Windows Phone Fail

So you can check out a Windows Phone demo at http://aka.ms/wpdemo . Unless you're using Internet Explorer. In which case you'll get redirected to the following;

Do something right Microsoft. Maybe you should stop pretending.

Tool for diff, pretty coffee

cubano at brioso, artisan: karl

Do you have an excessively unwieldy mp3 collection spread across multiple computers? Do you have a moderately nit-picky desire to merge them and reconcile the differences? Are you sufficiently obsessive that you know if you are forced to do this manually you will spend a half-dozen hours easy  on the task?

If so, read on...

So I had to merge 35gig and 95gig folders, jam-packed with mp3s; approximately 40,000 files in total. I ended up with 25,000.

The two folders were fox-music (35g) and nar-music (95g); the former being primarily instanced by copying from nar- previously, and then added to with the nar- folder being deprecated. Easy peasy enough.

I found a diff- tool for Windows called winmerge that did the job terrifically. Basically it loads a left and a right record/list; left being fox, right being nar. Scans files, displays differences between the two records. From there a few simple steps and my mp3s are basically cleaned up (yes I am aware I lost some meta-data but I'll be sure to cry about it when I start caring).

• Preserve all right only records
• Move all left only records to right
• Delete all binary identicals on left
• Done

Like I said, easy peasy and Winmerge is a great tool. It is substantially more powerful than this, but for such a simple task the interface and workflow was straightforward and I have a feeling that for more in-depth diffs you would get the same feel.

By the way, if you're thirsty at lunch, and its chilly, the double cubano at Brioso is amazing. Also, they have a honey-prep full-city on tap today that's fantastic. Do yourself a favor if your in the 43215 and get down to the corner of High & Gay streets for a cheerful dose of caffeination.

Update on 1:08PM by mfg

oh yeah, final count was 100 gigabytes; 25,000 files

I suppose this one's going in the will...

Winamp Review Follow Up

Here were my reservations from my original review:

• winamp remote integration (there are apps out there; ie where my phone can control the winamp desktop client)
  • still none
• podcast/streaming/shoutbox support
  • search for shoutbox stations is an option, but without (wifi) better streaming of podcast links from other sites a bit of a non-plus
• video?!?(meh)
• event listings; like cubed, last.fm, songbird (by extension) have
  • still none
• track ratings (that integrates with desktop on sync), love track on last.fm
  • still none
• track tagging, fuller integration of id3
  • still none

oh noes did i wipe my hard drive, or my phone?!

So updates have been made. None addressed what would have made Winamp better than what is already on the market. None have been done to bring the flavor of Winamp desktop to my phone aside from the queueing.

That said, I have fallen back in love with the desktop client of Winamp, now on version 5.6. It has Android syncing. I haven't pushed that very far yet. So, in advance, I prepared these questions for what I would want my desktop<>mobile winamp solution to handle.

• What files does it sync? it does a smartypants style sync with the auto-fill feature where it will push a quota of your device's storage space based on songs with the most plays and highest ratings
• Does it sync ratings, playcounts? <dunno yet>
• How does it support playlists (i.e. single directory only, meta data)? the playlists work, but i havent been able to pinpoint how....

The autofill feature seems to be working well, albeit slowly. it's pushing ability, along with its level of smartypantsishness will need to wait for another day. This isn't so mucha review then of the Winamp app, or the desktop client alone; but the <> of the suite. One the whole, for Win7 & Android, 3/5: too many knobs, too little clarity.

Area 51 Prop: googledy geeks

So i put up another (likely to be unsuccessful) proposal on Area 51 for a Q & A forum. This time I went after trying to get a Google Geeks site going. I am intrigued by the negative success of it. My success thus far with the other two was someone posting a question or two. This time I have a comment questioning the necessity of another prop to cover ground seen as redundant in scope to the web apps and Android sites. Three people up-voted the sentiment, and one person voted to close the prop altogether.

i mean, i get that. i do. i'm not going to use this space to argue my point of view on the viability of the prop much considering i dont know if many who are here even are familiar with Stack Exchange or Area 51. but anyway, Google is setting itself up as a platform beyond the scope of both Android (an embedded OS) and beyond just web apps (considering the Chrome desktop OS).Their products are beyond the scope of simple web applications as we normally conceive of them. there is a degree of interoperability that, if properly harnessed, is and will be a platform on the scale of Windows or Unix, rather than on par with dropbox experts.

i suggest merely that maybe organizing a community of people who can drill down into the Google-brain (you know there is a Microsoft and Unix brain for how to do something) isn't such a bad thing. the Google platform is obviously burgeoning and not mature to the extent the other two are, but that is precisely what makes having a community a powerful idea.

If you would like to support the prop, click here!

Google Geeks

Proposed Q&A site for extreme users of Google's platform, that know the products' ins and outs, and the nooks and crannies of each lab for those products. We can help you connect every last tube as needed.

Winamp for Android! w00t!

(pic links to engadget article; QR goes to market for DL)I was a long time user of Winamp. It has been my standby since I began using it sometime around version 2.0 (prior to 3).

I used it consistently through the early aughts. I maintained an active install of the latest update prior to 3 for quite awhile since the release of 3 was too unwieldy of an architecture at the time for a boot-strapped computer's resources.

Eventually, somewhere in 2007 i moved to Totem, Banshee, Rhythmbox as i had moved into Gutsy Gibbon Ubuntu; and then in 2008 i moved over to Songbird (Genesis release i think). Really had high hopes for that. 

Right now I've been between mp3 players for awhile. none of them have exactly the right mix top to bottom. The three big ones to me seem to be itunes, songbird, and winamp; for various reasons (mind you, i am referring to win7).

on the one end of the spectrum, you have a massive .db powered bloat monkey like itunes. on the other hand you can run a leaner shell based program like winamp. or you can try to find balance in between with songbird. this metaphor used to hold. now songbird is so off kilter with the most recent releases i've used that i switched back to a mix of winamp and songbird skipping between the two depending on how im listening. if i know what i want to listen to, i use winamp; if i dont, i use songbird. last i updated, scrobbling was broken on songbird, queries are taking forever to load, library filtering feels clunky. and thats on a fast desktop (either my core2duo or the i7920!).

anyway, on android i have tried the media player built in, as well as 3 ("cubed" - who i hold out high hopes for, but it still feels flimsy and half-baked), and for the past 9 months been thoroughly baiting my breath for an immediate contender. thank you Winamp, i think you have listed a race-maker there. 

i saw one comment about it feeling like that standard player. in someways i can understand what they mean; when browsing it uses the android shell and appears to mimic the andro-mp3 player, but actually thats just the browsing default. in many ways the Winamp is actually more deeply integrated with its features than the stock player.

• One thing off the top that Winamp did was add a pane feature that mimics the status pane. They positioned it just low enough below the system status bar that you dont confusedly hit the wrong one (even on a device like the droid whose screen accuracy is sketchy).
• In the stock player it can be disorienting to find where the playing now track is playing so you can change it (i have to switch to home to use the widget frequently, ugh). With this app, when you switch away from the now playing screen, the pane just drops to the other page you switched to, but you still have now playing controls, and with one tap youre back to control central.
• The settings page is aflush with settings, and they actually do something!

Thats just the comparative experience of it. Fantastic. As for the features, it has wireless syncing if you have winamp on your desktop/laptop, the fantastic playlist queueing system of regular winamp, playlist reordering and creation, widget with [ <||, =, |>, ||>, album art track/album/artist, and tap to app], last.fm scrobbling, search integration. pretty full featured.

Requested features? I have a few.

• winamp remote integration (there are apps out there)
• podcast/streaming/shoutbox support
• video?!?
• event listings; like cubed, last.fm, songbird (by extension) have
• track ratings (that integrates with desktop on sync), love track on last.fm
• track tagging, fuller integration of id3

The one criticism i have is the menu button. It has different options from one pane to the next (now playing v. home in particular; the specialized queue menu makes sense). There arent that many buttons; make it a 2x3 menu and condense it.

Otherwise, beautiful job; lets heat this race up. What you gonna do Google? You gonna maybe make your listen/music apps work?