Free audio plug-ins that work: compressor, expander/noise gate, de-esser

I've just installed a great set of audio plug-ins on my system and must say they work terrifically. Called blockfish, spitfish and floorfish from digitaldishphones.com, they will compress, de-ess and expand/gate you audio. And to sweeten the deal, they're extremely easy to use with easy minimal interfaces that make sense. I used it successfully to sweeten a voice recording I did this evening. Give it a try, the price is right.

Comes in Apple AU Units or VST flavors.

Link.

UDPATE 12/9/07: Doesn't seem to work on Intel Macs, maybe a universal version is on the way?

Businesses don’t have to take your dough

After reading that Apple now requires one to use a credit or debit card to buy an iPhone (to limit unlockers), Slashdot reminds us that Apple is not obligated to accept your hard earned cash, contrary to what you (and myself!) might think.

According to the U.S. Treasury FAQ:

There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.

Dang! That surprises me. Think you're getting back at a business by paying a bill with all pennies? They don't have to accept it!

Link. Via Slashdot.

Perian: The missing Quicktime component

Quicktime is a both a great platform for video and a great playback engine since it supports a very wide range of video codecs. However, there is room for improvement. VLC can play even more video with winder codec support. Enter, Perian, the Quicktime Component you've been waiting for. Perian will play all types of DivX and MS-MPEG-4 codecs plus it also plays Flash Video. This is great because it makes it incredibly easy to transcode these formats into other standards-based codecs like H.264.

Make sure to remove some of your other components that Perian will now cover.

Link.