Matt’s Desk: Editor’s Blog

I had several old audio recordings made with a microcassette recorder that I wanted to transcode to digital files.  Problem was, the resulting digital files had a lot of background noise I wanted to get rid of before archiving. 

But I don’t know much about audio cleanup.  I did, however, find a very easy-to-follow tutorial that teaches how to use Audacity, a free audio utility, to get rid of unwanted noise in a digital file.  I’m sure there are far more powerful (and expensive) solutions, but I was shocked by how well the noise-removal process worked in Audacity. My files sound better than ever.

You can read the tutorial here.  Of course, you’ll also need a copy of Audacity, which will run on Windows or Mac OS X. 

Much appreciation to the authors of both the tutorial and the software.

-M

While USB 3.0 has been around since early 2010, only this year has the newest, fastest universal port come into widespread use. USB 3.0 ports are now common on Windows 7 desktops and laptops (usually marked with a blue connector), and are even on the latest-generation MacBook Pros and Airs.

Faster USB peripherals aren’t nearly as plentiful, however, with only thumb drives and external hard drives getting widespread USB 3.0 treatment – and the latter far more than the former; in fact, while USB 2.0 remains the connection method of choice for USB thumb drive makers, USB 3.0 now dominates external hard drives.

Which is great.  After all, USB 3.0 drives can transfer data far faster than their 2.0 predecessors – up to 10X faster, in fact – which makes them more useful and and less time consuming. 

But there’s a problem:

USB 3.0 and the drivers that make the I/O technology possible are still new enough to have bugs, which can create some headaches for users.

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According to every single bit of “information” that’s come out over the last few weeks, it’s now all but certain that a entire new line of MacBooks, iMacs and even Mac Pros will debut next week during WWDC.

New, thinner MacBook Pros are expected, along with new iMacs.  There may even be new MacBook Airs and Mac Pros.

I’ve been waiting to buy an iMac for months now.  Most excited about that.

-M

Google Drive. Dropbox. SkyDrive.  While all interesting and worthwhile in their own ways, stripped to their cores these three competing services all work more or less the same way: create a folder, drop stuff into it, and keep the folder and its contents synced between computers and the Cloud, and accessible from the web or mobile devices.

But what if you need something more flexible?

What if – like me – you already have folders on your desktop(s) and laptop(s) you need to keep synced across computers – and even platforms – without having to consolidate them into “drop-boxes”?  What if you want Folder A – as is – on your PC synced with Folder B on your Mac, and Folder C – as is – on your Mac synced Folder D with your PC, and to have changes made to folders on either system synced with the other? 

Sadly, none of the aforementioned services can do this without changing your existing file structure.

For keeping project files, development workspaces, and existing file structures in place and in sync, there’s only one service I’ve found that gets the job done: SugarSync.

In this article, I’ll show you how to use SugarSync to keep existing files and folders synced across different computers, be they Windows PCs or Macs, and backed-up in the Cloud. And, if those folders don’t exceed 5.5GB or so in total space, you won’t even have to pay for the privilege.

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