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I'm a bit OCD when it comes to organizing my itunes library. One of my recent organizational projects is to enter date information for all albums and songs.

There are a few benefits to this. If you have accurate years on everything, you can:
  • View albums in chronological order, both in itunes and on your ipod. This is especially helpful for artists that you have a lot of songs from.
  • Sort any list of songs by year.
  • Create smart playlists by year, decade, etc.
Here's how I do it.

I select all the songs within an album, go to Get Info, and enter the year of release as the Year tag. You'll find that many tracks have the year the CD was released, or re-released, not the year of the original release. When you see Elvis songs from 2004, you know something's wrong!

Here's the best part. For the Album tag, I put the year of release BEFORE the name of the album. Think about it - there's no point in listing albums alphabetically. I want to see them in chronological order so I can tell the early Elvis Costello from recent Costello! So his Spike album would have the following info as the Album tag: "1989 Spike".

The results are incredible. Here's what my Elvis Costello album list looks like:





























If you want to make a playlist of songs from a certain year (or span of years), here's what it would look like.


















Some tips to make this easier:
  • I only attempt this with artists I have a lot of. Someday I'll get around to all the onesies and twosies.
  • I found that a lot of my tracks were from greatest hits collections. There's a tough decision to make - keep the tracks under the "Greatest Hits" album title, or relabel the album tag for each song with the original album it was released on? I use both approaches. If I have just 2-3 albums from an artist, I like to know which ones are on the greatest hits release. But if it's an artist I try to collect all of, like the Beatles, I relabel each track with it's original album release name. EITHER WAY, put the correct year on every track, so it will come up in smart playlists.
Putting in the year info for all these songs is time consuming. Here's the most efficient way I've found to do it:
  • In itunes browse view, with the artist highlighted, I highlight the names of the albums and songs that need year information added.
  • Sort the song list by name, so it's A to Z.
  • In your web browser, go to allmusic.com and pull up the list of all songs by that artist.
  • Go to Get Info for the first song, find it on the allmusic list, and type in the album name. Don't worry about the year yet, and don't enter OK.
  • Click Next (or use the keyboard shortcut - Apple N on the Mac - to go to the next song. Flip back and forth between the browser and itunes (or line them up side by side on the screen) until all the album names are entered. Use "Unknown" or "Other" for any odd tracks. Using "next" saves time, so you don't have to keep going back to the list of songs and clicking on Get Info.
  • When this is done, pull up the artist's discography on allmusic.com, and find the years for each album. Back in itunes, highlight all the songs on an album, go to Get Info, and enter the year tag, and insert the year before the album name. While you're here, you might want to copy the album art from the AllMusic album page, and paste it into itunes on the appropriate spot in Get Info.
  • If you are doing a lot of these and you set up both windows on your screen side by side so you don't have to flip back and forth, you can do this pretty quickly.
That's it. I've been working on it sporadically for a year and I'm far from done, but it's gradually getting there. Good luck.

Comments and feedback appreciated.

Kevin Dern
www.kevindern.com

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Silverkeeper
Backup software. Easy to use, works flawlessly. You are backing up on a weekly basis, right? Free.
link
















SlimBattery Monitor
Useful little utility that reduces the size of the battery icon in the menu bar, and shows more information. Free. link






Quicksilver
Amazing interface for the mac that allows you to open programs and execute actions with a couple keystrokes. Hard to learn, amazing to use. Free. link









Graphic Converter

This is a powerful graphics program. Great for slideshows, photo editing, renaming, etc. Better than iphoto. It's no photoshop, but it's free. Free. link







Write Room
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Netflix Freak

If you're a Netflix fan, you'll love this. Edit your queue, browse movies and more within a clean, OS X interface. Free. link








Audacity
Audio editor. I use this mostly to extract songs from podcasts and save them as MP3 files. Free. link










Disc Inventory X
Allows you to view how you are using up your hard drive. Shows each file as a small box. Helps you to see how you're using up all those gigabytes. Easy to use and free. link







Mac the Ripper
This program will allow you to rip most DVDs to your hard drive. You'll need another program to burn your DVDs. I use Toast, which is not free, but works great. Mac the Ripper is free. link













VLC Media Player
Allows you to play FLV files that you download from YouTube or GoogleVideo, as well as lots of other video formats. Free. Link









Gawker
This is a useless but fun little program that takes photos from your built-in isight camera and makes them into a time lapse video. Free. link














Google Earth
No explanation necessary, right? If you haven't played with this yet, prepare to be blown away. Free. link










Gmail Notifier
If you use gmail, you'll love this. A little icon sits in the menu bar and tells you when you have mail. Free. link





Limewire
The only P2P program I'll use. No spam, no spyware. Free. link








Renamer4Mac
I love OS X, but renaming files is a pain. This program makes it easy to rename batch files. Free. link









Stuffit Expander
Essential utility to decompress sit and zip files. Free. link











YamiPod

This program allows you to easily access ipod files without itunes. This makes it easy to copy songs from your ipod to your mac (or from a friend's ipod!). Free. link








Firefox
In my opinion, Firefox is the best browser available. It's definitely better (and more customizable) than Safari. If you've never tried it, you owe it to yourself. Seriously. Free. link






Click here for a list of addictive Flash Games

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Over the last few years, we've seen lots of guesses, "leaked" photos, mockups and ideas about what the iphone and widescreen video ipod would look like. Turns out they were all wrong. Here's a look back at what people imagined.

Giant collection of photos here from our-picks.com

Lots of photos from the iphoneblog

Some iphone guesses on Gizmodo

More iphone guesses on Gizmodo (2005)


More iphone guesses on Gizmodo

More from Gizmodo

Gizmodo Spoofed

MacRumors page of iphone patents

iphone concept video (wrong)

More concepts (all wrong)

Another guess?


Another

Brilliant concept using apple remote

Widescreen video ipod guess
Another
Another
Another
Another






























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Diet Before and After Photos (Inspiring!)
One, Two, Three, Four, Five

How Many Calories am I Burning?
Calorie Calculator

BMI Chart

Diet and Fitness Tracking Sites
The Daily Plate
Fitday

3FatChicks.com
Great reference, but even better forums for dieters. Best place to chat about weight loss.

How Many Calories in this Food? (Calorie King)
Excellent reference.

The "Cost" of a Cookie (MSNBC)
To burn off the calories in one gingerbread cookie, you will have to swim 18 minutes. The martini and party mix will take 47 minutes on the bike.

Exercise = Weight Loss, Except When it Doesn't (NY Times)
On one hand, you may have heard that exercise is not very useful for knocking off extra pounds, though it helps to maintain weight. Or you may have heard that only weight-bearing exercise — like jogging or brisk walking — can help you lose those unwanted pounds, while activities like swimming and cycling are not helpful as far as weight goes. At other times you may have wondered why, after you took up activities that were supposed to burn 500 calories a day, you failed to lose that pound a week.

Exercise Demo Videos for Each Muscle Group

Weight Loss Blogs

Top 10 Tips to Lose Weight without Losing Your Mind
Water, Water, Water. We all know how important water is to our body. It helps flush your system and makes you feel full.

10 Things Your Gym Won't Tell You

Men Join the Migration to the Spa (NY Times)
"About half of our customers are now men," said Marika Olsen, a spokeswoman for the Pritikin Longevity Center and Spa in Aventura, Fla. The cost for a week ranges from about $3,000 to $5,000, depending on the room and the season. In the past, many men attended only when prodded by their wives. "Now we are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of men who are coming on their own," Ms. Olsen said.

How do you lose a large amount of weight and keep it off? (Ask Metafilter)

How to Eat Right (eHow)

I.Ate.A.Pie.Net
A Guy reviews diet foods.

50 Weight Loss Tips
Start reading labels. I know it sucks, but you have to do it - and there’s no way to avoid this tip. If you don’t know what you’re putting in your mouth, you’re flying blind.

11 Tips to Boost Your Metabolism

BMI Calculator

Glass Size can Affect How Much you Drink (Cornell Univ)
Beware of the shape of glass you use. It could contribute to you drinking much more than you think.

Amazon's Best Selling Books on Diet and Nutrition

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Part 1


Part 2


Part 3
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