I'm a big fan of analytics data; therefore I try to collect stats about anything – like visitors that check my web pages/profiles. It’s no different with my Last.fm profile.

Last.fm profile page uses BBCode markup that is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards and unfortunately it has no JavaScript support.
Google Analytics (GA) on the other hand makes use of JavaScript code when it comes to the tracking code one must include in their website. This causes a frustrating experience to anyone that tries to integrate the GA tracking code in places where JavaScript code isn’t accepted.

While searching for a solution some time ago I didn’t find a way to solve this impedance, but yesterday after putting a little bit more caring on my Google search query, I finally found a way of filling the gap so that both services could talk to each other: NoJSStats, short for No JavaScript Stats is the missing piece. It’s a free web service. Basically NoJSStats uses Google App Engine to track visitors using just an image or anything that allows external resource requests in the website you want to track.

Here’s what you need to do in order to get analytics data popping up at your Google Analytics account in respect to your Last.fm profile:

First, let’s configure GA side…

1 - Go to Google Analytics and click the Gear icon at the top right of any page and create a new Web Property:

Figure 1 - Creating a new Last.fm Google Analytics Web Property

2 - Name the Web Property and in the Web Site URL field enter your Last.fm profile URL and click Create property:

Figure 2 - Filling Last.fm Web Property with the correct data

3 - Take note of the Web Property ID assigned to your new Web Property:

Figure 3 - Checking Web Property ID that’ll be used when configuring Last.fm profile

Now let’s configure Last.fm side:

4 - Edit your Last.fm profile clicking in the Edit link located in the right side of your profile page:

Figure 4 - Edit button used to get access to Last.fm profile data

5 - Head to the “About You” field and add this line at the end:

[img]http://nojsstats.appspot.com/UA-1234567-89/www.last.fm/user/leniel[/img]

Do not forget to click the Save details button.

Two things related to that img URL deserve a note here:

► You’re using the Last.fm GA Web Property ID, for example UA-1234567-89 taken from step 3 above.
► You’re pointing to your Last.fm profile at the last part of the URL.

DO CHANGE these two parts accordingly.

Interesting enough to try is that if you copy & paste the URL from step 5 in your browser, you get this result:

http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmwv=1&utmn=37172618&utmsr=-&utmsc=-&utmul=-&utmje=0&utmfl=-&utmdt=-&utmhn=www.last.fm/user/leniel&utmr=&utmp=&utmac=UA-1234567-89&utmcc=__utma%3D167996071.415430387.1319322154.1319322154.1319322154.1%
3B%2B__utmb%3D167996071%3B%2B__utmc%3D167996071%3B%2B__utmz%
3D167996071.1319322154.2.2.utmccn%3D%28direct%29%7Cutmcsr%3D%28direct%
29%7Cutmcmd%3D%28none%29%3B%2B__utmv%3D167996071.189.24.47.122%3B

Awesome! NoJSStats does its magic and all GA data -- every single item is assembled and packed into the Request URL's query string (everything after the '?'). For more technical details, see this StackOverflow question: Why does Google Analytics use __utm.gif?

This is everything you need to do. Easy, no?

If you have problems
I have tested this workflow and it’s indeed working as expected. In case you can’t get it working:

If you check the Tracking Code status in GA it says: "Tracking Not Installed".

Figure 5 - Last.fm Tracking Code status

It doesn't matter... really. That's because we aren't using the standard JavaScript code provided by GA. GA is waiting to detect the presence of that code. We are not using this approach and so it's OK if it reports "Tracking Not Installed".

Analytics data appear within a time frame. It's not real-time at the moment.

If you still do not see any data after a day or two, please leave a comment in this post and I’ll try to help.

Final notes
You should also see data on GA about your own visits to your profile! You can block this from being counted. Check this: How do I exclude my internal traffic from reports?

One of the advantages of using this approach instead of others like FLAG counter that I usually see all over Last.fm profiles is that you keep your data private and get way more stats from your visitors.

Last.fm is missing visitor Analytics features in its current incarnation. I sure hope it implements something interesting in this area.

For now, I hope you get a better insight of how your profile is performing in the internetz.

I mentioned in my last MP3 series post that I had the material to write a new post regarding this topic and so today I’m fulfilling the promise I made. I’m going to show how you can use the powerful Swiss Army knife called Mp3tag (Windows “only” app) right within your Mac. Yes, you read it right. You can run Mp3tag using your Mac. Nowadays almost everything is possible…

The great thing here is that there’s a way to use our beloved Mp3tag in Mac OS. I even asked a question at SuperUser where I was trying to find some similar software that I could use in Mac. Here’s the question: Alternative to mp3tag for Mac OS X. Well, after searching a little bit more I found a great site called PlayOnMac. What is PlayOnMac?

PlayOnMac is like wineskin, winebottler or crossover a piece of software which allows you to easily install and use in your Mac numerous games and software designed to run only with Microsoft®'s Windows®.

I then found Mp3tag bundle here. You get a .dmg file which contains Mp3 Tag.app (172.5 MB) on disk. Just mount the .dmg file with a double click and extract the .app file to your Applications folder in Mac OS dock. Doing this you have the power of Mp3tag right inside your Mac. No Windows virtual machine needed/no need to load your bootcamp Windows. It’s good because you’ll have more memory left for your Mac (in the case of a virtual machine) or you won’t spend your time changing the operating system (in the bootcamp case).

Ok, the bundle is a little bit lazy to load and the visual (retro) is Windows like but who mind?

There’s nothing better than a use case to showcase something. Today I need to organize some MP3 tags because their Track - Artist - Title fields are all a complete mess. Some data are already there and some are missing completely. I of course will use Mp3tag guessing pattern feature to solve this.

To get to the Guess values dialog window, click the Actions (Quick) icon in the toolbar and select Guess values in the dropdown menu. Screenshots can be seen here.

Here are the MP3 files before the process:

Figure 1 - Mp3tag Guess Values Window for Track Artist and Title in File Name [ before ]

As you see most of the tracks have 1 in the Track field and Title and Artist fields are missing in most of cases. All the information that is missing is present in the Filename field. Really interesting fact.

Let’s take advantage of Filename info and fill the missing tags with that data. How? Using Mp3tag Guess values window.

Source format: %_filename%

Guessing pattern: %track% - %artist% - %title%

Really easy, isn’t it?

What the hell these % symbols are doing here? They are simple placeholders that tell Mp3tag about a specific pattern found in fields of MP3 files. In this specific case, Mp3tag will extract data from the Filename field ( source ). Looking at Figure 1 we see that all file names follow a pattern: Track # - Artist - Title. Such pattern is then passed to Mp3tag in the Guessing pattern field. With this input Mp3tag is able to infer/parse the file names and split them accordingly. Each part will then be used to fill the correct MP3 tags.

Here’s the post-processed MP3 files:

Figure 2 - Mp3tag Guess Values Window for Track Artist and Title in File Name [ after ]

That’s a much better view and experience within your preferred Media Library software!

Things like this makes me really happy with computers…

Hope you find it as useful as it’s being to me in this hard task of keeping a MP3 collection organized. I at least try my best.

To see more ways of using the Guessing Pattern, check the MP3 series of posts.

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.

Take a look at the MP3 series. Probably you’ll find something interesting.

If you're like me, you also like to take a look at the lyrics of music that is currently playing in your computer or mobile device as the iPhone. I do it to learn a bit more of English since its not my main language and of course because I also want to sing along correctly. :)

The iPhone for example allows you to read the lyrics of the current song if the lyrics are present in the MP3 ID3 metadata container. This is pretty cool. If you already have lyrics embedded in your MP3 files you can see them while in a bus trip, waiting for a service, etc.

Every MP3 has a specific field (also know as frame) in its metadata to store lyrics information. It’s just a matter of filling this field with the correct lyrics. This is a hard work to do manually because you have to search for the lyrics and then copy/paste it in the right field. This sounds like a great thing to be done by software instead. Again, that’s what computers are for… save us time.

In iTunes (the media player/library software I use) for example, one would right-click a music file and then select the Get Info context menu option. Then you’d select the Lyrics tab and paste the lyrics in the white huge field making sure to click OK as seen in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1 - Adding lyrics to an iTunes music file through the Lyrics tab

Some time ago I asked a question at SuperUser site: Software to add Lyrics to MP3 files ID3 metadata. It seems that there are a lot of people (3,356 to be precise as the time of this post) out there looking to accomplish what this post tries to clarify.

When I asked the question I was using Windows and I got good answers.

I also discovered other software by myself as MiniLyrics for Windows at that time. If you’re interested in MiniLyrics, here goes a small tutorial to save the lyrics to MP3 metadata!

MiniLyrics
Right click MiniLyrics icon in the system tray, choose Preferences and then select the Lyrics icon. Under the Save downloaded lyrics in: - select Save lyrics in mp3 file.

Other great feature MiniLyrics has is that while the music is playing the lyrics can be shown on your screen according to what is being sung, that is, the lyrics flows in your screen according to the music timing. Fantastic job from crintsoft people... :)

Besides saving the lyrics to MP3 metadata, there are lots of features and possibilities when it comes to lyrics in MiniLyrics software.

From the official site:

    MiniLyrics Display lyrics for your favorite music!

        * Lyrics plugin software for iTunes, Windows Media Player, MediaMonkey, Winamp, etc. You do not need to change the way you enjoy music.
        * Display scrolling lyrics, you can follow along with the artist and catch every word.
        * Automatically search and download lyrics.
        * Huge lyrics database, and it is expanding everyday.
        * Free Trial version that never expires.

Lyricator
Lyricator as suggested by merv is a fantastic/great/cool piece of software to go with MediaMonkey but it is having some problems currently as you can find in this thread.

I had to resort to other service while Lyricator is being repaired. I found other free software that does the job, but only on a Mac computer (that’s OK because I’ve switched to the Mac world). It's name is Get Lyrical.

Get Lyrical

Figure 2 - Get Lyrical doing its job in the background

    Get Lyrical auto-magically add lyrics to songs in iTunes!

You can choose either a selection of tracks, or the current track. Or turn on "Active Tagging" to get lyrics for songs as you play them.

    You can also browse and edit the lyrics of your iTunes tracks right from Get Lyrical.

I highlighted in yellow above a powerful feature of Get Lyrical. You can even add lyrics to a selection of tracks at once. This is a batch processing feature really welcome when you want to add lyrics to an artist’s complete discography for example.

I’ve been using Get Lyrical for some time now and it is really competent in the job. I highly recommend it.

Last time I showed you how to Automate tasks in Mac OS with Automator. I used Automator to create a simple workflow that helps moving MP3 files to iTunes folder. Check that here.

Now I have another task to Automator.

This is the description of what I want to accomplish or the problem description if you prefer:

I often download some free legal MP3 files from the internet for evaluation, more specifically from Indie Rock Cafe (great great site by the way :D - check it out if you like Indie Rock music). I use IndieRockCafe mainly to discover bands that I’ve never heard about. It’s being a great experience so far. I’ve come to know some really good bands that, else I would never hear a song of theirs.

To download those MP3s I use DownThemAll that is a really nice piece of software that works beautifully with Firefox. I wrote about DownThemAll in Automate the download of a list of URLs/links. Although I didn’t write how to download only MP3 files with DownThemAll, this post gives you an idea about the purpose of DownThemAll. I’ll write about how to download only specific kind of files (MP3 in this case) using DownThemAll, but that’s another post. Probably I’ll detail this download process I’m mentioning here.

As I was telling you, I often do the same task, that is, I go to IndieRockCafe, click on DownThemAll icon in my Firefox toolbar and tada, the download of IndieRockCafe’s recently added MP3s just start. DownThemAll will download only page links that point to MP3 files saving these MP3 in a single folder called IndieRockCafe.

After the download I used to select all the files within that folder and drag and drop them inside an iTunes playlist called IndieRockCafe. iTunes is wise enough to tell me that some files are already part of the playlist and gives me the option to skip them adding only new files into that playlist. Doing so I always have a fresh playlist with the latest files of IndieRockCafe. It works, but it has a lot of manual steps.

Yesterday I thought: the above steps are a perfect fit to be automated with Automator.

Let’s create a workflow:

1 - Go to the Applications folder and select Automator.

2 - You’ll be presented with the following screen to choose a template for your workflow. Select Folder Action as the template.

Figure 1 - Types of templates available to create an Automator workflow (Folder Action)

3 - In Folder Action receives folders and files added to, select the folder you want. In my case it is the IndieRockCafe folder.

4 - Now select Music in Library list and then select Import Files into iTunes under the Actions list. Drag this action to the workflow area in the right.

5 - Select Existing playlist and the playlist you want the files to go to. As I wrote above I already have a Playlist called IndieRockCafe inside iTunes. So I selected it.

6 - Go to the File menu and select Save. Give the workflow an appropriate name, e.g. IndieRockCafe.

The following screenshot shows the Folder Action workflow configured:

Figure 2 - IndieRockCafe.workflow configured according to the six steps described above

7 - Now that the workflow is created, there’s a last step required to orchestrate things: go to the IndieRockCafe folder and right-click it. Select Services > Folder Actions Setup… Make sure you attach the IndieRockCafe workflow to this folder as shown in Figure 3:

Figure 3 - Attaching IndieRockCafe.workflow in Folder Actions Setup

Make sure you click the Enable Folder Actions checkbox too:

Figure 4 - Enabling Folder Actions and turning IndieRockCafe.workflow ON for the IndieRockCafe folder

… and we’re done! As you see this is totally life saver.

Every new MP3 that gets added in my IndieRockCafe folder through DownThemAll or that I manually place in this folder will be automatically added in IndieRockCafe playlist.

Task successfully automated!

I’m a music lover and I hope you can take advantage of it too.

Important
DownThemAll creates file segments ( *.dtapart files ) while downloading. DownThemAll splits the file into several parts and then downloads each segment of the file individually, which gives you better speed from servers, especially those that choose to limit your download speed. This behavior will cause the workflow created above to fail because iTunes won’t recognize those parted files when trying to import them. To solve this problem, do the following:

In Firefox Tools menu choose More dTa Tools and then select Preferences.

In tab Advanced and under Temporary files choose a directory to store those dtapart files. See screenshot below to have an idea:

Figure 5 - Using a temporary folder to store DownThemAll file parts or segments

Doing the above, DownThemAll will store those partial files in a separate folder. When it finishes downloading a file it will join its parts and then will move that file to the IndieRockCafe folder I specified in the workflow. Now iTunes will import the MP3.

Note
Folder action workflows are saved in
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions

Download
You can download this workflow at:
https://sites.google.com/site/leniel/blog/IndieRockCafe.workflow.zip

This one is about an incredible application that comes with Mac OS X. Its name is Automator.

Jesus Christ, this is a life saver app!

This is the description of Automator:

With Automator, you can accomplish time-consuming, repetitive manual tasks quickly, efficiently, and effortlessly. Automator lets you skip the complex programming and scripting that is normally required to create automations. Instead, you assemble individual steps into a complete task by dragging these actions into an Automator workflow. Automator comes with a library of hundreds of actions. And with the Watch Me Do action, you can record an action — such as pressing a button or controlling an application without built-in Automator support — and replay it as an action in a workflow.

I have lots of MP3 files that I need to go through analyzing if I really want to keep them in my media library. During the last year I stored all those MP3 in a folder and such a folder is now 55.56 GB and contains 11840 files to be precise. That’s a lot of MP3! I keep postponing this open/listen to task but today I thought I’d start. That’s where Automator fits the job.

In this post I’ll show you how to create a simple workflow that helps moving the MP3 files to iTunes folder /Users/leniel/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes. The folder Automatically Add to iTunes is a special folder that iTunes keeps watching for new files added to it. When a file is added in this folder, iTunes automatically adds it to the media library using MP3 metadata to organize the library. When added files will reside in /Users/leniel/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music.

Let’s create the workflow:

1 - Go to the Applications folder and select Automator.

2 - You’ll be presented with the following screen to choose a template for your workflow. Select Service as the template.

Figure 1 - Types of templates available to create an Automator workflow

3 - In Service receives selected, select audio files. “In” select Finder.

4 - Now select Files & Folders in Library list and then select Move Finder Items under the Actions list. Drag this action to the workflow area in the right.

5 - In Move Finder Items select the folder where you want the files to be moved to. You also have the option of showing the action when the workflow runs.

6 - Go to the File menu and select Save. Give it an appropriate name as Add to iTunes and you’re done.

The following screenshot shows the Service workflow configured:

 
Figure 2 - Add to iTunes.workflow configured according to the six steps described above

Now, let’s use this service workflow. To do this, go to Finder and open any folder that contains audio files such as MP3. Right click the MP3 file and voila. Now there’s an extra context menu option called Add to iTunes. What a marvelous thing.

Figure 3 - Add to iTunes context menu option in Finder when right clicking MP3 file(s)

What happens when Add to iTunes is clicked? The workflow we created will be executed and the selected file(s) will be moved to the folder specified in the workflow, in this case /Users/leniel/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes.

As you see this is totally life saver.

I can play the MP3 in iTunes and if I decide that I want to keep it in my media library I just have to select Add to iTunes.

The possibilities with Automator are endless given the amount of options in its Library and Actions lists and workflow template types.

I hope you could get an idea of what Automator can do.

Updated on 12/16/2010

If you make a slight change in step 3 above you can have this workflow add not only audio files but even entire folders to iTunes and better yet, iTunes will ask if you want to replace existing files so that you don’t end up with duplicate files in your iTunes library. This is great.

So what do you have to do? Instead of audio files, select files or folders. Just this. Save the workflow. Now right click over any folder in Finder and you’ll see that you get a new menu option under Services called Add to iTunes.

Figure 4 - Add to iTunes context menu option in Finder when right clicking a folder

Notes
Service workflows are saved in /Users/YourUserName/Library/Services.

In prior versions of Mac OS, there was an option to save the workflow as a plug-in. This was necessary so that you could have a context menu option (right-click) in Finder to run the workflow. I tried to go this way but this option isn’t available in Mac OS X 10.6.4. I realized that I had to create a Service workflow when I read this question at Apple’s Support site: No Automator plug-in in 10.6?

Download
You can download this workflow at:
https://sites.google.com/site/leniel/blog/AddtoiTunes.workflow.zip

References
Automator - Your Personal Automation Assistant

Automator - Learn by example

Automator at Apple’s Mac OS – All Applications and Utilities

Automator article at Wikipedia

It’s always good to keep things organized even more when it comes to MP3 files. If you use to listen to MP3 music you know what I’m talking about.

I keep a timeline of music I listen to at Last.fm. Last.fm tries to help us correcting wrong MP3 tags, but corrections are only visible online and they don’t change MP3 metadata, that is, you still have wrongly tagged MP3 residing in your music library.

To overcome such situation I started looking for a piece of software that could resolve this misinformation. I got to know a free yet powerful small application called Mp3tag that allows the execution of various commands against MP3 metadata.

Excerpting from the official site:

Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of common audio formats where it supports ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags.

It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words in tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more.

Mp3tag supports online database lookups from, e.g., Amazon, discogs, or freedb, allowing you to automatically gather proper tags and cover art for your music library.

One of the best features of Mp3tag is the Actions menu button that let’s you replace text within any MP3 tag field using simple find and replace or more advanced regular expressions. The following figure shows the options available:

Figure 1 – Options available through the Actions menu button

I’ll briefly show how to edit the Title of some files all at once - what is known as batch processing.

I’ll remove with only one command (action) the text “ - TO BE REMOVED” that is part of the Title tag of 10 MP3 files:

Figure 2 – Mp3tag listing 10 MP3 files before the batch processing

Click on the Action menu button (mouse pointer is over it in the following picture) and select the action type as Replace and click OK:

Figure 3 – Mp3tag action type selection

Now select the MP3 tag field you’d like to change. In this case I’m going to modify the content of the Title tag field. Enter the text “ - TO BE REMOVED” inside the Original field. As I want to remove the text I’ll let the Replace with field blank/empty.

Figure 4 – Mp3tag Replace action window

Click OK and voila:

Figure 5 – Mp3tag listing 10 MP3 files after the batch processing

Now you know where to look for a versatile MP3 tag editor. It comes to the rescue allowing you to avoid spending your time editing MP3 by MP3. You can do lots of things related to MP3 metadata. You can batch process all your MP3 with only one action easy as pie.

It would be good if popular media players as Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc could let us do things like this simple task I demonstrated in this post. Maybe someday they will. I hope.

References
Mp3tag online Help
Mp3tag group at Last.fm
Mp3tag at Twitter

I've just bought an iPod nano 3rd generation (4 GB) model. It arrived from Germany from a trip a cousin took there for his new job at Thyssenkrupp.

I decided to ask him to buy an iPod there because the price here in Brazil is an absurd. While in the USA it costs $ 149.00 and in Germany € 149.00, here in Brazil it costs an average of R$ 600.00.

I put my hands on the iPod on Saturday 12/22 in the afternoon although it were on my computer desk since the morning.

Firstly I tried to connect it in one of the USB ports I have on my computer. It didn't work. The computer refused to install the iPod and didn't recognize it at all. I kept trying any possible configuration but even after formatting the hard disk I couldn't get it functioning.

I googled for the causes of this problem and I found a lot of advices and possible solutions. For what I could see there are a lot of people with the same problem.

I spent more than 24 hours of constant research to get to a solution. It wasn't that obvious.

My motherboard is an ASUS A7S8X-MX and it has 4 USB 2.0 ports on the back. The USB controllers are from SiS, more specifically model SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller (look at the expanded node in the image bellow).

When I tried to connect the iPod to the computer I got an error message that stated that the device had malfunctioned. Sometimes the operating system tried to install the drivers but failed during the process and stated that the device could not work properly. In truth it didn’t work. I couldn't see the iPod neither in Windows Explorer nor in iTunes. So what was the solution? I got the motherboard manual and searched for USB. There is a jumper that controls how the USB ports are charged. It is described in the section “USB device wake-up” in the manual. What I did was just change the jumper position from +5V to +5VSB. After that the iPod was recognized by Windows XP SP2.

From what I could observe the iPod didn't have sufficient current so that every time it started to charge its battery the OS automatically ejected the device. This way I didn't have access to the iPod. Every time it connected and ejected automatically.

Now everything is working flawlessly and I've already synced some music. I'm listening to it.