Posts Tagged ‘howto’
Video: Google Reader Basics Tutorial
January 23rd, 2009 •
Tags: feeds, google reader, howto, rss, tutorial, xml
This is the first episode of what I intend to be a bi-weekly video show. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think about it. If you have ideas for what you would like me to cover in a show, leave that in the comments as well. Not every episode will be an instructional screencast. I intend to cover much of the same material in the show as you might find on the site. I hope you like it. Make sure to subscribe in iTunes or your podcatcher. You can add either the HD Quicktime format (iTunes) or the iPod format (iTunes) to your podcatcher of choice! Two additional feed options are coming soon: Standard Definition Quicktime and Audio-only MP3.
Have you ever wondered how some people seem to keep track of all the latest news breaking online? How are they able to follow so many web sites? The secret is RSS coupled with a good feed reader. There are tons of options for feed reading including a multitude of both desktop applications and web-based applications. This tutorial focuses on one of the most popular options, Google Reader. Like many of Google’s services it has a simple interface, is free, fast, and available anywhere.
In the video, I demonstrate how to find feeds and add them to the app. Then I show how to use basic keyboard navigation. Here is a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts for you keyboard junkies:
| j/k | item down/up | selects the next/previous item in the list |
| space/shift-space | page down/up | moves the page down/up |
| n/p | scan down/up | in list view, selects the next item without opening it |
| o | open/close item | in list view, expands or collapses the selected item |
| enter | open/close item | in list view, expands or collapses the selected item |
| s | toggle star | stars the selected item |
| shift-s | toggle share | shares the selected item |
| m | mark as read/unread | switches the read state of the selected item |
| t | tag an item | opens the tagging field for the selected item |
| v | view original | opens the original source for this article in a new window |
| shift-a | mark all as read | marks all items in the current view as read |
| 1 | expanded view | displays the subscription as expanded items |
| 2 | list view | displays the subscription as a list of headlines |
| r | refresh | refreshes the unread counts in the navigation |
| shift-n/p | navigation down/up | selects the next/previous subscription or folder in the navigation |
| shift-x | navigation expand/collapse | expand or collapse a folder selected in the navigation |
| shift-o | navigation open subscription | opens the item currently selected in the navigation |
| gh | go to home | goes to the Google Reader homepage |
| ga | go to all items | goes to the “All items” view |
| gs | go to starred items | goes to the “Starred items” view |
| gt | go to tag | allows you to navigate to a tag by entering the tag name |
| gu | go to subscription | allows you to navigate to a subscription by entering the subscription name |
| u | toggle full screen mode | hides and shows the list of subscriptions |
| ? | keyboard shortcuts help | displays a quick guide to all of Reader’s shortcuts |
There are a couple of useful shortcuts that I forgot to mention in the video. The “g” shortcuts allow you to filter your feeds in different ways. Press “g” followed by “a” to go to the all items view; “g” followed by “s” will show your starred stories; and “g” followed by “u” shows an overlay that lists all your subscribed feeds. Start typing the name of the feed you want to view and press enter to show stories only from that feed.
Here are some cool feeds to get you started. Take note that these feeds won’t do much without some sort of feed reader to view them. I am linking directly to the RSS not to the web site.
Tech
Internet
Gaming
Download the podcast
For fans of this site, those feeds will get you off to a good start. Don’t forget to subscribe to the raddevon.com feed! Also, feel free to choose one of the category feeds on the right if you want only one category of posts. Be sure to talk back in the comments. Which other feed readers do you use, and what makes them better than the mighty Google? Until next time!
Automatically add lyrics for your iTunes tracks (for Mac)
January 21st, 2009 • 7 comments
Tags: Audio only, howto, itunes, lyrics, mac, music, tutorial
Reposted from me.raddevon.com.
I don’t have a lot of music in iTunes, but a lot of the music I have is not the easiest to automate lyrics downloads. There are a number of one-step automated solutions, but unless your collection is limited to Justin Timberlake, The Beatles, and Madonna, you may have trouble getting lyrics for all your songs. Even this method is imperfect, but it finds the most of anything I have tried.
First, you will need to make a stop by Doug’s AppleScripts. There are two scripts we need for this process: No Lyrics to Playlist and Needle Drop. The former is fairly self-explanatory; it makes a playlist of every track in your library without lyric information. The latter allows you to specify a number of seconds to play of each track in a given playlist. After invoking Needle Drop, it will load up and play each song in your playlist for the time you specify.
There is one more piece of software needed to complete the process: TunesTEXT. This is a dashboard widget that finds lyrics for the currently playing iTunes track and adds them to your library.
Now, we can put the pieces together. Install the dashboard widget by double-clicking on it. The scripts have to be installed manually. Unzip the downloads and drag the scripts into (your home folder)/Library/iTunes/Scripts/. Once everything is installed, start your iTunes. If iTunes is already open, you will have to close and re-open it so that it will pick up the new scripts.
Once iTunes has started, you should see the scripts you just installed in a menu on the menu bar that looks like an unfurled scroll 
. Switch to the music section of your library. Click the scroll and choose “No Lyrics to Playlist.” This script will take a minute to comb through your tracks to find those that have no lyrics. Now, you may have to clean this list a bit. If you have podcasts, they will also be included in the list. Sort the list by Genre and delete any tracks that you don’t want lyrics for (e.g. books, comedy, classical, podcasts).
Now, you should have a playlist with only the songs you want to search lyrics for. We can use Needle Drop to play just enough of each track so that TunesTEXT has time to find lyrics. I found that, on my connection, five seconds was plenty of time for the lyrics to be found. You may have to experiment to find the perfect balance. Especially if you have lots of music, you want to choose the shortest playtimes that are enough to find lyrics to reduce the time the search will take.
While still in the No Lyrics playlist, click the scroll and select the Needle Drop script. You will see a dialog box where you can enter the playtime for each track. Enter the time you determined was ideal for your setup (or just try five seconds—it worked for me!). Now, the tracks will begin to play, the lyrics will be searched and added by TunesTEXT, and all will be right with the world. Enjoy!