How to get 5.25GB on Dropbox with a free account

Dropbox is an excellent utility for syncing files, sharing files and backing up files. With a free account, you get 2GB of free storage.

It is possible to get this free account up to 5.25GB. Following the rules set by Dropbox, you need to refer a number of people, getting 250MB each time someone starts using it. I did this, but some people failed to use my link and others didn't install. I really needed as much space as possible, so I went about trying to cheat the system. I succeeded, and here's how (the text assumes you may have a few referrals already)...

1. Make sure you've made yourself a "Dropbox Guru" by checking the 5 or 6 tasks on the web interface. You should get an extra 250MB for this (and probably already have).
2. Work out how many lots of referrals (in 250MB chunks) you need to take you to 5.25GB. Let's say you need x...
3. Set up x trashmail accounts that will forward 1 message for 1 day
4. Send a referral to each of these trashmail accounts from your regular Dropbox login
5. Check the referrals page on the web interface of your regular Dropbox login - all the trashmail accounts should show "invited" or something like that
6. Sign out of your regular Dropbox account online
7. Set up an account and password for each of your x trashmail accounts, ensuring to use the referral links that got forwarded to your normal email from trashmail. Suggest making the password the same for each one to save your grey cells
8. You should now be able to log back into your regular account and check you referral status. All the trashmail accounts should now show "account created" or similar.
9. Download VirtualBox and install it
10. Download the latest Ubuntu ISO image (700MB)
11. Run VirtualBox and load up the Ubuntu ISO. Follow instructions here from the ever dependable Lifehacker
12. As Ubuntu loads, be sure just to run from the ISO - you don't want to install it
13. Open Firefox in the Virtual Ubuntu
14. Navigate to and download the Ubuntu version of Dropbox (strangely it is a 2 step process: you download the file from the web and install, then go into Applications then Internet and click on Dropbox to complete)
15. Choose the Dropbox prompt "I already have an account" and sign in with your first trashmail account
16. As soon as it has signed in, your master computer (i.e. not the virtual machine should show you a notification that your storage has increased)
17. Close the Ubuntu virtual machine window
18. Delete the virtual machine on the VirtualBox management window
19. Start again for the next trashmail account with steps 11 to 18 (it is important to delete the Ubuntu virtual machine and start again as Dropbox knows it's the same install)
20. Once you've done this x times, you should have maxed out your Dropbox account at 5.25GB. You can then uninstall VirtualBox if you like

Slightly evil, I know - but if it gets you using the service and recommending it (which I do), then it's all for the best...

The Tippopotamus 'todo' system

I've tried a lot of things over the years to try and keep organised. To be honest, I'm a bit of a hard sell as I can quickly tire of a system if it's not easy to access and easy to use. I started with paper and found that I didn't always carry a notebook and pencil with me. I tried using my laptop, but again, it's not something I always had with me.

Only recently (the last 3 or 4 years) have cellphones become powerful enough and sufficiently user-friendly to take on an organizational role. The good thing for me is that I carry my phone everywhere, so long as I'm wearing something with a pocket. I plumped for an iPhone as it really is the canine's cahones. The App Store really was the icing on the cake.

I set about trying a bit of everything until I found a system that really worked for me. This took a while, but I was very strict with my criteria, having been through a number of failures:

• I needed to have an offline to do list on my iPhone
• It needed to sync to the Internet for total backup
• Ideally it would sync to an application on my laptop for offline bulk entry
• It would also sync to a web-app that was easy to use, anywhere
• Items would need dates, categories, tags, importance and notes
• Tasks that had specific times or dates would show up on my calendar
  
• I wanted the ability to add tasks verbally
• It needed to cost very little, or be free

My current system covers most of these, but not all - there's still room for improvement. Here is a diagram of how it all works, and I will explain each piece of software and numbered step below:


Toodledo
The system really revolves around this excellent todo list web application. I only hit upon it after finding out that my iPhone app of choice synced with this and Remember the Milk. I tried out RTM, but found that you got more for your money (i.e. free) from Toodledo. The interface wasn't as pretty, but I rarely actually use the website itself - I do it all on my iPhone and synchronise.

Toodledo has lots and lots of features and ticks all the boxes in terms of functionality. I really don't have any gripes with it, especially since it is completely free. You can pay for some advanced features, but they're just dressing and not needed, in my opinion.

Essentially, Toodledo acts as my todo hub. Everything passes through it and I can trust it as a constant backup of all my task and notes information.

Appigo Todo
Toodledo does have its own iPhone application, but, my favourite is Todo by Appigo.

It's not free (it's £5.99 in the UK), but I think it's worth the money. They have provided a lovely clean interface and do updates every now and then that add lots of functionality. They made an update a couple of weeks ago that allowed nested tasks and checklist tasks, without compromising the simple and easy to understand interface.

Synchronisation (1) can be done to RTM or Toodledo. you simply press a button each time you want to sync (or make it automatic). This is great, because you have a constant backup and can recover your data in seconds if something goes awry.

I would add, that pretty much all my task population and editing is done directly on my iPhone, so the user-friendliness of this app is perfect for me.

UPDATE: Check out this screencast if you are interested in Appigo Todo's functionality and interface:



Appigo Notebook
I found that I was also keeping some records that weren't really tasks. Lists of things to buy or present ideas. Measurements or other data to remember. These did not suit a todo list, but i did want them available and backed up. I useed to jot them down in the iPhone notepad, but this wasn't that secure. I then tried the service called Zenbe Lists and was impressed for a while. However, it wasn't very fast and seemed a little clunky to me.

I then saw that Appigo released a notebook and decided to buy it for £2.99. It was worth it and now my todo list and notes are consolidated, since both apps sync to Toodledo (2). This is great for backup, but also means that where I have lots of text to enter into a note, I can do it quicker by accessing the notes portion of Toodledo and doing it there.

Phone numbers also show up automatically on the iPhone version - I have found it great for doing research on my laptop for suppliers or trades persons and then calling them from my iPhone after a quick sync.

Dial2Do
I was envious of all the folks in the US being able to use Jott for free before it started charging. The great thing was that a couple of options presented themselves that worked in the UK soon after Jott went fee-based.

I tried reQall for a bit, but it was trying to do more than I needed it for. I then found the brilliant Dial2Do - a free service that works just like Jott does and it does the UK.

Using it, I am able to send emails and sms messages, but more importantly, it can populate tasks in Toodledoo directly (3). This means that if I'm out and about, I can simply phone my Dial2Do number and say "Toodledo", then say my todo item. When I next launch the iPhone app, I sync and there it is!

There are lots of other functions you can do with Dial2Do, but I stick to Toodledo and the Email (which I use to send myself the odd piece of information I could forget). I don't use Dial2Do much, because I can often just enter the data directly into the iPhone, but it's a useful option to have in your todo arsenal.

Google Calendar
GCal as it is sometimes known is great and I would normally fully adopt it if I was not bound to using Outlook at work. Toodledo recently added the functionality to import your tasks into GCal using the iCal protocol (4):

This means that I can now look at my weekly calendar and see tasks with a date at the top of each day. Tasks with a specific time get placed at the correct point in the day. This is a great way to look at the week ahead - you can see todo items and your schedule all in one place. Now, if only I could get that into Outlook...

Microsoft Outlook
As you may well know, Google Calendar Sync allows you to synchronise your Outlook calendar and your GCal (5). This is great as a backup and also so that you can see your calendar online wherever you are. However, there are a couple of drawbacks (or opportunities for Google to work on, if you like).

• GCal can only sync with the default Outlook calendar
  
• GCal can only sync the main calendar in GCal, not iCal imports

This means that I can't (for the moment) get my Toodledo tasks into my Outlook calendar, which is a real bummer. I'm sure they'll sort this at some point, but right now, I'll just have to make do.

Furthermore, I keep two calendars active in my Outlook mailbox. One records my forward plan and the other records what I actually did. I find this useful for retrospectively finding out when things happened (e.g. tax returns). Only one of these syncs to GCal.

Before I move on, I would like to give a nod to Chromatic Dragon's utility ToodledoSync which allows you to sync from Toodledo (and hence from your iPhone) to Outlook's tasks. I used this for a good while, but then decided to stop as I was not using the tasks function in Outlook much. It works really well, and if you need this option, this is the solution.

iPhone Calendar
Of course, all this syncs back to my iPhone from Outlook (6). In a perfect world, my todos would be in Appigo Todo, Toodledo, GCal, Outlook calendar and my iPhone calendar. The only thing stopping this is being able to sync iCals in GCal to Outlook. It does manage to sync my two Outlook calendars, though, presenting them in different colours, which is really nice.

So, I'm almost there - just waiting on technology. I'd be interested to see what anyone has to add on this and if I've missing any utilities that can fill the gaps. I'm sure there might be other solutions out there that do the same things in slightly different ways, but I find this one works well for me and has cost less than a tenner (so $15ish). I have definitely become more organised because of it and find that after a little bit of setting up categories, tags, folders and whatnot, every piece of information has its own place.

Adopting iTunes for the uninitiated

Have you grown tired of Windows Media Player's clunkiness, MediaMonkey's interface or [insert your music software here]'s something or other? I was and decided to go and give iTunes a try. I was afraid of letting iTunes rule my collection (see my previous post on how I got there), but have been happily using it ever since I got over this.

In terms of how I went about adopting iTunes, here are the main steps I went through.

1. Read this iLounge article

This is all the research you need to do as it gives a great overview on how iTunes handles your files and where data is stored. I found it invaluable in getting my head round my personal transfer, even though it was adopting iTunes and not moving my library.

2. Back up your entire collection
Just go ahead and copy your current music folder somewhere safe. You never know, you might not like the change and rue the day you read this article. Always backup your music library so that you never have to weep into your pillow. Also, this is a good time to make sure all of your music files are in the same place as it means you won't miss importing any into iTunes when we get to that step.

3. Decide where your library is going to be (don't move any tracks yet!)
All your music is going to be in one folder, so decide where that's going to be. I chose to put everything on a portable external hard drive as I wanted to move about with it. I also chose this so as I wanted two identical collections (see my post on syncing two iTunes libraries). The important thing I learnt from the iLounge article was that wherever the library is, it need to have the same drive letter and path inside that drive (therefore, both my computers access the library in the X: drive). One other thing of note is that during the transition, you will need room for two versions of your entire collection, so you might need to use an external drive at some point if you are gigabyte-challenged. For this very reason, I would also suggest that you don't make the new library location the same as your previous one as you are eventually going to delete the old one. Having them in the same folder could get confusing.

4. Point iTunes at root folder
Open iTunes and navigate to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced. Change the 'iTunes Music folder location' to your chosen drive and folder in step 3.

5. Set iTunes to manage your library
On the same tab, check the boxes near the top called 'Keep iTunes Music folder organized' and 'Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library'.

6. Let iTunes help you sort your compilations
Whilst you're still in the Preferences window, check the box named 'Group compilations when browsing' if you have a lot of compilation and soundtrack albums as this will make navigating your library a lot easier. See this post for how to let iTunes know which tracks are part of a compilation.

7. Let iTunes move your music for you
When I say move, this is really a copy, so don't worry too much (in any case, you should have a backup from step 2 as well). This is also why I warned you in step 3 that you will need twice the space your collection takes up - don't ignore this or the process will stall on you. Navigate to File -> Add Folder to Library. Choose the root folder that has all your pre-iTunes tracks in it (the folder you backed up in step 2).

8. Leave iTunes to build your library
Press 'OK' and then leave iTunes to run. Depending on the size of your collection, this could take a while. Remember, iTunes is copying your entire collection into the new library location, creating a new folder taxonomy based on artist and renaming each track. If you have tens of tracks, check your email; if you have hundreds, make a cuppa char; if you have thousands, order a pizza and watch a movie; if you have tens or hundreds of thousands, go to bed.

9. Check it has all worked
Be a pedant and check everything. Have a browse through iTunes and have a look in the new folder to see the automated taxonomy. The best check is to compare the folder sizes of the old and new. They should be pretty much identical, unless you have given iTunes the go ahead to convert (not something I am covering here). My system has always been to convert to mp3 first (see this post on how I do this), so I never had a file format issue.

10. Delete your old folder
Providing everything was successful, you now have two versions of your music, plus a backup. Go ahead and delete the original version to free up the space, unless you want two backups.

10. Sort compilations tags
iTunes will now have organized your library the Apple way. You have to accept this from now on. Before you look at the iTunes folder and panic that there are squillions of artists, you need to do the next step of the compilation tagging process. It's a manual activity, but is well worth it in my opinion, and it doesn't take too long. I have already written a post detailing how it's done, so have a look here.

Congratulations! You're pretty much there now. You are now an iTunes user. The next steps (for me at least) were to add lyrics (see this post) and create some playlists (see this post for some ideas). I will post in the future about using the grouping tag and smart playlists, which I think are relevant here.

You may also be interested in how to deal with new music, how to perform everyday tagging on your new tracks, and making sure your tags are consistent.

Automatic mp3 genre tagging: is it possible?

Genres are a tricky business and crawling the web has shown that listeners either love or hate them. Right now, I haven't formed a final opinion on whether I like them or not and if they're worthwhile, but I haven't fully committed to using them on my collection yet.

However, I have done a fair bit of research on the matter, and that's what I want to lay out here as it may save some of you a lot of time to get to where I am (still without a solution, but a lot wiser nonetheless). Apologies for the length of this particular diatribe, but it can't be made any more succinct.

My previous posts on mp3 tagging have focused on processes, software and automated ways of beating mp3s and tags into shape. After processing my entire collection, I sat back and saw that two things that were still missing:

• Consistent genres
• Ratings

I am not dealing with ratings here - there's a whole post in itself.

I wanted to get my genres into shape, not because of my crusade against badly tagged mp3s, but because they have the potential to help hugely in coordinating my listening and building playlists of similar types of music. This would be a necessary step in reaching my mp3 nirvana.

As a first foray into genre tags, I thought I would start by looking for an automatic method for populating the field. It made sense to me that with all the tagging software and mp3 databases out there, there should be a successful solution. Not so. However, here's what I did find...

POTENTIAL GENRE SOURCES

There are a number of good databases out there that genre population could come from. I thought these ones could do the trick if there were a way of getting the data into an ID3 tag:

• Gracenote (formerly CDDB)
• Freedb
• Discogs
• iTunes store
• Last.fm
• Allmusic

I did a test to see which was best, looking at the legendary Led Zeppelin as a case study. I thought there was sufficient ambiguity in how to classify their music to generate quite a varied set of results. And I like them quite a lot. And I'm English.

So following the order of my bullet points above, I set about going through each of these sources starting with the old CDDB, Gracenote. This one did not help me much. I couldn't find a way of seeing the genre, even when I chose an album (Led Zeppelin I):

Hence, I decided this was not a great database for genres. I guess this is fine since it is mainly designed as a database of track info, not a method for organising individual music libraries, so I'll let it off.

Freedb wasn't a hell of a lot better than Gracenote. I found that I could only get a genre returned by disc, not by artist or track:

Also, it was not consistent between different instances of the same disc. Under the same album (Led Zep I), I got rock, blues, misc and even reggae! The only reggae-ish track I can think that the Zep did was D'yer Maker - not on this album. So, not too impressed here, but again, this is more a database of track info rather than for structuring your music in any way.

Discogs is a nice site, but once again, I could only get results returned by disc rather than artist or track. However, I noted that it was split into first Genre and then Style:

I was pretty happy with the simple set of results it returned as well - Rock as a genre, then split into Styles of Classic Rock and Blues Rock. Not bad.

I was sure the iTunes store wouldn't disappoint too much, and sure enough it did an alright job, returning quite a few applicable genres:

However, the more genres that get returned, you start thinking "well, which one do I choose for my tracks". This was starting to look like a very complicated idea, hence why no one has put together a bulletproof method or database yet.

Next was the mighty Last.fm. On first impressions, it looked promising, with 5 applicable results returned as 'tags':

However, on clicking the 'See more…' link, I was shocked to find a massive cloud of tags. It was apparent that this was heavily influenced by all the users tagging tracks and creating a muddled mass of genre information:

'awesome', 'dance', 'favs', 'indie pop', 'punk', 'yeah'? Give me a break…
So, suffice to say, I was not too impressed with Last.fm as a tagging source for genres.

Finally I came to Allmusic, sometimes known as AMG (All Music Guide). This was quite impressive. Firstly, artists are broken down into a Genre and then subdivided into Styles, just like Discogs had gone for. Good and applicable ones too:

Allmusic went one step further, though and put together 'Moods' and 'Themes' as well. Although there were a lot of moods, I began to think that these could well be useful in generating playlists. These are the moods and themes for the Led Zep I album:

Furthermore, just take a look at this link to see the pretty comprehensive breakdown of their Pop/Rock styles.

I thought that I could use the Genre, Styles and Moods in my ID3 tags as follows:

• AMG Genre maps to ID3 Genre (there is only one)
• AMG Styles can go into the the ID3 Comments, with underscores instead of spaces and separated by a space or a period (I am currently using Comments for artist bios, but I have realised I never look at these)
• AMG Moods can go into the ID3 Custom 1 field in MediaMonkey for the moment

Therefore, I think I might have found a winner in Allmusic. Now If only I could find a way to get this data into my mp3 tags without any huge manual effort…

AUTOMATIC GENRE POPULATION

I searched for quite some time on this, so I think I can safely say without any doubt that there is no way to automatically populate your mp3 genre tags directly from Allmusic.

It seems as there used to be a solution called the Allmusic ID3 Tag Fixer by KRKeegan, but it seems as though Allmusic changed their terms of service back in 2007 which has prevented anyone from using the data. Humbug!

I also found that the well respected Mp3tag used to have Allmusic as one of its web sources framework (meaning you could select it as a tagging source), but with the terms of service this stopped working in 2007 as well.

Lastly, I found a post about a script that a chap called Steegy had written for MediaMonkey called Web Sources Tagger that could access Allmusic which has since disappeared.

How I wish I had a time machine…

So my plans were scuppered at the first hurdle. So I looked at what else was available. I found that Mp3tag could use amazon, discogs and freedb as web sources, but having seen what Allmusic had to offer, I decided not to proceed as I would always be left wanting.

I went a bit further and found another Media Monkey Script by Trixmoto called 'Last.fm genre script' and gave it a shot for a laugh. It did exactly what it was meant to, but if you cast your eyes up to the Last.fm results above, you can imagine the mess my genres were left in. The idea of this was to get something consistent going.

I think I ended up with many, many more genres than I had originally - 1047 in all, including such gems as...

• Brutal Death Metal With Nordic Influence And Guest Vocalist Satan
• Candy Ravers Rules The Universe
• Existential Saturdays
• Have Other Music by This Artist
• I-feel-oh-so-classy-music
• Jangly American Guitar Pop
• Plunderphonics
• Sing Yer Wee Heart Out

…and those are just some of the clean ones!

A great script, though - if only Trixmoto could apply it to Allmusi. Unfortunately it seems as though our hands are tied in terms of access to the data. My collection remains tagged like this, but I'm not bothered as I don't use the genres yet anyway - I need a solution.

So, still no success, and my dream of automatically tagging my genres was quickly fading [if I have missed anything, I would love to know about it, so please comment with your feedback below].

Hence, I set about seeing if anyone had any guidelines on how to do it manually without too much bother...

MANUAL GENRE POPULATION

I went trawling the Internet again to see what I could drag up. The most useful thing I found was a great post by Daniel R Stout called 'Organizing iTunes: Simplify your genre list'.

I won't repeat everything that Daniel says here - you can read his blog - but as a synopsis here are the main points:

• Less genres are better
• Have a basic list to choose from
• Use smart playslists to filer music on genre to sturcture your listening
  

He also suggests a quick way of manually getting your genres into shape:

"It’s an easy thing to change the genre on many songs. Create a playlist that sorts by existing genre data. You can find out what genres are in your music library by doing a Get Info on any song and then clicking the dropdown menu for the genre of that song. So create a playlist that grabs some genres that fit under, say, Alternative & Punk. Then highlight a bunch of songs together and do a Get Info and change the genre for all of those songs. In my case, it took less than an hour to get my 20,000 song library into shape."

He then provides a list of 25 basic genres to start with. Which he further breaks down into sub-genres, if needed. This does end up as one long list which can be a little difficult to digest, so I have created a handy table in Excel that you can find here. Apologies for the Excel pastel colours.

This should be a useful lookup tool for anyone wanting to go ahead and manually tag their genres. I may go ahead and adopt this method of genre tagging, but I think it would take me longer than the hour suggested for 20,000 tracks. I just need to sum up the courage.

I would also like to credit the commenters (Lucas, amazon_blonde and Nick) for this post of mine on organising your iTunes library. There are some useful insights and another list of genres from Lucas that may suit you better if you are going the manual route.

THE FINAL ANALYSIS

As I think I have shown, there are no bulletproof ways to automatically tag your genres consistently. At least not yet.

Also, genres are a very personal thing - one person's 'Prog Rock' is another person's 'Cheesy Listening'. Hence it may be best to just take the plunge and manually tag them with something bespoke that simply works for you. The problem is that this takes time; and time is a resource many of us are not blessed with.

Another point to consider is how much detail do you put into it? Or, to coin a phrase, what is your 'depth of genre'? Is it best to have 25 basic all-encompassing genres, or to go to town like the Allmusic system and have a genre broken down into multiple styles and moods?

You can also argue over whether individual tracks should have different genres, or if genres should be grouped by album or artist. I think that single track genres would be best if you are going the detailed route, but artist grouped genres would be superior for a 25 genre system.

Lastly, one might put it out there that genre tagging is a complete waste of time and will only bring me closer to my own 'Stairway to Heaven'.

Personally, I think this post is using too may of my little grey cells and I'm going to sit on it for a while and see what debate it generates. Over to you...

A reverse date prefix file and folder naming convention

I always used to name files and folders randomly. I never followed a particular convention of any sort. One thing I did like to do was to include the date I worked on the file in the file name, but I never thought of this tip until recently - I'm sure it's not a completely original idea, but it makes complete sense to me.

What I now do (for pretty much every file that I work with) is to put the date at the beginning in reverse in this format:

YYYY-MM-DD filename.ext

What this does for me is the following:

• Sorting by the file or folder name quickly sorts chronologically
• Any desktop search you use can quickly search on the date in the title
• I can easily scan through the list of files and see how they interrelate in time
• If I change the date every time I make a change I can see when I last made an update
• Following on from the point above, it enables me to keep a very simple version control system which is extremely easy to maintain

I use this for all files except my media files. For music, I let iTunes manage the naming. For videos, I just name them (apart from home videos, which I use the date format). However, I go a little further with my photos…

After a long holiday and multiple photos from different cameras, I realised that making a universal slideshow would put everything in the wrong order unless I used a chronological naming convention. Hence I took it a step further and used this format:

YY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS (orginal photo number).ext

I reduced the year to two digits (to keep the file name a little shorter). I also did away with any description of the photo as it takes too much time to write. The folder gives the date and the general content which is good enough unless you are doing something specific with the photo.

The great thing about this was that using the excellent (and free!) piece of software Bulk Rename Utility, I was able to do this right from the context (right click) menu. But that will be the subject of another post as it really is an indispensable utility for the file-naming-obsessed-geek, albeit a rather complicated looking one on first principles:

If anyone else has any useful hints on file naming conventions they care to add, please let me know in the comments section below as I'm always trying to get more organised. For me, simplicity and effectiveness are the key measures of success.