- Hulu is a very popular service for watching movies and TV shows online but it a service for US residents only. Like with anything on the Internet there is always a way around and that's exactly where Hotspot Shield comes in. This app lets you watch Hulu movies and TV show episodes online. It's free and works both on Mac and Windows PCs. It doesn't require any technical skills either. [via MakeUseOf]
- Top 5 Facebook Applications That Don't Suck
Do you remember when Facebook was only for college students? It seems so long ago now that anyone and everyone has a Facebook profile. With the addition of website pages, artist pages, and blog tools, I am on Facebook more now than ever. If you have a Facebook profile (as I'm sure most Make Use Of readers do) then you are probably aware of the 20,000 applications that are available. While many of them are pointless, there are some that are quite good. Here are the top 5 Facebook applications that don't totally suck:
1. Scrabulous
Scrabulous is the number one application in my book. I currently play online Scrabble with friends and family members that are located all over the globe. When I was growing up, Scrabble was always a game I enjoyed playing with my grandparents. Now that my grandparents are on Facebook, I can still play Scrabble with them via Scrabulous.
The Where I've Been application is interesting in the fact that you can share with others where you have visited, lived, and where you want to visit. You can compare maps with your friends and see where they have lived and visited. Where I've Been is not just limited to countries, it also has all the US States, Canadian Provinces, and other international regions.
As a poker fan, I use this application all the time. I especially like that this application allows you to see if any of your friends or people in your network are currently playing. If you see someone you know is currently playing, you can join their table and even chat with them inside the game. One of the newest features actually allows you to create private tables with only people you know. One of the only drawbacks to this game is you're only given a certain amount of chips every day, so you can't keep losing and reloading your chips all day.
4. iLike
This application allows you to share your favourite music and music videos on your profile. You can also dedicate a song to friends. This is great to use with your significant other or for making fun of your buddies. Think you know music better than your friends? If so, compete with them in the iLike Music Challenge. Are you going to a concert soon? Let your friends know and see if any of them are also going with this application. The only downside is if you load lots of songs and music videos to your profile it can take a long time to load. If this is the case you can always use iLike.com
5. Flog Blog
If you are a blogger and want to want to link your Facebook profile and blog, this is the application for you. Flog Blog allows your friends to read your blog posts directly from your Facebook profile. Now I know you are probably worried about it taking traffic away from your actual blog, but don't worry there are permalinks to your site. The great thing about this application is whenever you make a new post it will show up in your news feed. Flog Blog automatically updates via your RSS feed so that it includes your most recent posts. You can completely customize this application to display your posts exactly how you want. [via MakeUseOf]
- Organize And Manage Your Music Collection With MediaMonkey
MediaMonkey is a full-featured music player and music collection organizer. It can convert audio, automatically rename your files, find duplicates and missing tags, create and save playlists, generate statistical reports and more!
Believe it or not, MediaMonkey comes with many FREE features that make it easy to organize your music collection and enjoy the latest Gnarls Barkley or Beethoven. If you are throwing a party (wild, crazy, or otherwise), just set the "Party Mode" and you don't have to worry about your friends and guests changing the playlist.
Why do I need MediaMonkey?
If you are like me and have gigs upon gigs of music but lack the technical knowhow (or patience) to manually edit the ID3 tags or download album covers, MediaMonkey is one of the best products on the market. It is easy to use and intuitive.
Do you have an iPod? Does iTunes make you want to scream and go running for the hills? MediaMonkey has built-in iPod support, so it just takes a couple of clicks and you can send music to your iPod and manage your iPod easily. You can also sync MP3 phones (like my LG Rumor) or other music players, too.
Are you into personalization? I am and MediaMonkey's community has skins (themes) available for just about every personality out there - and if you are into coding, you can build your own skins!
To sum it up, MediaMonkey does everything other players do, and more - for FREE.
Okay, you've convinced me, how do I get MediaMonkey?
Download MediaMonkey from its website - and for those power users who need faster CD/DVD burning capabilities, advanced timers, a sleep timer and more, the MediaMonkey "Gold" upgrade is $19.95.
Now that you've gotten MediaMonkey, let's try updating our music collections!
Find Missing Album Art and ID3 Tags for your collection!
- In the folder-tree section on the left side, go to My Computer > My Documents (Documents) and Music (or the folder containing your music files).
- Select your "Music" folder, then select the "All" button. All of your music files will appear in the window. Your music files will appear in the main window. Click on the Album column to sort your songs by album.
- Select all the songs in an album. Either click the first song, press SHIFT and select the last song. Or, drag a box around the songs, like you do in Windows.
- Press CTRL L to launch MediaMonkey's Auto-Tag from Amazon feature. Wait a few seconds and you should see the artwork and track list for your album. Sometimes, the feature doesn't pull the correct information from Amazon, but don't despair - just clear the search field and manually enter the album name. You can also select the "down" arrow next to the album name and see if there are any other matches.
- Click the Auto-Tag button, let MediaMonkey do its magic and abracadabra! MediaMonkey adds embedded album art to your selected music tracks, as well as updated ID3 tag information - artist name, album, release date, record label and track names!
- Now,give yourself a pat on the back, get a drink of water, and repeat for all of your albums. Yes, this might take a while, but it is WELL worth it, don't you think!?!
Further manage and enjoy your music collection with MediaMonkey!
When you right click on a selected album or song, you can find a whole set of features to help you further manage your music collection.
This includes basics like "Play" and "Play Next", but also an option to "Send to." a playlist, folder, music player or email!
My favourite feature is the "Get Info/Buy" - you can chose your local Amazon or CD Universe to purchase songs or albums or Google, Wikipedia or the Library to get more information on an artist or album.
I also like to rate songs, and make playlists with just 5 star songs and send to my friends or family.
Overall, MediaMonkey's powerful tools can be enjoyable to use for everyone from music collectors old and new. Even without the MediaMonkey "Gold" option, users can manage their collections easily - and personalize the program to fit their personal preferences through drag and drop components to plugins and skins. [via MakeUseOf]
Ed. I'm a MediaMonkey user and for me it has a couple of rarely mentioned features which are real important to me. They are:
1. the inbuilt utility to normalise track/album volume levels. Other utilities I have used have distorted the odd track on playback but the inbuilt utility in MediaMonkey has a 100% success record so far with zero tracks distorted after normalisation
2. the inbuilt CD burning utility allows you to easily create folders and also burn tracks in the order you want, not by default, alphabetically on 'Artist Name'
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