Archive for 'Reviews'
Randomly fill your audio player using RandomFill
June 19, 2008 by InF, under Reviews.
So, there is another freeware review today on the menu. This time, I’m looking for way to randomly fill up my mobile phone with tracks from my music collection found on my PC. Why? Because I’m just too lazy to randomly select tracks myself. Because I’ve got no idea about what I want to listen to. Because I love using Google to find freewares and share them with you. Voila! Now you know, and on with the review.
For this job, we will be making use of a creatively named software named… RandomFill.
Mind you though. RandomFill will work with classic “drop-and-play” audio players and mobile phones, and not iPod-like players with advanced library features, requiring specialized software to upload tracks to them. Anyways, you can download RandomFill and give it a try with your favourite player and see if it works.
Using RandomFill is a 4-step process, as shown below.
The steps are as follows:
- Add folders or playlists from which the tracks will be chosen. Usually, this will be your MP3 directory. Optionally, if you have used RandomFill before and saved your settings, you can load these in this step.
- Here, you are going to select where to send your random tracks. This can either be a location (your player?) or a playlist which will contain a list of random tracks. You can choose to delete everything at the storage location before the random tracks are moved there. I chose to send the tracks to Drive E, which is my mobile’s memory card.
- This step is quite interesting. You can choose to bias the selection process to include more tracks from a particular folder which you add. For example, you can bias the search to include more tracks from your favorite album. Just add the folder, and you will be prompted to add a weight. Weight should be greater than 0. (positive real numbers!).
- If you add a folder and set the weight as 0.1 or 0.2, tracks will probably not be selected from it, and if you add a folder with a weight of say, 20, there will be more tracks from it in the “random” selection”. Add your favorite albums, and bias the weights as you wish.
- This is the final step. Now, you select the total size of the selection in Megabytes, or how many hours of music you want. Useful if you want to only fill up your player or mobile up to only a certain limit, and not completely. You can also choose to fill up by hours if you want, but remember that more hours = bigger file size, so don’t go overboard, keeping your player’s maximum memory size in mind. Save your settings if you want, so that you don’t have to repeat the same steps completely every time. After that, just click Finish and let RandomFill do its job.
Now, there is a small “bug” I’d like you to be aware of. After the copy, if you click Finish again, it will try to re-copy a random selection to your destination, which can cause problems such as full memory. So, after the copy part, you will need to click on Cancel instead. A bit weird, but it’s useful to know. Another potential disadvantage is that the last folder used is not remembered. This will probably be made in future versions. For now, it’s not available.
That’s about it for the RandomFill review. It’s not perfect yet, but I hope you can find some use to it. Give it a try, and drop us some comments. 
Ps. iPod users, you might want to check Floola as an alternative to managing your device with iTunes.
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Firefox 3 Final: The Review
June 18, 2008 by InF, under Firefox, Reviews, Software.
Firefox 3.0 Final has just been released today, 17th June 2008 (it’s already 18th in some countries though), and I already downloaded my copy to help establish the Firefox World Record. Now that it is installed and ready to work, I am going to review it. I’ve been using Firefox since the early 1.x versions, and I kind of saw its evolution. If I could resume Firefox 3, it would be “Shiny Search Boxes”, with respect to the glass buttons and the large number of new search boxes scattered everywhere.
Without much delay, on with the review. But first, you might consider getting your own copy here, and help with the World Record initiative (you need to download from the official mirrors of Firefox, else the download does not count!). Beware though. Some of the pages of the Mozilla website have yet to be updated, and are still showing Firefox 2.0 downloads. Also, the page is taking a significant time to load, probably considering that lots of people are currently downloading.
A word of warning. Before installing Firefox 3, make sure all your add-ons are compatible with the new Firefox. A number of my add-ons are not yet compatible with the Firefox 3 Final. Specially Tabmix Plus, which is not yet compatible. Even Unplug is not yet compatible, according to the default install. So, check beforehand, or simply backup your Firefox profile before upgrading, in case you want to revert. As you can see below, some of my extensions are not compatible with Firefox 3.0. Unfortunately, you will have to check manually via the Mozilla Addons site.
To backup your Firefox profile, you could use the FEBE extension (cross-platform) (doesn’t work with Firefox 3 Final yet), or you could use the MozBackup (Windows only) application. More info about manual profile backup is available from Mozilla, here.
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Brief VS Sage - The Feed Reader Duel
May 3, 2008 by Guru, under Firefox, Reviews.
In today’s article I will be talking on how to read feeds (your favourite ones). Brief and Sage are Firefox’s two most popular feed reader. Hanging out with one is a wise decision, that’s another chance to take your browser one level up. Before going any further, we must not forget, there are also web based feed readers like Google Reader, Bloglines, alongside we also have specialised applications meant just for reading feeds.
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What is a Feed?
March 28, 2008 by Guru, under Randomness, Reviews.
This entry is specially for Abhi, and for others who do not know what a feed means and how it can be used. In the simplest terms, it is only used to get updates. What this means? Let’s say you love a particular web site and want to read what latest stuff has been published (only if the platform used supports feeds). A feed will allow you to have these latest contents directly without going to the URL. That means, you can have a common pool where you have all the updates of your favourite sites to “feed” on. The feeds can be in two formats Atom and RSS… (more…)
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Review: Logitech X-540 vs Creative M5300
March 27, 2008 by InF, under Reviews.
When I was looking to buy my first 5.1 channels speaker system, I considered those 2 models primarily. At that time, the Logitech X-540 was not yet available in Mauritius, and I had to opt for the Creative Inspire M5300 which was priced Rs.2700 (~$90). Well, for this review I’m not going to bother you with figures and whatnot. I’ll just tell you about my testing results. For both setups, I placed the 2 back speakers on a wall behind me, the front and centre speakers were on my desk in front. The speakers are powered by a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy SE 5.1 capable soundcard.
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Wordpress vs B2Evolution
March 27, 2008 by InF, under Featured, Reviews.
While setting up GeekScribes, we explored a number of blogging platforms on which we could base our site. We tried B2Evolution, Serendipity and finally Wordpress. I wanted to stay away from Wordpress because of its reputation for attracting spammers. So we installed both Serendipity and B2Evolution. Here’s the review!
