CD Ripping by Rip-fast?

Several major publications - Rough Guide, The Sunday Times & The Daily Telegraph - have been very kind in recommending our CD ripping service podServe. The Telegraph have been kind enough to give us a mention again today on the Telegraph website.

I was interested to see another CD ripping service mentioned, by the name of Rip-fast. Now I'm not sure who the Telegraph had in mind but I think Rip-fast is a body building supplement, seemingly favoured by Arnie himself.

If you're looking for CD ripping service Rip-fast might I suggest you check us out first? We are at www.podserve.co.uk

Sonos Sweepstakes

Fancy winning a new Sonos system? Yes, me too. You can, just visit Sonos on Facebook and follow the sweepstake links.

Then get podServe to convert your CDs for your new music system.

Album Art

One of the most popular enhancements to our CD ripping service was including album art. I don't mind admitting at first I was sceptical but today ripping CDs without adding album art is unthinkable. Well, yesterday I thought the unthinkable.

One of the best decisions I made was to go with iAlbum Art as the software to embed album art in our clients music. It works like a dream and Mike's tech support has been great. Something I was taking for granted when we upgraded our version of iTunes. I don't know if the upgrade was coincidental and maybe Amazon made a change at their end but horror, iAlbum Art just stopped working. Program opened fine, seemed to run but resolutely no little pictures were added. Small panic, we've got a couple of thousand CDs in process right now.

Thankfully the fix was simple, iAlbum Art 2.1 plays nicely with iTunes 10 and co-operates with Amazon. If anything it runs better, with better art and a snappier response, I think. We breath a sigh of relief and stick more CDs into the computers.

drop.io

One of the best things I've found on the web is drop.io - an incredibly simple and effective file sharing service. So many time it's helped us deliver files to clients.

But no longer, drop.io is no more. They've sold ought to Facebook. Well done them, and thanks for what you've given us over the years.

iTunes Music Store Receipt Email

If you receive an email seeming to be from iTunes Music Store, with the header including a receipt number, some dodgy maths in the "bill" - whatever you do, DO NOT click on either of the hyperlinks in the body text.

I did, and spent the next couple of hours regretting it. More on the podServe blog.

Thanks to AVG Anti-virus and Spybot Search & Destroy for a happy ending.

Wow - Gracenote - 200 billion ripped CDs.

Gracenote has now processed its 200 billionth query, and received its one billionth metadata submission, according to data shared Thursday morning by the company.

Apple Synch Notifier Exe is Missing - Solved

Call from a CD ripping client with a problem on their PC (Vista Business). This is the error message -

Apple synch notifier exe is missing

Core file missing.

Did some digging, found a solution - go to Control Panel and you will probably see an entry for Mobile Me. Delete that, seems to solve the issue.

iTunes How To Videos

OK, we're going to blow our own trumpet here. We're a CD ripping company and we want you to get the best out of your music experience. We want happy clients.

So we've produced a set of How to ... videos covering topics such as how to load the music data files we supply, how to create smart playlists, how to move your iTunes music library ... and more.

Take a look at the videos. Hope you like them, if you'd like to see more let us know.

Low Cost CD Ripping

We rip CDs for clients, but mainly in the London / M25 region. Over the years we've had people express a demand for our services from outside our usual collection area.

So we set up a mail based CD ripping service called MP3 by Mail. Hard to believe we're coming up to four years old. But yes, we're still here, ripping CDs for iPod owners, for Sonos lovers and a whole raft of people who simply want to make their music portable. Check out our (other) site.

Apple TV

Just to update an earlier post - the installation with Apple TV running with Windows 7 (which previously stubbornly refused to sync) - has suddenly sprung into life and happily syncing music and photos.

Multiple Tracks in iTunes Library

Had a phone cal from one of our photo scanning clients - can we help them with an iTunes problem?

So on Friday I went over to survey the situation. Looking at their iTunes library was first step, which explained a lot to the client because as a Sonos user that was the way he looked at his music. Immediately you could see he had three copies of each track.

His first question was why? Well, if you set in Preferences / Advanced that you have a tick in the box for copying music into your iTunes library, when you go through the loop of adding to the library (File / Adder Folder) this is what happens. Even if that track is in the folder already, another copy will be made and added to the original folder. You get from one to two copies. Do it again, even if you're not sure what you were hoping to achieve, you'll get another set of tracks - your third.

Second question, how do we correct this? The only way is the tedious one. Hit show duplicates, then grind through the duplicated items and delete them. Took me hours, but eventually done. That's the exciting side of being a cd ripping service.

What's with Apple TV?

Not so long ago Apple described their network to TV bridge device - Apple TV - as a "hobby"device. Rather cruel I thought, even though on the scale of iPads and iPhones this hasn't been a roaring success, at least in sales terms. You have to admit some Apple products are cursed by being ahead of their time and I'm wondering if the time has come for Apple TV.

Many moons ago, when we got married, we inherited an old TV set. I bet the speaker inside cost less than 50p. Dreadful. Have you seen today's TVs? The sound from a new set is brilliant in comparison and many sport multi speaker surround sound systems to compete with cinemas. So what could be more natural than to pump your music via iTunes into your living room via a compact device such as Apple TV. Several of our CD ripping clients use Apple TV for this and are very happy with it. If you think coverflow looks good on your iPod Touch wait till you see it on a top-flight plasma screen.

Our other venture in analogue to digital media conversions, our photo scanning service 1Scan, is also recommending Apple TV. Trust me, your holiday photos or your old family image library will look great blown up on screen. But you also get an automatic facility to turn static images into a rolling slideshow.

The interface that drives Apple TV from your computer is iTunes, a program familiar to so many people now. And it runs faultlessly on Mac and Windows. Apple TV will play nicely with your home wireless network although if you must you can drive it via ethernet. In typical Apple fashion (forgive the pun) it looks cool in its nice white box, makes no noise although I have noticed they can get very hot.

Look great, sounds great, networks nicely and is reasonably priced. What's not to like about Apple TV?

iTunes Live

I love a conspiracy theory, so much so I think I am tempted to make one up. Apple has apparently trademarked the term "iTunes Live". But they haven't explained what Apple Live will be, so let's speculate.

Apple have been supporting live music sessions in their various stores. Perhaps they'll record them and make them available via iTunes. Or ...

It may be functionality to enable web content to be fed to iTunes and / or your iPod or iPhone. A kind of music streaming service, in real time.

Of course it might be the re-emergence of the music streaming service Lala that Apple bought and closed down.

Or you could add your own guess.

Photos on iPods

Maybe I'm blinkered, natural since in running a CD ripping service we spend so much time doing just that. But iPods aren't just for music - indeed we also operate put a lot of time into scanning photos.

So I noticed with interest a heated discussion among professional photographers on the best way to use an iPod as a portable display device. The modern iPods will store not just music but thousands of images in high quality. Of course the larger screen on the iPod touch lends itself better as a display unit.

I have also seen that a software company is launching a service to host photos for professionals, with the added dimension of an iPhone application. This would both help the photographer when in front of potential clients, but would also allow prospects and clients to download their own version so they can access the snappers work. What price the iPad in this environment?

Apple TV Photo Sync Problem Under Windows 7 64bit

One of our earliest CD ripping clients moved on to install an Apple TV unit. He has a B&O TV system with great speakers so the first asset was hearing his music streamed into his lounge area. Next was watching Youtube clips and seeing photos of his lovely family in big screen clarity.

Then the photos wouldn’t sync.

I think the start of the sync problem was when he upgraded his PC to a new unit with Windows 7. So I was called in to fix the issue.

First thing I did was see if iTunes needed to be upgraded, and sure enough an upgrade came down the line. I again configured the photo sync but although the computer thought iTunes was syncing it was clear nothing was happening. I reset the Apple TV, still no improvement. I reset to factory defaults, re-installed Apple TV, updated its software, still no photo sync.

Trying to force things along by opening / closing iTunes I noticed and error message saying Corefoundation.dll was missing. Quick Google search suggested this caused a problem with iTunes sync server program which would be fixed by uninstalling Windows then downloading a fresh version to install.

I did this using the download function on the iTunes page of the Apple website. A few minutes later I got a message saying this version would not install under 64bit Windows 7. I searched Apple’s website and found yes, there is a 64bit version of iTunes so I dug around and found it. This version has 64 in its name, so I downloaded that and the install went ahead OK.

Back to Apple TV - things were worse than when I arrived, Youtube was OK but no music, no photos. Went back to PC (on the otherside of the apartment) checked settings a couple of times and eventually music was syncing and could be heard. But no photo sync.

Three hours after arriving we were no further forward than when I arrived, except for a long list of things that don’t get iTunes on Windows 7 to sync with Apple TV. I’m left with thinking this is an Apple or Microsoft issue, but I’ll keep digging.

Automatically Add to iTunes

Months ago I needed to copy some music into iTunes as part of a clients job, something I've done thousands of times before, and it went wrong. I hunted around to find out why and came across a folder I hadn't seen before - Automatically Add to iTunes. What was it for?

Apparently it acts as a holding area for tracks you might want to add to iTunes. Drop your music there and the next time you fire up iTunes those tracks will, er, be added to iTunes - automatically. However I've noticed that having that folder side-by-side with the rest of my music files can cause issues. So if I have to do a bulk import into iTunes I've got into the habit of deleting that folder, and no harm has come to me. Of course the folder pops up again thanks to the magic of iTunes.

But all this got me thinking ... what on earth is the point of this? Having scratched my head I can't really see what this delivers. Any suggestions?

Playlists - Act Now, Before it's Too Late

PC had crashed, but he'd backed up all his data so quickly installed a new machine and copied iTunes across. It was a big job, we'd ripped his CDs a couple of years ago and it was a big library then. One sigh of relief, but wait ---- where are all the playlists?

Sorry, but they're lost.

If you back up the location that stores your music tracks that is all you have secured. Sure that's the main thing you need to keep hold of but it's the music, only the music and nothing but the music. Your playlists live elsewhere so unless you can fire up iTunes on the old PC, sorry, those playlists are lost.

That's why we created a quick guide for clients of our CD ripping service explaining how they can backup playlists before the worst happens. The guide is free and you can get it from www.podserve.co.uk - backup now, before it's too late.

iTunes + Cloud? CloudTunes?

The rumour mill is grinding away in advance of the Apple media event coming up in the next few days. Most it's concentrated on the Apple tablet (iSlate? iSlice? iSlab?) but some brave souls have been speculating on an implementation of iTunes which draws on the latest IT hot topic - cloud computing. What would this mean to most users?

The answer has to be peace of mind and convenience. Let me explain why.

About the only thing you can be sure of with computer hard drives is that sooner or later, they will fail. Today users have massive amounts of data, unbelievable only a couple of years ago. When we began ripping CDs we stored clients work on an 80 Gb drive and it tooks weeks before it was filled. Just a few years later this laptop has the same amount of storage, small by many of today's machines. Can it be backed up? Technically yes but very few of us have the discipline to backup our discs, and what do we backup to? Yes, another hard drive with all the risks of that failing. Our moves into photo scanning have shown how people are adding to their storage demands.

CloudTunes would allow you to migrate your precious music from your local PC or laptop away to a centralised data warehouse professionally managed. A location where systems and hardware are in place to keep your music safe.

Convenience? Suppose you're working late in your office and you'd like to listen to your music. Simply point your PC to your iTunes part of the cloud and play away. Kids at uni? Draw on the cloud. Pump music around the house? Just point each PC to the cloud. Tired of waiting for music to download? It will appear instantly if your library links into the cloud.

If it's not this week it is surely time for clouds to gather over iTunes.

iTunes Error 2131

Contacted by a client who suddenly found he couldn't burn CDs from iTunes. When he tried he just got an error message - the code was error 2131. How can that be fixed?

Reasonably on getting Error Code 2131 as he ran iTunes he naturally assumed that the cause of the problem was something within iTunes. Of course any single software application relies completely on interaction with the operating system which in this case was Microsoft Windows. iTunes does some things, Windows handles thousands of other tasks. For an exercise to be completed correctly, such as burning a humble CD, both iTunes and Windows need to play their part.

It is difficult to quickly see where the source of any error might lie, but my immediate thought was that this stems from Microsoft who offer a wide range of Error Codes. When we've been ripping CDs I think we've seen most of them but this one was new to me.

First stop - Google the error code. Wow, aren't there a lot of people hit by Error Code 2131 was my first thought. Looking at their posts to forums and blogs this has been going on for years. One common complaint - why doesn't Apple fix this? In my experience Apple does so having seen the age of the issue my suspicious eye turned to Microsoft.

Reading through the posts I felt that the majority of users complaining were laptop users. Next, why doesn't Microsoft fix this? Reading deeper into the messages from those who had beaten error 2131 they had done so either through an edit in Windows Registry or by downloading firmware for their drives. If you're not familiar with the term firmware its a small program a device such as a DVD or CD writer needs to function. Logically it sits "under" the operating system and therefore out of Microsoft's remit; physically it is stored on a small microchip on the logic board driving the writer.

Dell, Fujitsu and Toshiba owners were all hit, odd in itself as these are better quality manufacturers. I can't prove it but my suspicion is that they have all sourced CD / DVD drives as components from the same manufacturer. At some point something has happened resulting in a clash between Windows and the drive. Indeed this is what the error code is trying to say.

If my analysis is correct this really is the responsibility of the manufacturer and indeed several Dell users have downloaded a new version of firmware for their writers which has put an end to 2131. Owners of other makes have said this has worked for them too.

What should you do if iTunes stalls with Error 2131? Try Googling 2131 with the name of your PC manufacturer and that might give you access to a firmware update. Try your suppliers support website too, and log this as a fault with them. If you purchased your machine recently from a decent supplier think about contacting them and maybe even rejecting the machine. In my opinion far too few people do this.

Beyond these comments and suggestions I'm sorry to have to say if you get both iTunes and Error 2131 I'm sorry, I don't have an instant solution.

Lock Closes iPod

Panic phone call yesterday evening from a CD ripping client. She was moving her music from an old to a new laptop when for some reason her iPod became locked. She couldn't do anything with it, couldn't play music or synch with new library. Help.

First, why a lock? Well it beats me, it's the last thing I'd want on my iPod but maybe I'd think differently if I had younger children or jape oriented colleagues. It is an effective way of stopping access to anyone else. But once in place you need that four digit code to unlock it. As far as I can tell there isn't a master code as that would rather defeat the object of the lock, so once in place it turns your humble iPod into a small bank vault.

Here's how you overcome the problem. You have to connect the iPod to its original computer, the one it was connected to as its master library before the lock code was put in place. Once connected to that computer you have from the standard iPod menu in iTunes the option to reset to factory defaults. If you take that option the iPod is reset (minus the lock) and you have to download all your music back onto the iPod. For more information search for iPod lock in the Apple support pages.