I'd like to know any app that shows a list of the files that lie within a compressed file .zip or .rar. If the list could be ordered by file size it'd be great! It could be any software that runs on Windows or Mac OS since I use both OS using Parallels.

Why this is important to me?
The answer is that sometimes I need to send a compressed file to someone and this file generally contains lots of coding files that are part of a Visual Studio Solution/Project for example. I just want to send a subset of those files. There are some big files like DLLs and database files scattered everywhere in a lot of folders that don’t need to go with the compressed file.

So how can I avoid spending time going through all those folders/files, looking their size and deleting one by one to make the final compressed file to be uploaded smaller?

I thought about asking this question at SuperUser. To tell the truth I already had the question typed there but before I could post it and after a few tries by myself I got what I wanted using WinRAR with an easy play of menu commands. So how can you do this? Follow me…

1 - If you don’t know or don’t have WinRAR or use another file archiver, you can get it at:
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

I use WinRAR in its evaluation copy incarnation that once in while pops up a dialog asking you to purchase it. It works great even if you don’t want to purchase it… take it easy.

2 - At first compress the folders and files you want without getting bothered about the size of the resulting compressed file. After installing WinRAR it’s available in the context menu of any file or folder in Windows Explorer.

3 - Open the compressed file in WinRAR and play with the menu just a little bit. Go to the Options | File list and select Flat folders view and Details menu options.

Figure 1 - WinRAR listing the files of a compressed file (trunk.rar) by file size

Taking the above screenshot into consideration (it lists the content of a trunk project folder compressed), we can see that it has 1554 folders and 1624 files. This compressed file alone has 87 MB in disk when the actual uncompressed content has 193 MB in size but it’s still pretty big to send it over the wire… I have a lot of folders and files to go through if I want to delete the big and unnecessary files to try to decrease the final size! As you see, it also contains many duplicate files in different paths… it’s pretty daunting just to think about a manual scan. A visual scan in a single screen is much better. How do you get a big picture of this compressed file?

4 - Order all the files by size by clicking the size column header.

5 - Select all the files you want to remove/delete from the compressed file in just one go. One can do this in two different ways: clicking a file and holding the ctrl key and clicking another file to select not contiguous files OR selecting one file and pressing the shift key and clicking another file to select contiguous files. After this it’s just a matter of right clicking the file selection and executing the Delete files command.

Hope this useful tip helps you someday!

This is just one more post in the MP3 series where I write about how you can organize your MP3 library/collection performing batch renaming to correct MP3 metadata and save time.

Just after I posted about Using Regular Expressions to correct mistagged MP3 I had other task to accomplish with Mp3tag but I didn’t know how to do that. What I want now is somewhat like what I showed in that previous post. The difference is that now I want to use the content of a given tag to fill another tag, thus copying/cutting that content from tag to tag.

As always I have a feeling that there must be a way of doing what I want and as always I go after it.

Here’s the problem this time:

Picture 1 - Title tag has both the Title and Artist names and Artist tag has a wrong value

As you see in Picture 1, I have some MP3 files that have the Artist name included in the Title tag. The Artist name is between brackets while the Artist tag has the text Various. Obviously this is wrong because the Artist name should be in its proper Artist tag.

How can we correct this without manual intervention that would be a time consuming task?
The simple answer is using Mp3tag and its powerful set of features like the one called Guess values.

Guess values is so amazing that its window dialog just takes 2 parameters to get the job done. They are: Source format and Guessing pattern.

The Source format field in this case has the value %title% and the Guessing pattern field has the value %title% (%artist%). You can use any mp3 tag field between percent signs (%). What do these values mean?

Source format retrieves the value present in the Title tag of each MP3 and by guessing the values through the Guessing pattern it’s possible to split the Title tag according to the pattern. This opens up a world of possibilities where you can use any kind of combinations (masks/patterns) to split the value of a given tag and have those split values fill any MP3 tag of your choice.

So, in this case we have something as this happening behind the curtains:

Title: Begins With Me (Point of Grace)

Source format = %title%
Guessing pattern = %title% (%artist%)

Making the substitution, we have:

Guessing pattern = %Begins With Me% (%Point of Grace%)

With this, Mp3tag now knows what values it must use to fill the MP3 tags we want correctly.

Here’s the final result after you press the OK button present in Picture 1:

Picture 2 - Correctly tagged MP3 files

Hope you got the idea and make good use of this.

I already have the material to write the next post in this series. Keep an eye in this blog. :)

Two months have passed since I last posted something here. These were 2 busy months in my life. Hooray, I bought a brand new car and got my driver license, not necessarily in this order.

This post is about something I had planned to write sometime ago… the two screenshots shown here I got maybe 3 months ago. :D So let’s get to it.

As a big and eclectic fan of music that I’m, every now and then I see mistagged MP3 files like the ones with title tags that contain both the artist name and the song name. The following picture shows what I mean:

Picture 1 - Mistagged MP3 files (Title field has both the Artist and Song names)

Here’s where Mp3tag comes to the rescue. As you see in Picture 1, I’m using the dialog “Replace with regular expression”. Read my previous post about this great piece of software called Mp3tag to see how to get to this dialog. It has 3 fields that you must fill to make some magic happen allowing you to correct those wrongly tagged/mistagged MP3 titles all at once. Ha! You won’t lose your precious time correcting MP3 by MP3. I know that this is boring and that’s why I desperately searched for a solution. I know that if you’re reading this, you’re probably in the same situation and you just found a solution. :)

I’ve chosen the Field TITLE since it’s the problematic field in this particular case. Now the most important part, the so called Regex or Regular expression: (.*) - (.*). This thing means that we’re gonna separate the MP3 Title field in two parts. One part will have everything (.*) before the hyphen - and the other part will contain everything after the hyphen (.*).

Example:

Dru Hill - Away (Prod. by B.Cox) (Full + NoShout) (2010)

The regex (.*) - (.*) will separate the MP3 title above in two parts…

$1 = Dru Hill
$2 = Away (Prod. by B.Cox) (Full + NoShout) (2010)

The Replace matches with field has the value $2 because in this case I want to replace/substitute the MP3 Title with only the Song/Track name (the 2nd part/match of the regex above). If instead I wanted to keep the Artist name in the Title tag (D'oh!, not something I’d want to do), I’d write $1 in this field.

Now, take a look at Picture 2. When you click OK, this is the end result/magic you get. Nice and correctly titled/tagged MP3 files. The way I wanted them to be.

Picture 2 - Correctly tagged MP3 files

To make things last forever, do not forget to click the Save button present in Mp3tag’s toolbar or in the Save tag option present in the File menu. I like to press Ctrl+S as a shortcut.

If you want to learn the basics about regular expressions to use with Mp3tag, check this out: http://help.mp3tag.de/options_format.html#regexp

As you see, using regexes (one of the most powerful features of computers) you can make any kind of change to your MP3 tags like for example removing that (2010) present in each MP3 Title field above. That 2010 should be in its proper MP3 tag, namely the Year tag. Don’t ya think?

Hope this simple process helps someone out there keep an organized MP3 library as I do like to keep mine.

Note
Mp3tag is a Windows only application as is Windows Live Writer that I use to write these blog posts. I use/run it through Parallels Desktop on my Mac mini. Read this post to get more info about how to run Windows side by side with your Mac OS.

Here I’ll point you to great iPhone apps that I use. As I discover new ones I'll update this post to showcase them.

Use the comments section bellow to point me to great iPhone apps you use. Let's share them with the world.

Note
App here means any kind of application including games.

App - A to Z	Description
Analytics Pro	Finally a Google Analytics App that has all the features you want and need. Your data is presented in a useful and meaningful way rather than just listing the data like some other apps.
Aqueduct	Introducing Aqueduct - a world of jumbled waterways and mixed-up pipelines. It's up to you to rearrange the tracks and restore the flow. Locked gates, shifty conveyor belts, puzzling warp portals, and more stand between you and order. With over 190 unique puzzles, spanning 8 chapters of difficulty, Aqueduct delivers hours of neuron-jolting fun.
Download Manager Pro	Download Manager Pro is an ultimate download manager application which allows you to download files by using your iPhone OS device. You can view and share them.
Guitar Hero	Guitar Hero - the biggest music videogame franchise ever created is now available for the first time on your iPhone or iPod Touch! It’s your chance to experience the original, addictive guitar game that over 40 million people have jammed out to worldwide.
HP 15C Calculator	Developed by HP, the HP 15C Scientific Calculator app for your iPhone or iPod Touch is an exact replica of the original layout, functions, algorithms and calculation sequences you trusted to help you through college and your career.
iBabylon	With iBabylon you have translation @ a touch! Babylon the world’s leading provider of dictionary and translation software, brings you iBabylon for iPhone and iPod. iBabylon gives you quick and comprehensive dictionary results in over 75 languages, as well as effective full-text translations between dozens of languages.
Plants vs. Zombies	Winner of more than 20 Game of the Year awards! A mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home. Use your arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants — peashooters, wall-nuts, cherry bombs and more — to kill 26 types of zombies before they break down your door. Get ready to soil your plants!
Scrobbl	Scrobbl is useful for Last.fm users. Its is an update of Tony Hoyle's Scrobble daemon for iPhone iOS 3.0. Music you listen to using your iPhone gets scrobbled so that you won't miss a song in your profile. You can find it in BigBoss' repo on Cydia. It is compatible with the SBSettings Scrobble Toggle so you can turn scrobbling on and off quickly.
Tetris	Now celebrating over 100-million paid downloads on mobile! Discover why millions of players around the world have made the TETRIS® game one of the biggest blockbusters in mobile gaming history.
Twitter	Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world with the official Twitter for iPhone app. Realtime search, top tweets, trending topics and maps show what's happening now everywhere and nearby. Tweet, send DMs, share photos, videos and links to your friends and the world. Don't have an account? Just sign up from the app!
Wi-Fi Sync	Wi-Fi Sync enables wireless syncing with iTunes at the touch of a button. Never go looking for that USB cable again. Sync from the car, bed or shed whenever it suits you. Available now on Cydia Store for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. You won't find it on the App Store.