blogable.eu

Using iTunes as my main – and most likely only – media player started off quite badly. Not only that I had to change every single video I have into a *.mov-file, I also found *.mp3-files that would neither play on my iPod nor within iTunes. Trying to add these files via iTune’s automatic adding function would move them to the not added folder instead.

The MP3 Validator for Mac OS X neatly solved this issue for me. Just download the software and open it, before you can simply drag-and-drop your mp3-files into the program. It will show which failure persists and repair it. Just checked my whole library and found quite a lot of failures on files which I didn’t suspect in the first place.

PS: Windows-user might be happy to read that MP3 Validator is doing the same for them.

PS:PS: Thanks to Trevin Chow for this helpful piece of information.

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.

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.

Windows Vista and its predecessors haven’t really been famous for their ability to create backups. Third party applications were and are therefore a must have, if you’d like to sleep tight without worrying about your files. Playing around with a harddisk partitioning tool – and not reading properly – I managed to delete all my files on my harddisk a while ago. Afterwards, a restauration programme confirmed that I did my job well. Luckily, I got myself Acronis True Image 2009 before this incident and stored everything important on my external drive. While it isn’t a cheap product, I found it worth the investment to secure my files automatically.

With Windows 7, Microsoft offers probably the most powerful backup solution yet, without the need to purchase extra sofware. If you’re using Windows 7 already, you might want to read the how-to from mysticgeek.

Just a few days ago a friend told me that he uses a Linux distribution on a USB-stick whenever he has trouble with his operating system. Although I won’t tell you which OS that is, I guess you figured it out already.

Many Linux distributions are available and a few of them were designed especially for slow computer and/or USB-sticks (also called pendrives). This directly points to the first Linux distribution I would like to introduce you to, which is designed for an installation on a portable device: Pendrive-Linux. Other options are Damn Small Linux (DSL) and TinyCore (TC). The latter one requires only 10MB of space. The reason why I’m writing about these distributions is simply that not everyone has a 4GB USB-stick or bigger available to install Ubuntu and might just want to try out other distributions anyways. If questions remain on how to install these, please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Installing Linux onto your USB-stick:

Get UNetbootin and install it, just like you would install every other software for Windows. Next to that, download the distribution that you would like to try out, for example Ubuntu. Check before you download, if the Linux distribution you would like to try out is supported. Now everything is pretty much self-explanatory. Choose the distribution you would like to install and the folder, you saved the downloaded file in. The good thing about this process is, that you don’t need to burn an image to a CD. Just choose the .iso file and choose the drive you woulod like to install it onto. Now lean back and wait. After the installation you will be able to restart your computer from the USB-device (if supported) and work with an operating system, which is portable and doesn’t expose you to the danger of deleting files from your harddisk. The ‘normal’ installation process of Ubuntu (for example) is so easy though, that everybody who is able to press Enter often enough can install it – seriously.

Update:

An article at lifehacker.com pointed out a nice piece of software called uSbuntu. This software allows to create a bootable version of Ubuntu (and apparently other Linux distributions as well) onto a USB-stick. While this software might not be as comprehensive as UNetbootin (see above), it sure is an easy way to create a bootable version of your favorite Linux distribution. As my heading suggests, this software is Windows only, which I find rather funny.

The easiest way to install Ubuntu is probably the installation from within Windows, using Wubi. To do so, you will have to get Ubuntu from here, where you can download it for free. If you know whether you will need a 32bit or 64bit version, click the Custom Options depending on what you would like to download. If you’re unsure, just click download from a place near you. You will get an .iso image file. This can easily be burned with any burning programme. Just visit this page, if you don’t know how to burn images. Once this is done, only two (possibly three)  more steps are necessary to install Ubuntu.

Before I tell you how to install Ubuntu, I would like to start with an introduction to Wubi though. Wubi is a nice little Windows programme, that allows you to install Ubuntu like any other software. This means that once you want to get rid of it, for whatever reason you may have, go to your Installed software list and simply delete it.

Installation:

Firstly, insert the Ubuntu-CD in your Cd drive. When the autostart-window opens, click on Wubi to install. If this shouldn’t be available, you can download and install Wubi from here, install and start as any other Windows programme. Once Wubi is running, you have to decide about a few options. For starters, there’s the harddisk you want to install it to. Choose a harddisk/partition of your liking, which is big enough for the next setting – the size. You will want to give Ubuntu 10GB, which should proof sufficient for most needs, but if you have more available and plan to install many applications and/or games, you might as well add the one or other gigabyte. Depending on how much space you have available (or plan to need), click on an option and then enter a username and password. This password is important, as you’ll need it to log in and furthermore to enter whenever changes in the system are made (e.g. the installation of software).

Attention: Although I haven’t heard of problems using Wubi, it’s a free application afterall and may cause the loss of data. So please safe your important files or make a backup before installing Ubuntu.

The installation will create a bootloader. That’s a software which will ask you which operating system you would like to load after starting your computer. So when you finished the installation, restart your pc and choose Ubuntu to start it. Now Ubuntu will start to install. Why? Because Wubi actually didn’t install the software but created a file, which Ubuntu uses like a harddisk. If you’re interested about that, you might want to read about virtualization, otherwise just enjoy the easy process. Once Ubuntu finished the installation, restart your computer and have fun using your new operating system.

It’s no secret that I’m using and loving Ubuntu. It’s so easy to use and does exactly what I want it to do. Can’t really say that from Windows Vista, which I’m running as well, but that’s a different story. Quite often I hear and read that there’s no reason to use Linux at all and after asking why, I get the usual answers like: ‘It’s too difficult’; ‘It doesn’t work with Windows software like MSOffice, which I need’; ‘Not all my hardware is supported’ and my personal favorite: ‘I heard so’.

Okay, so let’s clear some basic things here. Linux is an operating system based on the Linux-kernel, the engine of a car if you want so. Ubuntu is one of many distributions. This basically decsribes the look and feel of the car. (Some might hate me for saying such things, but relax, just trying to visualize things here. ) A few years ago Linux-distributions might still have been geek-only-territory, but these times are long gone. My parents are using Ubuntu on my old laptop and they can go online, create documents, burn their pictures and so on, without me having them to tell how it’s done. For the ‘I can’t use my Windows software’-argument, I will publish a post soon, which should clarify the mystery of using Windows software – if you really need it. The hardware issue, well…, I never really encountered big issues myself, but you might have a point there. Overall I would say, you should try and decide for yourself and not listening to others, who might never have done so and actually never spent time with Ubuntu or other Linux distributions.

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.