How to cut or trim mp3 file

Often you find that your favorite mp3 song introduction is too long to suit as your mobile phone ring tone right?

You want to skip that lengthy song introduction and straight away want your ring tone start at the chorus of the song. So, how to do that in real quick and of course, free of charge? (I have been asked this question number of times actually, which lead me to write this short tutorial).

It is pretty simple actually. The concept is you just need to highlight the area (of your song track) that you don’t need and cut it out. As simple as that.

Tools of choice range from free and extremely small software to professional class application such as SoundForge or Adobe SoundBooth.

But since this tutorial is focus to average user who doesn’t need to waste hundreds of megabytes and couple of hundred bucks for a software that 99% of its function will never been used, we will use a free tool called mp3DirectCut.

Steps:

• Download mp3directCut from author site or mediafire mirror.
• Install that application.
• Run this application from your desktop.
• Main application graphical user interface will be like screenshot below.

  

• Click on File -> Open (or alternatively you may press Ctrl + O)
• Choose your favorite song that you want to cut/edit/trim as screenshot below. I choose Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow song for this tutorial. Click Open after you select your favorite song.

  

• Then, you will be prompted with this windows. Just click OK.

  

• Now your mp3directcut windows will show something that below screenshot if you successfully open your mp3 song.

  

• A bit confuse eh? Well don’t. I will explain several key features that need your attention only….in order to reach our goal.
  • As in any media player, here is your play and stop button.
  • Here is indicator to point up where in your mp3 song track is being played.
  • “Set Begin” button is the button that will mark your Starting Point of track selection (that you want to be played as your ringtone).
  • “Set End” button is the button that will mark your ending point of your track selection (track after this end marker will not be saved as your ringtone).
  • Omit this one if you just want to highlight certain area in your mp3 song and save that selection.
• So what you need to do is:
  • Press play button. Your mp3 song will be played. When you hear the chorus area that you want to make it as your ringtone, press stop button.
  • Then click on Set Begin button.
  • Press play again until you listen to the point that you don’t want that area of song to be played as ring tone.
  • Click stop.
  • Then click Set End button
  • Now, a portion of your mp3 song will be highlighted as the screenshot below.

  

• Click File -> Save Selection and you are done.

  If this text guide confuses you, feel free to watch this tutorial’s video at youtube.

An early but pleasant experience with Norton Internet Security 2010

Well, before I go berserk and directly compare NIS2010 with other high profile Internet Security Suite, I decide to write an overview of Norton Internet Security 2010. Honestly, this is a very good product and I personally feel that this product deserve to consume couple of writing hours of mine just for an overview. I will highlight its’ features base on my experience for this writing phase.

 

Less than 10 seconds after I double click on installer file. Note the completion percentage: 80%. Impressive!

 

By default, you get 15 days trial period to evaluate this product. 15 days is enough to evaluate how well it protects your pc while not hogging your PC resource. Please note that I have been use this product for more than 2 weeks (non beta one) and for the sake of this article, I restore my PC to clean state Windows 7 + latest driver + Microsoft Office.

 

Since my Norton Internet Security 2009 still has around 200+ days’ active subscription, I can use that CD key to activate Norton Internet Security 2010 without any drama.

Yes, you read this correctly. Contradict to yesteryears product, current antivirus maker doesn’t sell product actually. They sell subscription period. So, as long as your subscription still valid, you can always download their latest product and use your current key instead. No need to buy a copy of Norton Internet Security 2010 (NIS2010) if your NIS2009 still has subscription period.

You may upgrade your Norton product here : http://updatecenter.norton.com/

Note: If you want to choose your upgrade product manually, click on “Choose My Product Manually – (For Advanced Users)” located at right below of that page.

 

240 days left. Nice.

 

Time needed from the moment I double click the installer file to this screen: Less than 30 seconds. You may ask, what’s the biggie right? Well, since Norton keep advertise that their product will be completely installed in your system within a minute, I can’t help the temptation to validate that statement myself. Well, they are right. In fact, on quad core system with at least 4GB RAM (I use Phenom II 955BE @ 3.6GHz, 4GB DDRIII 1333), time required could be just 30 seconds.

 

Main screenshot

 

Performance Screenshot

Optimizing

While optimizing, this small notice box inform user that NIS is doing some background task. This is a good touch since, on slower single core machine, while NIS2010 optimizing, it may slow down their pc a bit. But, frankly speaking, I don’t feel any slowdown while NIS2010 is optimizing my system.

 

Norton Tasks

 

Norton Insight Screenshot

 

Those are default setting screenshots. Pretty comprehensive eh?

 

Scan option

Custom scan

 

Finding:

• NIS2010 could be installed within 1 minute.
• Nice GUI
• Comprehensive setting option
• Install and forget approach
• Performance indicator for those who are really concern about how much NIS2010 bog down their PC resource

Verdict:

• A very good consumer based security suit
• 2 weeks experience with this product (non beta) really impresses me. I could say, [my system+NIS2010] is more responsive than [my system + Avira classic]. Avira classic only an Antivirus while NIS2010 is a suite of anti-virus, firewall, anti-spam, anti-spyware, identity protection, safe web and browser protection. I still can’t explain how Norton engineer able to craft this piece of software to be lighter than Avira Classic which previously I think one of the fastest AV. Furthermore, it is completely not fair to compare an complete security suite with a standalone anti-virus product but, yeah..that is my own personal experience. In short, my computer with NIS2010 feels more responsive than my computer with Avira antivirus only. This is pretty subjective, but worries not because when time permitted, I will conduct a series of benchmark to measure this quantitatively.
• Able to use previous product CD key with latest product is a very nice approach. Now, I am not worry to pay 3 years subscription (which is always cheaper than 1 year subscription) since I know I could always download latest version of NIS and use my current subscription CD Key without any problem.

 

..to be continued…

• Explanation of each features and screenshot.
• Virus detection capability
• Memory consumption on idle and scanning
• CPU consumption on idle and scanning
• <reader suggestion thru comment section>

 

How to add VirtualBox shared folder in Windows Server 2008 as guest OS

I need to develop an ASP.net and ASP websites recently but I decided not to install IIS7 on my Win7 OS due to this is my gaming machine as well (since IIS7 will run a lot of other services in background even when I am gaming or doing nothing related to webserver task). Therefore, with the power of virtualization software (virtualbox, free of charge), AMD Hyper-V (from phenom 955 BE) and Windows Server 2008 free for 8 months (grace period), I think running Windows Server 2008 in Virtual Environment is not a bad idea. Furthermore, beside IIS7, I could use other stuff as well especially DNS. And the best thing is, virtual OS could be moved from one machine to other machine (read: from my PC to my laptop, for demonstration purpose) without much headache of redeployment.

 

Host OS : Windows 7 x64 (to fully utilize 4 GB ram)

Guess OS : Windows Server 2008 (x86 to minimize size of memory need to allocate to this guess OS)

Software used : VirtualBox (v3.08)

 

The Problem

Unlike Windows XP, adding shared folder in Windows Server 2008 as guess really pain in the arse. The networking (search) feature seem to be, errr… not working for my setup. I simply can’t find my shared folder.

 

Solution

@ VirtualBox software menu bar à Devices àShared Folders

Note : It is highly recommended that you install Guest Addition to improve your guess OS performance and capability

 

Click on button

 

Add the folder that you wanna share from your host OS (PC) @ ‘Folder Path’ à Chose Other

 

Choose your shared folder (this folder exist on your host OS)

The Click OK.

Note : VirtualBox Disks folder is created by me in my storage partition. Yours one might has different name.

 

Then name your shared folder name @ ‘Folder Name :”. Any name will do. In this example, I choose MyShare

Click Make Permanent Checkbox

 

‘MyShare’ shared folder now exists (actually, now I have 2 shared folders, one is the one we just created, and the other one is my actual shared folder that I use for work)

Click Ok

 

All screenshot below this text is taken from virtual os aka guess OS (in this case, my WinServer 08)

Now logon on your Windows Server 2008 (guess OS).

 

From Windows Server 2008 explorer (or run windows), type net use Z:\vboxsvr\MyShare

Z is your map drive (you can change to any letter as well, as long as it will not conflict with your current Windows Server 08 drive letter)

MyShare is my logical shared folder name.

 

And..tadaaa…

 

From now on, I can access my shared folder by using Z drive.

 

Done.