10 Daily Things

Did you ever wonder how iTunes or other media players know so much about the files they’re playing? I mean, you’ve got a file with a name like “my-cool-audio-file.mp3″ but when you load it into your player, it tells you that it’s actually “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” from The Beatles’ White Album. This bit of data sleight-of-hand is accomplished though the use of an “id3 tag”, a bit of meta-data that many media files carry along with the actual content of the file itself. This meta data includes information about the title and number of the track, the artist, the album, and more.

If you need to tweak this information, or maybe add more to it, you need a tool to access it. That’s where ToeTag comes in.

Named, unfortunately perhaps, after the coroner’s favorite means of identification, ToeTag lets you add, edit, or delete meta information stored in your media files. Add a track name, correct a misspelling, or even enter information about the bitrate of the recording, or the composer of the piece. You can also grab song information on-line from the free tracktype.org server.

ToeTag works on Windows Vista and Windows XP with .NET 2.0.

Download Toe Tag >>>

CRON-O-Meter is free, open source, and cross-platform (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) dieting software written in Java. It is a fully featured nutrition and biomarker tracking tool. Designed for practitioners of Caloric Restriction (CRON) Diets.

CR (Calorie Reduced) diets require a lot of information to perform optimally. In order to restrict caloric intake, but remain healthy, users of the diet must track their vitamin, mineral, and protein intakes with great care.

We aim to provide a complete solution to the CR dieter. Current open-source diet-tracking applications fall short in some vital respects. Either they are not detailed enough, or they suffer from critical usability flaws. We believe that a diet tracker must be effortless to operate for the activity for which it will be used most of the time, keeping track of the foods eaten in a particular meal.

To this end, we are developing CRON-O-Meter, an application that will take into account good usability design and dense functionality. It will provide diet advice, track consumption and exercise, and generally assist in all aspects of a CR diet.

Download CRON-O-Meter >>>

Microsoft has released a new version of its free virtualization sotware with support for the latest Microsoft operating system updates. Virtual PC 2007 SP1 includes support for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 as host and guest operating systems. That means you can run the virtualization environment if you’re using those operating systems, or if you want to emulate them. Microsoft also threw in Windows Server 2008 Standard for good measure.

Like its predecessor, Virtual PC 2007 SP1 does not officially support Windows XP Home Edition or Windows Vista Home Premium or Home Basic. But for the most part, it will run just fine on those operating systems. You will, however, get a warning message telling you that you’re using an unsupported OS when you install the software.

Download Virtual PC 2007 SP1 >>>

BumpTop is a fresh and engaging new way to interact with your computer desktop. You can pile and toss documents like on a real desk. Break free from the rigid and mechanical style of standard point-and-click desktops. Interact by pushing, pulling and piling documents with elegant, self revealing gestures. BumpTop’s stunning interface makes clever use of 3D presentation and smooth physics-based animations for an engaging, vivid user experience.

BumpTop is not publicly available just yet, because it is in private beta at the moment, but you can sign up for the mailing list to be the first to try it.

[BumpTop]

TagScanner is a multifunction program to organize large music collections. It can edit tags of mostly state-of-the-art audio formats, rename files based on the tag information, generate tag information from filenames, and perform any transformations of the text from tags and filenames. Also you may get album info via online databases like freedb or Amazon. Supports ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis comments, APEv2, WindowsMedia and MP4(iTunes) tags. Powerful TAG editor with batch functions and special features. Playlist maker with ability to export playlists to HTML or Excel. Easy-to-use interface. Built-in player.

Download TagScanner >>>