Recently in Music Category

OMG, I just love Sweetest Girl by Wyclef Jean. it is terrific Hip Hop for those of you who like that kind of stuff. Check out the video

I'm also listening to Avril Lavigne's Keep Holding On

MP3Tag is a nice freeware program that lets you take MP3 tags and change the filename. I like to do this so that all my music is really nicely laid out.

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Well, I may be too old for all this, but lately, I've been listening to a lot of Hip Hop. I've been through my rock (the Boss!), alternative rock (Natalie Merchant), chick music (Indigo Girls, Patty Griffin) and country (Dixie Chicks) eras and still love them, but its like a whole new world. Some favorites right now:

Beyonce. Now famous because of Dream Girls, she was the lead on Destiny's Child and then had a huge hit with Dangerously in Love in 2003 and now B'day in 2006 which she did on her 25th (wow I'm old!) birthday.

Rihanna/Rihanna。 Are singers getting younger. Rihanna is from Barbados and was discovered when she was 15! Her latest album is A Girl LIke Me which is awesome.

Paula Deanda. She's actually my personal favorite. (And she's younger than Rihanna yikes). She's Mexican American Her debut album is just amazing with Doing Too Much, Walk Away and When it was Me being amazing!

Sean Paul. A Jamaican reggae artist

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I've always loved this song by Elton John and thought it was just about two brothers leaving, but saw being a Cold Case mainly because of its great Soundtrack I found out that the song has a missing set of lyrics. Apparently, it was really about a fictional Vietnam vet who has lost his sight and was headed out of the US to live in Spain. Totally change the meaing when you know about the lost lyric. Most amazing the song was written recorded in just one day.

Now that Musicmatch has really broken on my machines (Yahoo bought it and it isn't supported much anymore), I really need to find a good tagger. Musicmatch is still my favorite because it has very easy Album finding and also it lets you rename files from tags automatically and put in tags based on filenames. So the search goes on. I tried DBpoweramp tagger, but it doesn't have these features. Neither does Windows Media Player nor iTunes, so now I'm trying MP3Tag

MP3Tag is shareware and does this magical file to tag and vice versa. It doesn't have a cover art finder, but I head iTunes 7.0 now has this.

Nero 6.6 leaves all kinds of video directshow filters that really screw up my machine, so back to finding a simple program that just does burning, like the old Nero 5.5 but is free. I can't use Nero 5.5 because it doesn't recognize my newer Benq 1640, but does find our old Ricoh 5125

CDBurnerXP Pro is one that I've heard good things about, but when I tried it, it crashed when trying to erase a DVD. I also noticed all the copyrights are 2004, so don't know how up to date it is.

When I google:"dvd burning freeware", the top pick was ImgBurn but this really need a full .iso image file whereas out of DVD-Lab, I just get a bunch of files. I really want something that takes a bunch of files and pushes them onto the disk.

I got this error message, proving again that something is wrong in my codec configuration. This only happens with Musicmatch, iTunes works and everything else does. A quick google query reveals this answer. Thank you mp3machine!

1 Go to control panel 2 Add hardware
3 At "Welcome" screen, press next
4 Select "Yes, I have already connected this hardware". Press next
5 Scroll down, and select "Add a new hardware device"
6 Select "Install the hardware I select from a list"
7 Select "Sound, video and game controllers"
8 Select "(standard system devices)" in pane 1, and "Audio Codecs" in pane 2
9 Press "Have Disk"
10 Enter "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32" in the drop down box and press "OK"
11 Select "Microsoft Audio Compression Manager" and press "Next" , then "Next" again.
12 At the security screen, press "Continue anyway"

It will install, and require a reboot

If it still does not work, then follow the same procedure, but at point 11 choose "IMA ADPCM

Audio CODEC" and on the next run select "Microsoft ADPCM Audio CODEC"</blockquote

Melodeo lets you see what podcasts I'm listening too. They have this cool feature where there is a personal website for each user and I got that key user id rich. Also they sync with your cell phone, so you can listen to podcasts for free over your cell phone if you can figure how to download. If you are lucky enough to be on Alltel, it is preloaded.

OK, I admit it, I know I'm supposed to be legal, but I just hate the way these DRM schemes work. Two cases in point:

1. Apple. If you lose a hard disk which I just did, then the only way to get back your keys if you are on five machines (or like me, you rebuild or machines regularly) is to do an annual reset. Then, you have to keep track of activation and deactivation. What a pain. So if you use itunes, then just be aware that you need to keep track of your keys and for heavens sake, don't use a hotmail account for password recovery. Microsoft right now eats most password recovery email as spam. This happened to me for itunes, pricegrabber, newegg.com and a bunch of other sites. You need to have an identity/email someplace that really is free of spam filters otherwise you'll end up in a state where if you forget your password, you'll have lost your music forever. As a backup strategy, you might want to have MP3s around. For sure, if you buy music with Apple, you want to blow a CD and put it somewhere so that if you lose your authorization keys, you don't lose all your music.
2. Audible. They have a monthly plan and you have to be careful about what it means to own your music. They will only authorize three computers for audible content. As with Apple, don't lose your password and make sure that you have a long term email account that you really control. They say that you own your music, but truth is that if you lose your hard disk, you have to negotiate. It also means that for your entire life that you own an audible book, you have to have a login account with these guys. Makes me want to convert all these .aa files to .mp3 to make sure I really have them for a long time.

Well, I'm glad that J and Robbie are on this, nice to know there will be some competition. The 30GB Zune player direct from Microsoft will have Wifi so you can download without needing a PC. Will be about $400 according to rumors, so it will be pricey. They even have a blog for it and Robbie's pitch is up on the web too.

As an side, all the Financial Analyst Meeting presentations are on the web.