Segments

What was veronica's shirt?

Enjoyed the PC hardware talk! and Nice PC V!

I thought this week's episode was great keep up the good work. I enjoyed the gaming PC buildup story even though I'm not a gamer. Right now I'm trying to figure out what hardware to get as I build up a PC for my home studio. Multitrack high bit rate audio takes a LOT of computer power to make a useful workstation. My old PC is about 5 years old and it's time for an upgrade.

My personal idea for DropBox: using it to allow multiple computers to use the same iTunes Library anywhere

Hi fellows. I saw DropBox mentioned during this episode & wish to share an idea I developed recently (& will test very soon):

using the Dropbox cloud service to maintain a single version of iTunes library that can be accessed, used & updated from anywhere via any computers.

That's the main idea. Do allow me to delve into the details: this all came out of my recent regular system format. A few major changes occurred as part of this process:

i. Upgraded from WinXP to Win7. This implied my "C:\Documents and Settings\my_username\My Music" folder was changed to "C:\Users\Music"; which also implies the location of my iTunes home folder was affected as well.

ii. Upgraded from iTunes 8 to iTunes 9. This also caused some re-arrangement in my "~\iTunes\iTunes Music" folder (now "~\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music")

iii. The impetus to shift all my actual music files to an external hard disk for "portability"

Anyway, the easy part was allowing ONE portable computer, having iTunes installed, to still be able to add content on the go (even though my 3.5" external drive is at home), such as importing a newly-purchased music CD or downloading the latest episode of Tekzilla for sync-ing onto my iPod. Because more & more users have shifted to laptops as their sole computer, this use case has reached maturity & multiple websites have it well-resolved.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

(start reading from the line, "Using an External Hard Drive and a Portable Computer")

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/19/how-to-keep-your-itunes-library-on-an-external-hard-drive/

(start reading from the line, "But what happens if I import media, download podcasts or buy something from the iTunes Store?")

My tough part was, since I use both a laptop & a netbook, how do I have both of them pointing to the same iTunes library while maintaining the scenario above, i.e. having the ability to import new content to sync onto my iPod while I'm out and about with my netbook? The clever bit here, is to have the iTunes library database files (the itl, xml, genius files, etc) stored in the DropBox folder! Whenever I have any secondary computers that I wan to access my library on, I just install iTunes & use the "press-Shift-key-&-select-choose-library" trick to point the local installation of iTunes to the copy (of itl) stored in the local DropBox folder on same machine!

This way, no matter how I manage my library, add new content, delete content, change ratings, modify playlists on any computer, all the other computers will have their iTunes library up-to-date when DropBox updates its contents! Furthermore, since the way iTunes references the iTunes library database, & the respective media folders is based on "relative downstream", no matter how the operating system architecture/folder hierarchy changes in the future, I'm almost guaranteed future-proofing of my iTunes library!

Example: doesn't matter to iTunes whether the library are stored in:

1. C:\Documents and Settings\my_username\My Documents\My Dropbox\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl

2. C:\Users\my_username\Documents\My Dropbox\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl

3. F:\blah blah blah\blah\My DropBox\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl

As long as:

a. the relative path starting from "~\iTunes" remains the same
b. I can always assign a drive letter to my external drive & the location in it where I store my music, i.e. I:\Music

This way, my iTunes library is pretty resilient to how operating system folder hierarchy evolves in the future! Not to mention ease of accessing (the most updated version of my) iTunes library anywhere, any Windows OS version!

Hope you fellows find this "iTunes library database files inside DropBox" trick handy!

For more information about how I'm revamping my iTunes library & shifting to a future-OS-proof, media-on-external-drive, library-mgmt-via-multiple-machines architecture, do check out my blog post at:

http://ralliart12.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/how-i-spent-my-year-end-holiday-part-5-of-6-current-upcoming-eventsactivities/

For more information on how I feel about the way iTunes store media & data should evolve, please refer to my blog post at

http://ralliart12.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/how-i-spent-my-year-end-holiday-part-1-of-6/

(Look for the key phrase, "UPDATE #2", & read from there)

Hi!! This is my very first message!!! And, I want to know what's veronicas think about the new iPad. For me, this is the most useless apple gadget i ever see. It's a huge iPod and the worst... The tablet doesn't have flash!!!!! I'm sorry for my very bad english, it's my second language!!

iPad?

The iPad? Please! This thing is a disaster! Who is gonna use this thing? I wouldn't even consider this a good portable device. Its a large sheet of glass with a aluminum casing. I'd be afraid to carry it out in public for dropping and cracking it! And lets not forget the features it doesn't have for instance:

No Multitasking
No Flash support (Jobs calls it the best web experience?)
No 16:9 video support
No HDMI
No SD card slot
No E-ink (Harder on the eyes for long term reading)
No kick stand (so much for picture frame viewing!)
No USB (not even one!)

This is a new low, even for Apple! I'm sure the Apple minions will come out of the woodwork and buy this thing and sell about 3 to 4 million and will be considered a sucess! Maybe by the 3rd revision, it will be what people really want (I said MAYBE!). I was more impressed with Veronica's gaming rig than I was with the ipad! The only thing I would do on the gaming PC would be to up the video card to a Radeon HD 5770 card for a better gaming experience. other than that, not bad for a first time build!

I used to have the same problem Veronica talked about ("so many chargers and cables, what goes with what") when responding to CP's question. Then I bought a couple of these: (http://bit.ly/9gm4eI). It's probably the single best tech-related purchase I've ever made. Now, the charger for every single electronic device I bring into the house gets labelled.

I could have forgiven the no-flash if it had a front facing camera. That's a deal killer for me.

What case is that?

Big V,which thermaltake case did you use for the new PC? It looks like the Wing RS201. Nice
job fellas. Keep up the great programming.