. But it's much too high for regular consumers who want to check their e-mail occasionally or chat with AIM buddies while away from home or office.
For those who are not on corporate expense accounts, the best PDA is often the least expensive.
At the moment, that would be Palm's m100 at $99. The m100 handles all the Palm organizer basics, and many users won't miss the extra features offered in pricier models. Plus, if you only spend $100 today, you'll feel less pain setting your purchase aside next year or the year after when wireless PDAs and wireless service finally become affordable.
