Songbird 0.7.0

Finally a company has the right idea. I picked up the latest copy of Maximum PC today. As I like to see new software that's being developed (even though for the most part it doesn't apply to me being a Ubuntu Linux user). I came across an interesting piece of software to my surprise. It's an open-source program called Songbird. Because it's open-source it's available for Linux, Mac OSX , and Windows. Finally a cross platform music player that has built in support for iPods. Needless to say I went ahead and installed it right away on the Mac. Lets start with installation. It was very easy. Might I add that it automatically picked up on all my iTunes music. But it didn't stop there. It actually checked all music while importing and removed the duplicates for me. All I have to say about that is it's about damn time. I often move music back and forth and in some cases I move music that was already there back. What happens in iTunes is I end up with 3 copies of the same song and I don't know which one to remove. After that I immediately started installation of this application for my Ubuntu machine. It was fairly easy to install on both systems. For Ubuntu installation see my Journey To Ubuntu blog. If your a Mac or PC user go to getsongbird.com. Now once installed he application as I mentioned automatically adds your music. Either by directory of by existing iTunes library. This application is jam packed with amazing features. So lets start from top to bottom (if you have he application you'll follow this along a lot easier).

The Library:
It's pretty straighfoward when it comes to the library, you have your genre, then artist, album, and song. They also have a library search which comes in handy if you have alot of music. It's also very functional. It auto searches as you type and based off your library offere's a list of what it thinks your typing before you finish. The library is basically laid out like iTunes only with the actual player on the bottom instead of the top (that's what she said). I think the coolest part of the library is the option users have to get more media views. Wow it's about damn time we get to customize our media player to our liking. Also this application has a built in web browser so you don't have to switch around when surfiing the web for new songs or additional add-ons for this application. Also as a side note for you hard-core iTunes users they offer an iTunes skin or as they call it "feather".

Downloads:
Not really anything spectacular here. But I'll take this chance to mention the thousands of Add-ons offered by this application. Anything from song lyrics displayer to song tapper lets you tap the rhythm of a song and it will find it. They have everything and it doesn't come weighed down with all the crap it's just what the name says "ADD-ON" but it's free and fun.

Next is a new feature called Concerts:
This option allows a user to set his or her location and it will search your artists and find concerts in your area by your favorite bands.

Radio:
Yes this application has radio support. But not the iTunes podcast type (although I'm sure those are offered as an Add-On) I'm talking the good radio that you find with Winamp. Shoutcast stuff like that.

Overall I give this application a 10 out of 10. I've read about users who have had issues with system performance... But no more than iTunes. My system isn't great by any means but this runs fine on it. I would highly recommend giving this application a try.

Helping A Coworker In Need

A co-worker of mine recently approached me with an interesting question. He's the head technician for one of our accounts and has multiple machines for different functions on separate networks (Ghosting, Managing AD, Work Communication, etc). He wanted to be able to get rid of this excess clutter on his work bench by integrating all his machines to one monitor, one mouse, and one keyboard. Obviously I was egar to help him. I had suggested a couple ways to accomplish this one being a KVM switch. Today we ventured far and near in our workplace in search for a KVM switch with multiple inputs. Turns out we have a bunch of them (about 50 to be exact). It's the first time I have ever seen this type of KVM switch with support for up to 10 computers. I found it to be quite cool so we hooked it up and tada it works (Big surprise right?) So that combined with a few config orders is what I have done today!

Ubuntu In The Workplace

Currently I am a PC Technician at a place called Pomeroy IT Solutions. My job for the most part consists of configuring and repairing computers for multiple companies in a timely fashion. However due to lack of work recently (Most likely due to the horrible economy) I have come to face my mortal enemy... Boredom! So what does a computer tech do when he's bored and has thousands of PCs at his disposal?... Well here's what I did.

Normally the PCs we configure run on Windows 2000... Boring!!!
So with my recently aquired Ubuntu CD that I brought with me today (I was actually going to give it to a co worker but he can wait) I installed ubuntu on this Lenovo (IBM) Thinkcentre.
Model number for those of you who care 9645-CC5
It has about 256 MB of ram with (some of you may want to sit down for this) a 1.6 GHz Celeron Processor.
To be honest I didn't think it would actually run given that these are pretty outdated by today's standards. But to my suprise, it did, and very smoothly might I add.

Even with the additional desktop effects such as Desktop Cube, Motion Blur, etc. It still is running like a beast!

Now for the funny part.
Normally when we put windows on this machine it doesn't have any of the drivers preinstalled, which means we have to take out or handy driver CD and load them all up (we avoid this by just ghosting the whole machine now) but with Ubuntu it picked up on all the hardware. ALL OF THE HARDWARE!!!!... WOW I can't even do that with Windows XP on my machine. Needless to say today's boredom experiment made me a very very happy Ubuntu camper.

P.S. I ended up giving my co-worker the CD after I was done with it. He can't wait to go home and try it out!

SSD is the new hard drive?

Okay so it's been out for a long time now but developers are just now getting around to making it "worth while". SSD is essentially a flash card. Just imagine the possibilities. Now instead of having your hard drive running, faulting out, and essentially sucking power your computer will be run off of a SSD. What is SSD you may ask? It stand for Solid State Drive. Developers like Toshiba are making SSDs that can hold up to 256 GB. That's about the size of a HDD that's installed on almost any computer you buy at circuit city. How freaking amazing. The great part about it is well these drives are basically amazing. Take for instance your typical jump drive. Have you ever noticed how durable those are? I ran mine through the wash once, let it dry out and it still worked. Wow. So in short this new technology could in turn replace the HDD and set a new standard to memory management. I'm pretty excited about it. The possibility for this technology to become apparent in laptops is basically a given. With read speeds at 120MBps and write speeds at 70MBps through a SATA connection. I think I need to go to the bathroom!