It took quite a while for me to come around, but iTunes eventually changed the way that I listen to music (and download podcasts) on my PC. I was a long, long, long time WinAmp user, and until iTunes released a version that minimized to my system tray, and I could find a way to control iTunes with keyboard shortcuts, I wasn’t interested. Well, the first problem was dealt with a while ago, and for my second problem I found iTunesKeys, a program dedicated to solving iTunes’ woefully missing keyboard shortcut access. But, after using iTunes for awhile, I realized that while Apple has given us an incredibly elegant and fun to use media player, its developers suffer from some serious delusions that iTunes users will never make mistakes, or decide to delete songs. I can’t quite fathom why you would have an application show a [!] symbol when it finds a missing file, yet offer no way to actually remove the reference to that missing file.
Enter idleTunes. idleTunes was made for people who love iTunes, but wish that it would just:
By far the coolest feature of idleTunes is the way that it makes iTunes compatible with non-iPod portable music players, including intelligently renaming files when copying a playlist onto a screenless flash player to ensure the play order stays intact. Brilliant! And did I mention it’s free?
- Find and insert album artwork into tracks
- Copy iTunes playlists to any MP3 player
- Export iTunes playlists as M3U, PLS, or B4S
- Remove "dead" tracks from your library
- Create playlists for all of the albums in your library
- Create playlists for all of the artists in your library
- Delete user playlists
Finally, no post about how to fix iTunes would be complete without some directions on how to clean up your library and get consistent ID3 tags. For that, I'll direct you to Connected Internet, who has a great primer on how to use MusicBrainz Tagger to rationalize your music collection. It takes some time, but MusicBrainz makes it as quick and painless as it can be, and the results are definitely worth it.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Download Squad: How To: Fix iTunes
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Om Malik : » Sprint’s PPC6700 Stands Out
You may have heard the argument: When talk turns to converged consumer electronics devices, many tech industry observers point to the clock radio as one of the few success stories. Everything else, no matter the maker, tends to sacrifice usability in the name of feature-lust. So what to make of Sprint’s new HTC-designed, UTStarcom-produced, PPC6700? In addition to posing as a dual-band CDMA phone (800/1900MHz), Sprint’s new business-focused smartphone also packs both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, operates on Sprint’s nascent EV-DO network, includes a (surprisingly good) 1.3 mega-pixel camera, the Windows Mobile 5.0 OS, an integrated QWERTY keyboard, and a removable storage slot. As it turns out, the 6700 may be the best-designed and implemented PDA phone to date. I spent the last four days testing the 6700 encountering no major problems; in fact, the 6700 may be one of the first devices to offer a viable alternative to towing around a laptop on short trips. Not only was I able to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi at home and the office (its internal antenna was able to pick up a Starbuck’s signal 29 floors below and a block away), at times I was able to get download speeds in excess of 400 Kbps using Sprint’s EV-DO network here in San Francisco. (Here’s a list of cities in which Sprint curren
Friday, November 18, 2005
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Amazon.com: Quotes & Trivia: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - The Complete First Season (1990)
I wish I knew how to do the carlton dance
The running gag of the 'Carlton Dance' throughout the show was actually a parody of the dance Courteney Cox did on the Bruce Springsteen music video 'Dancing in the Dark' in 1984.
Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Running Windows with No Services
A Windows service provides functionality to the operating system and user accounts regardless of whether anyone is logged into a system. Windows XP comes with around four dozen services enabled by default, including ones that many people consider superfluous like Remote Registry, Alerter, and SSDP Discovery (Universal Plug and Play). A question many Windows administrators commonly have is therefore, which services can I safely disable? What if I told you that for at least basic functionality like Web surfing and application execution, Windows doesn’t need any services? In fact, you can also do those things without system processes like Winlogon.exe, the interactive logon manager, and Lsass, the local security authority subsystem.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Wireless RF Remote Control Extender Review
The Remote Control Extender uses a truly unique method to convert remotes into RF. Instead of actually converting the IR signals through an external box or device that would have to strap to the front of the remote, this system embeds a tiny RF transmitter into the battery compartment which 'listens' to the remote control's internal RF commands. All remote controls send out low level RF commands when they are used. The Remote Control Extender picks these up at close range, interprets them, and transmits them to the base station for rebroadcast as IR commands. Since the transmitter is stored in the battery compartment it was essential to shrink it down small enough to allow for a reduced size 1.5V AAA battery to work with it. To accommodate some larger remotes that use AA batteries, an additional sheath was developed that slides over the rechargeable battery and transmitter, allowing it to work in the larger battery compartments.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Target : Retro Black Chair with Step Stool
• Steps glide in and out
• Grip-treads for safety
• Comfortable padded vinyl seat
• Classic chrome finish
• 22Wx35Hx16D'
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Japan Today - News - BitTorrent file-sharer jailed in Hong Kong - Japan's Leading International News Network
HONG KONG — A Hong Kong court sentenced a user of the BitTorrent file-sharing software who shared movies with other Internet users to three months in jail Monday for copyright infringement.
The Tuen Mun Magistrates' Court meted out the ruling to Chan Nai-ming, 38, who was convicted on charges of copyright infringement on Oct 24 for using BitTorrent to share three movies with dozens of users on the Internet. Copies of the Hollywood films 'Daredevil,' 'Red Planet' and 'Miss Congeniality' were found on his home computer during a customs raid in January.
The Impulsive Buy » Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools
The Impulsive Buy » Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools
Office supply catalogs to a quasi-product review blog editor are like stolen Victoria’s Secret catalogs to creepy lonely men and Russian mail order bride catalogs to creepy old lonely men. We love looking through them, letting our imaginations run wild, and occasionally getting pages of a catalog stuck together.