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Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Daily Trick 12. Trim MP3 Song
Talking about mp3 songs, one application should instantly crawl inside our mind: iTunes. Yes, today I will share with you how to trim your mp3 songs with iTunes.
As usual, first step you will need to open iTunes and then followed by:
- Select mp3 song you want to trim
- Open contextual menu and click on Get Info
- Go to Options tab
-
Inside you can see Start Time and Stop Time.
Fill it with the wanted start time and stop time of that mp3 song after trimming - Now select the song again, open the contextual menu and choose Create MP3 Version
- Last step is to wait for the process to finish
You can click on the thumbnail for viewing larger screenshot.
Have fun in trimming! And don't forget to introduce me some nice songs as you can see that I've no much songs in my iTunes playlist.
Categories:
Audio,
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Daily Trick,
iTunes,
Song
Recording Speech with GarageBand 2009
After burning some time to play around with GarageBand 2009, I got a new skill to share with you all in this article: recording speech.
Although it sounds simple, there are many hidden tricks to get clean and nice recorded speech. Hope this article can help you in your future speech recording.
Experience iTunes Like Never Before with Additional Freewares
Having my Mac accompanying my daily life, it would be a miss without the companion of music. And for now, I still adore iTunes as my music player. However, there are still some limitations to the awesomeness of iTunes, such as hard to rate, difficult to find lyrics, little information in mini player mode, etc.
In this article, I am going to share with you some of the freewares that can make you experience iTunes like never before. Hope you enjoy it!
Enhance Your Music Life with iTunes
iTunes has often been carved deep inside our mind as one of the coolest music player that we have on our Mac. Apart from playing music, many useful features also can be added to your iTunes experience. From the music shuffling to music sharing over network, from tweaking rating system to setting music duration, will be discussed in this article as well as some other cool features.
Funtastic iTunes Visualizers
Hearing music alone isn't enough; Hearing music and seeing the amazing visualizer are most satisfying. Not only we can throw our stress away but we can also kick off our boredom.
Apart from latest iTunes 8 Visualizer, there are still many others interesting iTunes visualizer that can be plugged in easily to enhance your iTunes. To run your iTunes visualizer, you can use keystrokes Command-T and keystrokes Command-F to toggle full screen mode.
Let's see some funtastic iTunes visualizers.
Addictive iTunes 8 Built-In Visualizer
I've been too careless to overlook this new addictive iTunes 8 visualizer. I don't know what it's called, but I know how addictive it is for me.
Here is the video of iTunes 8 visualizer that's depicted from Beowulf soundtrack: Hero Comes Home.
Lucky for Windows users, I think iTunes 8 can be installed on Windows. So what you're waiting for, quickly Download iTunes 8 and Install it.
Speech of the Mac
Not only your Mac sings songs but also now your Mac can deliver you the speech with simple keystrokes.
Sounds interesting! Let's try it.
- Open System Preferences…
- Click on Speech and choose Text to Speech section
- Select your favorite System Voice and adjust to convenient Speaking Rate
- Tick the checkbox Speak selected text when the key is pressed
- Set your key combination by utilizing Set Key… button
Alex: Hi, I'm a new voice for Leopard.
Kathy: Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Anyway, don't forget to turn on your speaker or else you won't hear anything.
Change Mail Alert Sound
Two days before, I just discussed about how you can Change Flag Icon of Mail. I know if you've chance, you will try that.
And now, I'm going to introduce you how to change your Mail alert sound. If you notice, your Mail has four types of alert sound, i.e. Mail Fetch Error, Mail Sent, New Mail and No Mail. The function of these types of alert sound are self-explanatory so I am sure I don't need to explain further.
These alert sounds are stored in your Mail application package with the format AIFF. Before going further, I will give you a brief explanation of this audio format.
AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)
According to wikipedia, AIFF is..
Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was co-developed by Apple Computer in 1988 [1] based on Electronic Arts' Interchange File Format (IFF, widely used on Amiga systems) and is most commonly used on Apple Macintosh computer systems. AIFF is also used by Silicon Graphics Incorporated.
This audio format is non-compressed, lossless format which uses much more disk space than MP3 but helps you in streaming in multiple audio files from disk to your application. Hm.. A bit difficult to understand it, maybe this can help you, "It's fast yet expensive audio format."
You can go to Simply the Best to get the various sound effects in AIFF format.
And next, you're going to be directed to the location of these sound files.
Terminal Sings Songs
Just a quick tip, with a your Mac built-in voice, you can make your Mac sings several nice songs with Terminal.
say -v Good oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Is it nice? Do you want more? Don't worry, there is more songs ahead for you to enjoy, especially during your most boring time. You know what I mean.
say -v Bad oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Maybe you feel the lyric is a little bit boring? All o's like that. Let's use a little bit creativity.
osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum he he he ho ho ho fa lah lah lah lah lah lah fa lah full hoo hoo hoo" using "Cellos"'
osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dum de dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dee dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" using "Pipe Organ"'
osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dum de dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dee dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" using "Hysterical"'
I don't like this one above. It's just because it's too long.
osascript -e 'say "oh This is a silly song silly song silly song this is the silliest song ive ever ever heard So why keep you listening listening listening while you are supposed to work to work to work to work its because i hate my job hate my job hate my job its because i hate my job more than anything else No its because youve no life youve no life youve no life and you better go get one after forwarding this crap" using "cellos"'
You can Triple-Click on the displayed command line to highlight the whole line.
Special thanks to :
- MacRumors for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd songs
- The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) for the 4th and 5th songs
- The commentor Jérémie for the last song
Set Custom Incoming Mail Sound
Everytime you have incoming message to your Mail, you will realize that there is a sound echoed by your Mail. This sound is set as New Mail Sound by your Mail default. The fun thing here is you can set this incoming Mail sound with custom sound.
Do you want to this setting custom Mail sound can be done?
Song of MacBook Air - New Soul
Have you ever wondered who is the singer behind MacBook Air Ads? It's Yael Naim with her song New Soul.
Searching around YouTube, I got these links : one is the Video Clip of New Soul and the other one is the live video.
Yael Naim - New Soul Clip
Trick for Fun : iTunes Play Count
Being iTunes user, especially if you have a mountain of songs in hand, it's usual to filter out all of them by sorting the Play Count in descending order.
In this case, a song with the most Play Count will appear on the top of the lists. You can trick iTunes so that your favorite song will appear on the first rank which of course has the most counts.
Mac Tricks - Announcing Time
You can actually ask your Mac to remind you every hour, every half an hour or every 15 minutes by using clock feature, announcing time.
Clock Preferences Pane
First, go to System Preferences. Click on Date & Time to go inside Date & Time Preferences Pane. Inside here, you will see three tabs, which is labelled from left to right Date & Time, Time Zone, and Clock; Click on Clock.
Mac OS X - Startup Sound
Adjust Startup Sound Volume
I found this site useful, SilverMac, which provides us with .prefPane file to adjust your startup sound volume. This story was hot on Digg several months ago.
Hear the Chime with MacTracker
Some people would probably have forgotten how their Macs startup song sounds like. In this case, download MacTracker, which can get the info of any Mac along with the startup sound.
QuickSilver Tips, iTunes Launcher
Enjoy these short-simple-fun steps to decrease chances ended up moods being ruined.
- Invoke QuickSilver with Option-Space
- Go to Triggers Pane using shortcut Command-[ ']
- Click iTunes menu tab located at the QuickSilver Triggers Pane Sidebar
- Look for Play / Pause Command
- Fill in with shortcut intended to be used for opening iTunes Application
Though I assign Control-Space, you can assign another shortcut as you feel comfortable with as me with my shortcut. iTunes can be invoked whatever the pane you're at; It's amazingly flexible and extremely useful.
Categories:
Audio,
Quick Silver,
Tips and Tricks
Tags:
iTunes,
QuickSilver,
Quicksilver