Tezzo's Technology Blog

Discogs - Huge discography database Dogmazic - lots of Creative Commons music (mainly French) Whitburn project - 120 years of chart history Artists facts and Song facts - lots of facts about songs and artists Classical.com - Huge database of classical music Grove music encyclopedy - *The* ultimate resource for all sorts of information about western music John Peel Festive Fifties - Actual content of John Peel sessions (would be cool to link to that from the BBC John Peel dataset) Musical knowledge webs - Some general music information, appears to be quite structured Bach cantatas - All Bach Cantatas Concert Programmes - Large concert database (performers, venue, works, etc.) Laytune - Audio web search by artist/track/album Songkick - Huge database and recommendation service for live music OLPC sound samples - Big database of Creative Commons audio samples FreeSound - Huge database of freely available audio samples OperaGlass - Huge database of Opera - 25,000 operas, 4,8

Embedded comments, and star ratings Google’s Blogger has a couple of new features available at the special Blogger Draft site. Google Blogoscoped

Yesterday I decided that it was time to restructure my email. A completely stuffed inbox and reading Darren’s article about 10.000 to 0 emails in 24 hours convinced me, that it was time for some changes. If you have read Darren’s article, you will notice similarities since I used his tips, but I’ve made some personal tweaks for some reasons, I’ll explain later on. Coen Jacobs

When you're copying and pasting something to or from a Microsoft application such as Word or Outlook and you want to remove the formatting there is a quick keyboard shortcut to do so. Rather than use the mouse and the Paste Special button, you can simply paste the text, highlight it, and hit Ctrl+Space to remove the formatting and convert the selection into plain text. Lifehacker

The newest version of our favorite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3 , offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing. After 17 months of alphas and betas, Mozilla's finally made a feature-complete release candidate available, so it's time to spotlight the biggest improvements that will make "Gran Paradiso" the browser to beat. Nearly everything in the open-source app has gotten a second look from the minds at Mozilla, from back buttons to bookmarks, address bars to add-ons, passwords to performance, and the changes will make Firefox 3 worth the upgrade come its official release date, slated for sometime next month. Let's take a look at the 10 best upgrades in Firefox 3, and how they'll bolster your browsing, after the jump. Lifehacker - Go! Also, Field Guide to Firefox 3 from dria.org.

You already know about Firefox 3's marquee new features, but now it's time to dig deep and unearth the shortcuts, tweaks, and even Easter eggs that Mozilla marketing doesn't mention. In honor of today's official release of Firefox 3—at 10AM Pacific Time—let's dive in past Firefox 3's most talked-about feature-set into its lesser-known power uses, tricks, and customizations. Go! Lifehacker

The quality of design sites around has just been escalating and escalating. Last year we published two articles on finding design inspiration - 34 Places to Get Design Inspiration On and Off and the follow up 60 More Places to Get Design Inspiration . Since then I’ve been collecting new sites that didn’t make those two lists, and today I’m happy to deliver 33 New Places to Get Design Inspiration! Without further ado From: http://freelanceswitch.com/

Windows occasionally gets into a weird state where, well, things just stop working - the start menu doesn’t launch some apps anymore, clicking links in Internet Explorer doesn’t work, context menus stop working, etc.* Instead of rebooting Windows to get things working again, try logging out and logging back in. When Windows (and the apps that plug into the Windows shell) get into some weird state, you don’t need to reboot; a logoff shuts down the Windows Explorer, and a logon loads it again. This used to happen to me every now and again, but since SP1 It hasn’t happened once. Alternatively there is a much easier way to get your computer running smoothly again and remove all the idle processed. Create a new shortcut on the desktop In the input field type: “%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks” Click ‘next’ and name the shortcut. When this shortcut is run the system should stop for a few seconds as it reclaims RAM before speeding up again as you use it. Don

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination June 5, 2008 J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “ The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination, ” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. Harvard Magazine May-June 2008

iTunes 7.6 Since its inception, iTunes has hidden the inner workings of its file management , preferring instead to present a single abstract "Library" to the user. This is fine if you like doing things the iTunes way, but it can be annoying if you prefer to organize things according to where all of your files actually reside on your hard drive. Fortunately, Apple gave in—partway—in Version 7.0, with support for multiple libraries. Hold down the Shift key (Windows) or Option key (OS X) as you start the program, and you'll see a graphic representation of the different libraries you have, along with an option to create a new one. Expert Help by PC Magazine

If you’re concerned about your web pages’ speed or want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications. from Six Revisions

1. Digg This Plugin for Live Writer : The Digg This plugin inserts a "Digg This" button to your Windows Live Writer posts and provides seamless integration with Digg. 2. Social Bookmarking Tags : Using this plugin, you will be able to add automatic social bookmarking tags to your blog posts like del.icio.us and Technorati. (Check out this URL for an example.) the rest . . . . Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Microsoft launches Windows Live Writer, a new publishing tool for authoring rich blog posts on Windows Live Spaces, Wordpress, Typepad and other blogging services. Digg - Introducing Windows Live Writer

Ok, so you've lost an important file. Don't panic. Take a breath, and let's see if we can find it. Before you go into full-on file recovery mode, make sure you double-check the folder you had saved it in and the Recycle Bin or Trash. Still nothing? See Lifehacker .

Via Lockergnome Technorati Tags: virus , scanners There are a couple of excellent places online where you can test single files. The first of these is VirusTotal . Virustotal is a free service that will run a file through 32 separate anti-virus programs. Afterwards, it will give you a report. The report will contain the results from each AV, the date of the last update of each AV. There are two blogs found on Lockergnome that you can always count on to keep you up-to-date with the latest information on what Security products are good, what’s in, what’s out and what to stay away from. One is written by Kat . Both of them are Microsoft MVPs. Ron’s MVP award area is in Windows Desktop Experience, and Kat’s award is in Consumer Security. Both are well known in their fields, and know what they’re talking about.

MakeUseOf.com Lots of websites come and go, especially when it comes to TV show and movie websites. Being a major movie, TV show, news and documentary addict made me try lots of websites over the last couple of years. While many of those sites sucked, some of them were really good. Here are my top four websites for watching my favorite stuff online."