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You can play music tracks through Dropbox’s web interface, but only one at a time, in a very minimalist player. DropTunes provides a great web front-end for your Dropbox-synced tunes, offering Flash or HTML5-based streaming and continual playback. It’s pretty darned handy.
(Via Lifehacker.)
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Think about the sheer amount of media content you have stored on your Mac and any backup drives you have. Chances are, the combination of video, music and photos in your personal collection is staggering, but the real problem is sharing it with friends and family.
In an effort to offer a solution that can work on a variety of different Web-connected devices, an Israeli developer came up with Libox as a simpler method to uploading and sharing content without any storage limitations. The coolest part of the app is that it can do this easily with high-definition files as well. Let’s see how it all plays out.
You can use Libox in a couple of different ways, and I’ll show you how those connect as I move along here. Before you download the desktop application, you need to sign up for a free account on the Libox site. Once you’ve done that and installed the app on your Mac, launch it and log in.
The Libox interface is pretty clean and seamless with the left column listing all the options you have, and the right showcasing everything in a tiled format. To get a sense of how the software plays files, the developers included some stock video content for your own testing. But naturally, you are more interested in how your own content will work.
The Libox Main Screen
The next step is to upload media to your account, so you can view it and even share it if you want. You can do this in a couple of different ways — you can point Libox at specific folders already on your Mac, or create a new one and throw in whatever you want to upload.
The size of the files will make a difference to how long the upload process goes. This is especially true of HD video files, which can take a long time to upload if they’re anything more than just short clips. But the beauty of it is that uploading doesn’t compress the original file in any way.
In other words, you can view the same clip without sacrificing quality. The problem is just that it can take a bit too long to upload a lot of HD clips. The bright side is that Libox isn’t too picky about file format. An MKV file played just as well as an MPEG4 one did, for example. I haven’t seen an actual list of supported formats, so I can’t say for sure what will work and what won’t, but it seems like many formats will.
Uploading Media
With the uploading out of the way, you can browse through whatever you just synced over by using the Home tab. This aggregates the files together, regardless of media type, but you can also browse those separately by just clicking the respective tabs on the left.
In the case of photos, you can search by date, country or albums. Video can be browsed by date, country or playlist, and music can be browsed by tracks, albums, artists, genres or playlists.
Now that you’ve got your files up and running, you can start to choose how you want to share them. The best part is that sharing can be done specifically to one friend, or to as many as forty contacts. Click on an album, playlist, video, or even a combination of media and click on ‘Share’ to bring up the sharing interface.
At this point, you just have to input the email addresses you want to share with, and Libox will send them a note. The caveat is that recipients can only view the shared content after they’ve signed up for their own free accounts, something that might detract those who aren’t particularly tech-savvy.
One way to convince them would be to tell them that they don’t have to commit to uploading anything. Indeed, they can just have their accounts to purely enjoy whatever content you share with them.
Sending an Email
Another compelling tidbit is that shared photos can be downloaded by recipients as well. And since photos are at their original resolution, they can be printed with ease, too. This is an important feature for those who typically share photos on Facebook or Flickr. For starters, there is more privacy with Libox, and those services don’t always allow full resolution images to be uploaded.
Music and video, on the other hand, can’t be downloaded by recipients — only viewed and commented on.
The Libox Photo Layout
Despite the fact there is a desktop app, Libox also has a Web-based app, which would be the ideal way recipients can access what you’re sharing with them. Signing up for an account is one thing, but at least they won’t have to download and install the desktop app.
What is great about the Web-based side of Libox is that you can access your own files and download them remotely, despite recipients not being able to. This includes mobile browsers on Android and the iPad as well. An iPhone app has also been launched that streamlines the process, too.
In fact, you can shoot photos and video on the iPhone and upload them directly to your Libox account, where you can decide how to share them.
The developers have made it clear that Libox isn’t a backup solution because no data is actually stored on their servers. Instead, the software leverages peer-to-peer sharing algorithms to stream the data to whatever devices you happen to use with Libox.
The very premise of what Libox aims to do could lead to some legal issues when it comes to all this content distribution. While it’s great to share family and vacation clips and photos, it’s just as easy to share stuff that has copyright written all over it. But then again, if that content is bought and paid for, what is the difference in sharing it, especially if it can’t be downloaded? It’s really no different than having a group of friends together to watch a movie.
Where Libox goes from here is anyone’s guess, but the way it works in its current form is really promising. To be able to watch HD video without losing a lot of image quality is appealing in its own right, but the other features are also just as functional.
(Via Mac.AppStorm.)
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In this article, I’m going to outline some of the top resources that I use to find guitar chords for songs that I want to learn how to play. Recently, I decided that I needed a way to relax and get rid of stress – something that is somehow unconnected with the computer.
I remembered playing around with my mother’s old guitar when I was a kid, and realized that I’ve always wanted to learn how to play guitar. My daughter was already taking piano lessons from a local older couple who give lessons, so I decided to take guitar lessons while waiting for my daughter to finish her piano lessons.
Within three lessons, I found myself playing a John Denver song using just three chords. Of course, I was immediately hooked. Practicing every night, I’ve mastered the song in about a month. However, once I was able to play the one song, I wondered how many others I could learn that use just those three or four chords.
So, a hobby that I took on in order to get off of the computer and take a break from the Internet, ended up bringing me back to the Internet in search of guitar chords for songs that I really want to learn how to play. I’ve found a few excellent websites that do a tremendous job in cataloging the correct chords for the most popular traditional and contemporary songs. Today, I’d like to share those discoveries with other guitar players out there.
I think Chordie has to be one of the largest collections of guitar chords and tabs that I’ve ever found. I’ve yet to think of a song that doesn’t have a corresponding Chordie listing. At Chordie, you can search for either song or artist listings that are organized in a long alphabetical collection. This way, if you don’t know the title of a song, you can search for the guitar chords by the artist name instead.
Chordie is actually a huge community of guitar players who love music so much that they spend time trying to figure out the chords to music, and then list their findings on Chordie. Most of the time, you’ll discover that the chords listed here are actually pretty accurate – and you’ll be playing the coolest songs in no time.
If you can’t find guitar chords for songs that you’re looking for anywhere else, then I’d suggest going to Chordie as your last resort. Why as a last resort? Because at least half the time, you’ll also discover that members posted chords or lyrics that are just totally wrong.
For example, one of the first songs I tried to learn on my own was Losing My Religion, by R.E.M. I found that the chords seem correct, but the lyrics are completely messed up. Some sentences are completely wrong, and others are just plain silly. This is only representative of about a third of Chordie chord listings from members – most of them are pretty accurate. The best part of Chordie listings is that the chord is displayed at the upper right hand corner, so you don’t have to go flipping through your guitar book to remind yourself how to play an ‘F’.
Although I started out using Chordie, I got frustrated looking for accurate contemporary songs, so I was very pleased to stumble across Ultimate Guitar. The first thing you’ll notice when you arrive is that the layout is very clean and very cool. There’s music news, reviews, articles and interviews. You’ll find a forum and a full community of guitar playing music lovers just like you.
This is seriously a huge community where you can not only discover the guitar chords for songs, but you can absolutely immerse yourself into the world of music as you’re learning to play new songs.
My favorite section of the site is the Top 100, where you’ll discover some of the greatest songs that you hear on the radio and wish that you could learn how to play.
I was very happy to discover the song Hey There Delilah, by the Plain White T’s – it’s a song I really want to learn how to play. Unfortunately, this page brought the discovery that it requires both F minor and B minor – two chords I’ve yet to master yet. Maybe some day soon…
Another thing I like about this site is that in most cases you’ll find both the chords and the tabs. Many self-taught guitar players like tabs because it shows which string and which fret to play for each strum. However, taking lessons I’ve learned the chords, so really prefer just the lyrics with the chord changes listed above. Luckily, at Ultimate Guitar you’ll find both.
While my favorite online sport for popular guitar chords is Ultimate Guitar, E-Chords is a very close second. I love how functional the site is. From the main page, you’ll discover that you can search for songs by artists, albums, composers, song titles and even using just part of the lyrics, which is very useful when you just can’t remember the title of a song.
This site isn’t so much as community as it is an awesome online application that helps you learn how to play any song using whatever format you’re most comfortable with. The coolest part of e-chords is how you can customize the display of the song and the associated chords with a click of the mouse.
The guitar chords for songs that you’ll find here are displayed exactly how I like them – the lyrics with the required chord listed above them. The menu bar on the left offers all kinds of cool features, including auto-scroll (really nice when you’re trying to play and need to scroll down for the lyrics!), increase or decrease the font size, hide chords, play simpler chords (if available) and even switch the chord display from the letter to the chord drawings (awesome for beginners).
Overall, I’d have to say that guitar chords for songs that I want are at e-chords, then this is where I prefer playing them because it’s so convenient and easy to use.
While Heartwood Guitar isn’t a giant library of thousands of guitar chords for songs, it is a place that you’ll want to go for some amazing free resources to learn how to play the guitar – with a hundred or so great classic songs, including the chords you’ll need to know to play them. Major kudos to Rob Hampton of Seattle for creating this impressive and useful online resource. To find the chords, from his main site just click on Chord Charts. You’ll find hundreds of great songs listed alphabetically.
These chord listings are nicely laid out with strum and rhythm information noted throughout in some spots. Now, while the chord listings are really fun to go through and play, I have to say that my favorite part of this website are the guitar lessons that Rob has written up and that he offers for absolutely free on his blog.
On his blog, he’ll show you tips and techniques on how to strum, tuning your guitar, fingerpicking and much more – often including images and always including detailed and clear instruction. It’s obvious that this is one instructor who is an excellent teacher, and that he really loves the art of guitar playing.
(Via MakeUseOf.com.)
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The music legend performs a special mini-concert on top of the Ed Sullivan Theater Marquee. Songs include: “Coming Up,” “Band on the Run,” “Let Me Roll It,” “Helter Skelter,” and “Back in the USSR.”
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