Richard Farrar's Blog http://www.richardfarrar.com Life, Technology and Everything... Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:09:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 richardfarrarhttp://feedburner.google.comSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesWelcome to my RSS feed. Podcast: The Internet Monthly – November 2009 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/S95DJS10syE/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-november-2009/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:09:34 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-november-2009/ The Internet Monthly Podcast The Internet Monthly is a monthly podcast featuring 20 or so short Internet related articles, tips and tricks and a regular search engine of the month feature.

In this month’s podcast you can find out how to create a heat map for your Web site and improve the buttons that leave visitors cold, learn why Google wants you to wave goodbye to e-mail and how a keyword catcher that narrows down a trillion search queries can still be free.

You can also learn how you to start your own search engine, or earn a living doing absolutely nothing with a big enough following on Twitter, and the solution to wi-fi hacking in a new coat of paint.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – November 2009:

Download audio file (podcast_nov09.mp3)

Or, download: podcast_nov09.mp3 [21’ 39”, 10MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

  1. ZEN HITS SIXTH NUMBER ONE – Six years at the top as best ISP
  2. MOVING TO FASTER BROADBAND – 20 Mbps coming to a town near you
  3. HARRY POTTER OUTDONE BY WINDOWS 7 – Windows 7 pre-orders out sell  Harry Potter on Amazon 
  4. UNWANTED VISITORS – On-line shops need to improve to keep visitors 
  5. BALANCING BUTTONS – Button makeovers improve web site conversions  
  6. CLICK MAPS – Find out where people are clicking on your web site 
  7. KEYWORD TRAWLER – Analyse over a trillion keywords 
  8. GEO LOCATION – Find geographical coordinates of your location   
  9. ZOOMBU – Journey planner for Europe by any means 
  10. RUNNING MAPS – Map and measure your jogging and walking  
  11. POLLUTION STREET MAPS – Pollution hot spots in your streets   
  12. POLLUTION WATCH – Help to map the pollution in your area 
  13. ANTI-WIFI PAINT – Protect your valuable data with a coat of paint
  14. APPLE AMBUSH – Apple tackle Microsoft for supremacy  
  15. GOOGLE WAVE – Google’s browser-based conversation tool
  16. YOUTUBE PAY PER CLICK – Google makes YouTube pay for itself 
  17. TWITTER ADS – Make money while twittering
  18. READERS WRITE – The debate continues
  19. START YOUR OWN SEARCH ENGINE – Become a search engine 
  20. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – Search for files online 

Zen Internet logo This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-november-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-november-2009/http://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/podcast_nov09.mp3 Genie of the LAMP http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/DFX8tvmmj3o/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/genie-of-the-lamp/#comments Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:49:13 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/genie-of-the-lamp/ Linux - Apache - MySQL - PHP

Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, or LAMP as they’re more affectionately known, are a collection of software packages that form the infrastructure supporting much of the World Wide Web. They have become the most common software packages used for web servers around the world today and moreover, they’re FREE!

While the individual software components that comprise a LAMP system are intrinsically separate, together their synergy offers a web server solution that is certainly much more than the sum of its individual parts. In fact, LAMP is so popular that it has almost become the de facto standard for web server systems across the globe.

Built upon open source and essentially free software, it is easy to see why LAMP has become so rapidly accepted by web hosting organisations as their server software system of choice. Furthermore, being free, there’s no reason not to try it for yourself and if you don’t get on with it, then you haven’t wasted any of your hard earned pennies in the process.


Letting the Genie Out

The term LAMP was first coined in 1998 (just seven years after Linux burst on to the scene) by Michael Kunze, who proposed that a bundle of free software packages could effectively rival commercially available software as a serious alternative for the implementation of a commercial-grade web server.

Since then, LAMP has gone from strength to strength, with many versions of Linux now bundling the ubiquitous Apache, MySQL and PHP packages with their operating system as standard.

Linux

linux-online-incMost software packages run on top of an underlying core suite of software programs that provide basic system functions at the heart of the computer. This suite of core programs is more commonly referred to as the operating system.

While Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows XP and Vista, are well known to most people in the home environment, other operating systems are in abundance commercially, such as the “Unix like” Linux operating system.

Linux is a free, open source operating system upon which much of the world’s web servers are based and which is the core of the LAMP suite of packages.

imageApache

Apache is a free web server that runs on Linux, amongst many other operating systems.

To say that Apache is the most popular web server and forms much of the infrastructure of the World Wide Web is not an idle statement.

Since 1996, Apache has consistently been the most popular web server on the internet and as of the time of writing, Apache serves over 60% of the world’s websites and in 2009 became the first web server to serve over 100 million web sites.

Unfortunately, web servers aren’t particularly inspiring things, they just do what they say on the tin: serve web pages. Rather, it’s the additional software packages integrated with the web server that really do the “interesting” and “useful” stuff such as the scripting (programming) languages like PHP and the database systems like MySQL.

MySQL

imageMySQL is an enterprise class (big and professional) relational database management system (RDBMS). This again is free software that provides multi-user access to multiple databases, which in turn can support a host of websites simultaneously.

MySQL uses the industry standard Structured Query Language (SQL) to perform queries and return results from its databases.

Just because it’s free though, doesn’t mean it’s sub standard. MySQL is scalable and is the database system of choice for many large, well known web services such as YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Wikipedia.

So, if you’re developing a website using a LAMP server with a MySQL database and are worried about how well the system would cope with high traffic, don’t be. It will be more than capable of meeting your potential needs.

PHP

image While the ‘P’ of the LAMP acronym can refer to web scripting languages such as Perl and Python, it most commonly refers to the PHP language.

PHP was created in 1995, since which its popularity has grown steadily. It is now being used on over 20 million websites, running on over 1 million web servers!

Like MySQL, PHP is free software and is also capable of supporting professional high volume sites, some examples of which include YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia.

PHP programs run on a web server and PHP is therefore known as a server side scripting language, compared to JavaScript for example, which normally runs in a user’s web browser.

PHP programs running on a web server act a bit like the glue between the database and the web pages. When a user requests a web page, the PHP script talks to the database to gather the data it requires based on the user’s request. Once it has this data, the script then puts together a web page with the required data and sends it to the user’s web browser.

In this way PHP is said to generate dynamic web pages based on user’s input, compared to standard fixed, or static HTML web pages that can’t be adjusted on the fly in such a manner.

In Summary

Running a LAMP server is a cheap, reliable and moreover scalable way of hosting multiple, dynamic websites.

A LAMP server can be used to run a single, simple website at home if you wish on an old spare PC with no software costs.

Alternatively, the same software could be run on a multi-processor, ninja server and be used to host a plethora of different websites or one large, multi-user, globally accessible web site.

Clearly the choice is up to you, but if you start off small and your project takes off, then LAMP can be with you all the way.

Happy website building…


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/genie-of-the-lamp/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/genie-of-the-lamp/ Podcast: The Internet Monthly – October 2009 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/84yuFderYVI/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-october-2009/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:55:38 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-october-2009/ The Internet Monthly Podcast The Internet Monthly is a monthly podcast featuring 20 or so short Internet related articles, tips and tricks and a regular search engine of the month feature.

In this month’s podcast we look at a competition to redesign Google’s front page, how to download printable PC tutorials for children and get adult cheat sheets for popular software.

You can find out how to cook your own pie charts and logos online, check the free security monitor that scans your Web site every day for hacker interference, find out what others know about you from sites you’ve visited, watch the best from the BBC archives and make personal appearances in famous movie clips.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – October 2009:

Download audio file (podcast_oct09.mp3)

Or, download: podcast_oct09.mp3 [21’ 09”, 9.7MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

  1. REDESIGN GOOGLE – Competition to redesign Google’s homepage
  2. FREE PC LESSONS – IT lessons to download for 5 – 15 year olds
  3. CHEAT SHEETS – Quick shortcuts for popular software packages 
  4. CHARTS TO GO – Create great bar graphs and pie charts online 
  5. LOGO MAKER – Free online logo designer  
  6. PARK AND RIDE – Save the environment by cycling more 
  7. GREENER GEAR CHANGE – An eco friendly gearbox of the future 
  8. VANDAL PROOFING – Anti graffiti coating developed by MP3 creators   
  9. SAVE OUR SPOTIFY – Internet radio made easy 
  10. SURVEIL YOUR SITE – Check your website for security vulnerabilities  
  11. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? – What’s in your browser history?   
  12. CHIPMAKER CHIDED – Intel’s not been playing fair
  13. DARWIN DENIAL 2009 – More protesters against Darwin
  14. ROLE PLAY – Star in Hollywood films yourself  
  15. THE WAY WE WERE – BBC archives open up online
  16. VLC UPDATE – Cross platform media player gets updated
  17. GOOGLE CAPTURES RECAPTCHA – Google buys Recaptcha
  18. MIND READING TOOL – Advertisers predicting what you want to see
  19. NOW AND FUTURE SEARCH – Twitter becoming a search engine 
  20. STUCK IN SECOND – Goggle takes second place in China 
  21. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – A “personal” search engine 

Zen Internet logo This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-october-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-october-2009/http://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/podcast_oct09.mp3 Linux: Leaving the Comfort Zone http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/RCj5XzfO-Qk/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/linux-leaving-the-comfort-zone/#comments Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:29:58 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/linux-leaving-the-comfort-zone/ Linux penguin logo

Like many people, I’ve used Microsoft Windows operating systems exclusively for more years than I care to remember. Now, while I’m not about to abandon my comfort blanket entirely, I’ve decided it’s about time to poke my nose out from under the Microsoft blanket and explore the world of Linux; to see what all the fuss is about and if it’s something that I can put to good use.

For the average user, the only serious contender to a Microsoft based desktop PC for regular daily use is an Apple Mac computer with their proprietary operating system. However, if you already have standard PC hardware then Apple’s operating system isn’t really a viable option as it only runs on their hardware.

For the more adventurous however, a third, lesser known alternative exists that also runs on standard desktop PCs: Linux. While Linux is becoming a popular operating system for the new wave of notebook PCs, it’s probably better known as a server based operating system (servers running Linux form much of the backbone of the internet, particularly web servers).


The Linux Alternative

Whilst Linux dates back to 1991, it wasn’t until relatively recently that it became considered as a serious alternative desktop operating system, partly due to its popular Ubuntu version being offered pre-installed by PC manufacturers such as Dell.

Reflecting Linux’s rise in popularity as a desktop alternative, the statistics for my blog last month showed that 3% of visitors to this site were using Linux operating systems (the third most popular operating system of visitors to this blog behind Macintosh [11%] and Windows [85%]).

Now, while I don’t intend to abandon Microsoft as my operating system of choice for my regular desktop PC just yet, I have decided to dip my toe in the Linux pool and experiment setting up a web server on an old PC with Linux. After all, server systems are where Linux flourishes.

The Need for Change

On my home network I currently run Microsoft Windows Server 2000 on an old machine to store my music and pictures, which is accessible by all of the client machines throughout the house. As I develop websites, this machine also acts as a development web server.

However, this server is beginning to creak at the seams and is certainly well passed its sell by date. As most of the websites that I develop end up being hosted on web servers running a version of Linux, it would make sense to have a web server at home running Linux so that I can develop and test web sites in an environment more representative of what they’re likely to be hosted on in the wild.image

At this juncture I’ve decided to split my home server system into two. One running Linux for web site development, and a second running Microsoft Home Server with a few terabytes of storage for music, pictures and video.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu_logo Linux comes in many flavours. One version that is gaining a lot of publicity at the moment is Ubuntu, which is available as both desktop and server versions.

The desktop version is essentially built on the server version, but with a graphical user interface added, plus other goodies like the Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice suite of office programs.

As Ubuntu seems very popular, with quite a lot of support for it via internet forums etc., this is my choice of Linux.

If at first you don’t succeed…

I did install Ubuntu (desktop version) on an old machine about six months ago to play with out of curiosity, but never really got too far with it. I eventually gave up, not feeling I wanted to invest the time required to learn a completely new operating system on a whim.

When my present server system started hitting it’s limits I decided that it really was time to decide on a definite course of action for its replacement.

My initial thoughts were to use Microsoft Windows Server 2008, but this is a bit of overkill for what I need, plus pretty expensive. I then stumbled on Microsoft’s Home Server offering. This captured my attention, partly because of its price (about a fifth of its bigger cousin) but also because it’s specifically designed to stream audio and video media and back up all of the home PCs and replicate its data across multiple discs to provide fault tolerance.

Linux for Free

The downside however is that this operating system doesn’t support a web server suitable for the development of websites. Thus, if I want to use Microsoft’s Home Server I will need another server for web development. Linux is the obvious choice for two reasons. Firstly because it’s the operating system that the websites will end up on anyway, and secondly it’s FREE!

So, if I’m going to go this route I thought I’d best have a serious attempt at getting a Linux server running on my old machine to make sure I could get it to do what I wanted it to, before investing in new hardware for my proposed new servers.

If I was going to do it though, this time I was going to do it properly i.e. install the server version of Ubuntu without the graphical user interface, instead of the desktop version. This time I’m going hard core!

If things go to plan, I hope to write a few posts on how I set the system up and the pitfalls encountered.

Fingers crossed, into the abyss we go. Watch this space…


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/linux-leaving-the-comfort-zone/feed/ 5 http://www.richardfarrar.com/linux-leaving-the-comfort-zone/ Podcast: The Internet Monthly – September 2009 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/cHC8AQD-7PQ/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-september-2009/#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:42:16 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-september-2009/ The Internet Monthly Podcast The Internet Monthly is a monthly podcast featuring 20 or so short Internet related articles, tips and tricks and a regular search engine of the month feature.

This month’s podcast looks at the page every Web site needs to stay legal, buying Windows 7 in the UK for much less than American users, how to support Britain’s most surprising land speed record attempt and a review of The Geek Atlas.

You can also find out about the future of ‘cloud computing’ and nine office suites you can try in the sky today, where to test drive tomorrow’s version of Google and top time-saving tools for Twitter.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – September 2009:

Download audio file (podcast_sep09.mp3)

Or, download: podcast_sep09.mp3 [24’ 44”, 11.3MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

  1. BLUE RIBBON BROADBAND – Zen Internet ranked best ISP
  2. ETHERNET MEETS LOCAL DEMAND – Local council speeds up 
  3. COMPUTING A-LEVELS DOWN – Poor academic results in computing
  4. WHAT EVERY SITE NEEDS – Get yourself a privacy policy 
  5. SKYPE GETS IN TOUCH – Skype answers ID theft criticisms 
  6. WINDOWS FOR LESS IN BRITAIN – Windows 7 cheaper in the UK 
  7. A MONTH AT MICROSOFT – A month of excitement at Microsoft 
  8. YOUR WEB BASED OFFICE – Cloud computing taking off
  9. SIX AND STONES – Internet Explorer 6 refuses to die 
  10. SON OF NAVIGATOR – New browser spawned from Netscape Navigator 
  11. BOOK REVIEW – THE GEEK ATLAS – Geeky places to visit  
  12. BRITS IN OLDEST LAND SPEED CHALLENGE – Steam power returns
  13. STAMPING OUT SPAM – Pay as you go e-mails
  14. READERS WRITE – Top file view utilities 
  15. CONVERTING ONLINE – Convert your document formats online
  16. TWITTER TOOLS – Tools to make twittering easy
  17. CUT TO THE SEARCH – Is Twitter the latest search engine?
  18. CHANGES BREWING AT GOOGLE – Google updating its search engine
  19. WAKE’S PROGRESS – Yahoo’s not dead yet
  20. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – A social search engine 

Zen Internet logo This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-september-2009/feed/ 1 http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-september-2009/http://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/podcast_sep09.mp3 Podcast: The Internet Monthly – August 2009 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/yYVpftwo_xQ/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-august-2009/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:42:00 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-august-2009/ The Internet Monthly Podcast The Internet Monthly is a monthly podcast featuring 20 or so short Internet related articles, tips and tricks and a regular search engine of the month feature.

This month’s podcast looks at the likely demise of the PC hard drive, the open-source smartphones that will outshine the iPhone, the ringtones that only children and dogs can hear and the online photo-shrinker for friends with cinematic display expectations.

You can also find out about how to watch online videos or browse the Internet on your TV, couchsurfing that’s designed to get you out of the house, and the search engine for what’s happening now.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – August 2009:

Download audio file (podcast_aug09.mp3)

Or, download: podcast_aug09.mp3 [17’ 45”, 8.1MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

  1. PIRATES IN GOVERNMENT – Pirate file sharers go political
  2. MICROSOFT BIGGER IN IRELAND – Microsoft open mega data centre in Dublin 
  3. CLOUD CASTLES – Cloud computing data centres flourish
  4. GREEN IT AWARDS – Awards for organisations fostering green computing 
  5. SEVEN UP – Microsoft Windows 7 ready for production
  6. HDD FACING SSD THREAT – The hard disc drive faces demise
  7. DISK VIEW – Find out what’s really on your hard drive
  8. CARD INDEX – Search for new businesscard listings
  9. OPEN SEASON – Open source mobile phones to dominate 
  10. ULTRASONIC RINGTONES – Ringtones suitable for youngsters and dogs
  11. PHOTO SHRINKER – Online photograph shrinker  
  12. PDF TO WORD – Free PDF tools
  13. EXCEL YOURSELF – Free Excel templates
  14. WIKIFY – Automatically embed Wikipedia links in your documents 
  15. WORDNIK – Enhanced online dictionary and thesaurus
  16. APHORISMS GALORE – Aphorisms, aphorisms and more aphorisms
  17. PC TO TV – Merging the PC and the TV
  18. COUCHSURFING – Holiday on the cheap on someone else’s sofa
  19. SANCTIFIED SEARCH – Restricted search for Haredi Jews
  20. FRIENDS – Renting your house to Google
  21. META SEARCH SECURITY – Search without leaving a trail
  22. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – Search what’s happening NOW 

Zen Internet logo This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-august-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-august-2009/http://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/podcast_aug09.mp3 Alternative ID3 Tags for Adding Artwork to MP3 Files http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/9dFeZEjWnYM/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/alternative-id3-tags-for-adding-artwork-to-mp3-files/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:56:24 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/alternative-id3-tags-for-adding-artwork-to-mp3-files/ ID3 Image Tag - Front Cover

Album or cover artwork can easily be embedded within MP3 files via ID3 tags. However, the ID3 specification caters for over 20 different image categories. So which is the best image category to choose, and is it ever worth embedding more than one image into your MP3 files?

Since the release of version 2 of the ID3 tag specification over ten years ago it’s been possible to add album artwork to your collection of MP3 files. This feature of the ID3 specification is now pretty well supported. Most MP3 players with a screen capable of displaying graphics (be they software or hardware  based), now support this feature.

However, as usual with these sort of things, MP3 player manufacturers tend to implement the ID3 tag standard in subtly different ways. This inevitably leads to unpredictable results for the user, particularly when displaying album art.

Embedding Images into MP3s

If all this talk of ID3 tags leaves you a bit cold, then it may be worth pausing for a moment to read my previous post on ID3 tags in MP3 files before proceeding, as they are fundamental to our further discussions.

Embedding images into MP3 files is fairly straightforward and indeed might be accomplished automatically for you by your CD ripping software. If this is not the case, then you will need a special piece of software called a tag editor to help with the task. There are lots of tag  editors available for a host of operating systems, with some good free ones available. My personal favourite is Mp3Tag.

If you want to know more about adding cover art to your MP3 files, the best image format to use and what image size you should consider using, then check out my previous post on embedding album art in MP3 files.

ID3 Artwork Options

The present ID3 standard (version 2.3.0) lists 21 different images that can be embedded within an MP3 file. In practice only one image is ever usually embedded, although an MP3 track could technically have 20 images (only one of the icons #2 or #3 can be embedded at a time). However, the space taken up by the images in such a file would become quite significant compared to the audio data.

The images available to choose from are:

  1. Other
  2. 32×32 pixel icon (PNG only)
  3. Other file icon
  4. Front Cover
  5. Rear Cover
  6. Leaflet page
  7. Media (e.g. label side of CD)
  8. Lead artist, Lead performer or Soloist
  9. Artist or Performer
  10. Conductor
  11. Band or Orchestra
  12. Composer
  13. Lyricist or Text writer
  14. Recording Location
  15. During Recording
  16. During Performance
  17. Movie or Video screen capture
  18. A Bright coloured fish
  19. Illustration
  20. Band or Artist Logo
  21. Publisher or Studio Logo

There are two notable exceptions in the above list that are a little different from the others:

  • The second option (#2) only allows images in the PNG format and images which are sized 32 by 32 pixels for use as a small icon.
  • The eighteenth option (#18) in the list; a bright coloured fish! Some loony tune obviously decided that this was a good idea for a formal specification. Need I say more?

So, for all essential practical purposes, the list really has 20 options (ignoring the brightly coloured fish), or if you are just considering images of unrestricted size, then it has 19 options.

Support for ID3 Images

MP3 Players

Not all MP3 players are created equal when it comes to displaying ID3 images. For example, the Creative Zen Vision: M, while having a large colour screen capable of displaying pictures, does not seem to display any of the ID3 images as far as I can tell; no matter which image tag is used.

The basic Creative Zen displays the ID3 image from the last track in a folder, but insists on using this same image for all tracks in the folder, no matter whether they have different artwork embedded within them or not.

Software Players

Windows media player seems to display any ID3 image correctly, but providing there’s only one image in a track. If a track contains more than one image, it will default to the Front Cover image. Quite how you’re supposed to see the other images, I really don’t know, but at least this seems a sensible fall back position.

Podcasts

A lot of podcasts seem to use the Other image tag (#1 from the above list) for their artwork instead of the Front Cover option. I’m not really sure why this is, other than that their software defaults to this option. My preference would be for the Front Cover tag in this circumstance, but I’d be interested to see what the general consensus is on this.

Test your Player

Having tried a few players and found them to be wanting in their handling of ID3 images, I decided to do a structured test on those I had available to me.

Test Images

In order to test the various ID3 image tags on a range of players, I produced 21 different images corresponding to each of the image tags. Each image is a 300 x 300 pixel jpeg (except the 32 x 32 pixel PNG icon):

ID3 images

If you’d like to use these images yourself for your own experiments, you can download all 21 as a zip file. Each individual image is approximately 25kB in size:

Test MP3 Tracks

In order to test these images on an MP3 player, they each needed to be embedded into an MP3 file with the appropriate ID3 image tag associated with the image.

My tag editing software doesn’t support the 32×32 icon image tag or the nonsensical fish tag, so I ended up creating 20 separate MP3 files: the 19 basic image tags plus one MP3 containing all 19 images in the one track.

The MP3 track including the 19 separate images in the one file ended up with a resultant file size of 911kB for a 26 second 128kbps MP3!

If you’d like to use these MP3 files for yourself to test your own MP3 player’s performance in this respect, you can download all 20 as a zip file:

Report Back

If you’ve found these files useful and end up discovering some quirks with your particular player, please leave a comment so that others can benefit from your findings.  You never know, it may spur a manufacturer into updating their firmware to fix the problems and make their players fully compliant for future users.


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/alternative-id3-tags-for-adding-artwork-to-mp3-files/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/alternative-id3-tags-for-adding-artwork-to-mp3-files/ Podcast: The Internet Monthly – July 2009 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/RWMnb-qu5FM/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-july-2009/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:46:52 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-july-2009/ The Internet Monthly Podcast The Internet Monthly is a monthly podcast featuring 20 or so short Internet related articles, tips and tricks and a regular search engine of the month feature.

This month’s podcast features a new browser add-on from Google that tests your website’s performance, the cyber-squatter name checker that covers 120 social media sites and new domain names that will cost businesses £10,000 each.

There’s news about how Dell increased sales by Twittering and why Comet is publishing customer feedback. You can also find out how to automate your updates across 40 sites at once and make sure you’re found on Google, and where to get Windows 7 for free and Snow Leopard for only £20.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – July 2009:

Download audio file (podcast_jul09.mp3)

Or, download: podcast_jul09.mp3 [17’ 55”, 8.2MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

  1. FREE BOOST FOR BROADBAND SPEEDS – Zen internet upgrades internet speeds for all customers for free
  2. BRAND NEW DOMAINS – Branded company domains becoming available
  3. SOCIAL CYBERSQUATTING – Protect your brand names online
  4. COMET ADDS WEB 2.0 TAIL – Customers answer each other’s questions
  5. TWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS – Dell sell millions online via twitter
  6. AUTOMATED TWITTERING – Schedule your twittering when you’re busy
  7. ONE-STOP SOCIAL NETWORKING – Update all your social networking sites from one place
  8. WAKOOPA – See what applications people are using
  9. GOOGLE PROFILES – Control what Google says about you
  10. GOOGLE SPEED SCORE – How fast does your webpage load?
  11. 5-SECOND WEB SITE TEST – Quick test of your website’s memorability
  12. WINDOWS 7 – Get the new Microsoft operating system for free
  13. WINDOWS DRIVESPACIO– See what’s filling up your hard discs
  14. USB THREE – USB for the next generation
  15. YUUGUU IF YOU WANT TO – Remote control of PCs
  16. SNOW LEOPARD – Upgrade your Mac operating system
  17. MAC MAIL – Convert windows mail messages to Mac format
  18. TURN OFF TIME-WASTING SITES – An anti-procrastination tool
  19. SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH – Microsoft’s new search engine

Zen Internet logo This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-july-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-july-2009/http://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/podcast_jul09.mp3 What ID3 Tags Should you use in a Podcast? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/dV0yU-pTqNg/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/what-id3-tags-should-you-use-in-a-podcast/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:35:00 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/what-id3-tags-should-you-use-in-a-podcast/ Pocast ID3 TagsMP3 files can have a range of ID3 tags buried within them providing additional data about the track, such as artist name for example. If you produce your own podcasts, you could embed an array of these descriptive ID3 tags in your podcast files, but which tags should you really be using?  

Whenever you play a podcast on your portable MP3 player or PC, you will invariably see a host of information about the track on the player’s screen. This information typically includes the cover art for the track, the album, artist and track name, its genre and track number.

Such information is stored in the MP3 file itself using ID3 tags. However, in addition to the tag information in the example above, the ID3 tag standard can support over 80  different tags. So, out of this vast array of tags what are the key tags that you should consider using in your podcasts?


What are ID3 Tags?

ID3 tags are a simple and convenient way of embedding descriptive data about an MP3 track within the track itself. This descriptive data is sometimes referred to as metadata, which is data describing other data. The ID3 tag data describes the audio data of the MP3, e.g. the track title, artist name etc..

For a fuller and more in-depth description of ID3 tags, check out my previous post: What are ID3 Tags in MP3 Files?

Essential Tags

Downloaded podcasts will already have ID3 tag data buried within them, but if you produce your own podcasts, you have free reign to add whatever ID3 tags you wish. However, you could fill up your tracks with 50 different tags or more, but who is this really going to benefit? Not you for certain; it’ll probably take you longer to add all of these superfluous tags than it did to record the podcast in the first place.

Brevity is the key. Just include the bare minimum that users are likely to need, any more and you’re wasting your own time and wasting space in the MP3 file storing useless junk.

The tags serve two purposes. The first is to provide general information about the podcast that the user is likely to want to know, while the second is to enable the user to search through a large collection of tracks at a later date and hopefully filter out your podcast via its tags.

Track Title

This is undoubtedly the most important tag, being the title of your podcast episode and is a fundamental tag that should not be missed.

By way of example, the title I use for my monthly podcast, is the generic title of the podcast with the month and year appended:

The Internet Monthly – June 2009

Cover Art

Internet-monthlyAnother important tag to consider is the cover art tag. As the saying goes; a picture speaks a  thousand words, and this tag gives you the option to brand your podcast in glorious colour, forever etching it in the user’s memory.

However, while this tag will help to connect the user with your podcast, it’s unlikely to serve much use when trying to search for the podcast later on.

If you’d like to learn more about embedding images into your podcasts and what image types and sizes to use, then check out my previous post on: Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files.

Artist

This is the producer of the podcast. For example, I record a monthly podcast for Zen Internet to a script that they provide, so I add their name as the artist, as it’s essentially their creative work:

Zen Internet Limited

Album

While this tag is designed for use with music albums, where it refers to the album which an individual track belongs to, in podcast terms it is commonly used to refer to the series name of the podcast (assuming the podcast is not a one off, in which case this field would be left blank). For my monthly version of the Zen Internet podcast, I use the following album tag:

The Internet Monthly

Track

This isn’t often used in podcasts unless you have a concurrently running sequence of episodes, in which case you could use this field to denote the episode number.

Year

This is the year in which the podcast episode was first published. This field is probably not of much interest to the user under normal circumstances, but can prove useful later on when searching through an archive of tracks to narrow down the search:

2009

Genre

Again, this tag is not of much use other than for categorising the track for archiving and searching purposes. For podcasts, the de facto standard entry for this tag is unsurprisingly podcast, although sometimes you may come across alternatives of speech or vocal.

Interestingly podcast is not defined in the list of genres in the official ID3 tag specification, even though it is common practice to use this as the genre name for podcasts. Both speech and vocal are officially recognised as legitimate genres however.

I decided to go with the flow and hopefully the specifications will catch up with conventional wisdom:

Podcast

Comment

This field is often used for show notes and additional information pertaining to the podcast. Some people use this field for copyright notices, although if this is your intention, their is a specific copyright tag field dedicated to the purpose.

As my company (Silicon Bay Limited) produces the monthly podcast for Zen Internet, I use this field as a slight promotional opportunity:

Produced by Silicon Bay Limited

Copyright

Instead of using the comment field for your copyright information, this is the correct tag for the purpose:

Copyright (c) 2009 Zen Internet Limited

WWW

Invariably your podcast will be associated to your website, so why not embed your website’s URL into your podcast? This way if the podcast gets distributed via other means than your own website, you’ll have a way of driving traffic from interested listeners back to your site:

http://www.richardfarrar.com/

In Summary

The key ID3 tags that you should consider using in your podcasts, that will give the most benefits to your listeners without overloading them with information are:

  • Title – The podcast title
  • Cover Art – Thumbnail of the podcast art
  • Artist – The artist that recorded the podcast
  • Album – Which series the podcast belongs to (if applicable)
  • Track – The track number from the podcast series (if applicable)
  • Year – The year the podcast was published
  • Genre – The type of track, e.g. podcast, speech, vocal
  • Comment – General comments
  • Copyright – Copyright notice by the copyright holder
  • www – The website address for the podcast


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/what-id3-tags-should-you-use-in-a-podcast/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/what-id3-tags-should-you-use-in-a-podcast/ Podcast: The Internet Monthly – June 2009 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/richardfarrar/~3/6XNbAifUb_0/ http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-june-2009/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:00:26 +0000 Richard http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-june-2009/ The Internet Monthly Podcast The Internet Monthly is a monthly podcast featuring 20 or so short Internet related articles, tips and tricks and a regular search engine of the month feature.

This month’s podcast celebrates the 100th edition of Zen Internet’s free monthly newsletter, first published in March, 2001, when the top story was "the latest news about ADSL – affordable high-speed Internet connectivity that’s up to forty times faster than the fastest dial-up modem".

This month, a selection of stories from the Zen Monthly archive have been picked from the newsletter’s eight year history.

This podcast is derived from a monthly newsletter published by Zen Internet and recorded and produced by Silicon Bay. The podcast is reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet.

This Month’s Podcast

The Internet Monthly – June 2009:

Download audio file (podcast_jun09.mp3)

Or, download: podcast_jun09.mp3 [19’ 06”, 8.8MB]

This Month’s Articles

This month’s edition of The Internet Monthly podcast contains the following articles. A list of links associated with each article are included for reference:

  1. HITTING A CENTURY – Zen internet’s 100th newsletter
  2. SURVIVING THE SLUR (May 2002) – The real SPAM (in a can)
  3. NEIGHBOURHOOD NATIVES (January 2003) – Discover native plants to your area
  4. BROADSHEETS ABROAD (February 2004) – Read newspapers online
  5. FREEVIEW (January 2005) – Watch any video format online 
  6. SNIPSHOTS (February 2005) – Cut and paste from websites
  7. INSTANT PAGES (June 2006) – Websites at their simplest
  8. COPIED SEARCHES REVEALED (September 2006) – Google search information revealed 
  9. LOOKING UP (March 2007) – British Library redesigns its website 
  10. FIGHT THE BULL (March 2007) – Filtering out bovine scatology
  11. SEAT SIXTY-ONE (March 2007) – Eco friendly travelling  
  12. WORDY WINNER (May 2007) – The YouTube for documents
  13. STOP PRESS (August 2007)– The internet has crashed
  14. BUSINESS WIKI (September 2007) – A British business listing site
  15. KNOWING YOU (December 2007) – A personal profile website
  16. WEB HISTORY (March 2008) – View old web pages
  17. ZAMZAR (April 2008) – A free file conversion website
  18. AGGREGATE THE POSITIVE (April 2008) – Top content from the web  
  19. FREE TUBE (January 2009) – A free alternative to satellite TV
  20. RURAL RECEPTION (February 2009) – A Countryside TV channel
  21. FOCUS BEFORE SEARCH (April 2009) – A business oriented search engine

 

Zen Internet logo This podcast is sponsored and reproduced by kind permission of Zen Internet Limited. The music on the podcast was provided courtesy of Will Tang.


]]> http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-june-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.richardfarrar.com/podcast-the-internet-monthly-june-2009/http://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/podcast_jun09.mp3