roryokblog

All your comment are belong to us

android

Syncing Music to an Android device on Windows

Jul 10

Posted by rory in android, freeware | No Comments

I’m trying to sync music to hero. Big pain. I want this path ‘Music/AlbumArtist/Album’, so that I can accommodate soundtracks and compilations without fragmenting them by individual artist.
J River Media Jukebox – won’t accept AlbumArtist as a field in the customisable path, just ignores it or creates a folder called ‘[AlbumArtist]‘ – FAIL
DoubleTwist – won’t let me change the path the music is stored in at all – defaults to Music/Artist/Album – FAIL
Songbird – lets me set AlbumArtist in Path, but forgot I did it when I closed and re-opened program. Once I had synced the playlist once, my only option is to delete the playlist from the device, which doesn’t delete the music. Even after physically deleting MP3s on disk, songbird thinks they’re still there and will only re-sync the actual m3u file. SongBird also locks up for about 10 seconds every time I click on the handheld device – FAIL
iTunes – is proprietary spyware that installs all kinds of bullshit I’m not happy with, so I’m not touching it. – FAIL
In the end I decided songbird was closest, so I tried a little harder. Ejected the device, closed Songbird, reconnected device, re-opened songbird. Settings screen screwed itself up, took a while to show me my saved settings again. But in the end, it worked – synced the music to the device in the format Music/AlbumArtist/Album.

I’m trying to sync music to hero. Big pain. I want this path ‘Music/AlbumArtist/Album’, so that I can accommodate soundtracks and compilations without fragmenting them by individual artist.

J River Media Jukebox – won’t accept AlbumArtist as a field in the customisable path, just ignores it or creates a folder called ‘[AlbumArtist]‘ – FAIL

DoubleTwist - won’t let me change the path the music is stored in at all – defaults to Music/Artist/Album – FAIL

Songbird – lets me set AlbumArtist in Path, but forgot I did it when I closed and re-opened program. Once I had synced the playlist once, my only option is to delete the playlist from the device, which doesn’t delete the music. Even after physically deleting MP3s on disk, SongBird thinks they’re still there and will only re-sync the actual m3u file. SongBird also locks up for about 10 seconds every time I click on the handheld device – FAIL

In the end I decided SongBird was closest, so I tried a little harder. Ejected the device, closed Songbird, reconnected device, re-opened songbird. Settings screen screwed itself up, took a while to show me my saved settings again. But in the end, it worked – synced the music to the device in the format Music/AlbumArtist/Album.

All in all, it took about 40 minutes to sync one f**king album to the phone. I really wish the guys behind ImgBurn would take a crack at making music software, I bet there’d be none of this bullshit.

Tags: , , ,

Android Apps for new users

Jul 5

Posted by rory in android | 2 Comments

I regularly come across people who have just bought android phones, and inevitably we get talking about cool apps you can download. Here’s a list of the best apps I’ve found on Android, stuff that I just can’t get by without at this stage.

  • Astrid - to do list manager, hugely useful. There is a RememberTheMilk app too, but it only works for 30 days then you need to pay for a pro account.
  • Linda File Manager – browse your SD card, install apps from it, copy, cut, paste, move, rename files
  • Seesmic - really great twitter app
  • ChompSMS - way better than the default SMS app
  • Facebook - the official app
  • GMote - control pc / media centre from the phone. You need to install an app on the PC first, but its kinda neat! turns screen into trackpad, so you can actually just mouse around from the couch
  • Meridian - best media player on it – not perfect but better than anything else out there
  • Aldiko - ebook reader. Really good, packed full of neat features and gorgeous to look at and use.
  • Barcode Scanner – scan barcodes and search them on line
  • Evernote - only started using this since I got the phone, but its great! upload notes, photos, sound bytes etc to personal storage
  • pktAuctions - ebay app, not official but very good. You can browse, and bid through it.
  • Google Sky Map – A map of the night sky, uses the built in accelerometer & compass to tell what way you’re pointing. Great for impressing people with.
  • Bump - transfer files and contacts between android phones and/or iphones by bumping them together AKNotepad – simple notepad clone
  • Layar - a neat app which overlays info about your surroundings onto the camera feed,
  • AppManager - lets you uninstall apps, works far better than the standard android uninstaller
  • Flashlight - turns screen white, not particularly bright but better than nothing in the dark!
  • aFile - very useful app which allows you to connect to the phone from your laptop via wifi. If you can’t find the cable right this second but need to download a picture from the camera, you can always email it to yourself, OR you can fire up aFile. Doesn’t always work though
  • NetCounter - essential – keep track of your downloads through wifi or 3g, see how much you’ve used
  • WiFi analyser – lets you see the strength of all the various wifi signals around you
  • DoubleTwist - media player, hooks into desktop client for Windows or Mac, syncs music neatly either from iTunes or other sources. Its a work in progress but very sleek. I still prefer Meridian but I get the feeling I’ll prefer this someday.
  • Qype - Find nearby pubs, shops, restaurants etc.
  • Eirxor - eircom WEP hacking tool, handy if someone you know loses their router password. Thats all I’m saying.
  • Katawa - collection of web comics
  • Twitter - official twitter app. I don’t think It’s as good as Seesmic
  • Epicurious - Recipe app, ties in to Epicurious.com
  • IMDB official app – just launched the other day! Official app for sussing out what the hell that guy is from
  • Grooveshark - streamed music, only works with VIP (Paid) version of GrooveShark though.
  • Shazam - Identify music being played, just like the iphone version.
  • My Tracks – record where you go, how far you’ve travelled and share with friends or keep to yourself

Keyboards:

It’s easy to replace the default keyboard on android, and two stand out as excellent replacements. Swype or Shapewriter. Both use a system where you draw a continuous line through the letters of each word instead of tapping. Both are intuitive and highly useable. Swype has the edge in useability but some prefer ShapeWriter as it can do things like toggle the case (UPPER/lower/Sentence) after a word is written