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VIDEOs OF THE MOMENT

Marshall is feeling a bit nostalgic this week so... Lets take a trip down memory lane... here.

How about a two'fer this week... Another nostalgic video on memory lane... here.

What do you get when you combine Young Punks, Bleeding Edge Technology & the Big Blue Box Store, sprinkled with a little bit of mischief?

See for yourself here & another view of the same thing here.

DUANE'S FAVORITES

Animoto : www.animoto.com [Freeware]

What is it?
A really cool way to make your pictures come alive. Nothing like a slide show! Includes music also.

KRISTIAN'S FAVORITES

Pidgin : http://www.pidgin.im [Freeware]

What is it?
Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. (i.e. Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, Google, MSN)
7-zip : http://www.7-zip.org [Freeware]

What is it?
7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format.

MARSHALL'S FAVORITES

CDex : http://cdexos.sourceforge.net [Freeware]

What is it?
CDex can extract the data directly (digital) from an Audio CD, which is generally called a CD Ripper or a CDDA utility. The resulting audio file can be a plain WAV file (useful for making compilation audio CDs) or the ripped audio data can be compressed using an audio encoder. Many encoders are supported. In addition, WAV files on the hard drive can be converted to a Compressed Audio File (and visa versa). CDex also supports many audio file tag formats like the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags, which can be automatically inserted as part of the ripping process.

Marshall's history with MP3s...
When MP3s first started hitting the underground Internet scene you had to use places like underground/private AOL Chatrooms with "servers" that provided pirated softwares etc... but some of them catered specifically to music in the form of MP3 files. MJR remembers the first MP3 file he ever downloaded, Ratt - Round and Round via one of those Private MP3 Servers in a private AOL Chatroom (These rooms were against AOLs Terms of Service). MJR had seen these MP3 server lists but didn't know what MP3 was. Since they were becoming more common & always seemed to have Music Artists associated with them... MJR figured these must be music files.

Going back to a day hanging out at his uncle's, MJR's Uncle said he had software on his computer that could record music cd's to the computer. Unfortunately when MJR attempted this, the 4minute song was 40mbs in size! When your biggest hard drive at the time was barely 1.2gb - 2.4gb's, putting a whole album on the computer would take up too much space. Pointless when you could just pop in the CD and listen to the music that way... not to mention the fact that the file was a .WAV file, your basic audio file, raw & uncompressed.

Later MJR discovered audiogalaxy.com. AudioGalaxy.com originated as strictly a music/mp3 search engine. It would search known FTP Servers for whatever search string you had entered (Artist or Song Name Generally). It would give you the IP Address of the FTP Server, Port # and generally the anonymous log in info. You would then open your FTP Client (CuteFTP at the time or later WS_FTP) and connect to the FTP Server that had the song you were looking for. Most of these sites anonymous log in's message provided instructions on where to find the password that would let you upload/download to that FTP Server, which meant that you went and clicked on some webpages in hopes of finding that password & in some cases you wouldn't ever find it. Once connected, usually the upload ratio was 3 to 1. For every 3mb you upload, you could download 1mb, but these ratio's varied server to server.

Then Napster hit the scene. MJR got into Napster about 5-6 months before it really blew up.... Napster changed the game of downloading MP3s/Music. Back then you didn't have programs like iTunes that were media managers. The closest thing to a media manager was Winamp.

If you wanted to make MP3s of your CDs before MJR started using CDex... he used to use a program called Audiograbber. The thing about Audiograbber was, that it was only Shareware, so when you opened it up to Extract/Rip the music from your Original Audio CD it would only let you rip like 2-3 tracks. So MJR would ::cough cough:: the software so he could use the program as a full version without having paid for it. The Audiograbber application worked well but over the course of time other applications popped up & Audiograbber became harder and harder to make fully functional from the shareware download. Eventually Audiograbber had a shareware download & only if you purchased the application would you get a different version of the installer that would give you full access. By this time though, there were legitimate freeware applications with a GUI that you could use to create MP3s from your CDs.

Before GUI apps were avail. you had to download a couple different things and type in some "sophisticated" command line commands. The extraction of the audio CD was a separate process and you needed a secondary application to do the compressing into MP3 format for you, which was also another set of "sophisticated" command line jargon to complete the compression process.

As programs like CDex were born, they combined many parts of the process into one simple to use interface & process. CDex will go online & check the CD Disc # against the CDDB.com Database, then automatically populate the Disc Info, Artist, Album, Year Released, Genre & all the Track Names....

Why Marshall likes CDex..?
Mainly it goes back to the core fact that Marshall does not like having a program such as iTunes/Windows Media Player creating a Library out of his MP3 files & controlling their file names & folder structure. By using a program such as CDex you can rip/extract your Audio CDs into MP3 format & have them automatically named & placed in whatever file/folder organized structure you create on your own & CDex caters to this way of organization. Marshall prefers to manage his MP3 collection through Windows Explorer. Then use a program such as Winamp to create play lists & what have you.

How Marshall organizes his MP3 collection...?
Depending on how you configure your CDex you can have it name the MP3 files in any of the applications multiple options. Marshall personally has his collection organized in such a way....

D:/Music/Artist-A
D:/Music/Artist-B
D:/Music/Artist-Y
D:/Music/Artist-Z
D:/Music/Artist-#

So in each "Artist" folder, contains sub-folders of all the Artists whose name starts with that letter. So before ripping music to the computer, Marshall configures CDex to point to the "Artist" folder... So lets say we are ripping the new Sevendust album Cold Day Memory... We would set CDex MP3 destination folder to "D:/Music/Artist-S" then this is where the auto configuration of CDex file naming comes into play. You use variables to set the information. "%1/%Y - %2/%1 - %2 - %7 - %4", this variable configuration creates a folder in the destination folder Named the Artists Name, then a Sub-Folder with the Year the Album was released followed by the Albums Name, then in that folder it creates all the MP3 files naming them Artist - Albumname - Track # (Leading with 0s) - Track Name.

Example:
"D:/Music/Artist-S/Sevendust/2010 - Cold Day Memory/Sevendust - Cold Day Memory - 01 - Splinter.mp3"

This format allows us to browse Artists by Artist Name. So all artists starting with the letter "S" will be in the "D:/Music/Artist-S" folder. Then once you browse to the Artists folder, if they have multiple albums avail, they would be listed in Chronological order based on the year the Album was released plus giving you the Albums name. Then once you browse to the Albums folder, all the song files are named Artist - Album - Track # - Track Name.mp3. This way MP3s that end up outside of the folder structure on someone elses computer, you can still view the MP3s with some semblance of organization if all the MP3s were in 1 folder. They would still be organized by Artist & Grouped by Album Name & listed in order because we placed the Track # before the Track Name.

If the above information seems like a lot to take in, if you download CDex & configure it as shown on the below screen shots, you will have your CDex configured just like Marshall does.
Winamp : http://www.winamp.com [Freeware & Shareware]

What is it?
Winamp is a proprietary media player written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of Time Warner. It is skinnable, multi-format freeware / shareware.

Marshall recommends Winamp Lite (Free) if you just need an MP3 Player, Winamp Full (Free) if you are a more advanced MP3 collector/user for the added features and Winamp Pro ($19.95) if you want to take full advantage of the CD Burning Capabilities provided by Winamp Full (instead of using a program like Nero for all your CD/DVD burning needs).
Mp3tag : http://www.mp3tag.de [Freeware]

What is it?
Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of common audio formats where it supports ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags.
It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words in tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more.
Mp3tag supports online database lookups from, e.g., Amazon, discogs, or freedb, allowing you to automatically gather proper tags and cover art for your music library.
Oldversion.com : http://www.oldversion.com [Freeware & Shareware Apps]

What is it?
OldVersion.com assists computer users who are unable to continually upgrade their computer. Those who find that their machine is not able to run the latest version of a certain application have no choice but to use an old version of the program. Unfortunately, the vast majority of software companies do not offer this opportunity. We are doing our small part to help bridge the digital divide by allowing everyone to enjoy the same software titles regardless of their hardware. Oldversion.com : becausenewerisnotalwaysbetter!

Catagories:

[A]

Ad-Aware : http://www.lavasoftusa.com

Adobe Reader : http://www.adobe.com

Audacity : http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Avast! : http://www.avast.com

AVG Free Antivirus : http://free.grisoft.com

[B]

BeFunky! :

Backup:

[C]

CDex : http://cdexos.sourceforge.net

[D]

Daylight Savings Time Help and Support Center : http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst

Digital Photography How to Center provided by Microsoft : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography

[E]

[F]

Firefox : http://www.mozilla.com

[Forums]
http://www.msfn.org, Forum Link : Amazing resource for creating Unattended/Slipstreamed Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista Installation Media
http://www.winoscentral.com, Forum Link : Helpful resource for Windows users

[G]

GIMP : http://www.gimp.org (Free Image Manipulation Application)

[H]

HiJackThis : http://www.trendsecure.com

HouseCall : http://housecall.trendmicro.com

[I]

[J]

[K]

[L]

[M]

Microsoft Photo Editor 3.01 (From Office 2000, XP) :
Microsoft Photo Editor used to come with Microsoft Office 2000 & Office XP Installations. Great little program if you need to quickly re-size, crop, paste a screen shot to save as a .jpg & if you need to print a picture to a full page or change what area of the page it gets printed on to.. this just a great handy little photo editing application. Its definitely not photoshop but its lightweight, meaning its small in size & opens up quickly. This is one of Marshall's favorites.
Marshall just recently found that you could download this program separately from a software repository download site such as brothersoft.com. In Office 2003 & newer, this application was replaced with Microsoft Picture Manager. So for those of you who used to use this program and miss it because you have a newer version of Office on your computer, you can download this. Extract the files to a directory & create a shortcut to the PHOTOED.exe on your desktop as the application doesn't have an "Installer" or Install Process. Its a self extracting archive.

Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows XP :
Microsoft Photo Story 3 is a great, simple to use application for creating a video picture slide show with music & transition effects etc.. It makes it easy for non computer techies to create something nifty for the family or a loved one or any other reason you can come up with for creating a video slide show of pictures with music & transition effects etc...

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP :

Microsoft SyncToy v2.1 (x86) & (x64) :
Microsoft SyncToy was born out of the PowerToys for Windows XP utilities...

Taken from Wikipedia.com:
SyncToy defines three different types of operations to synchronize two folders: Synchronize, Echo and Contribute.

Synchronize: takes the two folders and makes sure they have the exact same files. To do this, SyncToy may copy files in either direction and may delete or rename files in either folder.
Echo: looks for changes (new files, renames, deletes) in the left folder and makes them in the right folder (one-way sync).
Contribute: is like an Echo, but it does not delete any files on the right folder that may have been deleted in the left folder.

SyncToy supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Mp3tag :

[N]