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Back when I was still using Windows, I used a program called MP3Gain to adjust the volume of my MP3 collection. If your collection, like mine, consists out of iTunes and Amazon purchases, as well as MP3s you created from CDs you bought, different volume levels aren’t news to you.

I was happy to find the same program for Mac here. On my Mac, iTunes may deliver a tool already to cover this, but whenever I listen to my music on-the-go, I still discover different volume levels. This may be because iTunes doesn’t write the information for the volume into the MP3 and therefore every player outside iTunes will ignore this ‘normalization’.

MP3Gain instead adjusts all MP3s to your preset volume and will save this into the file. This way all players will accept the information and behave accordingly. Are there any downsides? I’m sure there are and you’re warned on their web site to remember making a full backup, but it all went smoothly for me. An issue I encountered that may be annoying for people using Backblaze is, that the changed files are now considered new and Backblaze will want to back them up again. Not really a downside, but I wanted to warn you.

Good news for Windows - and Linux users: MP3Gain is available for those systems, too. The Windows version is available here, Linux here.

Since the beginning of mankind, people tried to communicate as efficently as possible and the introduction of the e-mail, which enables us to share information worldwide, sure had a massive impact on how we see and live communication today. Google intends to take it a step further and creates something new: Google Wave.

If you don’t know what Google Wave is, watching the following (unofficial) video may help:

I was happy enough to receive an invitation and currently I’m trying to understand all the features and possibilities that Google Wave offers at the moment. A nice to know information for new ‘Wavers’ is the following search:

search:public

This will enable you to find publicly written waves, as you may not know many people that have an invitation yet. This way you will get to know the features and can help to make this preview a beta soon.

If you still have no idea what Google Wave is, where it fits in between Facebook and Twitter, or if you simply would like to read more about it, you will find a good article here.

At the moment it’s quite slow and I encounter some issues once in a while. Nevertheless, this seems to be the next big thing and I’m looking forward to seeing the impact it will have on the communication over all and for me.

Just one more thing.

The so-called Web-Apps for the iPhone aren’t really newsworthy, but in regards to Google Wave it may be interesting to know that an added Google Wave home screen bookmark will not show the Safari wrapper, but look like an independent app.

Sharing appointments with others, inviting them and syncing it to your portable device are all features the Google calendar provides. When I tried to create a calendar to share information with my girlfriend though, I faced the problem of different time zones. Not happy about cluttering my calendar with additional calendars for each time zone, I was happy to find Google having thought of this already.

If you want to share a calendar crossing time zones, simply follow these steps:

0) A Google account is necessary. If you dont have one, please create one in order to follow the steps below.

1) Go to your Google calendar.

2) Visit the Settings page.

3) Mark the Display all time zones field. (Alternatively choose the country you would like to be shown and click on the additional time zone field to choose a city within the country you just selected. Skip Step 4.)

4) Choose the countries you would like to have displayed.

5) Save your settings.

6) Enjoy!

Games have come a long way. I’m about to buy the first three games of the GTA series and for everyone who knows this game series, you know what I’m talking about, for those that don’t know this game, well… I don’t know, but I doubt those actually exist. What I’m trying to say is that a few years ago a highly equipped computer was necessary to play games. Nowadays, while this partly remains the same, games are also running within browsers. A lot of people may think of small flash games, but this isn’t what I’m talking about. Games such as Quake are now playable within the browser and therefore are working with Linux and Mac.

I’m sure there are more games available but if you like MMOFPS, which stands for Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter – so I learned – you will like these two:

Quake Live:

Operation 7:

Depending on where you’re from, your legal age to play these games may vary, so keep that in mind before you find yourself shooting other people’s heads of. If you know additional games, please leave a comment.

A lot of people wonder why I would use Ubuntu, when ‘…everything is so difficult and complicated with it…’. I beg to differ. To me, a lot of reasons why people love Apple and their Macs will work for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions just fine. Ubuntu is stable, fast, has no viruses to be afraid of and moreover, it’s not only customizable without limitations, but it’s also free! It’s getting some time to get used to the installation process of software and the folder-system, but are you still wondering why I’m using it? Bringing a conversation to this point will ultimately lead to this: ‘…but you can’t use MSOffice, Itunes or play games…’. While the gaming part might be right to some extend (DirectX 10 is available only on Windows Vista and Windows 7, but CodeWeavers are working on Linux and Mac support), I smile about the software part.

To use Windows programmes, a few virtualization-tools are available; VmWare and VirtualBox for example, to name just two. VmWare does cost money but might have features you’d like to have or need. A while ago, that was USB 2.0 and DirectX 9.0 for example. I didn’t use VirtualBox because of this for quite some time now, but checking the newest version, these features have long been added. I won’t go into details which one might be better, but will show you how to install VirtualBox simply for the fact that it’s free. VirtualBox is available from Ubuntu Sources but since I prefer having new software installed (no need for direct updates), I’ll show another way to get it up and running.

Installation

- download VirtualBox and install it directly using your package installer

- enter your password

- you’re basically done now – basically…

- create a user group:

# General

sudo adduser <name> vboxusers

# Yourself

sudo adduser $<name> vboxusers

Instead of <name> type your login name and/or the name of the user(s) you would like to add.

- start VirtualBox (found in the System Tools)

- click New to configure the system you would like to virtualize by following the provided steps

Done.

Tips

I encountered a problem after I tried to start my virtualized system. A failure message told me that I didn’t have my kernel driver installed. Shocker!, I really didn’t know that I haven’t done that – but nothing to worry about really, as it will be solved after entering this into your console:

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install dkms

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

For further information or questions please leave a comment.

It’s pretty much safe to say that Gmail is the best thing that happened to email. I just checked and found the first message in my inbox to be already more than 4 years old. I was happy to be invited and directly sent more invitations to others. The way Google thought of organizing emails was and still is so different from others and I wish everyday at work, that Outlook could at least integrate a few features, that are standard for years now using Gmail. It features a great search, basically unlimited space and to me the best feature (next to many others) is, that an email conversation doesn’t end up in many single emails you would have to put into a folder. Instead, a conversation is created, which includes all email replies.

But onto the topic: How to organize your Gmail inbox. Although it isn’t quite the topic either, I would suggest to enable features such as Superstars and Labels, as this will make your life already a lot easier, especially when you receive emails from other accounts.

I started to use the different stars and arrows to organize my inbox, but still found it too cluttered. Then I tried to sort my mails with the labeling feature. Adding different colours and filtering my messages kept my inbox clean and I was happy ever since. To filter your messages, I would suggest using the following method:

- go to Settings and then Filters and Create a new filter

- into the Has the words field type:

from:(Friend A|Friend B) OR (to:Friend A|Friend B)

Enter the names of your friends for example to create a Friends filter. You can also enter email addresses or company names and so on, depending on the filter you would like to create.

- click Next Step and decide what should happen with new emails

- mark Add label to create a new label or choose an existent one you already created before

- make a test search or just click Also apply filter to __ conversations below.

- Create Filter to set up your new label

When you archive conversations now, it’s easier to find them, although you still have the search function. Nevertheless, if you receive a lot of emails and you don’t want to archive directly, this will help you to organize your inbox.

Shouldn’t this be sufficient, I suggest you check out this article at lifehacker.com. It will introduce you to the combination of Superstars and Multiple Inboxes to make your email experience even better.

Using Gnome hasn’t always been the nicest experience, but for me certainly a fast one. Switching forth and back I decided to stick to KDE – until 4.0 came along that is. I really disliked the way it looked and all these widgets aren’t really my thing.

Since the development for KDE obviously hasn’t stopped and KDE 4.3 RC 2 is now available, I thought it’s time to check out what’s going on and installed KDE next to my Gnome environment. I will add a comparison between these two desktop environments and try not to start a flame-war, but show why I decided to use either one. Which one you use in the end is ultimately your decision.

Installation

To install KDE next to Gnome, which certainly is a nice way to try or simply use the positive aspects from both desktop environments, you’ll only need to add the package kubuntu-desktop (using Synaptics: Ubuntu’s package manager) which will also install the standard applications. If you would like to install KDE only, just add the package kde-core instead. Using KDE in your language can be achieved by adding these packages (example for German): language-pack-kde-de and language-pack-kde-de-base.

Thanks to Daniel I was informed about Ubuntu One, which I now can use, as my invitation arrived. Ubuntu One, just like Dropbox, provides 2GB of online storage and can be used for free to share files. While I liked the idea since I got to know Dropbox, I’m not so sure if I like Ubuntu One.

The good

An easy installation process is provided and although a bug is known and the installation button has to be clicked twice (just read it, didn’t even realize that myself), everything worked flawlessly. A new folder is created and opening Nautilus, it’s shown on the left underneath documents, pictures and so on. Next to that, an icon appears on the taskbar besides the clock. Similiar to Dropbox, this icon is used to illustrate the syncing process. Overall, a seemless integration into Ubuntu 9.04, which is the required minimum for Ubuntu One.

The bad

It’s a new project and lots has do be done, so don’t get me wrong here, I’m just trying to point out things that disturb me and might not make me use the service for it’s current purpose (more below). For starters, there’s the need to have Ubuntu. Well, it’s a Ubuntu project, but hardly anyone I know actually does use this fine piece of operating system. My friend over at Schacknetz (see Blogroll) who introduced me to Ubuntu, went on to use a Mac. Next to that, I find it hard to convince people that Ubuntu or other Linux distributions work really well for ‘normal people’ since a while and to be honest, I don’t really care what they use. It’s actually fun to see people arguing about bugs in an operating system while I sit alongside smiling. My point is though, that I have to think of who I want to share files with and eventually end up using cross plattform software anyway.

The web interface is another issue. While I wasn’t able to check my pictures I uploaded for testing purposes, I found the whole appearance to be quite, …lets say…, naked. I will have to try later again and the idea of a beta phase is feedback but I miss so many features already, which are well known from other services like Dropbox. Since I am currently not able to view my files, I can’t say much about the way that works, but I miss something that Dropbox implemented: showing me details on changes of a file and/or folder.

Conclusion

I was fairly hard to this new project but can’t see myself using something that isn’t cross plattform, especially because I’m working with more than one operating system. Services such as Dropbox had a while to get better and I will have to wait how Ubuntu One will develop. What might be really interesting though, is the idea to build applications using Ubuntu One.

If you’re interested in trying out Ubuntu One, you can request an invitation here. Thanks To MacMacken, here are the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policy.

Just yesterday I wrote about the Twitter client TweetDeck. If that isn’t really your cup of tea, because it’s too bloated, then Twhirl might just do the trick for you. It’s easily installed (especially if you already have Adobe Air) and includes pretty much everything one may need. It offers features such as shortening URLs, adding images, searching tweets and cross-postings of your updates to sites such as Facebook. Although I didn’t have enough time to test all these features yet, it looks like a promising alternative to TweetDeck.

In the long run I will most likely stumble across more and more clients like these, but if you find searching for the best Twitter client as exhausting as I do, I suggest you decide what you really need and what saves you time through easy handling of the application. When you then find a Twitter client (for example one of the two I suggested) you’re happy with, stick to it. That said, this shouldn’t stop you from trying other applications every now and then, as clients will evolve and new ones possibly suit your needs even more. Overall you shouldn’t forget the most important thing: enjoy twittering.

I’m new to Twitter and slowly start to understand how it works and what it’s used for. Media coverage on Twitter and Facebook regarding Iran’s election controversy certainly helped me, too.

While many programmes for Twitter are available, I found TweetDeck to be an elegant and most importantly easy to use Twitter client. It builds upon Adobe Air and is therfore working on both Ubuntu and Windows. First step for the installation process is to download the software from here. Click on Downloads and Get Adobe Air. I decided not to put the exact link here, because following the link this way allows you to download the software in your language and for the operating system you’re using. Please read now the section depending on what system you’re using and soon you’ll be able to start twittering and following current events.

Windows: Download and execute the software before following the instructions until the installation procedure is finished. Now download TweetDeck (link above). You can’t miss the download button, as it says Download now, it’s free. Click Open and Install. TweetDeck will start automatically after installation. If you have an account, type your username and  password and you can use TweetDeck instantly. If you don’t have an account yet, register by clicking the button provided.

Ubuntu: Download the file and place it into a folder. I created a new hidden folder ./TweetDeck and placed the file there. Using the console and entering the folder, type chmod +x name_of_the_file followed by typing sudo ./name_of_the_file. This will install Adobe Air. Downloading Tweetdeck (link above – big button saying Download now, it’s free) will open a small window. Accepting the installation, TweetDeck will start automatically. Enter your Twitter details or create a new account to use this application.

TweetDeck will provide you with a lot of information and possibilities, which might be hard to understand directly. This is why I would suggest you read this. Pictures and videos tend to be easier to understand – an easy introductional video therefore is available here.