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I was searching for a convenient way to convert my (non-DRM)WMA audio files to mp3 format, but I found that it was difficult to find a solution that met my needs.  I looked up audio converters on Google and I was provided a large list of tools that sounded great.  I downloaded a few and I was surprised to learn that all tools required manually inputting information into id3 tags.  I research the problem a little more and several sources pointed out that WMA to mp3 tagging is not as easy as it sounds.  I figured that I would have to buy a plugin that worked with the Windows Media Player.  The prices ranged from $9.99 and up.  I would have purchased them , but I didn’t see any description that the products could do what I needed them to do.  Most of the tools provided ID3 tags when ripping from a CD to Mp3, but none offered ID3 tags when converting from WMA to MP3. 

 I have an iPod now, but I used to use a Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra.  I figured that I would try to reload or download the software that came with the product because I was sure that it offered a free conversion tool.  I went to the Creative USA site and they did offer a tool.  The tool works like a charm and converts title, track, and album name to ID3 tags.  I am including the link below and hopefully it will save someone some time.  The actual article below describes the conversion from Mp3 to WMA, but it is easy enough to figure out how to do it the other way. You don’t actually have to own a Creative Mp3 player for this program to work.  This is a great tool if you all of a sudden have a large collection of DRM free WMA files to convert.

Here is a screenshot of the program:  

*Note: Creative no longer has a direct link to the Audio Converter.  You will have to download the full software bundle.  You can delete the programs thst you don’t need.

Here is a direct link to the article and dowload.  <-- not working

Try this link. You will need to select your Country and mp3 player.  Any of the Zen Players should work.  Download the Creative Media Source Organizer.

 If you have iTunes, you can also just drag any unprotected WMA file into the library window and have the option to convert WMA files to Mp3.

 

The Slingbox from Sling Media will change the way that you watch Television when you are away from home.  One of the best things about this device is that it lets you stay connected to local news and sporting events if you are away traveling.  It also lets you control your cable box, Tivo , or DVD player. You need a fast internet connection in order to fully enjoy this product.  I will admit that some sporting events look choppy, but at least you can watch it in real time or with a minimal 15 second delay. 

 We have tested this product and would say that it is well worth the $200-250 cost.

At first glance, I was amazed by the wonderful features of my iHome branded clock radio for my iPod. It had an alarm, iPod charger, and the ability to play my ipod audio directly through the speakers on the unit. It was a dream come true. No longer was required to listen through those little headphones. I was free to listen without boundaries. I decided that work would be a great place to connect my unit. I am at my desk eight hours a day and my company is nice enough to let me listen to music at a reasonable volume level.

After only minutes of the first use, my iPod completely froze and would no longer go into sleep mode. I blamed the iPod for being faulty because it was brand new. I went online and tried to reset the iPod and that didn’t work. After a lengthy call with the helpful Apple associate, I was told to go home and reinstall the updated iPod software. That didn’t work, so I had to send my iPod in for repair. About two week later I had a refurbished iPod. It totally sucks because my iPod was just one week old when it stopped working. I was just happy to have an iPod that worked , so the following Monday, I connected my “refurb” iPod into my iHome. My iPod now freezes after about three songs and then I have to reboot my iPod in order to get it to play. It is a newer generation Video iPod, so I thought that maybe it was just a little “buggy”. I waited for the new firmware to be released because it promised to fix several bugs. The following Monday I connected the iPod to the iHome and it began freezeing again. I doesn’t freeze once or twice a day…it freezes like 20 or 30 times a day. I have a $10 set of computer speakers that I got from Walmart and my iPod never freezes when I connect it to those speakers.

I went to the iHome forums and all I could find is that it says that you may run into interference when connected next to a computer or monitor. I have three dell flat panel monitors connected to two computers at work, so possibly it could be that. It is just a sad thing that I lost my receipt and am unable to return the $89 paper weight. The clock radio sounds great , but I can hook up a $10 clock radio if that’s what I wanted.

Let me know if anyone else runs into the same problem or has a solution for me. This was a promising product that has just totally let me down.

I would not buy this product again, but that is only my opinion. Maybe I just have a defective unit.

Many people visit the popular social bookmark site called Digg.com .  I find it to be one of the best solutions for finding interesting news articles without having to search around.  One of the most disappointing things about Digg is that once a site becomes popular enough to hit the frontpage, it gets slammed with traffic and often crashes.  This leaves many frontpage stories that lead to error pages.  This leaves me with only one option…to digg the story ,so I can save it to view it later.  I know that digg allows you to undigg stories, so I could digg and then just undigg later.  That just seems like it would eventually just leave thousands of people digging a story that they haven’t even had a chance to read. 

My solution would be to create a “saved bookmark button” without a vote and it could hold those stories in your profile section.   You would then be able to read the article after the craze of the Digg Effect has died down a little.  Once you read the story, you could choose to delete or digg it. 

Below is an example of how it could be incorportated in to the site.

 

 

 

 

 

It is quite a simple solution, but I am sure that the programming behind it is more complex than it seems. Digg is constantly adding wonderful features that ”wow” the users, but this would be a simple solution that could bypass the need to start a service to cache a website for later viewing.  I miss out on getting a chance to see many of the stories that make it to the frontpage , so this would really be a wonderful feature to try out. 

read more | digg story
 

Sometimes it seems that people get too worked up over mashups.  The newest news craze is Gawkers site “Gawker Stalker”  .  It appears that the news media is attempting to make this look like a site that actually tracks celebrities in real time.  The site posts sightings of celebrities that are NOT posted in real time. This doesn’t appear to be something that would help a “stalker” to find his/her favorite celebritiy.  As far as I know, celebrities don’t stay at the same location for days unless it is their home or hotel that is being reported on.  This is only a site that lets you know where celebrities are seen.  I don’t see this as a huge invasion on their privacy. 

This site tracks celebs in New York city.  It would be cool to have a site to  list celebs sightings in LA.  Does anyone know how to code this?  We should get started on it.

Dave Chappelle made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show yesterday.  He opened up and told the Frey Killer the true story of what happened when he disappeared.  Dave says that after signing his $50 million deal, he just felt stressed out. He said that people were trying to control him and his show.  Chappelle decided that he needed a “spiritual” retreat , so he went to Africa. He has family and friends who live in South Africa, so he thought that it would be a good idea to spend some time away from Los Angeles.  The only problem with that was that he forgot to tell his wife or kids.   Dave says that he was only gone for two weeks, so it really wasn’t as mysterious an event as described by the media. 

 When it comes down to it, it appears that Dave made the same mistake that many great comedians make…they start to take themselves too seriously.  It has happened to most of the great ones…look at Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy.  Dave strayed away from just trying to be funny and started to think about his greater responsibility to the world.  I just want my favorite comedians to work on being funny and leave the political messages to celebrities like Susan Sarandon and Madonna.   

 Dave says that he would like to come back to his hit Comedy Central Show and have half of the DVD sales go to charity.

When it comes down to it.  Dave wasn’t crazy at all.  He just wanted to do a little soul searching. 

 

Below, I show an image capture that I took of a story on the frontpage that seemed like “spam” because it had tons of affiliate links and adds.  It was a story titled, “Legality of ALLOFMP3.com EXAMINED!!”  The title alone sounded a bit SPAM-ISH , but it already had over 120 Diggs.  I monitored the Digg Spy feature until I saw that it was no longer on the frontpage.  It took about an hour or so to get removed.  That sounds pretty cool because I counted at least 40 reports that it was “spam” or “just lame”(most likely it was a bit more).   I have to assume that since this article had nearly 300 Diggs when I last remember seeing it on the frontpage, that it must mean that it takes a negative comment ratio of about 15 to 20% of the total Diggs received to actually get booted off of the frontpage.  Since I didn’t view this article from Digg #1, I can only estimate how many negative reports it may have recieved before I started to monitor it.

Since I can’t actually find the link on Digg anymore, I am posting a full page image of a Digg Spy screen here Full Page Digg Spy  .  I looked up the username of the person who is listed on this screen cap on Google and found his profile, but he must have undugg the story because it was no longer part of his profile.

 I did find something strange. I noticed that once the article was removed from the frontpage, for the next ten minutes or so, I would still see it come across Digg Spy. I assumed that maybe a cookie was on my browser that was aware of recent stories that I submitted or reported , so I logged off I went to Digg Spy again.  I still saw the item coming across.  I think that maybe it was because some visitors may have not refreshed their browsers.   

 Once a story is removed from the frontpage, it is also removed from the Digg search.  Does anyone know the reason for this?  I assume it is just another means of filtering out spam.

 This just shows that Digg.com has a very effective way of filtering out spam and useless information.  This is great for people who are only looking for quality news items.  I know that I use Digg nearly everyday and sometimes three or four times a day, so I appreciate the effectiveness of it and look forward to seeing new features as they are released.

*forgive me for using photobuck to host the images.  If this article gets Dugg enough, I will be sure to replace the photobucket images and host them on my own server.

The life and death of Tim Treadwell is the focus of this thrilling documentary about a man who chose to spend his summers living amongt the giant Grizzly Bears of Alaska. Werner Herzog collected Tim Treadwell’s own video footage and has put together a wonderful tribute to a man with an impossible dream. Mr. Treadwell believed that he could live with and protect Grizzly Bears and perserve his life. In this film we learn about Treadwell and his “family” of Grizzly Bears that he proclaims that he would DIE FOR.

 

 

I saw this movie and was very impressed with the softer moments and the hard hitting survial nature of this film. This is a must see film because Treadwell comes off looney, but sincere in his attempt to protect the very bears that took his life.

View the trailer in Quicktime format:

Grizzly Man Trailer/

YouTube is to video like Flickr is to photos. YouTube.com , often mistakenly called uTube.com,  lets you upload up to 100 MB of video for FREE.  This is the newest in a long line of social networks that are exploding in popularity over the net.

What is YouTube? YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. With YouTube you can:

1. Blog the videos you take with your digital camera or phone.
2. Share videos with family and friends.
3. Become an instant internet celebrity.
4. Create video podcasting segments.
5. Produce video how-to videos.
6. Create an internet based tv show.

This is very easy to use and very fun. YouTube is a free online video streaming service that allows users to view and share videos that have been uploaded by our members. Anyone can view and share videos, and members can upload videos and use other features, free of charge.

     Most of the content on YouTube.com is worthless material,but sometimes you can find some very interesting video mixed in.  Just like any other service, you have to search for quality content.

     YouTube has taken some heat by networks for displaying copyrighted content.  I feel that they should just view it as free advertising for their programming.

 Update:  4/2/06

 YouTube.com has limited video content to 10 minutes because of fears having to deal with too much pirated content.  This makes it a much less attractive service than it once was…or does`it?  Video bloggers/podcasters will not like this new change, but the shorter segments may be more attractive to the A.D.D. generation. The shorter video segments will enable more unique content to reach the internet because it will allow give the non-professional segment of the internet to have a place to display creative videos on the net. Most segments above 10 minutes are usually pirated content. This could potentially be the next billion dollar idea or it could be the next internet bust.  Yahoo and Goodle may see this site as a gateway to the the social marketplace.

In additon to YouTube, you also have a service started by one of the creators of MySpace called Vsocial.com  .  Vsocial lets you post video content with no specified length limit.  Google video has updated and it now allows you to instantly upload and share video online.  Google Video had previously required that you upload a file and wait a few days for it to show up online.

 09/01/06 Update

YouTube has announced that it plans on making music videos available online in the near future.