HELP DESK
I'm a big music lover and would like to collect my music collection on an external hard disk in MP3 format. Do you know a good program that would help me convert my audio cassettes and vinyl into MP3, and is there a significant difference in listening quality between MP3s at 256KB and 128KB?
What is at this moment the most popular web site(s) to get/exchange MP3 files?
In case you wrote a whole article on this during the last few months and I missed it, it would be great if you could just send it to me.
MARC
Chiang Mai
Database replies: Wanda Sloan replies: There is no program that will convert old media to digital. Rather, you need old equipment - a turntable and some sort of cassette player - that will connect to your computer. As you play your old music, you can use software to capture the sound and save it in digital format. By far the easiest program to do that is Audacity, an open source audio program with huge compatibility. It is available at audacity.sourceforge.net. That said, there are commercial programs that advertise they can capture incoming audio, separate it out, and the like. Speaking personally, I haven't seen one you can leave unattended. If I have to sit there and do the work anyhow, I would use Audacity.
So far as MP3s go, there is a difference between any two given qualities, but I think "significant" is in the ear of the listener. Indeed, "listening quality" depends on the hardware as much as your ears, perhaps more. Some people, in fact, argue strongly that once you convert CD-quality audio to MP3, you have degraded the quality so badly it really doesn't matter any longer.
Exchanging MP3 files online can be illegal, and we don't provide a lot of news about the specifics of that. There are many peer-to-peer programs available if you want to get involved. These days, the actual exchange takes place on your own disk and computer, so you want to bear that in mind if you decide to participate in file-sharing. It is possible that you could be breaking the law if you place commercial, copyright material in a place where others can access them on the Internet.
However, there are many sites where you can purchase music and other MP3 files. The bad news is that the major ones do not accept customers from Thailand, because of licensing restrictions by the so-called music industry (the 10-percenters, not the musicians and writers). The biggest music sellers are iTunes, Wal-Mart and Amazon. Download.com gives access to thousands of free MP3s for free download, as well as many more commercial songs, most of which (again) you will not be able to legally purchase.
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Managing documents
I very much enjoy reading your weekly supplement in the Bangkok Post and in particular Wanda Sloan's replies to reader queries.
I wonder if she can help me with a reply? I am very keenly interested in family history (genealogy) and have amassed a large amount of material (on computer) over many years comprising mainly certificates, letters, hand written notes, printed copy articles, newspaper cuttings and numerous drawn family trees. My problem is to find a suitable indexing program (say, underlining each name to be indexed; or some other method) and wonder if you can help.
MIKE GRIFFIN
Database replies: Wanda Sloan replies: I have to read between the lines a bit on your query. I have to know about the types and formats of files you have, and I can only guess that they are in a number of formats including text, but also including a lot of photo-type formats such as JPEG and Bitmap.
Even text management is not simple, and document-image management can be complicated, time-consuming and expensive.
You can index and find text on your computer relatively easily, and for free. Most people like the Google Desktop (desktop.google.com). Personally, however, I prefer Copernic Desktop Search, which you can find at http://www.copernic.com.
For images, however, there is no easy answer, especially for home PCs. The most popular systems these days is to convert all images to PDF format, which then may be able to be indexed, emphasis on "may". Alternatively, you can use optical character recognition software to read the words from those images, put them in text files and use the desktop search engine to find them. Most scanners come with free OCR software, and a Google search for "OCR download" will turn up many possibilities. IT departments call them "document management systems," and they can be very large and, of course, expensive.
Proper management of image-type documents is still a developing field, especially at the one-person, PC-owner end. You will certainly have to pay. Just for example, a company called Open Mind Solutions has a program called ActiveQuality to manage documents, and it costs $1,300. I am not recommending this software, only using it as an example.
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