links for 2008-04-30
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Interesting Linux usability experiment. Love to see a Mac user on Windows or vise versa.
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This IBM Redpaper provides a strategic overview of the IBM® Chief Information Officer’s Technology Adoption Program (TAP) within the IBM Corporation. We also provide a detailed description of the process management framework that supports the program.
How To Rip High Quality MP3s
I have posted recently about the Media Server I have built. The server holds many hours of music ripped from CD. Call me old school but I would much rather buy CDs and rip them myself. The media provides a back up should everything go south. Also, I get the most accurate sound quality from the encode rather than suffer the low quality of a purchased download. Also, no digital rights management to get in the way of moving the file off the server to my portable devices.
My favorite software for ripping CDs is Exact Audio Copy. This software is getting better and better over time. It allows the conversion to MP3 or lossless formats like FLAC. I rip all my music to high quality mp3s. True audiophiles will probably want FLAC but the thing is, FLAC isn’t everywhere yet. MP3 is much more portable. For example, I can play it on my computer, stream it to my media extender, put it on CD for the car stereo, put it on my Archos, etc.
To get started you need:
There are great EAC guides at Hydrogen Audio Wiki
Follow the wiki page for the configuration wizard then see the screen shots below.
The screen shots below show how I have the various EAC options set. This helps get things set up quickly and if further info is needed, the Hydrogen Audio Wiki will provide the best resources. Click the image to enlarge.
EAC Menu - EAC Options (F9)
On the next screen I set the Naming Scheme to: %A\C%\N% - %T
This creates the file structure: Artist\CD Title\Track# - Song Title
Example: “Z:\Diana Krall\When I Look In Your Eyes\01 - Let’s Face The Music And Dance.mp3″
EAC Menu - Compression Options (F11)
The main setting here is the Command Line Options. Here is my command line:
-V2 –vbr-new –ta “%a” –tt “%t” –tg “%m” –tl “%g” –ty “%y” –tn “%n” %s %d
The bit rate doesn’t matter at that line overrides.
Enjoy your music!
links for 2008-04-29
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Mark Hamburg, a programmer who worked on Photoshop since version 2.0 and helped lead development of the newer Photoshop Lightroom, has left Adobe Systems for a new job at Microsoft.
links for 2008-04-28
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U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet’s current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.
links for 2008-04-26
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Poster for the new Batman movie. Movie comes out July 18.
Microsoft Live Mesh
Here is a video preview of the new Live Mesh:
Podcasting in Plain English
Another excellent video in the ‘in plain English’ series. This time, Common Craft shows us Podcasting in Plain English