My mp3 collection is growing and growing. It even reached a size where I archived some files because I am not listening to it anymore or at least rarely. Scrolling through my iPod Artist list must be fast when I look for something specific.

However, over the years, it turned out that I have three MP3 tools I constantly use and I can not imagine to live with out them anymore. Here they are:

Actually I am using Winamp already for 10 years. Sometimes (ok, maybe every 3 years) I am checking if there might be a better alternative. But so far I did not find one. I am using the Pro version. It rips CDs fast, I can browse and search the library quickly. If you want you can use it for watching video and browsing the web. Well, I guess for this there are better alternatives (VLC player, Firefox etc.). Winamp can be extended with plug-ins what is very useful. The only one I am really using is ml_ipod. It replaces the build in iPod support and it is much more comfortable in my eyes. And … this is very important … it scrobbles my data from Winamp and my iPod to last.fm.

When you have a big MP3 collection, you usually start to change tags. When I have an album which is mixed by a certain artist, the artist of the song is the one who mixed it and not the artist who originally created the song. Once I downloaded an album from Beatport, it was a mix album with 26 songs. When Winamp imported it into the libary I suddenly hat 26 more artists (and the mixer was not one of those).
Well, Mp3tag is for me by far the best MP3 tagging tool. You can easily edit the tags manually or, and this is much better, you can check Amazon or discogs if the album is known there and use it as a tagsource for your files. And yes, it is freeware. It also can rename the filenames, there is a Auto Numbering Wizard which helps you to get the songs in an album in the right order and so on. Cool tool!

The last tool I want to write about is the MP3 Folder structure Maker. This tool is freeware as well and it helped me dramatically to get a structure into my MP3 collection. This tool reads out the ID tags of your files and then you can save your MP3 files inside a specific folder structure. For me the his “Artist”\”Album”. However, you can do anything you want. Default is “firstletter of the artist”\”Artist”\ for example. I always wonder why you should do it with the first letter of an artist. Now where my collection is big enough I know why.

Mp3tag and Mp3 Folder Structure Maker are freeware. But I am sure that the developers are very happy about your donation.

In case you have better tools, please let me know.

Once in a while it happens that you download a file from somewhere and it does not play or at least it makes trouble during playback.

Sometimes, not always, this little tool helps.

 Mp3 Validator can analyze an MP3 file and even repair it. Well, at least it tries it because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. At least it can give you hope and it is worth a try.

I tried it with some files. Sometimes it works , sometimes it does not.

When we think back to Windows 95 times, we all remember that we rebooted the machine once a while. This helped to resolve many issues a couple of time and especially had a positive impact on the performance of the machine.

Well, with Windows Mobile, I am experiencing the same situation. Pretty often I have to turn the phone of and back on again. I am not an expert an finding out why, but it is quite obvious that windows mobiles “pollutes” the system memory after running for a couple of days.

Tools that can help is for example the memory collection from Oxios. Theses tools can help you to close running programs all at once and also tries to “clean” your memory. However, these tools help to close and clean, but you still will see that the remaining memory gets less and less after a while. So,lets reboot….

In Windows Mobile, there is no way to reboot the phone. There is shareware in the web which add this feature but also another system tools. Well, in case you just want to reboot, I have something for you and it looks like this:

It simply adds the reboot command to the QuickList. In order to add this feature, just download this file: winmobreboot.cab , copy it to your Windows Mobile device and install.
Now you have the Reboot option inside the Quick List and there is no need to turn off \ turn on procedures. Well, it saves some time and especially nerves.

I tested it on Windows Mobile 6 but I red that is should work on WIndows Mobile 5 just was well. Just a hint, after I installed it, Windows Mobile had some problems to reload the HomeScreen. Just selecting the same HomeScreen in the HomeScreen Settings did fix this.

Enjoy!

BTW.: Use it at your own risk.

I am surfing and searching the Internet for quite some time already (it must have been almost 15 years now). And I am still experiencing strange situations once in a while. For example the problem with the stupid Windows Offline Folders. Here is the story:

The Problem:

This many years I have in job a notebook instead of a desktop computer. Actually since 1999 when I started working for Microsoft in Germany. However, when Microsoft Released Windows 2000, there was also a new feature called “Offline Folders”.

For those of you who do not know what this is (I wonder why you are reading this article then). Here a short explanation: Use Offline Files When You’re off the Network (this article is about XP but in Windows 2000 it is the same, they just changed the name from folders to files …)

Now the feature is actually great. I do not have to be online in order to have access to my files on the fileserver. But it becomes terrible when you notebook thinks it is online, and you are actually not really online but connected through a vpn-tunnel with you corporate network. So you are more offline than online.
But since windows finds the fileserver and all the files through the vpn-tunnel, it assumes that it can access the files directly from the server. Since the connection from a remote location is never as good as when you are directly connected to the companies network, and the vpn-tunnel makes this even worth, this can become a pretty bad nightmare.

My Documents
On my notebook, I configured the “My Documents” folder to be on our fileserver in our company network. This has the advantage the they are saved in a central place in our company (if I want I can have access from any branch office in the whole world) and I do not have to worry about backups since the fileserver is backed up regularly from our IT department. Fine! Great! Perfect! ….. .
Since I am traveling so much, this feature lost a lot of its attraction. When I am on travel, I have to have access to my Mailbox through Outlook. And I get this access via vpn through the Internet. Also I have the files cached on my notebook, Windows decides to download the files from the fileserver. You can imagine that this really hearts. Especially when you want to have a look at a Powerpoint. 

The Solution:

For more then two years know, I travel more and more for my job. So the offline folder became more and more important. So I was surfing and searching the Internet in the hope to find a solution. How can I tell windows that it should use the cached version and not the server one. I found several user who had the same problem. But it seems that nobody had a solution in place.

Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools
It was just two weeks ago, I was working from my homeoffice, and this problem was driving me nuts again. Although I already researched the Internet for a couple of time, I tried it one last time.
And suddenly I found the solution. After two years I found it, and for my surprise, it was a very “official” solution.
I found that inside the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools there is a tool called csccmd.exe, which easily solves my problem. The official name is “Client-Side Caching Command-Line Options”. Together with the /disconnect switch, it just tell the offline files that they are offline. And so you can work with you offline version whenever you want. Here are the functions which are most important for me:

csccmd /DISABLE    - Disables the Caching in general
csccmd /ENABLE     - Guess what …. it enables it again

cscccmd /DISCONNECT:\\Server\Share   – if you want you can disable just a specific share