Simple Home Network Music Library

It’s that time of year again to start asking for another new computer for Christmas because your old one can’t hack it anymore. Or it may be time for an upgrade to that 2nd generation iPod you have from 2004. This post is a quick and simple way to set up your place when you return with all of the music you and your roommates boast into one large library each of you can have access to through iTunes. And for those music A.D.D. friends you have who can’t listen to more than 30 seconds of a song before changing it at whatever large or small gathering of people you’re having. This will take the edge off of carrying that cute iPod Nano with 300 songs on it, 30 of which are Katy Perry songs that only you and your BFF listen to.

1. First things first… each of you need to have iTunes on your computer. I know it’s clunky and you have to update it 3-7 times daily… but for this time around it might be easier to just follow these easy instructions and you MUST be connected on the same network for this to work!
2. Once you’ve loaded all your music into your iTunes library, open up your preferences by pressing either ‘Ctrl+,’ (Windows) or ‘Command+,’ (Mac). Click the Sharing tab which should then look like below.
3. From this screen, you can must tick the Share my library on my local network box to make the other options available
4. If you happen to live in a dorm or are doing this at work where you may have many computers on one network… it may be wise to password protect your library.
5. You may select to share your entire library or just certain playlists you would like others to have access to.
6. Once finished, click OK.
7. Now to see and access the portion, or all, of you library on another computer simply open iTunes on that machine.
8. You’ll want to look on the left sidebar under the Home Sharing section for the available library.
9. In this particular image, none of my roommates computer’s are obviously on with iTunes open to be sharing… otherwise they would be visible under this section.
10. Once you see the library you’d like to access, just open it. Depending on how large the library is… it may take a few seconds or a few minutes to view the songs.

I utilize this feature quite a bit in my home. We have an extra computer, that’s mostly useless because it’s old, in our basement hooked up to surround sound remotely accessing all four of our libraries on one machine through iTunes. I am personally a bit paranoid of my iPod disappearing if I were to use it out there… but this way I can access all of my music on my external hard drive which is safely kept in my room.

This is a great way to centralize all your separate music tastes into one easy to access location. Each computer, as long as portions or all of a library is shared, can access the other computers on the networks music quickly and easily. It’s great to have for parties and everyday use instead of dragging your computer around.

If you have any questions or comments, please let me know!

Adam

Does Your Android Battery Life Got You Down?

We all realize now-a-days how much the battery life in our cell phones is affecting our daily lives. The fact most smartphones can hardly make it through a work day without dying or having to plug it in is definitely a downer… especially at those boring jobs of ours.

Over the course of the last 18 months that I have had my original Motorola Droid, I have done quite a bit of research on how to keep that battery going strong throughout the day. Those large bright screens that make Angry Birds look so vibrant definitely suck the most juice out of your phone, obviously followed by playing Angry Birds for hours on end.

Some good practice to save that battery life are simple things such as:

• Carrying an extra, charged, battery or two
• Having chargers at places you spend most time (bed, living room, work, car)
• Keep notifications to a minimum
• Turn off GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth until needed
• Stop widgets, apps, and programs from auto-updating or refreshing
• Turn Off Background Data (Biggest Battery Life  Saver)
• Turn off auto-syncing
• Keep screen brightness to a minimum but most bearable
• Screen timeout
• Kill Unneeded Apps
• Battery Saving Apps and Widgets
• Use Silent or Ringer mode instead of Vibrate

I personally have two batteries, the stock one that came with my Droid, and an aftermarket one that came with a desktop dock charger I use for an alarm clock. The aftermarket charger and spare battery was $15 on eBay and simultaneously charges my phone and the extra battery. I don’t carry the extra with me often because I try to keep my phone charged whether it’s through my car charger, work desk charger, or at home. During the same time I bought the dock for my room, I also bought a Car Dock for the Droid and a car charger. I use my GPS fairly often trying to find places in Denver or anywhere outside of my normal routine, but having the Car Dock both allows me to GPS my way to my destination and charge, or keep my phone fully charged until I arrive.

When you first get your Andriod phone, many of the settings need to be changed to the user’s liking in order for it to perform for your needs. GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Auto Sync, and Background Data are all battery juice suckers and can be on and killing your phone without you knowing it. Turn off your WiFi Toggle, GPS, and Bluetooth through Settings > Wireless & Networks and through Location > Security.

Program and Application notifications are usually unnecessary. I understand text messaging, email, missed calls and voice mails are all required for most of us. I personally check my email on my Droid quite often but I don’t have it notify me when I do have mail… I check it and refresh it when I need to. This is partly because having it auto-sync every 5 minutes or even 6 hours is still wasting more battery than me refreshing it at my convenience. I also get a lot of mail that isn’t very important to be notified about. Turn off your unnecessary Apps and Programs from auto-refreshing even if you have those widgets on your home screens. Refresh them manually at your need. Once a status is posted… it will be there until you have time to check it.

Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn etc… are all accounts that can be synchronized through Settings >Accounts & Sync. If they auto-sync a few times a day because someone changes their profile picture every 10 seconds, it will drain your battery. Turn these features off and sync them once a week or even a month. Who cares if your friends avatar shows up current next to their text message?

Background Data is the biggest problem my phone has. I’ve only ever seen it be needed to update your apps or use the Market to download new ones. Otherwise it can be turned off through Settings > Accounts & Sync. Turn it on as needed when you are browsing new apps or want to update your current ones. If it’s constantly searching for updates from your phone, and downloading them a megabyte at a time, it will drain your battery. This particular one has been the biggest difference in the performance of my Droids battery and I suggest if you need everything else, at least turn this off.

Screen brightness should be a no brainer. Turn it down as far as it will go. Watching YouTube videos, Netflix movies,  or playing some games that need to be bright typically will brighten on their own and can be adjusted in each of their respective settings.  Also turn the screen timeout down to something bearable. Mine is 15 seconds which becomes bothersome sometimes, but I got used to it timing out before I am finished with what I am doing… it’s all worth it though for that extra few minutes or hours.

Kill unnecessary Apps regularly. ATK or Advanced Task Killer, which is free, can be set to kill all apps anytime your phone screen times out. How cool is that? No more clicking the little widget droid to kill all that crap you opened up for no reason!

Finally, of all the tweaks you can do to save your Android battery life, without 3rd party Apps, keep your phone from vibrating. Vibration takes more energy to shake your 4 oz phone than to make a loud noise come out of it. If you’re at work or school, put it on silent and check it every so often and keep it in plain sight to see if a call comes through.

Battery Saving Apps & Widgets:

I won’t give a run down on every app I have tried out to maximize my battery life, but the one or two I do use are BatteryFu and Extended Controls. BatteryFu helps keep mobile data to a minimum or none. Extended Controls is very customizable creating a widget full of toggles and other uses you can use at your advantage. I personally have a 4×1 widgets with toggles for Gps, WiFi, Flashlight, Screen Brightness, Battery life (in percentage), Silent/Vibrate/Ring, and Screen always on. I use the Silent/Vibrate/Ring, WiFi, and GPS the most. The screen brightness on this app actually lets you turn down the brightness almost 8% more than your phones native options do. For me, knowing a battery percentage rather than guessing at how full or empty the battery icon by the clock is is more helpful and lets me know when to switch mine out. with my charged backup.

Also clicking on the battery icon brings up the Battery Use screen which is found many clicks within the settings under Settings > About Phone > Battery Use. This menu will give you an idea of whats sucking the most life out of your battery and can help in deciding which apps aren’t as necessary as others and their uses.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know!

Adam

Computer Crashed? New Computer? Save the Music from Your iPod!

Expertise: Novice

A few months ago I had an accident. Some of you may remember my post about backing up files and My Story Why. It was a pretty tragic, yet eye-opening, experience for me. Thankfully my school work was saved because that was definitely more important than any music or data I had lost.

I was very fortunate to have an iPod sync most of my music. I imagine there are more practical portable Mp3 players out there to retrieve your music from, but many Apple iPod customers have run into similar situations of losing their music but still hold a portable copy of it on their iPod. The question is, if you haven’t purchased through iTunes, how do you get them from the iPod to the PC? Well let me tell ya…

It’s a pretty simple process and I had actually just got around to doing so last week. It’s a good thing to know just in case you, friends, family, or the general public needs to know since Apple is so stubborn with their software.

Steps:

1. First, Open iTunes.
2. Connect iPod to the PC and stop it from syncing if it starts automatically.
3. Click on Start > My Computer to open the file explorer.
4. Click on Organize > Folder and search options.
5. Click the View tab. Check the Show hidden files, folders, and drives box.
6. Look for your iPod in the My Computer window and select it.
7. Navigate to iPod_Control folder and then to the Music folder.
8. Select everything in the folder by clicking Edit > Select All.
9. Drag the selected folders to iTunes.
10. iTunes will import the files.
11. You may sort the files however you’d like to now

NOTE: The songs on the iPod prior to loading them into iTunes will all be named FXX (x = numbers) but when loaded into iTunes they will get their respective names back. For whatever reason, Apple had them named as so on the iPod which probably made it easier to understand within the code.

This little trick is very helpful because Apple doesn’t provide any steps to do this. Apple makes it difficult to do this but not impossible.

I thought providing my audience with this little tip will be helpful for other people like me who had lost thousands of songs due to a hard drive failure. This is also helpful in case you plan on spending money on a shareware application to save your files. Some programs can range anywhere from 10 – 50 dollars, that I have seen anyway. Hopefully this tip will be helpful to you and save you some money as well.

Remember, back up your files and you won’t have to run into this problem again.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns by leaving a comment or e-mailing me.

FREE Microsoft Paint Alternative = Paint.net

Recently I have found, and became very fond of, Paint.net. You may download it for free at Getpaint.net.

According to their website:

“The original project that started it all was in March 2004. It was completed in 15 weeks as an undergraduate senior design project at WSU, and was 36,000 lines of code.”

“It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.”

Paint.net is a simple, fast, and user-friendly program. It comes with a tabbed interface to edit multiple images at one time as if it was tabbed browsing. They have also made Paint.net compatible with Vista and Windows 7 Aero appearance. I personally have found it very useful and it boasts many features similar to more advanced and extremely expensive applications.

Some of the most notable ones are :

• Performance
• Layers
• Active Online Community with over 20,000 subscribers
• Automatically Updated for free
• Special effects
• Powerful tools
• Unlimited history and Undo’s

I was quite impressed with a freeware program having the ability to actually use layers. After some Graphic Arts work with Photoshop I had always wondered if there was ever going to be a slim down version or similar program to it. This is  nowhere near capable of doing what Photoshop can, but for the basics it does what it needs to. I feel layers are a very important aspect that this program actually has. Editing one picture in MS paint only to cut out pieces you didn’t want to cut out makes it troubling. The ability to use layers along with other special effects really give Paint.net an advantage over just the most simplistic applications such as MS Paint.

This image shows some of the basic tools on the left along with a typical color palette. It also shows the history window and layers window to edit different sections of your image without screwing up other important parts and pieces of your image.

If you’re looking for a smaller and inexpensive way to manipulate and create quality images instead of spending all that money and time with Photoshop or similar software, check out Paint.net. It’s free and it can’t hurt to give it a go, even if it just replaces MS Paint on your machine, it’s worth the few extra megs you’ll occupy with this lightweight program.

If you have any questions or comments visit www.getpaint.net and check out their community forums for some answers!

Firefox 4 compared to Chrome

Recently, a customer of mine had requested a web browser change and had heard good things about Firefox and Chrome. I had been leaning towards the move from Firefox to Chrome to actually check it out and see what the hype is all about as well. I have read constantly that “Chromes faster, smoother, and just better” all around which I feel may be true since the corporate giant seems to have their foot in the door with just about everything now. As this customer is pretty straight forward and isn’t about trying other things out; they just want to have everything work the best it possibly can, as do most of us.

I loaded Chrome onto his machine, over taking that slow IE he had been fiddling with for years now, and it seemed to be quite a bit faster than before… in fact every page he went to loaded noticeably faster. I was impressed as I had been using Firefox for quite a while prior to this test and the only reason I hadn’t switched over yet was that Chrome didn’t have a version of a specific plug-in I find very useful in my research and studies, but they finally did… therefore it was time for the move, especially after witnessing the features and difference Chrome made.

I switched over on my machine and used it for a few weeks, loading little apps and extensions for my daily use, auto Gmail checker, Pandora player… the essentials for my daily web routine. A few days after doing so, Firefox rolled out with version 4 which is completely different from its predecessor. I was torn between the two with the way Firefox implemented an extension bar that was fairly interactive, similar to Chromes.

Chrome seemed to run a lot smoother on my customers machine than it has proven to do so for me. That may possibly because my machine is a little more obsolete than his or the fact I tried to cram too many things into it before actually getting used to it. I ended up falling back to Firefox 4 over Chrome afterwards.

A few things I do like about Chrome were:

• The New Tab page shows recently visited and most visited pages for easy access.
• The extensions are pretty cool and there’s a lot to choose from.
• The fact it is Google Chrome helps it integrate a bit easier with my Gmail.

Things I disliked:

• Some of the extensions definitely slowed down the browsing and viewing process.
• Incognito, or not saving or caching any thing a user does, isn’t an option in the preferences. I think it’d be better if you could always have it on or maybe go Incognito on certain tabs.

Overall I do like Chrome but felt Firefox 4 fit my needs and wants a little bit more. I also think the browsing is a bit faster and smoother than Chrome on my machines, not all machines. It may be more useful for other people but I can live without the few things I liked about it!

Microsoft Fix It Solution Center

This week’s post is a quick and a very handy one. Microsoft’s Fix It Solution Center has come to my aid recently. This is an MS support tool to help solve problems or issues you may be having with any of Microsoft’s products ranging from Windows to Xbox and Zune to Servers and Office.

Each of the entries you may be heading towards with the symptoms that you’re having ends up sending you, if not to a MS Knowledge Base article, to a written solution. They do also typically offer, if it has to do with your PC, a downloadable application from the solution center to scan your computer looking for any errors or issues you may be having within the general use of it.

The online help center is fairly self-explanatory and definitely a helpful place to look first for any trouble you may be running into with your MS products… especially if you want the chance of having Microsoft fix it for you, as they should, rather than performing any kind of surgery yourself on your machines.

How to Mount CD/DVD Images

Mounting images (no not pictures) is a very useful tool. It sounds a little bit scary but can come in handy.

First of all does anyone know what an image is? I said not pictures! Basically a CD/DVD image is a file that contains everything that is on a CD. No it IS NOT where you copy all of the files straight from a CD to a folder on your computer… but it is similar.

An image is one single file, usually quite large in size (megabytes or gigabytes), that basically replaces the actual physicality of the CD itself. It is a file you can move from one computer to another, upload online, share peer-2-peer etc… Do you wonder why the heck any of this knowledge would ever come into use? How about to keep backups of CDs or DVDs you own, or if a friend has lost their copy of certain software and you happen to have an image of that game or program they are missing and need.

What is mounting a CD/DVD image?

Mounting an image is basically like virtually putting a CD into your optical drive but without the CD or optical drive. We will virtually create an imaginary CD drive that even shows up in Windows Explorer and claims its own drive letter as well. It will be fully functional as if there were a CD in your computer you plan to use, run, or install.

Why mount an image?

A big thing that some PC users don’t realize when purchasing a Netbook is that they do not come with an optical drive. It may make your life easier to purchase an external USB optical drive for traveling, but why do that when you already carry your external notebook drive around because that Solid State Drive isn’t big enough for all of your work?

These are situations where Virtual CloneDrive from SlySoft (which is free by the way) comes to the rescue. This program can save you hassle, money, and time. Forget sharing your CD drive over your network to install Office on your machine when you can easily create an image of all your necessary CDs and DVD’s and carry them with you on your USB Drive or External HD.

Now on the the fun:

First thing’s first, you must have an image of a file, you can download them, which is usually illegal. BUT it is not illegal to download a copy of something you already physically own as long as it’s the same version and you have a special key or code for that specific game or program to unlock and use it.

If you want to create an image of something you currently own, those programs may cost money, but I did find one here http://download.cnet.com/Free-ISO-Creator/3000-2242_4-10902634.html. I haven’t checked this program out, but they are pretty simple to use, it has good reviews, and it’s free from a trusted website so if it doesn’t do the trick, you can just uninstall it and surf Google for something along the lines of ‘CD Image Creator’ or the likes.  This I believe is also only for CDs. They do have ones that will make images of DVDs which is what newer applications are using such as MS Office 2010, Windows Vista/7, and Adobe CS.

File Types:

Image files come in a few different types, Mac images are completely different and I won’t even go there.

Some of the more common ones are:

• .ISO
• .BIN
• .IMG
• .NRG (Nero)

and you may run into other ones such as .CIF, .MDS, .CCD, .BWI, .ISZ, .DMG, .DAA, .UIF, .HFS.

For this particular case we will keep it simple and use .ISO format.

Virtual CloneDrive:

Go download Virtual CloneDrive from SlySoft and install it. It may put a little icon down in the System Tray which we can then use. After installing this, CloneDrive will claim a drive letter, whatever may be on the list next with your machine, and you have created a virtual optical drive for your machine. Click Start > (My) Computer – to check and see so.

If you click the Disk image in your System Tray it will open a small options menu and can even let you make up to 15 Virtual Drives, which you’ll never need. I don’t even know why 15 is a possibility honestly… there are only 26 letters in the English Alphabet.

From here you may either:

A) Browse to the image file you have or created and right-click on it and click Mount (VCD X:PROGRAMNAME.ISO) which is quite simple.

or B) Right click the Disk icon, Mouse to which drive (if more than one) you’d like to mount your virtual image, then click Mount.

Browse to the image file you have or created (if you created an image using the program I suggested, it will be named FILENAME.ISO) and select it to Mount the image. This effect is the putting-the-CD-into-the-PC-effect.

More often than not, after mounting the image, it will not Auto Play like most may be familiar with, so click Start > (My) Computer then open the Virtual Drive with the image you mounted and it will show the Images’ contents.

Usually from this point, you’d click the file ‘setup.exe’ or ‘install.exe’ to start installing the application or game you created or have an image of.

Other Stuff:

The VCD program is fairly lightweight on your computers resources and doesn’t interfere with anything, or hasn’t for the almost year that I have had it installed on my machine. You can may do as you wish with it afterwards. (uninstall it, leave it installed, etc…)

It definitely comes in to good use when your machine doesn’t have an optical drive or when you even to want soft-copy backups of all your CDs/DVDs to save that extra office space.

If you have any questions let me know!

Adam