But in the process of ripping my music CD and converting stuff around, a lot of my music collection are recognizable only by their filenames. They are not properly tagged, meaning the file doesn’t have any artist or album information or any sort of identification whatsoever, other than the filename. This presents a problem to most modern music library management tools such as iTunes, which relies heavily on the tags for most of its features including Genius Playlist, album cover downloads, etc.

I have therefore searched almost in vain to find a software that would automatically tag my music collection without having me to interfere with it. There are lots of paid services out there which are no doubt useful for this kind of job, but I want something that is free, being the cheapskate I am, I found something called MetatOGGer. Not a really classy name, but for the price, it offers an unbeatable song ID service.

Acoustic fingerprinting identification

MetatOGGer starts up just like any other windows application. Its a little bit klunky to use, but the gist of the matter is that you simply drag and drop any sort of music into it (you can do this even directly from iTunes) and it will load up the music. After that, simply go to Tools, then Identify Song by Acoustic Fingerprint. Via the magic of the Internet (and some nifty programming no doubt), it will acoustically fingerprint your music (how, I don’t know. I guess it generates some sort of hash for the file) which it then uploads to MetatOGGer’s server. The server contains millions of these musical fingerprints, matched with the proper album and artist information. Once the server reports a match, the results are delivered back to your PC where it will automatically populate that song’s tags, all automatically!

Granted, some flaws remain. First, it relies on having a good database of fingerprints to compare to. I don’t know how MetatOGGer maintains its database, but from my fooling around, it seems pretty good, being able to pick up Japanese and Chinese songs with ease and also correctly identifying some of the more esoteric music that I have in my collection, including the tons of Cafe Del Mar stuff I have. It is a truly wonderful view to see this program churning in the background and turning your Unknown Album/Unknown Artist into a properly formatted song. With this information, iTunes can then be used to import in the correct album artwork and you are golden!

One flaw of the program is that it lags a bit, especially when processing large libraries. I have tried with 1000 songs and it’s pretty slow, although I left it on for the night to crunch through the data. I don’t recommend adding more than 500 songs at one go, especially if you have an older computer. The lag issue aside, it’s pretty solid and didn’t crash on me despite the amount of data I threw at it. I would recommend this app to anybody sick of seeing improper tag in their music collection. It also has some other miscellaneous tagging functions, but the star here is definitely the free acoustic fingerprinting identification.

Integrates with Google Docs

That’s exactly what Offisync offers you, along with other Google-friendly integrations that strive to make your Office experience that much more productive. The first big feature of Offisync is integration with Google Docs.

This allows you to save your work directly into Google’s servers and opens up the ability to have collaborative editing performed at the same time on one document. It also means that you can have access to any of your Office documents anywhere you go as long as you have an Internet connection: very handy if you are prone to be forced to work from areas that does not have Office installed, or in printing rooms.

Integrated Search

The integration means that all your documents will be instantly search-able via Google’s powerful search algorithms, useful if you have many documents saved.  The best feature is that you can directly search Google Image repositories from within Office itself through the Clipart interface, saving you the need to switch between applications. With a click of a button, the image is immediately downloaded and pasted into your document. It is truly a very convenient method to encourage you to add more pictures to your document to make it more lively.

The program is available here and is currently in Beta, although it is already pretty stable to be used in production environments.

Check out the following Offisync video demo.

At first glance, FBackup looks like a rudimentary piece of backup software. You tell it what to backup, where and how often to do so and it will chug along merrily on its way. The settings are pretty short and simple to understand and it does the job nicely.

What sets FBackup apart from the rest of the pack is the powerful plugin manager it has, allowing you to expand the capabilities beyond performing simple backups of directories.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to extend FBackup to easily back up specific applications to capture all the settings and personalizations that you may have performed during the course of using an application. For example, if you use Windows Live Messenger a lot, chances are you already have a lot of emoticons saved up but when you reformat, all those settings are typically lost, unless you are computer savvy enough to know where Messenger stores all the settings and other information, usually scattered all over your hard disk in various folders.

With FBackup, you simply load the plugin for Messenger and it will instruct FBackup on exactly where and what customization files to backup in addition to the application files. You end up with an exact copy of the app complete with all the settings ready to be restored.

Mind that if you are restoring into a recently reformatted computer, you may need to reinstall the application from an installer first AND THEN restore the settings from FBackup, as FBackup only backs up the files but not the registry settings.

We are still far away from a point where you can backup all your apps and restore them back to a fresh computer complete with all your customized settings. Nevertheless, this method ensures that you have all the files and data safely backed up.

There are a host of plugins available (for free) from the creators of FBackup and they range from email clients, internet applications, audio and multimedia and others. It maybe a chore hunting down all the plugins you need, so perhaps in the future FBackup can detect installed applications and automatically downloads the required plugins.

Even without the automated procedure, FBackup is no doubt a powerful backup solution that is unique in its class. In the age where hard disk size are growing exponentially, it makes little sense to make a 1 to 1 copy of your entire hard disk and FBackup ensures you have all your important and necessary files with you at all times, with none of the bloat. This lean way of making backups makes perfect sense for those with limited hard drive space while those who don’t practice regular backups should be ready for the possibility that there may be a chance for a catastrophic data disaster event. Are you sure you are ready if that happens?

Having been using Mozilla Firefox version 3.0 for almost 3-4 months now, I must say I’m totally impressed with this browser and anticipating for its 3.5 ever since the initial announcement. Let’s see what has the new release in store for us:

1. Faster – With the addition of the brand new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey, Firefox 3.5 promised a two times faster browsing performance than the previous 3.0. This is a time-saver for me since multitasking has been going on and I’m sure many of you will appreciate the necessity of getting a well performed and stable browser.

2. More Privacy Options – The latest version has upgraded its browsing privacy level. Instead of just clearing the browser history, now it provides more options in:

a) Private Browsing: By turning ON this feature via Tools> Start Private Browsing, whatever sites you’ve visited afterward won’t be recorded. Don’t panic when seeing all your other browsers closed abruptly, you’ll get them back by stopping the browsing:  Go Tools> Stop Private Browsing.

b) Forget About This Site: Erase the particular sites from history instead of clearing all with  History > Show All History > (right click) Forget this site

c) Clear recent browsing: Clear browsing history based on time ranges from last hour, 2-4 hours ago, today or everything, using Tools> Clear Recent History

3. Retrieve closed windows/tabs –In previous version, Firefox could only recover last closed tab. But now, it has enhanced this feature to retrieve recently closed windows/tabs via: History > Recently closed windows @ tabs. Let’s just say that browsing experience won’t be that frustrating anymore.

4. Play Video – It used to be impossible to play videos using browser. Now, Firefox 3.5 makes it happen while supporting player controls and file saving as well. Just right click the video, and it will all lay out for you. This is a good news for web developers as they could do more, such as including effects or links within the video.

5. Location Aware Browsing – Not meant to scare you, but by authorizing Firefox to share your location based on IP, info on nearby wireless access points etc, you can now make your location transparent to websites that involve Geo-location service, by Share or Don’t Share.

6. Support New Web Technology – Web developers couldn’t be happier since Firefox 3.5 is now supporting various new web technologies, such as creative fonts downloads, CSS improvements for stylizing your pages, web worker threads and more. Just imagining all the cool things you could do to optimize your page browsing, and even incorporate media files for projects like animation etc.

Besides all these, Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is all about personalizing your browser with add-ons, just like old times sake. Get your new release today, and tell us what you think of it?

We often see in movies scenes, illogical sometimes, involving a person facing a problem of having to guess the password to the villian’s computer. Usually there are some creative ways employed that gives the hero inspiration for guessing the correct password, such as glimpses into the villian’s mind, piecing together clues and other literary licenses. However, in real life it’s not always the case.

Enter KON-BOOT.

For the first time, reality is better than fiction. By inserting this CD and booting the computer from it, the software dynamically patches the kernel of most major Windows and Linux operating systems allowing you to login as the administrator effortlessly. Once you are done, simply execute a command and KON-BOOT will wipe all traces of itself and your victim is none the wiser.

Head on over to the author’s website and snag a copy. It works for all versions of Windows up to 7. The author did not disclose much technical information on how KON-BOOT works, or whether it can be countered via a security fix by Microsoft. Whatever the case, feel proud knowing that you can PWN any password-ed computers you come across now.

What am I talking about? Why, Thetawall of course!

Powerful Wallpaper Management & Multi-Monitor Screen Saver

For those who don’t know what a collage is, it is simply a collection of many photos rendered together into one image. Picasa 3 made it simple to create collages, either rendered as if it’s a pile of photos thrown down onto the floor or as a mosaic of different sized images that form a perfect rectangle.

Upon launching, you feed Thetawall the directory containing all your photos and it will scan through all of them. Now, with a click of a button, you will be able to set it to automatically generate collages and put them as your background. You can also set it to rotate the collage with different ones every set amount of time, to keep things fresh. It even supports multiple monitors, for those who have the luxury of working with more than one screen.

The program is completely free and is portable, requiring no installation. However, it does need .NET Framework 2.0, although most users should already have this installed on their system if they keep their Windows up to date.

It is an amazing effect and definitely will wow your friends when they see your computer.

Windows users should consider checking out this very useful utility; Ultimate Windows Tweaker. With over 150 options to change, it is indeed ultimate when it comes to tweaking Windows.

The tool works well for Vista and the latest Windows 7 RC1 for both 32 and 64 bit versions. Prior versions of Windows are not supported. No doubt RC1 have introduced some new features such as dragging windows to the edge to make it fill up half the screen (useful for widescreen monitors) and shaking an open window to return to desktop.

For some people who are annoyed by this, Ultimate Windows Tweaker allows you to turn it off. Customization options are split into 7 distinct categories, which are Personalization, UAC, System & Performance, Security, Internet Explorer, Network Optimization and Additional Options.

The list of tweaks cover stuff like turning on check boxes to select files, restore folders at startup, show drive letters (or hide them), disable balloon tips, enable/disable UAC, force DLLs to unload from memory when not in use, turning off autoexec.bat file (viruses love this) and a host of other options too lengthy to list out here.

Most, if not all, of the changes can be achieved via editing keys in the registry, but Ultimate Windows Tweaker collects all these little tricks into a cohesive, easy to execute program which is also portable and can be carried around in a pendrive where-ever you go.

XdN Tweaker

If you are looking for alternatives, consider checking out XdN Tweaker, which is not as fully feature rich as UWT, but does the job pretty well too.

Happy tweaking Windows!

Today, we will take aim at Windows Explorer and seek to replace it with a much better alternative: Xplorer2.

Xplorer2, a better alternative to Windows Explorer

What does Xplorer2 offer that makes it superior to Windows Explorer? Well, it has a dual-pane interface that makes copying files easy from one directory to another. The tabbed interface also makes it a killer against Windows Explorer. Instead of having ten billion windows open, you now only need to have just one.

Xplorer2 also makes it easy to work with files as it offers a robust filtering and search mechanism allowing you to specify exactly what kind of files you are looking for, accessible easily from the program itself. There is also a huge library of shortcuts available to boost your productivity. The program is free of charge but to unlock some of the more powerful features, you will need to pay money for it. However, the free edition is good enough for everyday purposes and will make you look like an absolute bomb at the office as you deftly navigate from menu to folder and getting to the files you want quickly.

Another alternative would be to install something like Google Desktop and allow you to be able to search directly to the file you want, useful if you are descriptive with your filenames.

Give Xplorer2 a spin and I am sure you will understand why it is so much better than Windows Explorer. It might take some getting used to, especially when you have been working with Windows Explorer all your life, but now you will finally be able to see how totally useless this native Windows app is.

Malwarebytes Anti Malware

Malwarebytes is a lesser-known company, which makes a good anti-malware software named Anti-Malware. It belongs in the same league as Ad-Aware and Spybot’s Search & Destroy, both of which are great anti-malware tools as well.

I have largely given up on Ad-Aware and moved to Spybot for the last couple of years and it has served me quite well, being un-intrusive and generally quite capable of dealing with spyware and Trojan horses. However, there is a nagging feeling that relying on just one software isn’t really a good solution as it might miss out detecting other viruses due to the definitions being outdated. That’s where Anti-Malware comes in – it is a very fast and efficient tool to scan your system for so-called “Malware” and they update their definitions every day, making it capable of quickly reacting to new threats. It is also capable of picking up stuff missed out by Spybot.

The program can be used free of charge and works fine in this manner, but to get automatic updates and realtime protection, you need to pay a fee; however don’t let that turn you off as the free version is more than decent to fill in the “gaps of detection” in Spybot. Don’t expect to use this software as your main anti-malware software though, unless you plan to pay for the full version.

Update Notifier

The next tool to consider is Update Notifier. Most of the time viruses, ad-ware, Trojan horses, worms, and the rest of the evil and nasty things on the internet get into your machine via vulnerabilities in software. Thus software companies are constantly releasing updates to fix these problems. The most recent example of this is Adobe’s pdf file format has been compromised to allow an attacker to execute any code on your system, simply by viewing the pdf files. Shortly thereafter, Adobe made available a fix for this problem, but how many of you are aware of this?

To further exacerbate the problem, a typical computer can have so many different types of software that updating each one individually can take a lot of time. Granted, many software now come with an auto-update feature, but you are still required to launch the application and let it check for updates, so it is still tedious. That’s where Update Notifier steps in.

This application is completely portable (no installation needed) and scans your computer upon starting to build a list of installed software. From there, it will check to see if there are newer versions available, and provide you with a one-click download link if there is. This streamlines the whole task of keeping your software updated into one clean, simple package you can launch every other week to make sure you’ve always got the latest version installed. The best part is it’s completely free!

Now they have upgraded their service by launching a native music player called, unsurprisingly, the Mufin Music Player that comes automatically integrated with this awesome feature. The service has been compared to Apple’s Genius music-matching technology but with a few key differences.

The Apple Genius is a service introduced in iTunes 8, which scans your library and matches music according to an aggregate data of other people’s listening habits. So, say there are a lot of people who put Britney Spears music together with Carrie Underwood; if you were to ask Genius to suggest some music to go with your Britney Spears collection, Carrie Underwood will come up first.

The Mufin service works a little bit differently. Instead of relying on subjective listening data based on user preferences, they quantify music into 40 discrete parameters or audio characteristics (such as pitch, genre, vocals, etc). From that information, they are able to put together music with similar audio characteristics. It is a different, objective approach that somehow manages to create some pretty interesting results.

The new player has an interface similar to iTunes, and comes with the ability to sort by sound, in addition to sorting by artist and album. If you want to continue using iTunes as your music player, you can download a Mufin plugin for iTunes, but you are limited to only creating playlists using the plugin and lacks other features native to the Mufin Music Player. But for my purposes, it is more than enough.

Give Mufin a try and let me know what you think!