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If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of time trying to keep your music collection backed up. If your library is relatively small, you can use iTunes 7’s built-in backup to burn to DVD. Thats all fine and dandy unless you have a large collection. In my case I need to keep my iTunes library on an external hard drive due to my Macbook’s hard drive being too small to support it. This poses a problem as now I need an additional external hard drive just to back up my music. I would buy an iPod and keep everything sync’d to there but I’m waiting for the 120GB Widescreen video before taking that route.

This is were Mp3tunes.com comes in. They are now offering unlimited storage for free accounts. This means I can sync my entire iTunes music library and now have it backed up to an offsite server for free. Plus I can sync my library with other computers and stream my entire library wherever I have an internet connection.

You use a program called Oboe Sync that scans your collection and will only uploads what has been added or changed. There is a Oboe Sync client for Windows, Mac and Linux so no one is left out. There are also plugins for iTunes, Mac and PC, and Winamp that allows streaming of your locker. In the case of the iTunes plugin, you see your locker show up under the Shared music source list. Files are streamed at 128kbps so its CD quality.

While everything sounds perfect. There are some caveats:

1) It only sync’s music, no video files so any iTunes TV shows or Movies you have, you still need to back those up on your own. It will sync DRM’d music tho.
2) Syncing takes along time. This is due to your internet connection. Upload speeds tend to be a lot slower than download. For a 42GB library, I’ve been syncing for about a week on and off.
3) The Obeo plugin for iTunes (Mac) is not Universal binary yet.
4) All new free accounts do not have unlimited storage right away. They are adding the unlimited storage to free accounts in waves. It took me about a week after I signed up before my account was converted to unlimited.

If you’re looking for a way to backup your music collection, look no father. The price is right, free, and you have the added bonus of being able to stream your music anywhere and keep multiple computers sync’d with the same library.

[Sign up now]

Mint, the web site analytics program, recently was upgraded to version 2.0. You can check out the changes here.

With all the hype about the new upgrade, I decided to take a look at it again. I had passed over Mint for Google Analytics and Performancing due to Mint needing to be run locally and costing money. Well, Performancing is dead and Google Analytics just isn’t that good for tracking blog stats. This afternoon i downloaded the Mint Server Compatibility Suite and lo’ and behold, my server can handle Mint like a champ. So I took the plug and dropped my $30 for the package.

I didn’t want to wait until I got home so I ended up install the package from work. Only problem with work is, our proxy blocks port 21 so I couldn’t FTP the files onto my server. I ended up using the web-based file manager that my host provides. It wasn’t ideal but I did get it copied over and installed. The installation was a breeze. One of the easiest web packages I’ve every installed. Even easier than Wordpress was.

Instead of editing header files, I went the plugin route and installed WP Mint to take care of the javascript. After everything was up and running, I installed some Pepper(addon’s for Mint). I only ended up keeping User Agent 007 for now. Bird Feeder looks nice but I’m currently using Feedburner to track RSS subscriptions. If I can figure out how to properly setup Wordpress RSS feeds with Bird Feeder, I may switch. It would nice having everything all in one place. I did finally install the WP Feedburner Plugin tonight and removed all the hacky .htaccess stuff that I was using for Feedburner. WP Feedburner Plugin makes everything nice and neat and easy to deactivate if I decide to go with Bird Feeder in the future.

If anyone knows what I need to do to make Bird Feeder play nice with Wordpress, leave a comment.

I rely heavily on RSS feeds to get my daily fix of news. As you can see above, I don’t read a ridiculous amount of feeds but enough to keep me busy most of the day. One of the problems I’m starting to notice is that I’m spending a lot of time online just to keep up. I’m not sure how other people use RSS but i read everything that comes in. Maybe not “read” it all but definitely skim over the article. In the last 30 days, I’ve read over 24,000 articles. Thats a lot of reading and a lot of time invested to not fall behind. This reared its ugly head during my trip to Macworld this year. The internet at the hotel was so bad it was just about unusable unless it was early in the morning. So while I tried to keep up on stuff, I fell behind to the tune of about 3,000 unread items by the time I got home. It took me hours to just get through everything and catch up.

I’m finding I want to be doing more stuff on and off the computer but feel tied to my RSS reader. Catch up on podcasts, blog, World of Warcraft, watch TV shows, Netflix, workout, play my Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, photography etc. I work nights so my time is split up between before work and after so I can’t just do a lot of stuff.

I’ve been bouncing around news readers for awhile, Bloglines, Newsgator, NetNewsWire, endo, NewsFire, Google Reader to name a few in the past months. I’ve settled on Google Reader due to its web interface so I can access my feeds from both home and work. It’s missing some nice features of desktop clients but its ability to be “everywhere once” outweighs everything else. One feature I missed was Dinosaurs in NetNewsWire. Basically It showed outdated feeds that haven’t updated in awhile.

Enter Google Reader Trends.

It shows statistics based on your feeds. This includes what your reading, what your starring and what your sharing along with subscription based stats such as frequently read and inactive. Inactive is what I’ve been missing. It shows me the Top 10, 20 and 40 feeds that haven’t been updated.

So starting today I’m going to “trim the fat” as they say. I’m going to start deleting feeds that I don’t really need or want to keep up on. This should help me feel less tied down and hopefully free up some more time do so other things. I’m also going to start using the Sharing feature in Google Reader to share what I find interesting. You can see my Shared page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17007536064916393533. You can even subscribe to it to keep up to date.

My current OPML file is up on Share your OPLM if you’re interested in what feeds i read. This is the original file I will be trimming. I’ll post my new file when I’m finished.

Geekdrome is no more. Dan Trachtenberg left a post of the Revision3 forums today stating he was leaving Geekdrome.

I’m actually kinda floored by this. Geekdrome was the one thing I looked forward to each week. I just started watching it again about two months ago and because of it I have since subscribed to Netflix so I can watch more movies, started watching Battlestar Galactic and started reading comics again just from watching Geekdrome.

Wow. This sucks.

From the current forum posts, Jonathan London looks to be starting a new show of under Revison3 so keep you eyes on the geekdrome forums for an announcement soon.

Face it, Myspace is dead. Don’t believe me? Bookmark this post and come back in 1 year. You probably wont even have a Myspace account any longer. Its gotten so bad that i deleted my account. Most sites i lost interest in, I just leave and forget about but not Myspace. I want to rid myself of every part of it. It have because so overrun with 16 year olds, bots and advertisements its unbearable.

So with Myspace dead, where do we go now? Facebook looks like the next logical step. Its already had a strong following but now anyone can sign up, not just students. Simple interface with lots of features like photos, bookmarking and notes, its a welcome improvement from Myspace.

As for me? You can find me where all the cool kids hang out over at Last.fm.

“Lik-Sang.com, the popular gaming retailer from Hong Kong, has today announced that it is forced to close down due to multiple legal actions brought against it by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.”

Wow, this sucks. I didn’t see this one coming at all. Lik-Sang was my importer of choice since day one and I’m going to miss them. Looks like Play-Asia.com is my new #1.

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