Saturday, February 28, 2009

DJ The Easy Way With These Top 3 Sites For Music Playlists



 
 

Sent to you by Hemi via Google Reader:

 
 

via MakeUseOf.com by Tim Watson on 2/28/09

In my younger days, one of my favorite ways to pass the time was creating mixtapes. I'd spend hours flipping back and forth between tape-decks A and B, painstakingly coming up with the perfect soundtracks for gaming or just hanging out. I recall coming up with some wacky (or just plain wack) combinations.

When I happened upon each of these three sites, those old feelings came back, although the compilation of the mixes do not take nearly as long this time around.

MixTurtle

Mix Turtle is among the first of these sites that I came across, and I feel that it's still one of the better ones. Once you've signed up you can fill playlists with tracks found by Mix Turtle's search engine, which appears to hook into YouTube and Google Video as well as index audio files from around the Web.

Results tend to contain duplicates, and some turn out to be broken links, but it's quick and easy to find a good copy of a song.

Clicking the "live" light lists recently-played tunes which are one click away from your own playlists, which are in turn listed at your username.mixturtle.com page.

You may take a listen to my Mix Turtle playlist here.

8tracks

The makers of 8tracks seem to subscribe to the Apple school of Web design. The Flash-based interface is clear and simple. You're just about guaranteed to find a good file for the song of your choice, but if not, 8tracks accepts uploads.

Playlists require a minimum of 8 tracks, or about a half-hour. It's easy to browse and play other users' mixes, and follow your favorite mixes and DJs.

Spin my 8tracks playlist here.

Maestro

I have been looking for a service like this for some time now. Some of the sites I've used have come close, but Maestro.fm surpasses them all.

First, a downloaded client uploads your iTunes library. As long as that client is running, you may access your library from any browser. In an effort to save bandwidth, your songs are NOT uploaded to Maestro's server until the first time you play a song. Mac and Linux users, I'm afraid you'll have to take the manual upload option for now. Playlist creation and library browsing with the highly-responsive interface is swift; you may add tracks individually, or save search results as a new playlist.

Finally, my extended "Ridiculous Beats" mix on Maestro, which has already been played by site users 75 times, is right here. You'll end up either banging your head, bopping it, or scratching it.

How do you roll your playlists? Tell us what we've missed in the comments. Be honest, but gentile, and above all, enjoy the music!

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it.

New on MakeUseOf …

Categorized under: , , ,

Related posts


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 
Posted by at No comments:

Easily Create & Edit Windows Partitions With PartitionMagic



 
 

Sent to you by Hemi via Google Reader:

 
 

via MakeUseOf.com by Karl L. Gechlik on 2/28/09

partHeadI am an old school network admin and when I first found out I could re-size active hard drive partitions without losing my data back in the late 90's on a Windows NT machine - I was ecstatic.

Yes I am so old school I remember when it was called The Partition Magician and it was owned by PowerQuest and NOT Symantec who acquired them in 2003.

But any which way PartitionMagic does a great job at pretty much anything Partition related.

Long story short – PartitionMagic, even though it is not still being developed or improved, will cost you around $50 for a legitimate copy.

Yes people do pay for software when they have no other options – but, today I found a little known application (little known to me at least!) called EASEUS Partition Manager 3.0 Home Edition. It will do all the good stuff PartitionMagic did for me, so what's the catch? It is only free FOR HOME USERS and 32 Bit Operating Systems. Fair enough. Let's take her for a test drive.

I have a NTFS IDE hard drive sitting on my desk with some old data on it. I believe it is a 80GB drive. Let's see how hard it will be to split that into two drives without putting the kibosh on my data.

I started by downloading the installer file from Download.com here. It is a 7.9MB zip file. The zip file has one exe file in it that is slightly larger. I ran it, plugged my hard drive into an IDE-USB enclosure for the test and got down to business…

Part1

I chose the partition I want to resize and I right-clicked on it. It gave me this context menu.

part2

I chose Resize and I got the screen below. I have not had issues with resizing or moving partitions back in the day but you SHOULD ALWAYS BACKUP before starting any operation that messes with your file structure. So if you haven't backed up yet… Do it now!

part3

part4

On the next screen you tell the application how much space you want after you are complete. Then you simply click OK and let it rock and roll.

part5

Now as you can see by the new notification in the lower left hand corner, it says there is one operation pending. Now you need to click 'apply' to start it off.

Then another confirmation box will pop up asking you if you are ready to do this now…

part6

Then for most of the resizing/moving partition options Windows will need to reboot to finish its process. Make sure you don't have any open files and you are ready to continue.

part7

That is it and you are on your way to having another partition created without erasing your disk or dropping some serious duckets.

When your machine comes back up you are golden! Do you have another FREE partition magic-like program you use? If so share it with us….in the comments boys and girls!

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it.

New on MakeUseOf …

Categorized under: , , , ,

Related posts


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 
Posted by at No comments:

Take Control Of Your Windows Taskbar & System Tray With TrayIt!



 
 

Sent to you by Hemi via Google Reader:

 
 

via MakeUseOf.com by Jorge Sierra on 2/28/09

windows-logoTrayIt! is a very small but powerful tool for helping you manage your Windows taskbar and system tray. It is only about a 300k download and only about 600k installed. There's no installer, you just download the zip and extract the contents to wherever you want to "install" it.

Since there's no need to really install TrayIt!, it also makes a great portable app. Just unzip the contents to your portable USB drive and you're ready to launch it. When you first launch TrayIt!, you'll see a list of all the programs on your task bar.

tray-it-launch

There are a few ways you can put programs that are on the taskbar into the system tray.  If you only want to minimize a program to the system tray, the quickest and easiest way to do that is to just hold the Shift key while you click the minimize button.  To restore the window, you can just double-click the tray icon.

There are two ways to put a program into the system tray without minimizing it at the same time.  You can either right-click on the minimize button in on program window you want to put in the tray and select Place in System Tray, or you can select the program in the TrayIt! program list and click the Place in System Tray button.

place-in-system-tray-options

When you place an app into the system tray in this manner, you will see it both in the taskbar as well as the system tray.  TrayIt! creates a profile for the application.  You can edit the profile to change the way the application will interact with the taskbar and system tray.  To edit the profile, select the application in the TrayIt! list and click the Edit Current Profile button.

edit-current-profile

You'll see that you can perform many customizations for the application.  A few of note:

  • Basic tab > Startup section > Minimize window on creation / when TrayIt! is started
  • More tab > Application section > Hide application from the taskbar all the time, keep tray icon only
  • Advanced tab > Startup section > Do not create Tray Icon – minimize and hide window completely

These options allow you to control the way the applicaiton interacts with the taskbar and system tray when it is launched.  If you have programs that just sit in the background and don't require any interaction, you will probably want to take advantage of some of these options.

TrayIt! also has some application options you might want to take a look at as well.  To change the TrayIt! options, you can click the Modify Application Options in the TrayIt! window.  Two options I like in particular are creating a tray icon for TrayIt! and using single-clicks for the tray icons.

trayit-options

Another important thing to mention is that when you close TrayIt! with the X in the upper right corner (like you would any other application), it still keeps running in the background. If you don't have the task tray enabled for it, you can still get back to TrayIt! by right-clicking on the minimize button for any program you are running, and click on TrayIt! Application ….

To actually exit TrayIt!, you'll have to click on File > Exit or click on File > Uninstall.  What's the difference?  Exit closes TrayIt! but it maintains your settings in the Windows registry.  The Uninstall option will exit TrayIt! and also remove all the options from the Windows registry.  This is a useful feature if you are using TrayIt! as a portable application and you don't want to keep the settings in the registry.

What do you think of TrayIt!?  Do you use any other cool features that weren't mentioned in the article?

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it.

New on MakeUseOf …

Categorized under: , , , , ,

Related posts


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 
Posted by at No comments:

Friday, February 27, 2009

Send Your Photos To Your Picasa Web Album With An Email



 
 

Sent to you by Hemi via Google Reader:

 
 

via MakeUseOf.com by Saikat Basu on 2/27/09

Picasa is a Google application for managing and editing digital photos. It has a rich assortment of tools like file importing, editing, tagging and tracking features. Get more of the lowdown from this earlier post - 10 Tips to Manage Photos Better using Google Picasa.

The Picasa desktop application is tightly integrated with Picasa Web Album. Similar to Flickr, the Picasa Web Album is an online photo sharing application which allows Google users to store and share up to 1 GB worth of photos (extra space is available through purchase).

Photos can be uploaded to Picasa Web Albums through -

Now, Picasa gives the user another handy way to upload his collection of photos - using plain old email. As the site explains,

Uploading photos by email is particularly useful for mobile phones and devices with integrated cameras and email or MMS capabilities.

For the email option to work, the Picasa user needs to set some preferences in his Picasa account settings. The process starts off with…

  • Log in to your Picasa Web Albums account.
  • Click on Settings near the top right corner of the page.
  • Scroll to Upload Photos by Email.

  • As soon as you check Allow me to upload photos by email, a text field box opens up. Enter a unique word which will form the suffix of a special (but secret) email address. The email which appears with your entered word is your default address for sending the photos through email.
  • Save your settings and you are done.
  • Attach your photos to an email message, specify your special Picasa email address in the To field and click 'send'.

A Postscript:

  • To upload the photos into a specific (but pre-existing) folder, enter the name of the folder in the Subject line of the email. If the Subject line is empty or the folder name does not exist, the photos are uploaded into the default Drop Box of the Picasa Web Album.

  • Email upload for populating your web album is limited to 20MB per email. So, compress and resize your photos if required for faster and fatter upload. Formats supported are – JPG, PNG and GIF.
  • Last but not least.  Don't share your secret Picasa Web Album address. For security's sake, keep it private.

Now, you don't really need a computer. Blessed with a MMS capable phone you can email and share your smiling moments in real time. Of course, do share your Picasa email address with the family then they too can 'collaborate' and add to your pictural memories.

I just used it to spring clean my mail folders of all photos by forwarding attached pictures to my own Picasa album. Email upload is a feature that Flickr also has. With the availability in Picasa too, it's makes sharing photos a bit more practicable.

Do you agree with the value of this feature? Give us some of your graphic views in the comments.

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it.

New on MakeUseOf …

Categorized under: , , , , , ,

Related posts


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)