shahine.com/omar/

Wow. I installed Groove a few days ago on advice from Dennis and tried the File Synchronization feature. There are few things I will say this about. It's Magic. I can just drag stuff to a folder and it replicates to all my machines, w/o the use of a centralized server. Yes, this is basically doing P2P File Sharing from anywhere on the Internet to anywhere on the Internet (running the Groove Software of course). It doesn't get easier than this. The other day I tried to tell my parents how to copy pictures from their laptop to their desktop. They didn't know how, so they literally emailed them to themselves (cause they know how to do that). It didn't work though cause hotmail didn't take their 200 MB of attachments. Ack!

Groove is awesome and I'm at a loss for words. I can now have all my stuff w/o doing the hack of a job I was doing manually dragging folders around using Windows File Sharing (painful).

The Groove feature is a lot like the Castle feature in Longhorn (the file sync aspect of it). I don't even care what else the Groove software does. This feature alone is worth the money. Oh, it also sync's Favorites across all your computers. So long FavoriteSync. Groove even uses less RAM than FavoriteSync.

Chances are, you have ripped some of your music. More than likely you chose a lossy encoding. Probably it's in MP3 format. Maybe not. Anyway, I have continually refined my ripping strategy. It's optimized for getting the best audio quality on the device I am using. This includes:

• Windows Media Center
• Windows Desktop PC
• Windows Tablet PC
• Creative Zen Micro or other PlaysForSure compatible device
• Apple iPod (yep, still have one)

I've ripped my cd collection a total of 3 times in my life. The first time I ripped my audio I did so in MP3 format on my Mac. It only supported 32 character file names, and I ripped 160 KBps. The second time I ripped everything in Windows Media Audio Lossless. A few months later my hard drive died and I lost all 200 GB of data. Ouch. This is when I adopted my new strategy.

Requirements:

• Sleeves to store CDs in after ripping. Why keep the Jewl boxes? They weigh more and take up space.
• Redundant storage. I utilize a RAID-1 setup with two 200 GB drives. I have a third 200 GB drive that is a slave to this data. The drive is in my Media Center PC.
• Ability to RIP in a compressed lossless format (either WMA or AAC). I say compressed because if it were not compressed the ripped CD's would be huge.
• Ability to transcode (downsample) the lossless audio format to a lossy one suitable for use on a laptop or portable device. Windows Media Player does this automatically when you connect a portable player. You can also use the Plus! Audio Converter to convert WMA lossless to WMA lossy or mp3. This product is also available in the Plus SuperPack.

When it comes to storing and archiving your CDs, I highly recommend the products from DiscSox. I utilize Eurolite4 CD/DVD Case with DiscSox Classic CD storage sleeves. Each CD gets placed in a sleeve and placed alphabetically. Any CD that is ripped gets an Avery Color Coded Label. Because my drives are only 200 GB I only rip albums that I really plan on listening to. When I get my 500 GB drives I'll rip more stuff and it will be easy to find albums that aren't ripped.

So, assuming you are using Windows Media Player 10, set the player with the following options (Tools->Options->Rip Music)

• Format: Windows Media Audio Lossless
• [ ] Copy Protect Music (unchecked)
• [x] Rip CD when inserted
• [x] Eject CD when ripping is complete

I set the location to D:\Files\Music which is where I have my big drive.

Once you have all your audio ripped I recommend that you run Album Art Fixer to get Album Art for any obscure CDs. This is an awesome app and will also fix other weird problems with the Album Art Meta Data.

Now, you can run the Plus! Audio Converter and convert to another format. If you plan on using an iPod as a portable music player then convert to 160 KBps MP3. If you plan on using a PlaysForSure compatible player then Windows Media Player will automatically convert the WMA lossless to a format that will be suitable for your device. You can optionally select the bitrate manually, or running the Plus! Audio Converter and selecting an appropriate WMA format (I like the VBR variants).

Now for you Mac folks, I don't believe Apple offers this feature in iTunes, and I don't know of any Mac software that can take a lossless AAC file and convert that to anything else. If there is then you would simply follow the steps above except rip to AAC Lossless, and then convert them using whatever software to a lossy compressed AAC format for your iPod.

As a result of this strategy, you will have all your CDs archived away in a nice compact case, full fidelity audio on your pcees, and compressed audio for portable use.

Well, that was fast. My order for The Week from Amazon took less than 4 weeks to fulfill. Contrast that to my direct order for Make Magazine which has yet to arrive.

Anyway, I read The Week cover to cover last night. What a fantastic magazine. It is full of great synopsis from all around the world. I feel like I get a quick overview of what is going on around the planet in a very short amount of time. In the past I've tried magazines and daily newspapers but the reality is that I don't have the time, or the discipline to actually do this on a regular basis.

The magazine basically takes the top issues of the week and gives you background as well as commentary from many of the world's top publications (so you get an international slant, which is great as I always get the US slant which isn't always great). In the current issue I found out about a Black & White Photography Exhibit by John Szarkowski at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a recipe for Filet Mignon, and that Geico can't back up their claim that 97% customer satisfaction. Now those are the esoteric things, I did read about Sony's new CEO, Ten Commandments outside the Texas Capitol, Martha's recent comments on prison reform, a very sad story on the Amish, Olympic city selections, Democracy in the Middle East etc.

They have sections such as:

• The main stories and how they were covered
• Controversy of the week
• The world at a glance (with maps)
• People
• Gossip
• Briefing
• Best columns: The US, Europe, International
• Talking points
• Pick of the week's cartoons
• Health & Science
• Arts: Books, Art, Film, Stage, Music
• Best properties on the market
• Leisure: Food & Drink, Travel
• Consumer
• Obituaries
• Business
• The news at a glance
• Best columns
• The last word
• Television

The magazine's subtitle is "All you need to know about everything that matters". I think it's perfect for geeks. Interestingly enough the magazine is a member of the New York Times News Service, The LA Times and the Washington Post News Service. It's a shame that they don't sell this magazine in any store I've been to. I think it would be super popular of they did.

Anyway, this is definetley a Life Hack as you can get all this info in < 2 hours.

First rule of Google AdSense. Don't talk about Google AdSense . Needless to say I am not pulling in $10,000 a month. If I were I'd probably quit my job and move . At first I was just happy if the program could pay my hosting fees. It pays a bit more than that . Good way to feed my gadget habit, as well as allow me to increase my yearly charitable contributions.

I'm finding the AdSense program to be really interesting. I actually find the results that they place on my blog to be very complimentary to my content. Contextual Advertising is cool.

This is pretty neat. I wish Vonage had a web API, but they do not. However, they do have a HTTP GET and POST based API for initiating a phone call from your Vonage phone.

Simply create a custom URL for your account:

https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=username&password=password&fromnumber=fromNumber&tonumber=toNumberWhere:

username

The name that you use to log in to the Vonage dashboard

password

The password that you use to log in to the Vonage dashboard

fromNumber

Your Vonage phone number, this must match one of the numbers returned from the getnumbers request above

toNumber

The phone number you want to dial

When executed, a call will first be placed to your Vonage number. The system will dial the outbound number after the Vonage phone is answered. The Vonage customer will hear ringing as if the number was dialed from their phone and the two parties will be connected.

The neat thing about this is you could hack up some ASP.NET code, place on your web page, and allow people to call you for free. Basically they would go to your web page and initiate a call from your phone to their's. When you answer your Vonage phone, the account will then dial their number.

Here are some handy shortcuts. The will allow you to type dial 18005551212 to dial a number. Replace the items in red with your settings.

SlickRun

magicword=dial
filename=iexplore.exe
parameters=https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=username&password=password&fromnumber=fromNumber&tonumber=$W$

MSN Desktop Search

@dial,https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=username&password=password&fromnumber=fromNumber&tonumber=$W

Yesterday I received my Treo 650. I'll post a full review later on (compare it from the perspective of some one who has used Pocket PC from 1.0 to 2003 SE and SmartPhone 2002/3). The last Palm I used was a Palm V many years ago. And before that I used the US Robotics Palm Pilot 1000 (upgraded), a Palm III and finally a Palm V and Vx.

My intial thoughts:

• Form Factor ROCKS
• Not much bigger than my Audiovox 5600
• Much more stable when making/receiving calls than Windows Mobile
• Exhchange Mail Sync/Calendar Sync mostly works. Lots of missing features, and some that are better.
• The screen resolution rocks
• Not having a multi-threaded OS sucks
• Having 1 bagillion apps to chose from is good. Everything I used on the PPC is available on the Palm.
• Limiting Categories to 15 characters SUCKS! Common Palm!!! you fixed Contacts by adding support for 3 addresses and more than 5 phone numbers but you left this part BROKEN.
• Bluetooth Sync with my Tablet PC is 5000% better than trying to make Bluetooh + ActiveSync + Audiovox work. In fact I never did get it to work and I spent an hour on it. With my Treo I spend 2 min.

I already love the device. But, it's 4:53 pm, and it's 85 degrees in San Francisco. I'm out of here!

You can thank a pretty hard working developer in MSN for fixing this.

The site now says:

Now in new Firefox flavor!

Two new incubation projects in MSN.

• start.com/1/
• start.com/2/

What is an incubation project? Its basically a prototype, a snapshot on the way to something.

[via Dare]

This is most excellent news. The folks at Netcentrics are going to be updating the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-in. I applaud them for the transparency with which they are presenting their plans. I purchased the add-in last year and grew frustrated with it, so I wrote my own implementation in managed code (don't ask me for it, I'm not releasing it). However, I still struggle with various Outlook Interop issues and just don't have the time to deal with them.

Interestingly enough, a few weeks ago I got in touch with Scoble, who got me in touch with David Allen, who got me in touch with Jeffrey Phillips who does Marketing and BizDev over at Netcentrics. I wrote up a lengthy email of all my issues, and sent him the work that I did as well as my source code. A few days later I got an email from another employee at Netcentrics letting me know they were planning on releasing a new update this summer and asked that I continue to send feedback. I'm really happy that they were open about getting any feedback from me. GTD is so very important to me that having excellent software in Outlook is critical.

Needless to day I anxiously await the new version!

[via Marc Orchant]

A few years ago I purchased TopStyle. It's simply the best CSS editor on the market. Before that I loved HomeSite, which is now owned by Macromedia. I mean really, both products rock. Nick Bradbury has always been a talented developer in my mind, and I've closely watched his FeedDemon RSS application since it first entered beta. I was a NewsGator Outlook Edition user at the time, and have since switched to using NewsGator Online Services (see my post on the subject). Latley I've been sort of wishing I had a rich Win32 client to use, and well when Nick announced that FeedDemon 1.5 would support synchronization with NGOS I figured I'd give it another shot. Well I was a few days into my trial, and generally digging the product. I love the integration with de.lico.us, NewsGator, and the NewsPaper styles. But best of all, I love that when I post about a problem in the support forums, I get a personal exchange with the author, and a quick resolution to my problem. Anyway, I am now a proud owner of both FeedDemon and Topstyle.

Nick writes his software using Delphi, which is really interesting. Till Windows actually ships with the .NET Framework, I'm not sure he will enjoy the same deployment/install experience he does today (if he does decide to move to C#). Not to mention that his working set with increase 10x due to the ovehead of the framework. I love that the app uses up less than 4 MB.

Anyway, I love shareware. Thanks Nick!

I found this great freeware utility, png2ico, which will take a png and create an ico file. I wanted to create a favicon for my web site, and this made it super simple.

This will also come in handy when I need to make icons for my .NET applications. the VS.NET 2003 editor can't handle 32 bit icons.

The last time I owned a Palm device was in 2000. Since then I have used a variety of Pocket PC devices, and for the last few years I've tried one Pocket PC Phone and owned two Smartphones. My friends laugh at me cause the most important function of my phone is not to make calls, but to do email and sms. That sort of works out well because my experience with all Windows Mobile devices is that they suffer from enough problems and idiosyncrasies that at least a few times a week I get the dreaded "Unable to answer call" or I can't dial numbers. I assume that these are just core architectural problems with the platform, or buggy hardware firmwares that I can't do anything about. Geting bug fixes for these devices requires you to buy a new device running the new OS, and well, that happens infrequently and you are still at the mercy of the wireless carrier.

My wife has used the Treo 270 and now owns a Treo 600. I've always loved the form factors of the device but loathe the Palm OS as a PDA and Email platform. For one thing, the Contacts application was limited to the same schema that existed on the Palm Pilot 1000 (which I was a proud owner of). Most of my contacts have more than one address, and more than 5 email addresses/phone numbers. Additionally, the Palm was incapable of connecting to my work email server over the air. This is the killer app of the Windows Mobile Platform, but alas, it now exists in the Treo 650. Palm also updated the new OS to support the same contact schema as Outlook. Finally! Plus having a hardware keyboard and square screen is a new requirement of any device I plan on getting. T9 just sucks.

I was browsing around in the AT&T Wireless store today and found myself quickly getting the device itch. The Treo 650 is much sexier than the Treo 600. The screen is beautiful, the keyboard is even better, the camera takes great pics, and best of all, the email and calendar can sync to Exchange over the air. Sadly, it will not synchronize contacts, but that's ok as my Inbox and Calendar change with greater frequency then my Contacts.

So here is the thing. I could get this device now or I could wait an indefinite amount of time for the iPaq Mobile Messenger. The Treo has a better screen with more resolution (I can see more of the email), is smaller, and likely does not have the issues making and receiving phone calls that the Windows devices do. My wife's Treo has never said "Unable to answer call". I can't believe that there is even an error string in the Windows Mobile OS for that. For a while now I was thinking the Motorola MPX was going to solve all my needs, but that device is vaporware. If it does ever ship it won't matter cause it's a joke. Motorola never should have announced it.

Am I crazy for thinking of getting a Palm device? I won't be able to write .NET Compact Framework apps, but that's fine, cause the only one I ever wrote silly. Unlike Scoble, I have no intention of ever carrying around a PDA that cannot make and receive phone calls or check email wirelessly. If I am going to carry around a device it sure as heck better do it all. The last thing I need is a PDA, that was soooo 2002.

For the past few months I used the Rio Carbon. While it fared well, there were a couple of things I didn't like about the device. There was no hardware hold button, and the audio menu was not sticky and always dropped you back to the audio list, rather than your last selection. So, I decided to give the Creative Zen Micro a shot. I happen to love the device, and in many ways I find it's feature set to be better than the iPod. The build quality and fit and finish aren't as good as the iPod, but this device comes closer to anything else I've tried. I suspect that it will be a matter of months, or a year before Creative and iRiver have matched Apple in every way while providing some features the iPod still doesn't have.

Dominick Baier has posted two security bullitens for dasBlog:

Security Advisory: Log File Path Predictability in dasBlog Community Edition

This issue may or may not affect you. On my host, this does not occur as they lock down /logs from anon users.

Security Advisory : New XSS Vulnerability in dasBlog Community Edition

This issue was fixed in the latest version of dasBlog.

Special thanks to Dominick for his work in this area.

Unbelievable that for the past few weeks I have been stumped as to why my desktop pc and laptop can take minutes (like 5) to resume from standby. On a hunch I uninstalled Skype, then found this and this.

If you write software that messes with my power management shame on you. Sometimes I hate computers. Two strikes with Skype. First the bad installer, now this. If you were on my Skype list, you can call me on my phone. It's listed on my Messenger Contact Card.