Everyone loves to listen to music and collect music from all sources. And over the years this collection becomes very messy with some files having name as Track 01, some having no metadata, some files sound loud and some are very difficult to hear. Fortunately most of these problems are very easy to correct and the best part is this can be done with free software. No need to buy anything.

So here are 3 steps and 3 softwares to a better looking and sounding music collection.

P.S. - Why the hell do you need 3 different softwares ? I have found the below softwares to be the best when it comes to doing what they are doing.

1. Fix the metadata - Filling up album, artist and title information for all tracks

For someone with 1000+ tracks in library this will sound a bit hard and cumbersome. Worry not… It’s simple.

• Download Winamp 5.5 from here.
• Why Winamp ? - I found Winamp to be the best for auto-tagging any kind of music you have. Winamp uses Gracenote service to tag your music files by sending the waveform info of your files to the Gracenote Database.
• Add your music files to Winamp’s playlist.
• Then select all files in the playlist (Ctrl + A).
• Right Click and select Send To —> Auto - Tag
• Have a coffee while Winamp does the job.
• After the querying is over for all files, click on “Apply Changes” for the information to be added to the music files.

2. Rename your music files to something sane

Now that your music files have got proper tags, it is time to rename your music files for easy identification. I use the format to rename my <Track> . <Album> - <Title> - <Artist>.mp3 music files. To do this :

• Download MP3 Rename from here.
• Extract the package and open the executable “MP3 Rename”.
• Add all your music files.
• In the “Rename Files” tab, check the box “Change the ID3 to filename rules”.
• Enter the renaming format.
• Click OK.
• Hit “Preview” to see how your songs will look after renaming.
• If all is fine, click “Rename”

3. Normalize the volume of your music files

Here comes the third step. Do you need to adjust the volume everytime the song changes in your audio player ? Then this step is just for you. You need to normalize the volume of your songs so that they sound the same. You can achieve this using MP3Gain.

What MP3Gain does is that it scans your music and adds a ReplayGain metadata to your songs. Almost all audio players today support ReplayGain. The best thing is that your song’s quality is not affected at all.

• Download MP3Gain from here and install it.
• Open MP3Gain and add all your music.
• Now click on Track Analysis.
• After the analysis is over, click Track Again.
• Now check your songs, the volume of all songs will be consistent.

Thats it.. The three steps..

May be I will write a second part to this soon.

While browsing often I come across hyperlinks which have icons attached to them signifying what kind of files or pages they are linking to such as a link with a PDF icon pointing to a external PDF download.

After a bit of searching I found that using CSS you can place icons next to hyperlinks which signify if that link will take your visitor offsite, open a popup, or link to a file. Here’s how to implement hyperlink cues in your blog using CSS.

Get the images

First you will need some small size images signifying different kinds of files. Here are some I have collected till now. I will be adding new icons soon. Added

- A link to an external site that will open in the same window
- A link which will open in a new window
- A link to a PDF file
- A link to a Microsoft Word file
- A link to a music file

You can right click and save these icons.

Now comes the CSS part which you will need to use these icons in your blog.

Linking to specific file-types

Suppose you are linking to PDF files. Then the file extension is .pdf. So paste the CSS code below in your blog’s stylesheet i.e. between the <style>…</style> tags

a[href $='.pdf'] {  

padding-right: 16px;  

background: transparent url(pdf_icon.gif) no-repeat center right;  

}

What this rule does is that it searches for all links in your site which end with .pdf and then places a small PDF icon to the right of the links. The result will be like below, a PDF icon placed to the right side of all links pointing to PDF files.

You can do the same for other file formats by replacing .pdf in the above code with the respective file extensions, like .doc for Word Documents, .xls for Excel Documents etc.

Linking to other sites

If you are creating links to a external site , then it is a good idea to let your visitor know that he will be leaving your site by clicking on that link. To do this, add the following code to CSS

a.external {  

padding-right: 18px;  

background:url(external_icon.gif) no-repeat center right;  

}

Now whenever you are adding a link to an external site add class=”external” in its tag. An example of such a link would be :

<a class=”external” href=”http://www.manast.com” mce_href=”http://www.manast.com”>ManasT.com</a>

The rule looks for all a tags whose class is set to “external” and displays a small external link icon as a background image.

Again, if the link you are adding will open in a new window, then add the following code to CSS,

a.newwin {  

padding-right: 18px;  

background:url(new_icon.gif) no-repeat center right;  

}

And in the links add class=”newwin”. An example would be,

<a class=”newwin” href=”http://manast.blogspot.com” mce_href=”http://manast.blogspot.com”>The Voice Within</a>

The possibilities are endless

The best part is that the above CSS will work on all browsers inclucing IE6 and Safari. There is no end to how many icons you can add to help your visitor grasp where the link you have added will lead him. But one thing is sure, your visitor’s experience on your site will improve.

In case of any problem, just leave a comment

A post after a long time and that too a sponsored post. This is a sponsored ReviewMe post about Slamdot web hosting.

Slamdot is a new name in the immensely large web hosting market which aims to make web hosting simpler than ever. And it intends to do this with its innovative Web 2.0 control panel which will allow you to manage almost everything related to web hosting from domain purchase to hosting management.

The core of the Slamdot is its control panel. Instead of the cPanel you get a cool control panel. As Slamdot writes :

Slamdot takes the pain out of web hosting. Your account, billing, help desk, hosting control panel, and domain name management are all integrated into one dead-simple, web-based tool. That means you only need to remember one username and one password for everything.

Each hosting plan receives a feature-rich control panel directly integrated with the rest of Slamdot. Your control panel allows you to create email accounts, upload files, check web stats, setup subdomains and pointers, customize error pages, password-protect areas of your website and a whole lot more.

There are three plans available if you want to go with Slamdot. The plans start as low as $11/month and the highest plan costs $40/month. You can check out the details of the plans in the screenshot below.

The Verdict

I cannot say anything about the uptime of Slamdot servers, because I have never tried it out. But on the whole Slamdot looks to me like any other webhost but with a little spicy and unique control panel.

Slamdot’s main customers will be beginners who have no idea about web hosting and are starting out with it. Slamdot is all about simplicity. One central place to manage everything.
Slamdot

Do you download a lot from Rapidshare, Megaupload & other file uploading sites ? Everytime you want to download a file at Rapidshare, you have to wait for sometime which goes on to 300 seconds in some cases. And if you are going to download several files then the waiting becomes a little boring.

Firefox with Greasemonkey script NoDelay allows you to bypass “please wait, you download will start shortly” dialogs and begin downloading files immediately from a large number of popular file uploading sites such as Rapidshare & MegaUpload.

You can find the complete list of file uploading site with which NoDelay works on the script installation page.

You need to install Greasemonkey to use this script.

NoDelay || Greasemonkey

A lot of applications for Windows do not come with a simple option : To minimize them to the system tray when not in use. For example I always listen to music while working on my PC. So I need to be able to minimize my media player to the system tray so that the taskbar remains clutter - free.

One such app which does not come with the “Minimize to tray” option is Windows Media Player. For such stubborn applications, there is a small app called “Windows Minimizer” which enables you to minimize each & every program that you use to the system tray.

Window Minimizer is a small utility that allows to minimize to the System Tray and restore each of the desktop window by clicking system menu item or pressing user-defined hot key.

Download and run the program. You will see new system tray icon and new system menu item (”Minimize To Tray”) on every opened window. You will be able to minimize any application to the Windows system tray now.

Hope this utility helps you.

Download Window Minimizer