Tag: mp3-player

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Highlights WebTech

From YouTube to your phone, MP3 player

It was love at first note when I heard Amy Winehouse sing. Her voice exudes raw emotion unmatched in decades.

I first played my copy of her Back to Black album in Rhythmbox in my Linux laptop, while I was struggling with getting a graphical interface to Subversion working. When I heard her sing, it was as if I mangled my system and did an svn merge that automagically produced a track from my collection of songs of Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, and Dodo Greene.

I finally settled with using RapidSVN but I wouldn’t settle with the few Amy Winehouse songs I had. I browsed YouTube to view videos of her performances (especially her AOL sessions) and played them over and over again. Over and over and over again.

I wanted to sleep to her songs. I didn’t want, however, to leave the laptop and the modem router on. The siren’s calls were too strong, I knew I had to have her songs in my MP3 player.

Luckily, I had bookmarked VConvert.net weeks earlier, when I spotted a link to it in the popular bookmarks page of del.icio.us.

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Highlights Mobile Personal

Sony Ericsson makes me sing the blues

Inside the junk food section of a downtown department store, I decided to stop listening to my jazz collection at home.

Two weeks back, my family sought shelter in a Cebu City pension house from a scheduled overnight brownout in Lapu-Lapu City. We went to a downtown department store to stock on food and refreshments when we ended up, inevitably, on the biscuits and junk food section.

Sony Ericsson headset, data cable SONY ERICSSON CONNECTORS. If there’s one weak spot in Sony Ericsson phones, it’s the way its data cable and earphone connects to the unit. After a year, you’d start to experience cutting off of connections.

Our four-year-old son kept saying he wanted potato chips so I brought him to where there were rows of various potato chips in different flavors. He got one pack, placed it in the grocery cart, and then sang “you like pot-ah-to, I like patata.” He sang the song repeatedly that night–on our way to another department store, on our way to the pension house, while eating the potato chips.

His brother got into the act, repeatedly singing the line “everyone’s gone to the moon” in a mock Nina Simone rendition. It was a room full of singing, out of tune.

I got the message.

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free software Mobile Open source

Manage songs in your phone, mp3 player with Songbird

ITunes locks out other devices by limiting synchronization only to iPods and other Apple-approved devices. There are third-party software you can use to be able to manage songs in your phone or non-iPod mp3 player using iTunes but these applications can be complicated to install or tedious to use.

songbird and sony ericsson k750i SONGBIRD, K750i. The transfer queue of music files being sent to my Sony Ericsson K750i. Songbird allows you to manage songs in your phone and music players. Click to view larger image.

I’ve long stayed away from using iTunes to manage songs in my Sony Ericsson K750i because I do not like the way it organizes files in the phone’s memory card. I also do not like the way iTunes locks out other players. For a long time, I’ve been using MediaMonkey to manage songs in my phone.

Still, at the back of my mind and figuring consistently in my to-do list, I’ve always wanted to try using the open source media player Songbird with my K750i. But for a long time, the “developer preview” label on the Songbird download link put me off from trying it. That label gives an impression of being unstable that only developers should try using it.

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