There's this rather interesting new Netscape/IE plugin called "Beatnik",
put out by Thomas Dolby (yeah, that guy)'s company called "Headspace".
It's basically best thought of as a software general MIDI player, but with
many more baseline sounds and effects, and the ability to use downloaded
samples too. Anyways, there's two rather minimalist and short track-ettes
by Bochum Welt on there, which I thought would appeal to people on this
list (look for 'Gianluigi Di Costanzo'), as well as a few by Psykosonik (on
Wax Trax, he also works for Headspace). The best part about this is that
the downloads are made *really* small - and even if you want to use lots of
custom samples, you end up with smaller files than if you just used mpeg or
whatever. The tech looks promising; there are limitations, but it would be
interesting to see what someone really talented could do with it.
Brian
p.s. - looks like it'll be embedded in webTV, the next version of Netscape,
and the next Java VM release sometime soon...
--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--
"it's a big world, with lots of records to play."-sig brian@hyperreal.org