Computer, Electronic, and Freeware

I see guides all the time that purport to instruct new home recording hopefuls on the best equipment and software needed to start their home recording studio. There is one thing these “how-to” articles seem to have in common, which is that they explain very well how to set up an intermediate home studio, not a starter one.

I remember how overwhelmed I felt when I first started recording my own stuff, mostly music, but then audio books, voice-overs, podcasts, audio-for video, etc. That was about 20 years ago, and to be honest, there are STILL topics in the realm of audio recording that confuse me! And I’m an engineer and producer! So I’ve developed a rule-of-thumb for what constitutes “audio recording guidance for beginners” that goes something like this: If that guidance contains the acronym, “MIDI” (or any acronym for that matter), it isn’t for beginners.” Why?

First, let’s look at why someone might want to start recording audio from home. Guess what? Not everyone is a musician! In this multi-media, internet-dependent, YouTube-watching age, audio is everywhere; well, at least crappy-to-mediocre audio is everywhere;). From podcasts to audio books, advertisement voice-overs to e-learning, and video narration to, yes, music, we consume audio just about every minute of every day. So it is a mistake to assume that all, or even most, of the folks out there who really want good beginner advice on setting up and operation their own home recording studio are musicians. There is little need to tell those folks anything about the musical the instrument digital interface (MIDI) protocol.

Second, let’s talk about musicians who have little-to-no experience recording. A LOT of these folks are singers and guitar-players, garage rock bands or folk singer-songwriters. In other words, they just want to get their music “out there” in the world in the form of recordings. Musicians tend to be artists…yeah, I know, that’s a shocker, eh? Well artists are not always fabulous with the hard sciences, like electrical engineering or computer science. So even among the recording newbies out there, MIDI is not something they need immediately, if ever.

So now that I have described what advice for recording beginners does NOT look like, I suppose you’d like to know what it DOES look like. Okay, here goes. Download free audio recording software. There are a few good ones out there that are open-source “freeware,” like Audacity for example. Total cost so far: $0.00. Next, get yourself some headphones or ear buds. If anyone in your house has an mp3 player, you already have at least one set lying around. Total cost so far: $0.00. Now all you need is a microphone. Your beginner home studio only needs a PC mic. Thanks to on-line role-playing games and internet communication, most folks will already have one of these as well. Total cost so far: $0.00. If you don’t already have a PC microphone, you can get one almost anywhere for about $5.00. So the most expensive beginner home recording studio so far is $5.00. Once you have those things, you have your home studio!

Now I did promise in the title of this article to explain how to record good quality audio from a $5.00 studio. So what do I have to say for myself on that score? Only this: when it comes to audio quality, knowledge trumps gear. If you understand just a few key principles of audio recording, you can produce better quality audio from your $5.00 studio than someone with a $500 studio who doesn’t know what they are doing! I’ve seen/heard this all too often.

Oh now I suppose you want me to reveal those few key principles, huh? Well, if you insist. First, and most importantly, record as little noise as possible. Second, be able to reduce and/or eliminate the noise you couldn’t prevent. There will always be some, especially with the $5.00 studio. Said a different way, record as much of what you WANT people to hear as possible, and minimize stuff you don’t want them to hear.

You can learn more about those key principles from the tutorials on the Home Brew Audio website. The video tutorials there start out assuming you’re a beginner…a REAL beginner, and will show you how to set up the $5.00 studio and make your first recording in the first 5 lessons (should take less than an hour), which are FREE by the way;). Come check it out. I promise that “MIDI” isn’t even mentioned in the first several videos.

The ipad is the revolutionary new touch screen tablet computer from Apple that also doubles as an e-reader, a music player, a media console – and basically, whatever else its owner wants it to do if it has the right software. Shouldn’t it be illegal to have this much fun with a piece of hardware? Fortunately for us, it’s not.

Three million units were sold in the first two and a half months after the iPad’s launch. Analysts are predicting the iPad will be the big Christmas toy for grown-ups this year, with sales of 11 million by the time 2010 is through.

Part of what makes using the iPad so exhilarating is the huge number of software applications – colloquially known as “apps” – available to help you customize your user experience. Here are our four favorites:

Evernote: Evernote is an note-taking and archiving software suite that interprets the word “note” liberally. A note can be a piece of formattable text, a web page, part of a web page, a photograph, a voice recording or even a handwritten scribble. Once captured, “notes” can be edited, tagged, archived, commented upon, and sorted into folders. Evernote supports both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, and that means the notes you take on your iPad can be easily ported to other devices. It’s freeware, so the price is right too – although if you really like it, there’s a premium version of Evernote, which gives you even more versatility.

Kindle: These days Amazon is selling more e-books than print books, and the Kindle is the reason why. The iPad Kindle app is actually more versatile than Amazon’s proprietary hardware: It displays full color photographs (unlike its Amazon counterpart) as well any font in your library on an interface that’s easy on your eyes, and grants you access to the same 450,000 Web titles that owners of the Amazon hardware platform enjoy.

Netflix: For $8.99 a month, the Netflix app allows you to stream videos and TV shows to watch on your iPad. Be warned: this app is still in the early days of its development. The relationship between the ipad’s browser interface and the Netflix movie player is not the smoothest, and occasionally the aspect ratios seem off in what you’re watching. Still, these are small annoyances that will doubtless be ironed out in the next upgrade, and in the meantime nothing beats getting to watch “Casablanca” any time you really get the craving.

Pandora Radio: Pandora, which revolutionized Internet radio with its ultra-smart music selection algorithms that utilize over 400 tonal attributes, brings that same level of innovation to the iPad. Just enter the title of a song or the name of a musician whom you particularly enjoy, and voila! Pandora responds with a playlist of tunes that are acoustically akin. It’s a great way to learn about new artists and musical genres while expanding your listening horizons. If you really like what you’re listening to, Pandora can make purchasing it a cinch by hook you up with an online music retailer

The average internet user’s computer is very likely to have some sort of hidden spyware infection that is slyly monitoring their internet activities.

Thousands of spyware applications exist making it difficult for users to avoid the threats when using the internet for numerous purposes. While online you could become infected with spyware by downloading games, music,
screensavers, pop ups, pictures, emails, freeware and shareware.

A spyware or adware infection can slow down your computer, sometimes causing it to crash because advertisers bombarding you with pop ups and monitoring your activity are using all the system resources. Spyware programs latch onto computers to track your uses and acquire personal information to be sent out to intruders, all done without your permission or knowledge.

Legislators are now looking into making laws that would protect internet users from the privacy invasive software. Consumers must beware of spyware because it can uncover and take advantage of your personal information including credit card numbers, passwords, social security numbers and more. Malicious operators can hack into your computer and take control which could cause more permanent, serious damage to you and the computer.

If you are wondering what spyware may be latching onto your computer try downloading spyware scanning tools that can detect and eliminate malicious codes such as spyware. Spybot, Pest Patrol and ZoneAlarm Pro and popularly used removal tools.

Aside from perhaps the performance of graphic-intensive applications (such as games and video editing suites) there are few visual indicators for an overheating video card. That means that unless you’re using those high stress applications it can be almost impossible to be really sure if there is a problem with your card, and whether or not it’s actually overheating. Luckily, the solution isn’t too difficult.

Start by download the application known as Everest. There are only commercial editions officially available these days, but if you type Everest Free Edition 2.20 in to Google then you should be able to find somewhere to download the original freeware version.

Once downloaded and installed find the tab that relates to the temperature of your hardware components (there’s not too many menu items so it should be fairly easy to find). Then you’ll simply need to find the specific component that is your video card, and the associated temperature.

But there’s a problem

How do you actually tell if you video card is overheating? There is no “average” graphics card temperature, because they vary so wildly and can handle varying different levels of heat. The answer is actually quite simple:

Go to an online computer forum (hardforum.com is a good choice) and simply post about your graphics card and ask what temperature it should be. The answers will still vary somewhat, but if you notice that your card’s temperature is oddly high compared to the responses, then you’ve probably got an overheating problem.

USB drives are getting very popular because of their small size and ease of use. They are not only used for transferring data from one PC to another, but are also being used for different other purposes like for PC troubleshooting, booting your computer and many more… If you use USB drive or any other external data storage device to hold important data or personal information, you cannot just be done without protecting it with a password.

It is very much important to password protect USB flash drives and other portable storage devices because you may misplace or lose them due to their small size. Some people even leave their devices on their computer table at internet cafe and when they came back to find it, it was gone. In these circumstances, question arises how to lock your information away from snoopers even if you lose or misplace your flash drive. The answer is protecting your USB drive or other portable devices with a password so that no can misuse your confidential data.

You may use variety of software available in the market to password protect your USB or other external devices, some are free and some are shareware programs that you can download for free from the net, but the question is which type of software should be used to password protect your flash drives? Well, I would recommend using USB Secure particularly if you use more than one type of storage devices like USB drive, thumb drive and memory stick and need a software that can password protect all your external devices that you connect through USB port.

I never recommend using freeware to protect your data because software that are free to use sound great but more often they are not safe to be used as they can be riddled with spy-ware, ad-ware or other type of malware that can access your data that you are trying to protect. Do you want to trust these things? Obviously, NO.

Using a reliable data locking software would be the best approach when you want ultimate security of your data. USB Secure is especially designed to lock USB drives, thumb drives, pen drives, jump drives, memory cards, memory sticks and even external hard drives. Furthermore its Auto-play feature automatically detects all the devices currently plugged in to your computer and lets you protect and / or not protect your data by simply entering the password.

Although USB Secure costs you few dollars, but you will realize when it comes to USB security and protecting data in it USB Secure worth it! Investing in a reliable security program is a wise option!