Organizing my digital music
Now that I have my digital photo collection under control, I had to tackle my music. I usually ripp my Jazz CDs with Exact Audio Copy so that I can listen to them wherever I go. The problem here is that I have to edit the tags manually and that takes some time. Inspired by my photo organizing work I did the last weeks, I went out googling around for a similar tool set I had put together for my picture.
In the past, I tried a tool that indexes you music (like Picasa for photos) and I gave that a shot first. It is known as Mediamonkey and the latest version is really very nice. It works with my new Vista PC and I can skin it so that it blends into my desktop nicely. The free version does almost everything I need to do right now, but there is also a Pro version that will set you back $19.95, but this one has a few really interesting features, like automatic library updates, unlimited mp3 encoding, virtual CD previews and advanced filter. With the free version, you can synchronize iPods or mp3 players, manages playlists, convert between formats, rip CDs, level volume while you play your music and does the most important thing, it manages your entire collection! You could even get it to work with Winamp plugins if you need to.
While I was looking for this, I stumbled upon a nice batch renamer and tag editor, Tagscanner is very similar to what FotoAlbum 6 does for my picture collection, but for ID3 tags. You could select several files and and set tags for all of them at once, like album title or artist. Once you got all the tags with the right data, you could rename the files using them the way you want. It uses metavariables to do that, just like Siren for my pictures. It has a ton of other features that complement very nicely Mediamonkey.
Now I’m ready to get my music organized!
Organizing my digital photos
Comments(1)Keeping my digital photos organized has become a rather large task. First keeping a meaningful structure, then finding naming convention that suits my needs and then finding the renaming tool that could implement that naming convention. Besides of that, I wanted some kind of tool that allowed me to find and preview the pictures beyond what the native Windows tools provided.
As probably anybody else, I started with the software tools that came with my first camera. This was a Fuji Fine Pix camera and the tool that came with it was not that bad at all, at least not for me, a non pro photographer. Then I stumbled upon Picasa -later acquired by Google- and I loved the interface and the ability to email pictures directly out of it on a reduced size. Before I had to make a copy of the pictures I wanted to email, launch whatever photo editing software I had and reduce the picture to something reasonable for email. I’m talking here point and shoot family kind of pictures. I also started to create sideshows for family and friends, and Picasa came in really handy for that.
So I lived for a while the Fuji Fine Pix software mainly as a renaming tool, and Picasa as an basic editing (red eye removal and cropping) and archiving tool, but eventually I hit the archiving wall. I do store my pictures in folders and copy those folders to CD/DVD, but I started to lose track of what I had off-line, and looking for an older photo was not an easy task anymore. Picasa does not keep track of the ones on CD/DVD, so I had to start looking for something else. It took me literally years to find something that worked for me, since everything I found was part of a bloated suite of utilities I didn’t need or wanted and with a pricetag attached to them that was always more as I wanted to shell out.
The other day I was looking for something else and came across a blogpost at Lifehacker that gave some hints about Picasa. Down there in the comments I found two gems, one was regarding a cataloging tool, somehow similar to Picasa know as FotoAlbum Pro 6 that is a lot better than Picasa. It not only has the archiving piece I was looking for, but also an easy way of adding comments, captions and tags (or keywords) to the pictures. In Picasa it is rather difficult to do that. For captions you have to go to each picture to add them and then hit Ctrl-K to be able to add some tags. Both will be embedded in the picture, which is nice, but this is very time consuming. In FotoAlbum you could do this for several pictures at once and you could also add and see several other EXIF, IPTC and XMP Metadata. It uses a SQLite database to keep track of everything, even on which disc you archived your pictures. It keeps the thumbnail image and when you asks to see that photo, it prompt you for the right media and copies that file back to your hard drive. The Pro version will set you back $39.95, but there is also a free version that has most of the nice things (but not the archiving functionality I was looking for).
FotoAlbum has also a batch renaming functionality in the Pro version, but it seems limited to what I need. I was lately using RenameMaster, a very nice and free file renaming utility from JoeJoe’s Software, but on the same comments of that blogpost from Lifehacker, I found a link to Siren, another free renaming utility, similar to RenameMaster, but with several improvements. It also works with variables that allows you to compose any naming convention you wish, using not only EXIF data, but also IPTC and XMP metadata and you could save your particular combinations under Favorites. You could use this one not only for pictures, but for any kind of files, including mp3’s and videos.
Now I do have a pretty good set of tools, and with my new PC -which has plenty of disc space available- I’m going to work on all these pictures and archive them properly!
Email Overload
Comments(3)Who doesn’t suffer from email overload these days? Even my 75 year old mother sometimes claims she’s getting too much email!
Some time last year, I found this nice add-in for Outlook (yes, that’s what I have to use at work) that does and incredible job in prioritizing and organizing my email. It has even the right name: Clear Context It does a lot of other nice things too, like scheduling something out from an email into my calendar with the push of a button, or creates a task from a message.
The feature I like the most and use all the time is something very simple but very timeconsuming: filing messages. IMS implements a nice way of doing it by keeping track of the folder/topic you assign for the very first message in a thread, and then it just remembers it. You could either press the File Message or the File thread to get them out of you inbox and into the right folder. Your replys are also filed in the same folders if you whish, so you keep the whole conversation together. This is something I really like!
You could also defer messages and get them out of the way until sometime in the future, where they pop-up again as a new message. Isn’t that something nice?
Another powerfull functionality is a set of views for your inbox that puts the real important stuff right at the top. You could tweak this quite a bit, so all those powerusers out there would love this. By pressing the Related View button you get a powerfull view of all items related to that specific email you’re looking at. All this makes it a snap to find that important emial buried deep in some folder.
If you have to concentrate on your really important tasks instead of working your email all the time, the Alert function comes in really handy. Once set up, it will only notify you if there are messages that need your immediate attention. That is a productivity booster!
As you know, I’m also experimenting with GTD and yes, Clear Context helps with this too. They even have a guide explaining how to use their product with David Allen’s methodology.
I’ve used Clear Context since version 2 and they have recently released version 4 of this marvel. Here’s a demo you might enjoy while getting the opportunity to appreciate all the new stuff they are putting into this version.
Death by PowerPoint
Filed under: Communications | Tags: Communications, powerpoint, slideware
Comments(0) While reading some exciting stuff at Lifehacker I came across this really great presentation on presentations. It was done by Alexei Kapterev, a russian presentation designer and consultant who got the point.
Here it is… enjoy.
Steve
I know, I know… this is nothing new for many, but it is still something that touched me when I first saw it a couple of years ago, and just wanted have it here. It’s Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005. It is a reality touch for those graduates just before entering into the job market from one of the guys I most admire. I admire him for what he did and from where he did it.
And here is the full text to follow along, directly from the Stanford news service.
Getting Things Done
Last week I was in Manhattan to go over the outsourcing proposal I mentioned a few weeks ago with our global team. We stayed at the Embassy Suites Hotel next to Ground Zero and the World Financial Center. Since 9/11 I was never back to downtown Manhattan and I was really impressed with what was left.
While walking around that area I had to go to Borders to digg around the bookshelves, and on my way out I stumbled upon David Allen’s paperback edition of Getting Things Done. I first tried GTD on my Palm a few years back with Shadow Plan, an excellent hierarchical list manager, that fell a little bit short on the desktop version. I still have it on my Palm and use it to manage a few lists but not for GTD anymore. I actually never implemented GTD based on David Allen’s book, because I never got the book in the first place. It was all based on his basic idea I got from groups and forums that are out there.
Last year I came across My Life Organized, a way better desktop task manager that even got a GTD template build in (and a PPC version, but not a Palm one), which I started to use right away. It syncs with Outlook, but I haven’t ventured into that feature yet. With all these projects and activities I’m getting lately, I decided to get serious about this, so I took the opportunity and bought the book. It’s and interesting reading since it has many good examples of his methodology which I will try to make work with MLO.
Sharing your slides
The other day, I stumbled upon slideshare.net, a pretty interesting site, where you can upload, share and learn from other slideware. It is a sort of slideware social networking kind of site, with comments, favorites, digging, etc.
The most interesting piece for me, is that there are a few really good pieces out there to learn form. Sure, there’s a ton of crap, but you can lear from those too. You can also use it like Flickr, but for slides and embedd them into your blog or site, like I’m doing right here with that deck I mentioned in another post a while back.
New URL
For those that haven’t noticed, this blog has now the proper URL, namely blog.cremerius.org and it should be all transparent to you.
I can’t believe it’s been that long…
… since I last blogged here. It’s been a crazy time for me and I’m totally tied up with work. I can even bearly read my favorite blogs. I’m traveling so much between to UK and the US right now, that I should probably start a new travel blog…
Anyways, all this is because I’m involved in an really interesting outsourcing deal (on the to be outsourced side) and you can imagine how wuch work this means. We just finalized the due diligence phase and are entering final negotiations.
Well, this was just to let everybody know that I’m still alive, and if at all possible, I’ll try to keep you updated on my learnings form this experience.
Thanks for sticking around!
Ways to distinguish yourself
Well, that was a big pause here on my blog, but had really a lot to catch up with at work and with family.
As always, I’m keeping track of my feeds in Bloglines and there I came across this blog, a remarcable blog from Dr. Rajesh Setty where he writes a series about Ways to distinguish yourself, something really worth reading. He also published the first 25 (he’s already at his 111th entry ) as a manifesto in Change This.
If you want to get an easy access to this, bookmark his Squidoo Lens.
