Terminator Gene Ban Suggested in Canada - as someone in the comments puts it: “DRM for seeds”. Amazing times we live in.

I’m not sure what’s going on with my photo in the Brad Sucks Wikipedia entry. I’ve been alerted it keeps appearing and disappearing. And I don’t want to edit it on my own because I’ll also want to talk about what big muscles I have and how irresistible to the ladies I am.

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 - New version of Windows Live Writer, my favorite blogging tool. Overall a very nice update. Page editing and category adding aren’t working for me though. [via Scoble]

Getting started with Ogg - A good intro to Ogg Vorbis via the Play Ogg audio format campaign. I want to be down with Ogg, but the support isn’t there (yet).

This is software I’m using but would be happy to ditch for something better:

Google Desktop - I run Google Desktop because I like the quick program launcher and docking my Google Talk & Calendar in the sidebar. But the sidebar overall feels bloated and slow, the email gadget sucks (slow to update, shows sent items, lacks Gmail integration), the quick launch often doesn’t find things I want to launch and the desktop search keeps finding files I’ve deleted that don’t exist anymore. The more I write about it here the more lame I think it is.

ToDoList - I’ve used this for a while and it works okay, but the options and UI are super complicated. I also can’t get it to keep hiding my completed items and I’d like a view that shows me all my due tasks on one page. Having it online and integrated with my other software would be nice as well but I haven’t found a better one to replace it.

KeyNote - KeyNote’s development discontinued back in 2003 but I’m still been using it. It’s done well for me as a notebook and scratch pad, but these days I want to ditch the note-tree paradigm for something that lets me tag my notes and ideally store them online.

Firefox - I love the awesome customization of Firefox, but it’s slow, even without my gazillion extensions installed. It can’t be denied that IE7 and Opera are both much faster. But I’m tied to Firefox because I can’t live without Greasemonkey & Gmail Macros and NextPlease and Adblock and Firebug and Google Browser Sync and All-in-One Gestures and and and…

MediaMonkey - A while back I mentioned I was searching for a new music player, something that would let me shuffle through my library nicely. I tried nearly everything out there and 95% of it was awful. Media Monkey is awesome. Less bloated than iTunes, more feature-rich than Winamp, MediaMonkey has it all. I went from being bored with my massive music library to being entertained again.

Media Player Classic - Make no mistake, VLC should still be installed on every system. But Media Player Classic is a little bit more attractive and faster for jumping through certain video files.

RocketDock - This is a sexy lightweight little program launcher. I always used the built-in sidebars in XP but this is sexier.

Notepad++ - My favorite programming editor. I keep finding new features in it that make my life easier.

Pidgin - I replaced Trillian with this after being horrified by how bulky Trillian Astra looks. I still like the simplicity of Google Talk but this is cool for all the other protocols.

The multi-protocol IM client Pidgin (formerly Gaim) 2.0.0beta7 is out.

I switched from Trillian to Gaim last week. I had bought Trillian 3 Pro, but the new Trillian Astra beta completely turned me off. Bloated and silly for something as simple instant messaging.

The new Pidgin beta is very slick looking, lightweight and works great. And it has my sounds in it!

I updated the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store to v.0.02. Some people have been paying me for hosted installations (which is SWEET) so I’ve been able to take the time to put in some fixes and also add international currency support in the config options.

I also put it on Google Code so you can use SVN to check it out, submit issues, etc. Questions about installation and stuff go in the forums.

I’ve been looking forward to CD Baby’s SNOCAP integration so I can sell songs direct on MySpace. It’s now up and running and it seems all right. Here’s the player/purchaser thing:

It’s not the most glamorous player, but it gets the job done. From what little research I’ve done it seems to sell in DRM-free MP3 format which is cool. It would be nice to allow longer previews and replace the default MySpace player with it.

I ask all you Ableton Live experts: is there a way to dynamically change the tempo in the arrange view?

I’m trying a different way of laying out my set and everything hinges on this. (PS: I may throw up in rage if there’s not a way to do it.) Thank you!