One Tip A Day » Apple

Save Money On 0870 Calls With iPhone App

Tony Williams — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:29:41 +0000

In the UK, there are numbers that begin with 0870 where you pay a set rate per min if you call from a landline, regardless with where you are. However, if you dial an 0870 number from a mobile it typically costs a lot more – not only do 0870 numbers not come out of call allowances, but they can cost x3 more than normal calls.

Thanks to the efforts of Simon Maddox and his free 0870 app, iPhone and Android users can now save money on their 0870 calls. How much? Well Simon estimates that his app has saved users over $400k in under a month.

Hows does 0870 do it? Well what this cool app does is try to find an alternative number for the company you are trying to call, that will cost less and will probably come out of your call allowance. If it finds an alternative number then the 0870 app dials that number instead! Not surprisingly the app took over 400 days to be approved by Apple, although Apple are alleged to have accused O2 and BT of blocking app.

More: iPhone App Store

Synchronize MP3 Players & Phones With iTunes Using iTunes Agent

Tony Williams — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:45:14 +0000

I currently use MediaMonkey to manage my music collection as personally I think it’s a better mp3 player than iTunes, with better tag, library, playlist and all round sexiness than iTunes. However, there are many who disagree and prefer to use iTunes.

If you are one of those, but want to sync another device like your PSP with iTunes then check out iTunes Agent. This free service allows mp3 players to be used with iTunes like an iPod.

It’s not the easiest to setup, but once installed iTunes Agent will allow you to manage your device directly from within iTunes.

More: iTunes Agent

How To Get $200 Back If You Just Got An iPhone

Tony Williams — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:45:39 +0000

After whipping half of America into a frenzy with the iPhone launch, Apple have just dropped the price of the 8GB iPhone by $200 or 1/3….not nice given that the iPhone has only been around for 2 months.

All is not lost if you’ve purchased your iPhone within the last 14 days, as Apple’s return policy states:

Should Apple reduce its price on any Apple-branded product within fourteen (14) calendar days of the date of purchase, you may request a refund of the difference between the price paid and the current selling price. An original purchase receipt is required, and you must request your refund within fourteen (14) calendar days of the price reduction.

So, if you splashed out on a 8GB iPod in the last 14 days then hurry on down to your local Apple or AT&T store to get your $200 refund. Be quick – the clock is ticking.

Download Music, Movies And TV Shows From iTunes For Free!

Tony Williams — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:39:46 +0000

I’ve stopped buying music and movies from iTunes as I hate the DRM issues. However, if you follow these great tips from Amit you will be able to download free Music and Movies From iTunes. I would move quickly on this one as I’m sure iTunes will close the loophole soon!

Step 1: Start iTunes software and open the iTunes Store by pressing Ctrl+Shift+H or click here.

Step 2: Open the Music Videos, Movies, TV Shows or Music link depending on the stuff you plan to download from the iTunes store.

Step 3: Create a new playlist in iTunes and name that as “_Phobos__Dnldstr_36c_” [replace the underscores with spaces, there's another space at the begining and one at end]

Step 4: Drag-n-drop all the music videos, films and TV episodes that you want to download to the above folder playlist in iTunes.

Step 5: Export the above list as an XML file which will have links to download the shows from iTunes without paying any fee. If you don’t see the download links in the iTunes XML file, make sure that you have created the playlist in Step 3 correctly.

10 Tricks To Play On Your New iPhone

Tony Williams — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:00:44 +0000

The web is buzzing about the new iPhone and rightly so, as it revolutionary and sexy at the same time, and well worthy of the Apple label. As I obviously don’t have one yet I can’t post any iPhone tips, but here are ‘10 Tricks I’d Like To Play On An iPhone’ which I posted to the Connected Internet Forums (I’ve also submitted it to Digg)

1. Spin the iPhone

“iPhone’s accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display, so you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio.”

See how fast you can rotate the iPhone before the operating system simply gives up trying to reorient what’s on the screen.

2. Grease the iPhone

It’s a touchscreen, man, but you just know that after your morning coffee and doughnut and several grovelling calls to the boss that you might have trouble getting your iPhone to understand your gestures. See how much gunk you can get on the screen before you (a) can’t control the screen and (b) can’t read it anyway.

3. “Venus fly trap effect” for your iPhone

“The proximity sensor detects when you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until iPhone is moved away.”

Go on, wave it about near your ear and see how many times it tries to save power and ‘prevent inadvertent touches’ before it just gives up and goes to sleep (or cracks open on your skull)

4. Install Office 2008 on your iPhone

Yeah, baby, Universal Office 2008 is coming around the same time as the iPhone (Stateside anyway). And the iPhone runs OS X right? So put this tiny, happy little application on ’cause you know how much fun typing a Word document on the soft keyboard is going to be, don’t you? And Microsoft and Mac get on so well…

5. Install Windows Vista on your iPhone

Next step up from #4. Hey, why not give it a go? Just because two-year-old PCs will struggle to get the best out of the Vista monster, doesn’t mean your Intel iPhone can’t have a go at running it. Wonder if Aero’ll work?

6. Teach your iPhone new gestures

Some smart-arse developer is going to find out a way to abuse the gesturing-with-your-fingers system and come up with some new interesting ways of controlling the iPhone. Worked for getting the motion detectors on the PowerBooks to flip screens, anyway.

7. Photo feedback loop overload

Get your iPhone to take a photo every second, email it to your Yahoo IMAP account (via your free wi-fi connection of course), then have Yahoo push that email back to you. See how long before that exciting digital flickbook you’ve just created eats up the 4 or 8GB storage.

8. Send rude audio files to a Zune user

Tricky one. First, find a Zune user. Then send him a cleverly concocted iTunes insult (a fart or something’ll do if you can’t be more creative) over wi-fi. OK, so the incompatible DRM could send one or t’other of them into meltdown (my money’s on Billy Zune) but it’s worth a go.

9. Widget overdrive!

See how many pointless OS X widgets you can cram onto the device. You know the ones – weird animations, quotes of the day from people you’ve never heard of, Sudoku – that sort of thing. Then watch iPhone squirm trying to serve them up to you. 3.5 inches of screen isn’t infinite…

10. Interrogate your iPhone

“An ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display’s brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light, thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time.”

Pretend your iPhone has done something very, very bad (called Bill Gates and asked for a laptop PC with Vista installed, for example). Shine a very bright light on it and watch it lose it’s ambience.

How To Add iTunes Artwork To MP3 ID3 Tags Using iTunes

Tony Williams — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 11:45:50 +0000

With iTunes 7, Apple added better support for album artwork. Previously iTunes wouldn’t automatically add artwork if you imported your own tracks. Now with iTunes 7, the program will automatically search the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) for artwork, and if any is available it will add it to your files. The problem is though, iTunes doesn’t add the artwork to the actual ID3 tag within the file that is read when other applications play your mp3s, so the artwork is only visible to iTunes.

I’ve discovered a very quick way of fixing this, which will add the iTunes artwork to your track’s ID3 tag. I prefer using iTunes to add the artwork rather than an external application, as (i) it’s quicker, and (ii) the iTunes artwork is much better quality.

To add album artwork using iTunes do the following:

Find the album you want to add artwork to
Select all the tracks in the album you want to add the iTunes artwork to the ID3 tag
In the bottom left-hand corner click on ’show/hide artwork’
Right-click on the artwork image that is displayed and select ‘copy’
Now right-click on the tracks you’ve highlighted and select ‘Get info’
In the pop-up box that right-click in the artwork field and select ‘paste’

Once you’ve done this iTunes will now add it’s high quality images to the albums ID3 mp3 tags, which will mean that other mp3 players and apps will now be able to display the artwork.

Top 10 FREE MP3 Utiliites That Money Can’t Buy

Tony Williams — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 18:17:48 +0000

I can’t remember the last time I played a CD – in fact I’ve given away most of my CD collection to a friend who had no music. All of music is stored on my computer, which I play either on my iPod or I stream onto my Xbox 360.

One of the problems with a large digital music collection, is that because so many sources have been used to add music (ripping CDs, downloads, bittorrent, iTunes etc) your collection can quickly get quite messy and unless you’re really on the ball with keeping your mp3s nice and tidy, then you can end up not being able to find the track you want to play as its not tagged correctly so you don’t even know which artist is singing a particular song.

Well, never fear. Here are The 10 Best FREE MP3 Utilities That Money Can’t Buy, that will allow you to get the most out of your music collection.

1. MusicBrainz Picard

MusicBrainz Picard is great if you have a really messy music collection. The latest version of Picard incorporates acoustic fingerprinting which will help you identify and tag unknown tracks, so at least you will now know what you are listening to! Tagging your music correctly is vital if you want to add artwork to your mp3s.
More: Musicbrainz Picard

2. The Filter

The Filter is a great iTunes plugin that automatically creates playlists when you select a few songs and click on the big black “F” button. So, rather than randomly browsing through your music collection The Filter can build playlists in seconds to fit your mood.The Filter is particularly great if you have a big music library, or you’ve downloaded a lot of music and you never get around to listening to it all. Now you can create playlists on the fly everyday for free in seconds.

More: The Filter

3. TuneSleeve

iTunes 7 makes a decent attempt at adding artwork, but it can’t add artwork if the ID3 tags are incorrect and it also doesn’t add the artwork to the ID3 tag which will mean the artwork won’t be displayed if you use anything other an iPod, or if you use another mp3 application.

The best way to add artwork without a doubt is TuneSleeve, which is the #1 app for adding artwork to iTunes music. TuneSleeve not only has a very intuitive interface allowing the best artwork to be selected or searched for, but it also adds the art to raw ID3 tag in the mp3 file so that all players can see the artwork.

More: TuneSleeve

4. itunesexport

iTunes is great at creating playlists and managing music, but what happens if you want to use those playlists in WMP or you don’t use a iPod? iTunes Export is the answer as it allows you to export iTunes Playlists to the standard .m3u file format, which nearly every other mp3 player uses. This great free tool lets you decide what playlists to export, and whether or not to include protected files.

More: iTunes Export

5. BadApple

Are you one of those ’special people’ who don’t have an iPod and use a different mp3 player? Well if you are, but you still want to use iTunes which is the best music player around, then this great little application could be the solution. BadApple is a free plugin that allows you to sync your iTunes library with any MP3 player. It works with many popular players including Creative Nomad, Dell DJ, Oakley Thump and Archos.

More: BadApple (link is in German – sorry!)

How To Play iTunes Tracks In Windows XP Media Center Edition

Tony Williams — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 17:37:05 +0000

Windows XP Media Center Edition is great for watching movies and listening to music on your PC. The problem is though, it isn’t compatible with music you have in iTunes, which just happens to be the most popular PC mp3 player. Finally, there is a simple answer. MCETunes allows you to access your itunes music and play it in your living room.

The free version will only play unprotected music that lives in iTunes. The paid edition ($29.99) will play any music bought from the iTunes store. I think the guys are MCETunes haven’t done their research, as most people only have on average about 150 tracks from iTunes Music Store, with the majority of their collections obtained by other means….but, hey, it’s free right??!!

Unfortunately the current version doesn’t work with the Extender built into Xbox 360s, but registered users will receive a free update to an extender-enabled version automatically when it becomes available.

Click here to download MCETunes.

How To Make All Your MP3s Play At The Same Volume

Tony Williams — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:18:51 +0000

Isn’t it annoying sometimes when you are playing back mp3s and the you have to keep dashing for the volume control because the playback volume can differ dramatically from track to track. This can occur particularly for older CDs that weren’t recorded in a modern studio. Although some mp3 players like iTunes try to fix this using ’soundcheck’ to make each track play back at the same volume, they don’t tend to work very well.

The best way of achieving a constant playback volume is to use MP3Gain. MP3Gain adds extra information to the tags within the mp3 file to ensure that all tracks have the same volume. It does this by using an algorithm to calculate how loud the file actually sounds to a human’s ears. It also does this in a lossless way so it doesn’t impact the quality of your music files, and the modifications are fully reversible if you don’t like the results.
To use MP3Gain on your music collection do the following:

(I) Download and install the latest version of MP3Gain

(II) Once installed select the following options:

Options -> Add subfolders
Options -> Preserve file date/time
Options -> Don’t clip when doing Track Gain Options

(III) Now click on ‘add folder’ or ‘add file’ in the header to add your music files

(IV) Now you need to apply gain. There are two ways of doing this. You can either analyse each track (‘Track Gain’)individually to increase/decrease the volume to your target level. Or, you can analyse each album and apply the gain to the whole album so that the albums average volume hits your target level. I prefer applying ‘Album Gain’ as Artists often deliberately make some tracks louder or quieter. If you don’t tend to listen to complete albums at a time then ‘Track Gain’ is for you.

Track Gain: If ‘Track Gain’ isn’t displayed on your toolbar, click the drop-down next to ‘Album Gain’ and select ‘Track Gain’. Then click the ‘Track Gain’ button and let it run (note: for large libraries this could take a while).
Album Gain: If ‘Album Gain’ isn’t displayed on your toolbar, click the drop-down next to ‘Track Gain’ and select ‘Album Gain’. Then click the ‘Album Gain’ button and let it run (note: for large libraries this could take a while).

(V) Clipping: If you are lucky, then you won’t need to do this last stage. “Clipping” is when the music hits max volume and gets distorted. This can be present in a file before the gain was calculated, and sometimes applying gain can introduce clipping.

If any of your tracks have a “Y” under the ‘clip(Track)’ or ‘clip(album)’ columns then click ‘Modify Gain’ in the menu bar , and select ‘Apply Max-No-clip Gain for Album‘. This will physically apply the album gain changes to the file(s).
One final note. If you are a iTunes user, I would recommend turning SoundCheck off. Not only does MP3Gain do a much better job, if you use Soundcheck on files that were already in your music library and you’ve just applied gains, iTunes calculations will now be out. If you’re determined to use SoundCheck, you’ll need to reimport your files again and let iTunes do it’s initial analysis (WARNING – YOU WILL LOSE PLAYLISTS, RATINGS AND PLAYCOUNTS!)

16 Top Tips For Your iPod

Tony Williams — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 23:14:38 +0000

Love them or hate them, they’re here to stay. Apple’s iPod is the top mp3 player on the market by far and 80% of us have one. To get more out of your iPod and mp3 collection, then check out these cool tips. Ranging from how to prolong battery life to how to copy songs from an iPod to how to merge two songs into one, the article’s selection is certainly worth a read.

Read Tips now

How To Use iTunes With Other MP3 Players

Tony Williams — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:22:33 +0000

Are you one of those ’special people’ who don’t have an iPod and use a different mp3 player?

Well if you are, but you still want to use iTunes which is the best music player around, then this great little application could be the solution. BadApple is a free plugin that allows you to sync your iTunes library with any MP3 player. It works with many popular players including Creative Nomad, Dell DJ, Oakley Thump and Archos.

You won’t be able to use it to play tracks purchased from iTunes, but all other tracks will be ok. To setup BadApple follow the instructions below:

Download and run the setup application. You must already have iTunes software installed. (Get this from iTunes.com if you don’t have it.)
After installing BadApple, open iTunes software as you normally would and click on the “Music Store” link in the left hand column
You will see the new features added to the main iTunes window. Click on the “Sync to MP3 player”
If you have more than one device mounted you will then be asked to select which device to sync to
You will receive a confirmation message indicating how many songs were copied upon completion.

Update: There appears to be problems with the download link. Here’s another one I’ve found.

Personalise Your iTunes Library On Shared Computers

Tony Williams — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:29:52 +0000

Using a shared Windows PC can be annoying sometimes. Take using iTunes for example. I may think a song is fantastic and may want to rate it a 5, but the next person to use the PC may hate that track. Because of the way iTunes stores its settings it’s impossible for each user to have individual ratings or to setup their own playlists.

Libra is the answer to this problem. This great piece of free software allows you to manage more than one iTunes music library on one machine by creating, renaming, deleting and activating different libraries, including playlists and preferences.

It is also useful if you have more than one mp3 player e.g. you may have a iPod Nano or iPod Shuffle with limited space that you only want to sync a few playlists to, and also a 60GB iPod which can hold the whole collection, and then some.

The app works on both Mac OS X and also Windows, which is an added bonus as most good iTunes apps are Mac only.

To download the app click here.

Quicker Way To Remove iTunes Duplicates And Dead Tracks

Tony Williams — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 16:55:57 +0000

If you have a big iTunes library it’s very easy to have duplicate files and dead tracks which are taking up space on your PC. This can also happen when you move files between folders or between PCs as iTunes can get confused. Removing these can be a pain but there is a better way.

Dupe Eliminator from Markelsoft automatically finds and removes dupes from iTunes. It isn’t free, but it does have a 30 day free trial which should be long enough to clean your iTunes library.

It has some cool features including:

List all files in iTunes Music Library
Choose to show only duplicate podcasts (based on your criteria selection)
Option to show only dupes (based on your criteria selection)
Option to show only dead links (library links to files that no longer exist)
Remove actual file option (remove actual file in addition to music library entry)
Sync iPod with iTunes Music Library. Useful after removing duplicates

More: iTunes Dupe Eliminator

Add Missing Album Artwork To iTunes

Tony Williams — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:07:09 +0000

One of the great features of the latest video iPods is being able to display album art. Unfortunately, none of your mp3’s added to iTunes before the last generation have albumart included, so what do you do?

Luckily, there are some 3rd-party apps out there which will add artwork to your mp3s. The best of the bunch is the iTunes Album Art Importer. It can scan your whole mp3 collection or just one album to try and find missing artwork. When it finds a out and get the album art via the Amazon.com web service, or from the Windows Media Player Album Art which I think is unique.

It is even smart enough to detect whether a track already has art already in place, which can be replaced or left alone. It will also allow the user to choose the best image if multiple covers are found, replacing any existing covers.
Definitely worth a try even if you already have most of your covers sorted.

More: iTunes Album Art Importer