In our last installment of “Essential Software” we’ll look at photo editing and management software. There are only two products I’ve ever needed when it comes to this task. One has been around forever, and one is a relative newcomer. The first one is ThumbsPlus by Cerious Software. They have put together a great package to manage all your images in your already created folders and it has some very advanced tasks that make your life easier. For example, you can batch process many images at once. If you like the way they do red eye removal, click a whole folder and apply the filter to it. The latest version of their software goes for $49.95 and is well worth it.

The second image management program I’d like to draw attention to is Picasa which was purchased by Google sometime last year. This software is free and works very fast for thumbnailing and browsing pictures. I also prefer Picasa’s web page wizard over the more complex (yet more powerful) offering by Cerious. It is really just 2 steps to get a page ready to be put online. The Picasa interface itself is very friendly and its easy to use. You can grab this software over at Google.

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I’ve changed my gadget lineup! The Nano has now taken it’s place as my MP3 player of choice, dethroning the awesome U2 Color iPod. The U2 ipod, with it’s 20GB hard drive was just getting to be too big to carry around. I also found myself skip-skip-skipping songs so often that I’d ask myself, “Why the hell do I have that album on here!?”. The size also became noticable when I attached the Bluetooth headphone adapter (review to follow) which seriously added to the bulk of the overall mp3 package.
So, I figured if Apple had Nano’s in stock, I’ll pick one up. Sure enough, they had just gotten some in. I grabbed one and a pack of cases and rushed home to see what all the fuss was about. WOW, this player works just like its big brother but is small enough to sit undetected in a shirt pocket. I grabbed a bunch of MP3’s of stuff I really wanted to spend time listening to and I ended up filling the Nano with maybe 350MB to spare. Perfect! I am also trying out iTunes instead of Anapod this time around, just to see how the experience compares. So far i’m very pleased. Some features that were missing last time I tried iTunes are now here, and I also have up to date podcast support which is a nice touch. I picked up a 3 pack of rubberized sleeves with screen protection and they work fine, although orange is not my favorite color. My only gripe is that Firewire connectivity is not supported, which is funny because original ipods ONLY used firewire and here we are supporting ONLY usb, but thats ok. My other accessories work fine and charging via Firewire still works. I just hope I dont lose it!

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I’m not a big fan of online music stores. They all want total control of your system and all media related files contained in it. No thanks. Like many people, i have a large collection of MP3’s that I want to put on my iPod, no fuss, no itunes. First of all, you may need to install the iPod driver, to see whether or not you need this, plug your ipod into your pc. If you see a new drive letter with the ipod folders on it, you’re all set, you dont need anything. Next, I recommend using Anapod from RedChairSoftware. This is a management interface for your ipod thats integrated into your explorer. It is much more powerful than itunes, manages the files directly located on the ipod, not on your pc. You dont have to worry about what songs are “synced” or not. This software also has increased playlist creation capabilities that you simply wont get on iTunes. Leave your MP3’s on that 300GB drive, sorted by name, and tagged how you like, Anapod doesn’t care! Drag them onto the anapod icon and bam, they fly onto the device.

Now that we have our MP3 collection onthe ipod, what happens when we buy another CD? We use Easy CD DA Extractor from Poikosoft to rip the audio to our computer, all tagged and ready to go. This has been the benchmark that other ripping software has been measured up against. I’ve been using it for many revisions, and it works flawlessly.

If you have messed up tags, and I’m sure you do, or if you want to update tags or add album art for those color iPods, check out Tag and Rename. It’s perfect for doing all things tag related. Check out their software over at Softpointer.com.

After writing all these, I didn’t realize how much work I actually put into saving, organizing and playing my personal audio files. I plan on trying itunes, just so I can make a direct comparison. Maybe I was wrong? I guess we’ll find out…

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