Antenna Finds and Records Internet Radio Streams in Windows
Last Updated on Friday, 9 March 2012 11:26 Written by Alan Sunday, 8 April 2012 06:00
Online radio has become one of the most popular media applications on the internet. There is no shortage of ways to tune in and listen to stations from all around the world, but recording streaming media usually requires a separate application. Now thanks to Antenna, an Adobe Air application, there is a way to find, tune in, and record internet radio all in one app.
To install Antenna, you’ll first need to have the Adobe Air framework installed. Think of this as similar to Microsoft apps that first require Silverlight or .NET installed. Download Adobe Air and then Antenna to get started.
The Antenna app comes with a unique user interface that integrates a world map to display the location of stations from all around the globe. If the map is problematic, you can locate stations by country flag as well. You can locate channels by country or genre, and double click a channel name to begin streaming it.
Once you locate an internet radio station you like you can begin streaming it. Once streaming click the “Record” button and it will go from white to red to indicate that recording has begun. Click it again to stop recording. From here you can also rate internet radio stations.
Antenna is an easy to install app that that doesn’t take up a lot of space. There are alternatives available, but none are as feature-rich as the Antenna internet radio app. It’s compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and 7. You can download it, along with Adobe Air, from this website.
WinDirStat Shows What’s Taking Up Your Hard Drive Space
Last Updated on Monday, 5 March 2012 06:00 Written by Alan Monday, 2 April 2012 07:00
One of the great mysteries of Windows computers can be the hard drive, especially when it appears to suddenly fill up with data for an “unknown” reason. That’s perhaps one of the most frustrating problems of all because it’s not always obvious where that data is is actually at. You can spend a lot of time looking through every file on your hard drive to find the data and then determine where it’s coming from, but you can save a lot time by letting a utility do this job for you.
One of the simplest ways to solve these issues is with an app like WinDirStat which can easily and quickly search through your hard drive and find out what is using up all of your disk space. It’s a free utility that can easily be downloaded and installed to any PC. Once you have the utility downloaded and installed you can open it and choose the drive you would like to search. You can search just one hard drive or multiple drives.
When you start the app you will notice the little “Pac Man” figures moving back and forth on each folder in your drive searching for the files that are eating up your precious disk space.
Once the process completes, and it’s surprisingly fast, you can begin to quickly analyze your hard drive. You will see each folder on your hard drive and, like using Windows Explorer you can click each one to drill down into sub-folders. Each folder has a bar, size, and percentage to the right so you can quickly see which ones are taking up the most space.
Now that you know where your space is going you can begin to decide what to do to fix the problem. If these are files you don’t need you can simply delete them, but if they are relevant then you may want to move them to a USB drive or some other external source.
WinDirStat is a free download available from WinDirStat.info. The program and is open-source and is based on an earlier KDE app.
Batch Convert Audio Files with Switch
Last Updated on Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:07 Written by Alan Monday, 30 January 2012 07:00
Not many people these days keep audio CD’s. For most of us, all of the CD’s we owned have been ripped to our computers, stored on backups, and/or moved to cloud storage. In our house we began ripping all of our CD’s years ago and then selling the discs to a music shop that dealt in used discs. It saved us a lot of shelf space and made listening to our music a lot easier as well. However, in the early days, I elected to use WMA (Windows Media Audio) as my format of choice, although I wave since switched to MP3. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a great format for music. However, it’s also not compatible with all services, like Amazon Cloud Player. So, what do you do if you have a large bunch of music that needs to be converted to another audio type?
One solution is a free program called Switch, from NCH Software. That’s what we’re going to be trying out here today. Once you have downloaded the app and begun the installation you will be asked if you would like to install any of the extras that come along with it. This isn’t anything nefarious, but a couple of them are checked by default (like the Ask.com toolbar) so be careful here.
The user interface is pretty spartan by today’s software standards, and that’s a good thing. You can add files or folders, play songs to get a sample or make sure it’s the file you wanted, and choose from a few options. At the bottom of the screen you can choose the audio format you want to output and the folder where you want the new files sent to.
Select your music, or a folder full of it, by browsing your PC or network and then choose what format you would like it converted to. Now choose the folder that you want your new files placed in and click the big “Convert” button at the bottom right of the screen.
The conversion goes fairly quickly and I am testing it with Switch installed on a Laptop (on 802.11n) and the files I converted were on a computer with an ethernet connection to the the router.
You can choose, in the options, to delete the source file upon conversion (this isn’t set by default), but I would recommend making sure your new files are good and then using them to replace the old format ones.
In my tests Switch worked flawlessly. It’s a small file and doesn’t come with bloatware, although as I said earlier, watch the installation to make sure you only get what you want. It handles a LOT of audio file formats and converts music quickly. The interface is straight-forward to use. The app is free as well, although there is a paid version that adds a few more features. You can get a copy by visiting NCH Software.
