The Life Digital

Songbird updated: Now offer file organization, better iTunes sync and equalizer

Hamid — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:02:11 +0000

One of my favorite media player Songbird which I reviewed here is getting better day by day and just like the geeky favorite Firefox the support for add-ons and and open source development support is really helping Songbird evolve into one of the most flexible and comprehensive media player. The Songbird team has just released a new version V1.2.0 with various asked for feature enhancements and performance tweaks.

Songbird 1.2.0 new features at a glance

Automatically Organize Library Files

This latest version of Songbird offers quite a few new features but the most notable is the improvement in the library management, specially the automatic file organization just like iTunes. Once the automatic file organization option is enabled Songbird will automatically consolidate all your media in one location on your hard drive organizing the files in folders and file names based on metadata contained in every track.

2-way Sync with iTunes

For users who purchase music through the iTunes store can now directly export and import their media to and from Songbird and this process is as seamless as it can get.

Enhancement in Last.fm Radio

Last.fm Radio supports artist, tag, and user stations, mapping station links on the Last.fm website to play internally in Songbird. It includes the Radio Directory allowing you to conveniently browse and explore the tag and artist relationships on Last.fm. Additionally, the Radio directory includes quick links for playing stations based on your Last.fm library, your Songbird library, and friends/neighbors’ libraries.

10-Band Equalizer

This was a much awaited feature for some time now and thanks to the newly added 10-band equalizer in Songbird 1.2.0 now you can tweak the frequency response of each song to enhance the sound quality or to tweak it according to your likeness.

Performance Enhancements

Other than the above new features Songbird 1.2.0 has pushed following improvement to make the application more stable and faster.

Faster search
Deleting many tracks at once is faster
Selecting a large amount of tracks from the library is no longer slow
Reduced the amount of threads required to be running at all times by 50%
Fewer Crashes: We’ve worked hard to identify and fix some of the most common crashes in Songbird.

The Songbird 1.2.0 can now be downloaded from the official Songbird website.

Post from: The Life Digital

Songbird updated: Now offer file organization, better iTunes sync and equalizer

SmarterFox: A must have smart browsing helper add-on for FireFox

Hamid — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:10:34 +0000

My love for Firefox gets boosted every time when an extension like SmarterFox pops up in the huge directory of Firefox add-ons and even though I am sick of the fact that how much ram Firefox needs in order to perform better, I still don’t allow my self to switch to any other internet browser. SmarterFox as the name suggests, literally make your browsing experience smarter with many cool features. It is a mash-up of accelerators from Internet Explorer 8, Site Launcher, copy/past helper, Google search helper/enhancement and much more.

The first notable feature you would see is the IE8 like accelerators which provide instant search for a highlighted word in Google, OneRiot, Twitter (Real time search), Baidu and Wikipedia. The icons for these search website automatically pop up as a bubble (as shown above) when a text is highlighted in any webpage and from there you can click on any one of these 5 icons to search. The search results can be opened in the same windows or a new tab according to the setting you have chosen in the SmarterFox settings windows as shown below. The one thing you may miss is the ability to add more search engines here. Like Yahoo or the uprising bing.

Apart from the IE8 like accelerators there are further many browsing enhancements which you start to notice once you browse extensively after installing SmarterFox. The Google results automatically show up in the Awesomebar/URL bar as you type (faster than going to google.com)

Another great feature of SmarterFox is the built in quick site launcher (Key board control) which is loosely comparable to Site Launcher I reviewed here. Same as Site Launcher, the quick site launcher in SmarterFox can be activated by pressing ctrl and space bar at the same time. Configuring your favorite websites in quick launcher is as easy as adding/moving a bookmark to the qLauncher folder in your browser’s bookmarks.

In the search results window easily switch between search engines during a search with a single click.

Other than above there are few more very useful features which make SmarterFox a really smart add-on. You can convert text URLs into clickable links. You can automatically copy on select / paste on middle click / paste on right click. This options is not enabled by default but you can do it if you are ready to get yourself accustomed to new mouse gestures but once you are familiar with this you will start loving it.

All in all, I am finding SmarterFox much more useful in my daily internet browsing routines then I anticipated at first and now I would definitely recommend it to every Firefox user.

Download smarterFox from here.

Post from: The Life Digital

SmarterFox: A must have smart browsing helper add-on for FireFox

Windows 7 super bar in XP or vista

Hamid — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:51:12 +0000

A very very small application (only 240KB~) called ViGlance onestep turns windows XP’s or Vista’s old fashioned task bar into a super bar which you can experience in Windows 7. The good thing is that this application is self executable and doesn’t need to be installed in anyway. Once executed the taskbar is instantly changed to Windows 7 like super bar along with the very nice transparency effect and the icons are all set in groups or similar applications running in your system.

ViGlance also enables the preview glide which pops up when the mouse pointer is hovered over a running application icon or a group icon but unfortunately doesn’t show the thumbnail preview. It definitely is a good application for those who want some (not complete) of the Windows 7 super bar functionality in their XP or Windows systems. Complete features are.

Take control of your taskbar with process grouping
ViGlance groups windows relative to their process.
Enjoy true 48×48 Vista/7 icons from your taskbar
Replace that ugly start button with a 7 Orb replica
“Glide effortlessly between tasks” – 7 Style transition effects
ViGlance implements a transition effect system I call “Glide”. This is based somewhat on the Aero peak feature from Windows 7. Each group is dynamically resized via the glide animation to fit the size of the available information to be presented, allowing you to “Glide” between each group on the Super Bar.

Download ViGlance here [Via: LifeHacker]

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Windows 7 super bar in XP or vista

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic announced [Preview]

Hamid — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:00:29 +0000

Although the Nokia’s touch screen offerings like N97 or 5800 Xpressmusic are not that intuitive and revolutionary as Apple’s iPhone is but given the price at which iPhone is available in Pakistan these Nokia’s phones are a good choice for the people who want to have touch screen goodness in their hands. I have been using the 5800 XpressMusic since two months now and I can say I am very much pleased and satisfied with the product. Now Nokia has just announced another model in the line of touch screen phones i.e. 5530 Express music which apparently is a less featured version of 5800 Xpress music (no 3G) but is more suited towards the users in Pakistani market since we have no 3G network here and it has a lot better appearance than 5800 but have 0.3 inches smaller screen and comes with only 4GB memory card.

The devise OS i.e. Symbian S60 V5 is almost exactly the same as 5800 except the contact list on the home screen is not limited to only four contacts, instead now twenty of your most favorite contacts can be saved to have accessed directly from the device home screen and the contacts can be browsed by scrolling like a carousel. See the video below to see how carousel works.

The main area where the device is different is the hardware. 5530 is smaller in size and is slim but looks better since it has a silver metallic finish. The screen is smaller but I am sure most of 5800’s users wont be able to note a prominent difference. In accessories section, a 4GB microSD memory card is a shame since most of the music phone now at least come with 8GB memory cards or internal memory. The earphones on the other hand look a lot better than what we get with 5800, yeah an IEM (In ear monitor) which I have been looking forward to and will see how these earphones compete with my Griffin IEMs.

Other features as expressed by Nokia’s website are

Touch-screen responsiveness gives tactile feedback and the fastest, most intuitive access to all the phone, web and multimedia features crammed inside – including music, video, gaming, social networking and messaging.
Contacts carousel – one-touch access to 20 favorite contacts, each displaying their most recent emails, calls or social media updates and a thumbnail pic chosen by you.
Media Bar pops-up to give quick access to instant messaging like Windows Live Messenger, on-board videos or YouTube, access to other sharing sites like Ovi Share, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, VOX – or just to browse the web.
Music features include a world-class quality music player for excellent audio quality, FM radio, stereo speakers with surround sound, dedicated full touch music keys, 4GB built-in storage expandable to 16GB for up to 12,000 songs with album art.
Listen to music – plug in the superb Nokia Stereo Headset WH-205 that comes in the box, and features a great tangle-free lead, or plug your choice of headphones into the standard 3.5mm headphone jack, or listen over Bluetooth stereo audio.
Synchronize and manage music with Nokia Music Store, upload and download tracks via WLAN, Bluetooth or MicroUSB. Manage playlists on the go, or via PC with Nokia Ovi Suite
2.9-inch brilliant widescreen with up 16 million colors brings videos, album art, photos and phone menus vividly to life.
Accelerometer automatically switches between landscape and portrait format whether you want use the phone, browse the web, watch a video or play games.
3.2 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus for snapping good quality photos and videos.

With the lack of 3G support, Nokia 5530 might not be a welcomed device in the US or European markets but for the markets like Pakistan, this phone would be a logical choice of many who want to have a touch screen smart phone on a better price, yes a $280 release price means within one or two months the price would be getting down under Rs. 20K here. Heck I would also be interested in switching even if the phone is a less featured version of 5800 but it sure has great looks and and an excellent looking earphone. The device is slated to be released in the third quarter on 2009 so get ready for a review once it is available here.

[Via: Nokia conversation and Engadget]

Post from: The Life Digital

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic announced [Preview]

YouTube introduces automatic video sharing on twitter and Facebook

Hamid — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:16:54 +0000

Although there are numerous other ways of sharing videos on Twitter or Facebook but the most popular video sharing network Youtube has just made it more simpler and totally automatic with the introduction of Twitter and Facebook account linking.

All you need to do it to link your Twitter and Facebook accounts to your Youtube by going into the upload video page. Once you have entered the credentials to link your social accounts any videos you will upload to your youtube profile will automatically be posted to your Twitter timeline and Facebook profile once the video processing is done and it is actually available for stream.

There is also an option to link your Google reader account to your Youtube but I couldn’t get to understand what this exactly do or to whose Google reader the uploaded videos will be shared. If anyone of you know the details about this please let me know in the comments.

This is definitely a very handy new feature by Youtube to integrate itself more with the currently uprising social networks and have further enhanced the already superb video sharing experience. Kudos to Google.

[Via: Mashable]

Post from: The Life Digital

YouTube introduces automatic video sharing on twitter and Facebook

Download movie torrents directly while browsing IMDB

Hamid — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:53:13 +0000

Lets not get into a debate here about whether downloading movies through torrents is right or wrong but if you do and if you are a dedicated movie lover as I am you would find the IMDB pirated version add-on for Firefox an absolutely wonderful and useful extension for you.

What this little add-on do is that when a movie page on IMDB is opened in Firefox it will display customized expandable menu right under the movie name. This menu consists of six options to display the torrents (Torrentz), release information (Vcdquality), subtitles (Subs), rapidshare links (Rapidshare), links from other file sharing networks (On Other Servers) and a Show Trailer checkbox to show the movie trailer which actually is pulled off youtube.

The torrentz will show the available torrents of a movie from various torrent search engines and trackers like the pirate bay, mininova, torrentz and btjunkie along with all the basic information like the current seeders and leechers of a torrent and the filesize. To get more information you can click the torrent file which will take you to the torrent page on the corresponding search engine. The good thing is that you wont even have to leave the IMDB page to download torrent if you find the right torrent in the search results from pirate bay or btjunkie. Mininova and torrentz don’t offer such option.

The remaining options are pretty straight forward give you the idea what these do. This add-on is very handy for the guys who browse movies on IMDB and want to download them via torrent or file sharing networks. To install in your Firefox click here and enjoy.

Post from: The Life Digital

Download movie torrents directly while browsing IMDB

MusicBee: Simple but powerful MP3 music manager

Hamid — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:40:02 +0000

CDs are now becoming obsolete and with the advent of the broadband internet people now prefer to purchase music in a digital form i.e. an MP3. Now real music junkies would still prefer to listen to have un compressed CD audio but most of us now keep their music collection in digital form. MP3 music can come from various resources which include ripping your CDs yourself, online music stores like iTunes and Amazon as well as the illegal downloading through torrents or other P2P networks. While music downloaded through the iTunes should have the proper ID3 tag information with the album artworks, there is no guarantee that the songs from other resources would have the same.

So if you have a large unorganized collection of music, say, over 10GB of data on your hard drive, you will definitely need a music manager application to properly tag and organize your music library. I normally use MediaMonkey or SongBird for this task but here is another free of cost music manager called MusicBee which definitely looks promising.

The features of music bee at a glance are

Organize music files and edit tags in your library with a powerful and easy to use interface.
Have new music files automatically added to your library from monitored folders, with the option to tag the files from an Inbox beforehand.
Securely rip CD tracks as individual files or as a single album with embedded cuesheet, and with AccurateRip.com validation.
Automatically look up Album Art, Lyrics and tag other metadata from the web. Have a track identified using its digital sound signature.
Play MP3, FLAC, Vorbis, WMA files and optionally have tracks scrobbled to Last.fm. Play the web – playlists are created from MP3 blogs you visit.
Play and Sync iPods and MP3 players, converting and leveling tracks on-the-fly.
Create dynamic playlists based on your own rules.
Have the Auto-DJ create a playlist for you and discover new music tracks from the web (or old ones from your collection you have forgotten about!)
Sync with the number of devices including iPod, iPhone, USB and MTP devices.
Ability to convert the music formats of the files you have in library.

MusicBee has released the second release candidate and since the time I have started using it I have not encountered any major bug or problem. MusicBee is made by a guy called Steven from UK who is an IT project manager and do the programming for fun, so I hope this application would remain free of cost.

To download and get more insight into MusicBee please visit http://www.getmusicbee.com

Post from: The Life Digital

MusicBee: Simple but powerful MP3 music manager

Gizmodo praise Palm Pre software but not the hardware [Palm Pre Review]

Hamid — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:19:17 +0000

Its now only two days before the Palm Pre is officially launched in the US market through Sprint and the early tech reviews have already started to surface. I have just gone through a rather detailed and constructive Palm Pre review by Gizmodo and it looks like the device is a winner in most areas.

By the looks of it, the device has a very responsive and interactive software and is a notch better than the competition (iPhone and Android) but according to Jason Chen of Gizmodo the hardware is not that impressive. It feels plasticky and fragile. Some highlights of the review are.

It’s the best multitouch screen we’ve seen.

The two halves of the device come together fairly tightly, but not tightly enough to prevent you from being able to twist the top and bottom like a plastic Oreo cookie.

Bottom edge of the phone is way too sharp.

Keyboard is not good enough for a smartphone. Keys are too small, plasticky and don’t give enough feedback.

The OS is really where the Pre shines, and manages to create a coherent internet-based platform that’s even more "connected" than Google Android.

For complete review visit Gizmodo

Palm PRE live demo video tells us how great it is!

Post from: The Life Digital

Gizmodo praise Palm Pre software but not the hardware [Palm Pre Review]

Watch live TV in your browser with LiveTV toolbar

Hamid — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:49:55 +0000

Though not very innovative as you might have other add-ons or extensions installed in your firefox or internet explorer browser which let you watch TV streams in your browser (like TV-fox add-on for firefox) but I feel that the LiveTV toolbar is the most simple to install and use and most importantly it actually works pretty well without any hiccup.

To install visit http://www.toolbar.tv/ and download the toolbar. Once installed you can select to watch number of TV channels from countries all around the world including United Kingdom, USA, Pakistan and India. In addition to TV you can also listen to quite a few internet radio stations and can add your favorite station as well if it is not in the list.

Although its a TV toolbar, it offers some other features which are not directly related to TV viewing but can be useful for you since you have already added a toolbar and these additional features make up for the free space left in the toolbar which are not related to TV or Radio. These feature include search, email notifications and others.

Enjoy watching TV in your browser.

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Watch live TV in your browser with LiveTV toolbar

Aino: Another touch screen phone from Sony Ericsson after Idou

Hamid — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:52:15 +0000

[Update: Sony Ericsson Idou has a new name Satio]

I don’t really understand the naming system Sony Ericsson is using for it’s touch screen line up of phones, first it was Idou and now Aino but as much as I was excited about Idou apart from the naming confusion I am also ready to appreciate the newly announced Aino which by the looks of it is a smaller and could be a bit cheaper than what Idou could be. I am saying this because the features and the hardware specs are inferior than Idou so logically Aino should be cheaper in price but overall the specs are impressive as compared to current range of SE phones.

Have a look at the full announced specs and features below.

8.1 megapixel camera, photo light, auto focus, face detection, image and video stabilizer, geo tagging
Bluetooth stereo (A2DP)
Access NetFront Web browser
Auto rotate
FM radio with RDS
Java
Motion gaming
A-GPS
DLNA Certified
PictBridge
Wi-Fi
Size: 104 x 50×15.5 mm
Weight: 134 grams
Main screen: 16,777,216 True Colour TFT
Resolution: 240 x 432 pixels
Size: 3 inches
Phone memory: Up to 55MB
Memory card support: SanDisk microSD
Talk time GSM: Up to 13 hrs
Standby time GSM: Up to 380 hrs
Talk time UMTS: Up to 4.5 hours
Standby time UMTS: Up to 367 hours
Video talk time: Up to 1 hour 40 mins
Music listening time: Up to 31 hours

Frankly speaking I am a Nokia user (not a fan boy at all ) but I have used many Sony Ericsson phones time to time and have enjoyed using their products but as I have mentioned in my post about Idou I got tired with the same interface and operating system which SE kept on enhancing in small parts here and there but the users were not given a true upgrade until Idou was announced and with the announcement of Aino I think Sony is taking things in the right direction by offering cheaper models in the line of new products and technologies.

Post from: The Life Digital

Aino: Another touch screen phone from Sony Ericsson after Idou

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