Soundflower is a Mac OS X (10.2 and later) system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. Soundflower is easy to use, it simply presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed. Soundflower is free, open-source, and runs on Mac Intel and PPC computers.

Example: To send audio from iTunes to Max/MSP, open the System Preferences and select Soundflower (2ch) as the device for sound output inside the Sound panel. Then, inside Max/MSP’s DSP Status Window, select Core Soundflower (2ch) as the input device. All output of iTunes should now be sent to Max/MSP’s adc~ object.

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(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: AudioBoo

Quick Pitch: AudioBoo is social audio. An iPhone app & platform that effortlessly records audio to the cloud.

Genius Idea: AudioBoo is a platform that I’ve been waiting to review ever since I discovered it several months ago. It’s essentially a way to create and share podcasts and audio clips, but with a simplicity that has attracted some big names like UK actor Stephen Fry and The Guardian newspaper as users.

First, the iPhone app: it’s very simple to use. The most important feature of the app is that you can record audio and upload it to the AudioBoo server and your account. This makes it very simple to create, publish, and broadcast your most recent podcast (also known as a boo). The second feature is the ability to listen to the most recent boos from other users.

Yes, the iPhone app is very simple, but that’s the goal: to make podcasting really easy. Audioboo definitely succeeds in that regard. With very little fuss you can be up and running with your own podcast that can be distributed via social media – you can have AudioBoo automatically update your Facebook and Twitter with new Boos – and even iTunes.

The website itself is also pretty basic. You can only listen and subscribe to boos (although you can sort boos by popularity and time). But once again, this is the point: it’s the Twitter of podcasts – simple to use, easy to distribute. Its focus on simple audio is superb and perfect for anyone who wants to try podcasting without all of the fuss.

Since I’m talking about an audio app, I can’t finish this post up without making my own Boo. So listen to my review and subscribe to my Boos for my future Boocasts.

(Via Mashable!.)

Watching TV with friends is a time-old tradition. But what if you don’t have any friends around and still want to have that TV-on-the-couch experience? A few months ago, Splashcast and Hulu hooked up to bring Hulu to social networks via applications on your Facebook or MySpace page. Tomorrow, Splashcast will officially announce new, more engaging features for these apps: they’re calling it Social TV.

In actual fact, Social TV has been quietly tested over the past two weeks; the central differentiating feature being something called ‘Chatter’. Chatter allows users and friends to talk about a show via microcomments (comments don’t update your Facebook status).

The cool thing is that this is not done in real-time, but instead any time you chatter, it is synced to the video. So if you watch The Simpsons and put in a comment 6 minutes into the show, future users will see that comment, even if they watch the episode the next day. It’s like a running commentary left by social network users. Splashcast claims that during the two week test-run, time spent in the apps increased 50%, showing that comments make videos much more engaging. Other social features include polls and ratings.

We don’t think TV will be replaced completely by these ‘watch with friends’ applications: sometimes you just want to kick back, relax, and passively consume a TV show. But it’s also clear that the web is enabling new forms of interaction around TV, and that can only be a good thing.

If you want to try the widgets, you can grab them on the Splashcast website.

Tags: facebook, hulu, myspace, social tv, splashcast

(Via Mashable!.)

UStream is out with a new look, a few new features, a new URL shortener, and soon, a new domain name.

The live video streaming service has adjusted its homepage to look much more like other video and news sites, with prominent categories – like news, sports, and entertainment – as well as more ‘featured’ videos on the homepage, many of which emphasize recent celebrity appearances that have taken place on the service.

In addition to the new look and feel, UStream users now get their own URL shortener – ustre.am, that is used when you share a link to a video on Twitter. This is significant not only because it saves users characters, but because UStream has also turned on its Twitter chat feature for all users, which, has been instrumental in helping UStream videos from the likes of Diddy and Ashton Kutcher go incredibly viral lately.

We’ve also heard that UStream plans to move the site over to UStream.com later this week, as opposed to its current UStream.tv. While UStream.com already re-directs to UStream.tv, the site and all of its pages will actually live on the dotcom once the change is completed. You’ll notice that UStream has adjusted their logo in anticipation of the switch.

UStream is well-positioned to piggyback off the growth of Twitter and Facebook. In fact, according to Compete, about 24 percent of the site’s traffic comes from Facebook, while 4 percent comes from Twitter. That compares to just 10 percent combined referral traffic from Google and Yahoo.

(Via Mashable!.)

With the iTunes 8.1 update, you can now sync with the new iPod shuffle, take iTunes DJ requests from friends, rip CDs at iTunes Plus quality and use Genius with movies and TV shows. There are other features, like bugfixes and stability updates, but you can read up on that yourself. [Apple via MacRumors]

iTunes 8.1 is now faster and more responsive. You will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing.

In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides many other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.
• Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.
• Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.
• Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.
• Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.
• Includes many accessibility improvements.
• Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

(Via Gizmodo.)

The iPod Shuffle has undergone yet another redesign, and this time round it won’t come in the familiar square form factor but will instead take on a rectangle shape. Maximum capacity has been doubled, while the control wheel has taken a leave of absence. The clip is retained though, while VoiceOver announces just which song is being played currently along with who the artist is at the touch of a button on the earbud cable. Heck, VoiceOver technology also allows you to call the shots for your playlist while navigating to others. $80 will snag you the new iPod Shuffle in either black or white colors, and it still retains the title of ‘Smallest Music Player’ in the world according to Apple.

(Via Ubergizmo.)

Live video streaming service Ustream is rolling out a white-label service today called Watershed for Websites and businesses that want to broadcast their own live streams. Watershed comes with a lot of extra management capabilities like the ability to customize the player, add a logo, turn on features like chat, polling, picture-in-picture video chat, Twitter integration, analytics and more.

Ustream is targeting this service at companies that may want to live stream meetings to employees, as well as to Websites that want to offer their own live-streaming programming and need more than what they can get by simply embedding a Ustream.tv player today.

Watershed is a cloud computing service, with pricing on a pay-as-you-go basis. Pricing starts at $1 per viewer hour for 1,000 viewer hours per month or less and scales down to $0.25 per viewer hour for streams that a reach 50,000 viewer hours per month or more. (A viewer hour is one viewer watching a stream for one hour, or 60 viewers watching for one minute, etc.).

So a live stream watched by only 30 people for a half hour would cost $15, but a stream watched by 30,000 people for a half hour would cost $7,500. I am not sure how much a comparable content delivery network like Akamai would charge, but Ustream CEO John Ham says they are aiming for a comparable price. Watershed’s advantage being that customers only need to pay for what they actually use.

That still seems pretty steep to me. If live video streaming is going to ever gain a mass audience, the price is going to have to come down.

(Via TechCrunch.)

Only two days after its release, Ustream’s iPhone Viewing Application has already hit the top spot of the App Store’s Entertainment section, and is ranked the 6th most popular free application overall. Ustream says that its latest figure for number of downloads stands at a whopping 113,000, which only represents the first 24 hours that the application was available (Apple doesn’t update download counts in real time). The application allows users to watch live and archived streams from Ustream.tv directly on their iPhone or iPod Touch, and also features an integrated chat.

Despite its popularity, it looks like users have had a number of gripes. With an average rating of two stars, many of the app’s user reviews complain about crashing, the lack of support for 3G or Edge (you need to use Wi-Fi), and little in the way of mainstream television content. These issues aside, the application is still very cool, and will only get better as the developers push out updates.

We’re still waiting on Ustream’s second application that would allow users to actually broadcast video (the viewing app only lets you stream). While competitors like Qik and Flixwagon have created similar apps that work on jailbroken iPhones, none of these have made their way to the App Store. Ustream’s application was submitted last week and has not yet been approved by Apple.

Update: This post originally said that Ustream saw 113,000 downloads in 48 hours. While it has been around 48 hours since the application launched, Ustream says that the download figure hasn’t been updated to include today’s downloads, so it really only represents the first day that the app was available on the store.

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(Via TechCrunch.)

Ustream has received approval from Apple for its iPhone live video viewing application just in time to watch the Obama inauguration live from wherever you are.

…as long as you have a wifi connection that is. The application requires an open wifi connection to show video, but it works very well. Audio is solid, picture quality is good but with a low frame rate. And users can both read and leave comments in the chat stream. Get it here (iTunes link).

We eagerly await the fraternal twin Ustream app that will let users broadcast their own video from the device as well.

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(Via TechCrunch.)

Ustream is anticipating Apple’s approval of the first non-jailbroken iPhone application that will let users record and broadcast live video from the device. Last month MobileCrunch obtained a picture of the application running on a test phone. Yesterday, co-founder John Ham demo’d the product for me here at TechCrunch – see the video below.

The application lets users broadcast live video from the phone, as well as read and participate in user comments.

Competitor Qik has had a similar application running on hacked phones since August 2008 (also here). Flixwagon has a similar application for jailbroken iPhones. But no one has gotten one through Apple’s approval process.

Here’s the video:

Note that this is a different application than we wrote about yesterday. Yesterday’s application allows people to watch Ustream videos on their iPhone (which is also really cool). This app lets people broadcast live video from their iPhone to the Internet.

The application is currently pending approval from Apple, and Ustream isn’t saying much about when that might be. But stay tuned, hopefully this is coming very soon.

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(Via TechCrunch.)