Ever since I’ve been exposed to the terminal I can’t go back. I found a handy open source app called >CD to…(weird name) which sits in your Finder toolbar. This means you can be browsing some folder directories deep, and when you click on the >CD To… icon it will open up your shell and point you to the directory you are in. Very useful for those Mac users who want to get their hands a little dirty.
I am somewhat of a perfectionist/completionist. I need to have album art, formatted tags, and lyrics for my music collection. Unfortunately you need an iTunes Store Account to automatically grab album art in iTunes which is not right. Corripio is an open-source app for your Mac that does all of this for you with a click of a button. You can go through your entire library and actually EMBED album art, and lyrics into the MP3 itself so if you ever decide to ditch iTunes for another media player you don’t lose all of that hard work. Now when I’m using CoverFlow, I am flipping through actual album covers, not just blank squares 
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Its been a while since I’ve updated my blog. I’ve been busy with work and playing with the new Mac, but fear not, in the process I’ve discovered a great DVD ripping app called Handbrake. It can rip any DVD you throw at it regardless of protection/encryption or not. You want to preserve the chapters, original quality or export it to your iPod? It can do that too. If you’ve got a dual-core machine expect to rip a full DVD in 10 minutes or less =). As always its open-source and cross platform so you can run it on Windows, OS X or Linux.
I’m a Google-holic. I use GMail and Google Calendar religiously. One thing that always bothered me about GMail was the fact I couldn’t drag and drop my attachments into the browser. Lucky for me I found this useful Firefox extension called dragdropupload that allows me to do so.
This post is now available on my new blog The IT Report:
I have recently just purchased a new Macbook. I have lost some friends in the switch, and will be forcing myself to try out OS X for a month so I can learn the system before I load up Ubuntu. Music is always a high priority for me, and iTunes’DRM-infested software just wasn’t going to cut it for me. I’ve dabbled with Songbird in the past when it was a very early beta but there have been lots of improvements since.
Songbird is the Firefox of media players. It runs on Mozilla’s platform so you can use it on any operating system, and allows extensions a la Firefox. Not to mention its also developed by the same boys who brought you the good ol’ Winamp. One of the features that sets Songbird apart from the rest is that it can detect songs on web-pages like MySpace and play the file like an mp3 that is local – so you can skip over it at your leisure. This makes listening to music on the web VERY powerful.
If you want to check out a hassle-free media player I suggest this because it can index your entire library, help you find new music, and of course as always is free like the air we breathe. Songbird is still a developers beta, but it is very stable, and very usable. The term “beta” is somewhat obsolete these days with Google keeping GMail in beta for what – a year?
Yes we’ve heard many times that Microsoft is the perpetratior of all things evil, but sometimes I think that without Microsoft the computing world would not be where it is today. Of course we would be much farther technologically with open-standards, but there are some Microsoft technologies that we may take for granted:
Office
If you think there is a better alternative you’re kidding yourself. Open Office is good, but it is basically playing catchup with Microsoft Office. Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are must-haves in the business world. Period. I don’t support proprietary formats like DOCX, but from a feature and usability stand point office has the grounds covered.
Windows Mobile
Do you remember the Treo 300? We don’t want something that ugly and unusable in todays mobile world. Windows Mobile is the reason why we see so many smartphones on the market. You could mention the Blackberry as another alternative but, Windows Mobile brings you the touchscreen support for certain models. The iPhone is great, but it doesn’t have the functionality of a true PDA, not to mention its unrealistic for cell phones to have 700MB of disk space to run the operating system. Microsoft managed to fit an OS on basic cell phones with the features you find on a desktop.
XBox
The 360 rocks. I love playing NBA Live ’07 in HD too. There is no denying that the XBox is a great console, and also a good business move for Microsoft. Which brings me to my next point…
Business
Microsoft can get away with making sub-par software and locking others into their proprietary system. How do they do it? They are masters at negotiation. There is no such thing as being the market leader by accident, Microsoft knew how the business worked, and made it to the top. Unfortunately they aren’t using their power for good, but from a business stand point they have excelled.
Bill Gates
Sure he may be a conniving crook, but he also donates billions of dollars to the Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation. Think of Bill Gates as the modern day Robin Hood. Jokes aside, he is a role-model for many. Who doesn’t want to drop out of college and make billions? Its the American dream (maybe not the dropping out part).
Windows
There is a saying, you don’t know what truly tastes good until you’ve tried something bad. Because of Windows we have desktop operating systems that are pushing the limits like Ubuntu and OS X. From an economics standpoint, its a free market – competition is good!
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I would like to point out that no matter which operating system you may be using, we all have reaped the benefits of open-source. Believe it or not, there is a little bit of free software goodness in all of us:
Windows Users
Mac users
Linux Users
The Web
Electrical Devices
As you can see open-source is all around us. The points I have mentioned are nowhere near the extent and true caliber of what open source delivers to us on a daily basis. Please enlighten me with your thoughts.
Wine lets you run Windows apps in Linux by having you manually install them as if you were actually in Windows. Who says you can’t install these apps Linux style? Wine Doors is a package manager for Wine applications. Thats right, you can grab your favorite Windows applications from a repository and install them exactly the way you would in Ubuntu. Wine Doors has a pretty snazzy list of software ranging from Dreamweaver 8 to Call of Duty 2 to satisfy both professionals and gamers.
Download:
Installing and removing programs can clutter up your system. Sometimes certain dependency packages aren’t needed after a program has been uninstalled – so trash it. I have a few handy tricks up my sleeve so you can reclaim some of your disk space back:
Autoremove
apt-get isn’t like your two your old cousin – it can clean up after itself. If you want to get rid of packages that are no longer referenced by your system, its as simple as “sudo apt-get autoremove” in the terminal
Clean
Retrieved or downloaded packages can still remain locally on your system like bad residue. “sudo apt-get clean” will clear the repository completely, leaving only the lock that is used to connect to your repo’s.
deborphan
Sometimes apt-get’s built in cleanup functionality doesn’t cut it. deborphan finds “orphaned” packages on your system. It determines which packages have no other packages depending on their installation, and shows you a list of these packages. It is most useful when finding libraries, but it can be used on packages in all sections. deborphan is in the universe so grab it by typing “sudo apt-get install deborphan.” It should show up under System > Administration > Remove orphaned packages after the install.
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