iTunes Music Tagger and Labeler

As I sit here trying to organize my digital life, realizing that I’ll have to eventually sit down and organize my entire iTunes collection, I had a thought…

Organizing my iTunes music is going to take a long, long time. most likely a few days, and that’s if I keep at it and stay motivated with no other distractions (read: work, school, eat, sleep). This is because I only have about 1/3 of it rated, and have a lot of duplicate songs and mislabeled song names, AND a lot of songs that are from albums called “the best of _____” (because iTunes album finder is stupid) or don’t have the album name at all.

I really…really wish there was a program that could do this for me. I don’t care how long it takes, but it would be VERY nice to have a program that labels my music correctly.
Of course I wouldn’t want it to rate my music. That would be my job after correct labeling is done, and being able to see all the correct information pop up on my iPod.

Obviously specifications for a project like this would have to be the entire music library in a database (sucks for people who like “underground music”), and the ability to read in music and recognize it just by the data that creates the music sounds. It would basically have to listen to music and recognize what’s being played, extremely accurately (and be able to distinguish between the original song and its remixes and covers, AND song mash-ups).
I doubt there’s anything like that today. Which means expect to hear me in about a week or two ecstatic about how I’ve finally, finally organized my iTunes all by myself.

OOH! Another thought! A fast-forward button to life! -_-
That would also come in handy after I order something on amazon and have to wait almost a week for it to come in the mail (i.e. my camera. Oy vey.)

/daydream

Online Account Aggregator

A few weeks ago, while trying to remember all the places I logged into over the years and gave away my precious email to and created an account in, and realized I don’t remember half of those places anymore, I had a thought…
What if you could have a program or website that tracked and combined all of your web accounts into one, so that you knew at a glance your entire effect on the web?
I know I’d like that.
I found something like that online, but it turned out to only have popular/well-known accounts for you to add (bad if you’re part of obscure forums) and even then worse is that even then, it didn’t have all the well-known websites to use.

I did find something pretty recently that works kind of like what I want–Norton 360 (yeah, I know) has a feature where you can have it remember every login and password for you, and have *that* ultra-password protected.
Not “your internet presence at a glance”, but we’re getting there.

/daydream

Belt Cupholder

About a month ago, after parking my car out about a block or so away from my house, carrying in a full drink of diet coke (I like it for the taste!) from my car to the house, my hand utlimately freezing in the process, and finally having to hold it in an unsafe fashion by the lid, I had a thought…

What if there was a belt attatchment that you could stick your cup in? I thought of putting my cup in my pocket, but that would just make the side of my leg extremely cold (and wet from the condensation). So I thought about a belt cupholder!

I then thought “oh, they probably made those, they’re probably like those 99 cent mini-recorders that can only record and play back one sound clip”, etc.
Well, they make really high-quality voice recorders, correct? Well, why can’t they make really high-quality other stuff? Just because a company sells “plastic crap” items for 99c, doesn’t mean the concept is necessarily bad, just the execution.

Now, know that I haven’t researched this at all yet. I have no idea if such a product exists. If it does, I just might buy it, assuming it’s of good quality.

Checking…
images.google.com search for “belt cupholder”: found something on the 5th page!

http://www.belowthebelt.net. How appropriate!
As the website says, the cup holder (the green one on the bottom row to the left) is a “paper cup holder – [it] fits the medium (16oz) paper cup shown on the right.”

Not an all-purpose belt cupholder, but we’re getting there.
Let me know if you find any others!

/daydream

Image Input Image Search

As I was searching for meme images on the internet about a few years ago, I had a thought…

What if you could search for images on the internet not just by text input, but by image input? Either you upload an image of something that looks similar to what you’re looking for, or you could draw in a drawpad area on the screen what the general look of the image is, and up pops the closest matches?

The latter is what I was thinking about when looking for images of “O RLY?” A couple years back. I wanted to see how many variations there were! But unfortunately, as opposed to today, where if you search for ORLY or O RLY on image.google, you’ll find at least half of your results are of alterations of the original ORLY owl, back then, only a couple showed up, and most of those were just the original.

The problem is that the images WERE on the internet, but weren’t tagged correctly. Or maybe google hadn’t found them, which is another problem altogether. Assuming they just weren’t tagged correctly, if we had an IMAGE INPUT image seach, we wouldn’t need tags at all! (This is, of course, assuming we already know of the picture we’re looking for. If you want to “find pictures of pretty sunsets”; then yes, until this image input algorithm becomes AMAZINGLY intricate, precise and accurate, you’d still need tags for those kinds of searches)

Until we get such an image search, keep playing Google Image Labeler!

/daydream

Lost Item Locator

As I was sitting in my room around a decade ago, annoyed at losing my transforming teenage mutant ninja turtle toy (which turned out to be indefinitely; I never found it) I had a thought…

As a young kid, I would always lose stuff. I even had a few really cool toys that I lost, one of them being my TTMNT toy. I felt like I really needed a locating system, like that in Glover, where you hold down a button, and it just points you in the direction of whatever you’re looking for.

I literally imagined a device like that one pictured, where you could flip a switch, and it’d show you an outline of what you’re looking for, so you’d never have to literally AIMLESSLY search for anything again.

Any that we have today like that is based on sound. I’d like a system like this, one that you could search for multiple items at once, and always know you’ve found everything you need.
Make lists! Need all the items for work in the morning? Select that list. Need all the items for school? Just select that list. Need some relaxing time? Select the list with the ipod, your headphones, your gameboy, and your snack stash.
You know exactly where everything is, and how to get to it.
This would probably be a godsend to messy people.

Original picture credit is here. Thanks, z.about.com!

/daydream

Globe-Wide Web

As I was sitting down in my comfy chair, writing yesterday’s Roadway-Wide Web post, I had a related thought…

What if instead of limiting the connectedness to the road, we were able to connect everyone to each other on a one-on-one basis?
Now, of course we wouldn’t want to replace plain old talking. But there are many things that we aren’t able to do efficiently and successfully with just plain talking, like instantly finding lost people in large crowds, giving visual directions to someone as they’re walking, and gathering groups of like-minded people instantly.
I see a future where people are able to just don a pair of computer-system-embedded glasses or sunglasses, and are instantly immersed much more deeply into the world around them.

I think perhaps this could even be used in a proximity basis–only receive and process signals from the people directly around you (a half mile or mile radius?). That way, there aren’t any need for servers or anything like that, just computer-to-computer connections (sunglasses-to-sunglasses), just like in the 80’s (am I right in saying that?)

Anyways, I hope one day this becomes a reality, and that the internet explodes out of our devices and actually immerses itself into our everyday lives, helping to bring us all together even further.

Picture source is here. Thanks, surfersvillate.com!
(Isn’t images.google.com amazing?)

/daydream

Remembering That Day…

I was debating whether or not I was going to make a post today about September 11th, 2001. I mean, I know everyone will probably do one, but if i don’t do it for whatever reason, it’ll look like I don’t care.

I definitely want you to know I care.

I’m not going to go into a story of what happened, you all already know how it did.
I’m not going to go into the conspiracy theories surrounding what happened, because frankly, those lies are a disgrace to the people who suffered and died that day.
My post isn’t going to be that long either, in fact, it’s already 1/3 over.

I’m going to talk about one thing I learned today about the future Freedom Tower, the building that is already being built at ground zero.

I’m a guy who really, really likes symbolism. It’s cool to see the 13 stripes on the flag and know they represent the 13 original colonies.
If you don’t already know, the top of the freedom tower building (the roof) will be exactly as high as the original twin towers, around 1,368 feet (417 m). The new tower’s spire will reach taller than the original towers’.
The original spire reached to 1,727 feet (526.3 m). The new spire, however, will reach to 1,776 feet (451.3 m)

Did you catch that?
1,776 feet.

I love our country so much.

It’s a great tribute, that in and of itself.

(P.S. I hate how it’s going to register me as logging this in on the 12th [http://daily...2008/09/12/remembering-...]. I can assure you that I logged this on the 11th. Late in the day, yes, but on the 11th.)

/day

Roadway-Wide Web

As I’m sitting here on the concrete, laptop on lap, waiting for my brother to pick me up after my philosophy class, I had a thought…

Everyone knows how boring it can get driving alone along the interstate. Even if there’s a hundred cars around you, there’s no way you can communicate with them, and the only way to have any enjoyment is to turn on your radio or plug in your ipod.
I had a different idea. What if, while you’re driving along any stretch of road, you could be instantly connected to the cars around you? They’re people, too, not just hunks of metal!
Some things you could do with this sytem:
-lively chats
-warn people about dangerous drivers
-alert problems along the road
-spam peop[MUTED]

I know there are other theoretical similar systems to automate the driving process, but I haven’t heard one yet that links the drivers together.

Hmm…this seems like it could be expanded to different areas of life…more in tomorrow’s post.

And yes, this post is short. A lot of it went into the picture, so be sure to click on it! (original picture source. Thanks, westcoastroads.com!)

/daydream

“Popular Online Discussions” Search Engine

As I stepped into my car to start driving home after a long psychology class that ended at around 10pm, I had a thought…

The internet today is larger than it has ever been before (wow, that was totally unexpected!) This is great, but this means it can get pretty hard to find that niche of people who are currently talking about whether playing with “Squirtle in Pokemon Red” is the best option (it is) or who are currently reminiscing about “Dunkaroos”.

To solve this problem, I think there should be some sort of “popular online discussion” search engine (which we’ll call Babble). Just like Google, to use it, you’d type in what you’re looking for, “X”, and hit search. What’s different is that instead of looking for websites in general, it would only look for dicussion boards, forums and chatrooms where the main topic is currently what you’re looking to discuss. You’d basically be asking Babble to “find the place online where the most people are currently talking about ‘X’.”

That last bit, “currently talking about” is crucial, however–you don’t want to find a forum that’s been dead for months, no matter how close it is to the topic you want to discuss. The problem is it’s very likely that the technology doesn’t exist yet for what Babble needs to do–daily, hourly, or more preferably minute-by-minute webpage crawling for the ENTIRE internet so that it can keep up-to-date on what is currently being discussed. Is that even feasible? IIRC, it takes within about a month to index a page on Google, or at the fastest about a week, neither of which are even close to what is needed for a popular discussions search engine. And don’t forget this needs to update all websites extremely frequently, not just once.
Unfortunately, It just doesn’t seem possible yet without at the very least a LOT of money and time spent putting into it.

After a small bit of searching, I was able to find a message board that had started up a conversation about Dunkaroos. Awesome!
Of course, as with most already-indexed forum pages, the discussion ended months ago. If “Babble” had existed months ago, I might have been able to put my two cents in!
Which, of course, would be in response to:

ThePoo: they are still made…you can order them by the truck load on amazon

Which, of course, would have deemed the obligatory response:

Me: WHAT? *ordering now* holy crap yes! THANK YOU!

Oh well. I guess for now, as opposed to some awesome dunkaroo-age (in about 2-3 business days), Babble will just have to stay a thought.

/daydream