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.

TC1100 Project

Today I have undertaken a huge task. I am going to setup an old TC1100 to run of 3 different operating systems. Yes it will be alot of fun is what I thought at first too. So here's the story.
A co-worker of mine asked me today to put Ubuntu, Windows 98 SE, and windows XP onto a TC1100 by HP/Compaq. Now first off these are little tablet PCs. I can only imagine that after working on one for more than an hour it would get really dull. So what I did was crabbed an external Keyboard and mouse. But then to my suprise realized (not that it was much of a suprise) that this unit has no CD drive... So I had to rumage around for an external CD drive which was quite the task. We're talking 10 boxes until I finally found it. Then I had to set out a game plan. I figured the easiest way to execute this was to Install Ubuntu first then have virtual box running 2 instances one of Windows 98SE and one of Windows XP.

So step one [Install Ubuntu]
Setup was pretty easy. It already had a version of windows XP installed so i just clicked Guided use entire disk and continued to click foward until it finally started installing. Now it took awhile most likely because it's running off an external CD drive... Which if any of you have ever used probably already know can be a massive bitch to work with. This whole step took about an hour to complete.

Step two [Install Virtual Box]
Go to System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager
Click Search then Type:Virtual Box
Right click on the Virtual Box Listing and click Mark For Installation
Click Apply
Then go to Applications>System Tools>Virtual Box
Click Add set the size of you HDD I did two a 10GB and a 4GB
Then click New
First I installed Windows XP
Then after that was finished I installed Windows 98SE on the 4GB drive

Step three [Test]
Here's where it got complicated I had to actually forfit the entire project due to lack of system resources. Turns out Ubuntu Will Work Fine but any of the other operating systems just FAIL miserably. Even when not going through Virtual Box they lagged and generated system error. All in all I guess a TC1100 is just a crappy machine built for jack end users who do nothing more than eat tacos and surf the web (I always picture people who surf the web eating tacos)

But the important thing is... IT CAN BE DONE!!!!

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!