Be The Pigeon

If you have multiple computers and would like to control them all with a single keyboard-mouse combo, it's easy to do. Use "Synergy." This doesn't require a KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) switch as it did in former days. In fact, the cool thing about Synergy is that you're not screen sharing. Each machine has its own separate display, and it can even have its own mouse and keyboard. But your main mouse and keyboard, when you move the mouse over to the new display, now controls the other machine. What's cool about this is that it works across platforms. For example, I have a Mac for my main machine, and a Windows 7 laptop sitting on the left-hand side. With Synergy running on both machines, I just move my mouse to the left until it comes onto the Win 7 laptop screen and then I can type and use it as though I were really connected there locally. It makes controlling multiple machines a snap. Synergy is available here for Windows, Mac, Linux, etc . It's ...

For years, I've had an ugly music library. Very little cover art, inconsistent album titles, artists, etc. I ripped all my old CD's years ago, and the formats seem to have varied quite a bit. A couple months ago I finally found a solution to clean the whole mess up. Now that I've switched to iTunes, the cover art is a nice thing to have, as it's shown on AppleTV and on the iPod when you listen. The cleanup process is very simple using a tool (which I purchased for about $20) called TuneUpMedia . TuneUp will listen to clips of your songs for you and then search them in an online database to come up with the right info and then retag your whole library. It will also add missing cover art and even detect duplicate tracks. Very nice. It loads up along side iTunes or Windows Media Player. I don't normally shell out bucks for this type of stuff (figuring that there's always a freebie if I look long enough), but this one was worth it. There's a free version...

I've updated my post from last year about how to convert DVD movies for your iPod or AppleTV.