The Weather Channel App

You’d think an app about the weather would be boring. I don’t consider The Weather Channels app for the iPhone. One cool feature that got me hooked is the radar map. I’m not sure if it was there the whole time or was recently added. You can check out the real time weather radar in the palm of your hand. Here’s a screenshot of the weather over my house as I write this:

You click the triangle button in bottom left hand corner it will play a short loop. Click the “i” and you can get customized maps. I think this would be an awesome tool for those that chase these storms. I find it handy to know when these storms are approaching. Plus you get the normal weather forecasts and warnings. I believe this to be one of those must have iPhone Apps.  This was from the free version(Pay version is ad free) of the app and can be found here.

What’s your favorite iPhone App?

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Meta-iPod: iTunes tune up

I followed up on yesterdays post on iTunes updating and organizing your music. I’ve found over time your music can accumulate duplicate tracks, missing album artwork, messed up names and so on. I downloaded and tried out meta-iPod: the iTunes cleaner. It works pretty well and I thought I’d share may experience here.

 

First you’ll want to start up iTunes then start up Meta-iPod. This is the current version 1.61.

To start analyzing you click on the great big green Start! button.

The program will start analyzing your data.

Individual buttons will become colorized as they become available. The red numbers below indicate the number of tracks affected. You then select one to work on. I didn’t try every feature but, I’ll touch upon a few.

Fix Duplicate Tracks: As the name implies you can eliminate duplicate tracks with this feature. You can auto-select the choices or manually click the ones you want to clean up. After you made choices click on “Delete checked tracks” and say good bye to clutter.

Fix No Album Art Tracks: One of my pet peeves about iTunes is that they miss a lot of album art  especially from ripped CD’s. This feature let’s you add album art from multiple sources so chances are you’ll find what your looking for.

When you double click on a selection it will search for artwork from multiple locations on the web. I’ve found this can be a bit slow depending on your Internet connection and hardware. Also I seem to get a small glitch like the one below:

I haven’t investigated this problem yet. I clicked on “Continue'” and I was to proceed without much of a problem.

Continuing on,   when you scroll down and find artwork that matches your selection you double click it and it will be added to all selections from the same album. When you click on “OK” it will update iTunes.

Despite the minor glitch in the artwork selection I liked this software very much and I do recommend it.

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Ripping CD's with iTunes

I personally use iTunes for my music needs on the PC. It's fairly simple and intuitive in my opinion. Until recently I used to just plunk my CD in my PC and played it. My hard drive space was limited so I was trying to conserve space. Recently after upgrading my hard drive I tried my hand at "ripping" my CD's onto my PC. I've come to favor Apple's iTunes player. Though there are others I'd just thought I'd share a little of my experience and give a very basic tutorial on this subject. I'm going to assume you've already have iTunes installed and CD's in hand. Here we go....

1. First of all you open your iTunes program either by click on your desktop icon or programs menu.

2. Open your CD/DVD player and insert your CD of choice. At this point you'll wait for iTunes to gather information on your CD. This shouldn't take too long.







3. When iTunes is done retrieving information you'll get a pop-up asking if you'd like to import(aka: Rip) your CD onto iTunes. You wish to rip entire CD click on "Yes". If wish to select certain songs click "No" and see step 4. Now sit back let the PC do the rest. iTunes will play the music as it's importing your CD.





4. After you've clicked "No"(see step 3). Uncheck the songs you don't want from the list. Then click "Import CD" button on lower right hand corner of iTunes window. It will then "import" only the songs that are check marked.

Well there you have it. It's fairly simple. There are other settings and stuff you can get into but I just wanted to cover the basics here. I've got addicted to adding my music myself. I hope this was informative and helpful. Thanks for reading and "Long Live Rock!"

Media Monkey - First impression

The one thing I've been fooling with is my music collection. I initially used Windows Media Player by default but then have been using iTunes almost exclusively. It's easy to use and fairly intuitive to use. Meaning you can use it more quickly without fiddling with it. I basically use it to rip CD's and listen to music with. I'm not an audiophile nut so fancy settings aren't necessary.
For those that need a little more Media Monkey may be the answer for you. I downloaded it and tried it out for a bit. It's has fairly simple interface, very much a classic windows look though I believe they have different skins. The one thing that's nice is that it categorizes each song in more detail. At least that's my initial impression. It takes a little getting used to after using iTunes for so long. Give it a try if your looking for something a little more in depth or just want to try something different.

Let's Get Rocked!

-Author pauses from a drawn out air guitar solo courtesy of Def Leppard-

Well I was doing some music research for my friend who I was helping out the other day. One of her questions was how do I download and listen to music. I have to admit downloading music I haven't done a lot of lately. When I've done it in the past it was usually using some P2P network like Kazaa and such. Which I of course know is not really on the legal side but I did it any way. Of course I wasn't going to recommend doing something on the shady side. I told her I would look into it for her.

Of course in the name of research I checked out the popular iTunes by Apple. I have to admit iTunes is not new but I have to admit I've been somewhat reluctant to try it out. I'm somewhat old fashion and prefer CD's . Something about actually purchasing something tangible like a CD rather than digital music file. I'm still having some issues with this but I'll put them aside for now, in the name of research of course.

So I downloaded iTunes and installed it. After it synched up with media on my hard drive which actually took quite awhile. I have to admit I've gotten past my initial hesitation using anything done by Apple. I like the interface and it's more intuitive than Windows Media Player. Of course to download music you need to create an account (credit card required of course, Steve Jobs needs to eat you know). I can see where this can be very addicting and very expensive place to hang out. I made my very first iTunes purchase the honor goes to Sheryl Crow's - Steve McQueen. Purchasing a song is almost too easy. I imported my first CD (using iTunes) - Def Leppard's - Vault. Though for over all music items I'd still prefer to purchase an actual CD I'd have no problem purchasing songs from them when I don't want to purchase the whole CD. I heartily recommend checking iTunes out. I think I'll be doing some guides on this in the near future so stay tuned.


P.S. I also have some issues about Sheryl Crow but that's another story. Enjoy her tribute to "The Man" Steve McQueen below.