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Vol. 6, No. 24      

6-8-06

 

1 Ripping Part 1

2 Ripping the old fashioned way

3 Vista Beta 2, Google.xls, iPods (hic!), Yahoo Photos

4 A repeat worth repeating

5 Firefox Updates

 

Portable music players seem to have taken over the country.  Everywhere you look you see people bopping along to unheard music issuing directly into their skull from everything from iPods to MP3 capable cell phones.

 

There are two mostly legal ways to get the music you want loaded into your personal player; purchase for download from services like iTunes or the neutered Napster, or rip the tunes directly from your CD collection.

 

The act of “ripping” basically amounts to capturing raw audio tracks from CD and converting them on the fly to a compressed, computer friendly format such as MP3 or WMA.  This compression allows for storage and playback of hundreds of songs on a portable device without switching CDs every 40 minutes or so.

 

MP3 is the universal format and will play on nearly anything, including iPods.  WMA is Windows Media Audio and will play on Media Player as well as most straight portables.  Both of these are called “lossy”, which means that they don’t record every second of every sound but actually take samples of certain bits and reuse them when needed.

 

During the ripping process, the higher the bitrate the less likely a noticeable artifact will crop up in a recording.  As we’ve discussed in the past, bits are discreet pieces of data.  Eight bits are needed to make a byte, 1024 bytes to make a kilobyte, so a higher bitrate simply means more bits are sampled per second of audio.  More bits sampled equals less chance of losing a chunk of unique sound during compression, but it also means the resulting file will be larger.

 

Since I got so many nice comments about the music I mentioned last week, I’ll mention more as examples of the differences between tracks.  The a cappella version of “Leave It” by Yes contains a lot of dead silence so a lower bitrate would work fine, but a complex piece of rock and roll like Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” with that rapid fire piano work by Roy Bittan needs a much higher rate.  128 bit/s is a good midline choice for most people for nearly everything, especially if you’re using a portable player as opposed to high-end home audio equipment.

 

Ripping audio isn’t just for portable equipment though.  Personally I do it more to make custom CD compilations of my favorite songs or songs by a certain artist or in a certain genre.  Like the days of yore when I used to do the same thing from LP to cassette, only the audio quality is better.

 

Next week I’ll cover the step-by-step process for ripping songs using both MusicMatch and Windows Media Player, and burning them to an audio CD using Nero Burning Rom.  As always your personal software choices may differ a bit but will be similar enough so that you get an idea of how it’s done.

 

Before I get emails about the Apple format, M4A, I’ll say that to my knowledge you can’t rip songs into those files.  That’s the propriety format of songs purchased from iTunes, which can only be played on iPods and are DRM (Digital Rights Management) compliant.

 

I usually use Restrictions instead of Rights for the R, since the purpose is to limit your fair use of products that you purchase and nothing do with your rights to use said product.

 

Until next week, ROCK OUT!

 

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru@microdome.net

 

 

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

 

Tech News of the Week

 

TECH NEWS OF THE WEEK

Microsoft has just released the first public version of its new OS,
Vista. It's called Windows Vista Beta 2 and it's a preview of Windows
Vista Ultimate - "the most comprehensive edition of Windows Vista":

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/index.php?p=204

Google Spreadsheet right now is still part of Google Labs and you have
to ask for an invitation, so we know it's still an experiment.   But
the question is what kind of an experiment is it?

http://blog.pcmag.com/blogs/miller/archive/2006/06/07/1158.aspx

In a rare instance, Apple Computer Inc.'s iconic iPod music player
surpassed beer drinking as the most "in" thing among undergraduate
college students, according to the latest biannual market research
study by Ridgewood, N.J.-based Student Monitor:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/14764223.htm

Yahoo launched on Thursday a limited beta of a new Yahoo Photos site
that allows people to download high-resolution photos, tag shots with
descriptors for easy search and comment on other peoples' images:

http://news.com.com/Yahoo+rolls+out+photo+site+beta/2100-1025_3-6081325.html

Copy us on the good stuff, especially all that leftover beer. ;-)

Matthew Dattilo

thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com

 

Download/Website of the Week

 

So, you need a word processor/office suite, but you don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars for one of the most popular versions of that software.

 

You can try “EasyOffice with PDF Filter”.  This free suite of office tools includes word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications.

 

EasyWord is compatible with Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, HTML, and ZIP files; it includes English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Swedish, medical, and legal dictionaries. EasySpreadsheet is compatible with Microsoft Excel, and features one-click e-mailing of your spreadsheets. Both of these applications include a feature that reads your text to help you catch mistakes. EasyPresentation helps you to create slide presentations, and its EasyContactManager even helps you to produce customized form letters and track appointment dates. Its contact lists can be exported in Excel format. This version can create PDF files. It also has a dictionary that gives you full definitions and a spell checker. It comes bundled with add-ons such as EasyCalculator financial calculator and the financial program EasyZip. It does not need Microsoft Office to run.  Get this freebie from:

 

http://www.e-press.com/downloads/index.html

 

If you’re like me you shudder each time you have to register your email at a website to access some content.  I have used some “throw-away” online email addresses to handle this in the past.  I have found a very cool solution that totally assures a “no SPAM” alternative.  It’s called www.dodgeit.com.

 

This site let’s you choose an email name to use, i.e. JoeUser@dodgeit.com, when you register at a website.  Then you can visit dodgeit.com to check for your confirmation email.  You can only read email here; you cannot send from this site.

 

Subscribers’ Bonus: No explanation necessary:

 

http://www.oxymoronica.com/oxymoralist.shtml

 

Art Maley

artman@gmail.com

 

Firefox Extension of the Week

 

 

Contest of the Week

 

This week’s giveaway is a Sony laptop from Symantec, the parent company of Norton Antivirus program among other security and system tools.  When asked I generally don’t recommend these products from both personal and professional experience, but I must say I’m impressed with their behavior with this contest.

 

Generally speaking many of these contests are geared toward collecting email addresses for advertising purposes and selections to receive future email ads from the sponsor companies are automatically checked “Yes”.  This is called Opt Out advertising, meaning you can uncheck those options but if you just fill out the entry form and leave the default selections alone you get their emails.

 

At http://www.safetytown.com/sweepstakes/ (the entry site for this contest) it’s an Opt In process.  You have to physically check the boxes to get the emails, otherwise you’re left alone.

 

Regardless of my feelings about their software offerings I find this classy.

 

Email Question of the Week

 

Q:  I am helping someone who has a licensed copy of windows 98SE from a
Dell desktop computer that was retired. He has an old Compaq laptop
where you can only use either the Floppy or the CD-ROM. Problem is
that the Dell CD doesn't have an operating system on the CD so it
won's boot from the CD Rom. I have tried the startup disk in the
floppy drive but it doesn't detect the CD Rom (because it is not
installed) so it doesn't install the drivers. Is there a way around
this? I am sure that this is a common question in the old days so if
you can direct me to an article on this that would be great. When I
accessed your Operating System forum it said there was nothing posted
in last 30 days.

Thanks for any help you can give

 

A:  Windows 98SE startup disk has a file on it that has the drivers for
most cd-roms.  You should get a dialogue from the floppy drive that
will ask you if you want to boot with cd-rom support.  Click yes.  The
cd-rom drive will be created, but if it is usually your D/ Drive, The
virtual drive will be E/  So when you are ready to install from the
cd, At the dos prompt instead of d: change the drive to e: and type in
setup. (e:Setup)

Depending on how old the laptop is, you can also go into the bios and
under advanced setup, you should be able to change the boot drive
order.  Make the cd-rom the first boot device and hdd0 the second.
After the install, you will want to go back to the bios and change the
boot order.

I hope this helps.  Keep in mind though; if it is an OEM copy of 98
the license is not transferable to a different machine.

Dan  

kickback-n-relax@insightbb.com

 

Contact info and legal stuff

 

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