I guess we all have been there. We are listening to a great song in the radio that brings back some great memories, but what is the song called and who is the artist? With the app I am going to introduce to you, you can find out fast and easy. The app is named SoundHound and is available in a free and a paid version. The app is available for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. It is also available for iPad if you have one of those. If you love music and you love your Smartphone this is a must have app for you.

How does SoundHound works?

It is very easy to use SoundHound. All you have to do is to start the app and click in the What’s that Song? button. Let your phone listen to the song and when it have recognize the song it will give a little beep and show up all the info it has on the song. Sometimes you can even hear a little sample of the song to make sure that you got the right one. It does not get simpler than that. With this great app on your phone you can get the song information where ever you are: In the car, on a bus, a train or at a party. You can find SoundHound on their Official Website that has direct links to Google Play, App Store and Windows Phone Marketplace where you can download the app for your device.

SoundHound App is available for:

• Android
• iPhone and iPad
• Windows Phone

Finally I would like to hear what you think about this app? Did you already know about it or was this new information to you? I first learned about this app over at my good friend SlappyBear. Please drop me a comment below and feel free to share this post with your finds

When people are comparing features on cloud services a lot tend to look only on the among free storage space before they make up their mind. Of cause it is nice to get a lot of storage for free, but for me personally it is just as important how good the support for synchronization and mobile devices are working. I have been using SkyDrive, Dropbox and now Google Drive and so far my favorite has been Dropbox, because the synchronization to my PC’s and mobile devices are working great.

What to choose? Google Drive or Dropbox?

I have been playing around with Google Drive for the last couple of days and have to say that the similarities to Dropbox are very easy to spot. The way the PC applications and the website services are working are almost identically. The only thing I have not been able to figure out in Google Drive is how to select what folder to upload to from my Android phone. When I upload e.g. pictures they are always uploaded to the root folder. I hope that this little issue will be fixed in future releases.
When it comes to free storage Google Drive comes with 5 GB free space Vs Dropbox where you by default get 2 GB. In my case I have been able to upgrade my Dropbox to 12 GB do to different Dropbox Upgrade Programs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKJ9KzGQq0w

Feature comparison table:

Which cloud service do you prefer?

How about you? What cloud services are you using and what do you think about Google Drive so far? I will love to hear your opinion about Google Drive. Please drop me a comment below.

Revo Pico DAB Radio

I just recently bought myself a DAB radio. It is something I have been considering for a while, but I think that they are pretty expensive for such a little radio. However I came across this Pico DAB Radio that was reduced in price because it was a demo model. I got it for 1/3 of the normal price and that is a purchase I have not regret. The installation of the device was easy and the channel search was fast done. The remote control is working great and instantly and gives you the possibility to move your radio to a location where you cannot reach it e.g. shelf where the signal will be optimal. One think that really impress me about the radio is how great the sound is for such a little device. Even when you turn up the volume the sound is great.

Specification of Pico DAB Radio:

• FM and DAB digital Radio
• Remote control
• M-Port cable (to connect devices like MP3 players)
• Large black LCD screen (2 x 16 character)
• 3.5mm headphone connector
• Stereo RCA line-out connectors
• Built In 8 Hr Rechargeable battery pack
• Dimensions: 167mm x 105 mm x 105 mm
• Main Power Supply: 12V 1200mA

What is included:

• Compact remote control
• M-Port cable (to connect devices like MP3 players to PICO)
• 240v power supply
• Operating Guide

Final Thoughts

I have not at all regret that I bought this radio and if you are looking for a DAB radio the Revo Pico might be interesting for you. You might also want to check out their Pico RS Wi-Fi Internet Radio That was all from me. Now I would like to hear from you what you think about DAB radio? Do you have a DAB radio or are you considering to buy one? Please leave me a comment below and share this post

Why you should add your Twitter name to you share buttons

First of all it gives you a change to see who is retweeting your stuff under Mention in Twitter and give you a great way to connect with these people. It also give people who see the tweet a fast way to find your Twitter profile and connect with you and maybe they will start following you on Twitter. I guess you can see it as free advertising and all you have to do is to configure it once! If you are a very active on Social network you are properly using hours each week to promote yourself. If you don’t have your twitter name added when people tweets your stuff on your blog you should get it fixed right away. I will show you how it is done in Sharebar below.

How to add your Twitter name to the Sharebar plugin

• Go to your Dashboard -> Settings -> Sharebar
• Click on Settings:

• Find Twitter username textbox and enter your own twitter name (without @)

• Click on Update settings and test that the Twitter button and/or Buffer button are adding your twitter name after you have made this change.

That’s all. Pretty simple if you ask me, so if you have not made the configuration yet, now you know how to do it. Now it is your turn. Are you also seeing a lot of bloggers that are missing this setting? Do you agree with me that it is a must do settings or do you think that it is a bad idea to add your twitter name when people are sharing your posts? Please drop me a comment and test my tweet button to see if I have configured my plugin correct

My Google Analytics Stats for Q1 2012

Traffic Types

For the first quarter of 2012 my traffic was spread like this:

• Search Engines: 73.48%
• Referring Sites: 13.57%
• Direct Traffic: 11.86%
• Twitter: 0.63%
• Other: 0.46%

Search Engines:

• Google: 94.42%
• Yahoo: 3.03%
• Bing: 0.70%

Google is still in top of the world in front of Yahoo and Bing. The rest of the Search Engines are all under 0.5 percent of traffic.

Top 5 Referring Sites:

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. t.co (Twitter)
3. techworkdk.tumblr.com
4. Geeks4share.com
5. Triberr.com

This quarter there are two new Referring Sites in top 5. The first one is t.co that in case you don’t know it is traffic from Twitter. I have seen a lot of other bloggers talking about how great Twitter is to promote yourself and how much traffic you can get from Twitter, but it have not really worked out for me until now. One of the reason why it might work out now is that I simply just have got more followers (above 500) and another reason might be that I have implemented the Tweet old post plug-in to auto tweet some of my old post when I sleep myself. The other new Referring Site on my Top 5 this quarter is Triberr. Triberr is, in case you don’t know it, a Twitter based network where you can be invited to join your Twitter friends tribes and then kind of agree to retweet each other’s new blog post. I am in 3 different tribes at the moment where we share each other posts. In some of those tribes there are people with more than 10.000 followers sharing my blog posts. That gives me a change to reach a lot bigger audience compared to when I tweet to my own 500 followers.

Top 10 visitors by Country:

1. United States
2. Denmark
3. India
4. United Kingdom
5. Australia
6. Canada
7. Germany
8. Netherlands
9. Philippines
10. Finland

My Top 10 Countries are the exact same as last quarter, but some of them have switch position on the list. In this first quarter of 2012 my blog have had visitors from 160 different countries.

Conclusion

To sum things up this first quarter of 2012 had been awesome to me when it comes to generate traffic to my blog. As you can see below I have more than doubled my traffic for this quarter compared to the last quarter of 2011. This increase is mainly due to the big increase in incoming organic traffic. This tells me that all my hard work on SEO and link building for this blog are beginning to pay off and that is a great motivation and inspiration for me to continue my work

Now it is your turn. How has your start of 2012 been when it comes to traffic? Have you also seen a big boost in organic traffic for your blog? Please drop me a comment below.

Are SSD (Solid State drive) really worth the extra money?

Yes they are..!
Well ok there might be a bit more to it depending on your needs, but the fact is that solid state drives are so much faster than the traditional hard drives that we have known for decades. I just recently bought myself a Corsair Force GT 120 GB like the one you can see on the picture above and it really is a great disk. With performance up to (read) 555 MB/s and (write) 515 MB/s this drive really can take advantage of the SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) controller.

Specification of Corsair Force GT 120 GB:

The problem with traditional HDD

With a traditional HDD it doesn’t really matter if it is connected to a SATA 2 (3 Gb/s) or a SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) controller. A traditional HDD is not able to take advantage of the high bandwidth at all. Some other problems with the traditional HDD is the high seek time, the heat (big problem in laptops) and the fact that traditional HDD is having moving parts that over time will fail at some point. In fact the old HDD as we have used for decades was first introduces in 1956 by IBM. Of cause they technology has been improved over the years but mostly when it comes to capacity. Just like back then the disk is still build with rotating plates and hard drive heads reading and writing data.
Whenever you see an ad for a desktop PC or a laptop you can always see how big the HDD is, but never how fast it is. Many of the cheap Laptops you can buy today come with a very high capacity HDD that often are operating with only 5400 RPM. That is a shame that people are buying a brand new Laptop with a fast CPU, lots of fast DDR3 RAM and a very slow HDD. The HDD is the really big bottleneck in modern PC’s and have been for years.

The downside of SSD

Well SSD is not are not all great. There is some issues with SSD as well. The biggest issue is the cost per Gigabyte. My new Corsair drive cost about $170 and is only 120 GB. For the same money I could easily get a 2 TB traditional HDD. However in my desktop PC I have plenty of room for multiple drives. My system drive containing Windows 7 is located on my new Corsair SSD drive. In addition I have a 500 GB and a 1 TB traditional HDD installed. All my music, videos and documents are located on my traditional drives and my system and programs are located on my SDD. In this way I can boot my PC in about 55 sec (including BIOS POST) and Web-browsing and launching programs are done with the speed of light, almost

The hard choice as I see it comes when you have a laptop and only have room for one drive. What to do then? Can you limit yourself to 128 or maybe 256GB or do you need more space? If you need more space you might need to go for a traditional HDD, but at least make sure that it is a 7200 RPM drive then.

SSD taken to the extreme

If you want to see SSD taken to the extreme, take a look at this video. It is 3 years old and a lot have happen to SSD since then but it is still pretty awesome I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

What do you think about SSD Vs HDD? Do you have a SSD disk in your primary computer? Have you ever considering buying one? Please drop me a comment below.

How to make BioPDF Writer call Outlook with attachment

1. After you have downloaded and installed the PDF writer, you will have to go to “C:\Program Files\bioPDF\PDF Writer\” and create a new file named default@printername.ini file where <printername> is the name of your PDF printer. If you have used the default printer name the filename will be defaults@PDF Writer – bioPDF.ini

2. Open the ini file in a text editor like notepad and add the following lines:

[PDF Printer]
RunOnSuccess=”c:\program files\microsoft office\office14\outlook.exe” /c ipm.note /m test@gmail.com&subject=Status /a “%1″

Note that the path for Outlook might be different on your computer depending on your Windows and Outlook version. The path in this example is from a 64 bit Windows 7 with Outlook 20120 also 64 bit. The %1 parameter contains the path for your newly created PDF file.

3. Test the configuration by printing a document e.g. from Word to your PDF printer. This should now result in a new Outlook Message pop up looking something like this:

Additional resources:

Additional BioPDF Printer Settings

Documentation for Outlook command-line switches

Download Biopdf PDF Writer

BioPDF Supports these Operating Systems

• Microsoft Windows 8 (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows XP (32 and 64 bit)
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

That was all from me for this time. Hope you find this little guide useful and I am sure that you can come up with some other usefull settings you can use with BioPDF Writer. I would love if you will share this post with your friends and I will also like to hear what PDF printer you are using yourself. Please drop me a comment below

What is .Net Framework and why do I need it?

.Net Framework (pronounced dot net) is a developed by Microsoft and is a large library of developer components shared by multiple programming languages like Visual Basic, Visual C++ and website development (IIS). Instead of including all those library functions in each programs, programs developed for the .Net Framework can share the same library functions based on the .Net Framework. In order to execute a .Net program on your Windows PC you will need to install the .Net Framework version that the specific program is targeted for. The .Net framework editions is backward compatible meaning if you have .Net 4.0 installed you can also have framework 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. Regarding version 1.0 and 1.1 it might be another story, but not many programs are using those editions anymore today.

Get the free .Net Framework detector tool

With this little .Net framework detector tool you can easily found out what versions of the .Net Framework is installed. It can also tell you what service pack level has been installed for each framework.

Download the .Net Framework detector tool (353 KB)
(No installation required, just a single exe file in a zip archive)

As you might know Microsoft has just released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview of their next operating system. Windows 8 are expecting to be finally released in the end of 2012. For a tech guy like me it is always interesting to follow the beta process of a new Windows version to see what features we can look forward to in the next version. Before we look into the new version let’s have a look on the history of Windows Client releases in the past.

The history of Microsoft Windows Client releases so far:

• 1995 – Windows 95 is released
• 1996 – Windows NT 4.0
• 1998 – Windows 98
• 1999 – Windows ME (Millennium Edition)
• 2000 – Windows 2000
• 2001 – Windows XP
• 2007 – Windows Vista
• 2009 – Windows 7
• Windows 8? (Will properly be released late 2012)

Actually Microsoft also released Windows versions before 1995 but Windows 95 was the first one able to natively run 32 bit applications.

Official Demo of Windows 8 Consumer Preview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGbaAQyz8Q0

New features:

The Windows Store – Microsoft have added a store like you know it from Smartphones.

Ribbon in Windows Explorer –  Microsoft has added Ribbon like we know it from the Office products.

Picture password – login using mouse gestures over a picture instead of entering your password.

Improved Task Manager – The Task Manager have got a lot of new nice features.

New Remote Desktop client – The Remote Desktop Client has also been upgraded

Improved tablet support – The new user interface in Windows 8 had been developed with Tablet PC support in mind.

Things you might miss in Windows 8

Start Menu – The Start Menu are removed in Windows 8. This might take a while to get use to that for most people. The Start menu has been available since Windows 95, but maybe it is time to do things in another way.

New file system – There have been a lot of rumors about a new file system (ReFS) in Windows 8 to replace the old NTFS system. For now it looks like it will only be available in Windows server 8.

Remember that this is still a preview and Microsoft might change things in the final version. The whole idea with a Consumer preview like this is to get a lot of feedback from user to make the system better. Maybe they will remove features, maybe they will add additional features we never know.

 Requirements to run the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

• 1 GHz or faster processor
• 1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• 1024 x 768 minimum screen resolution

That is all from me. Now it is your turn. I would very much like to hear what you think about Microsoft’s upcoming Windows version. Do you think it will be a success?

Click to enlarge picture

For someone like me that are not working with pictures for a living I find myself needing a little bit more features than MS Paint, that are built into Windows, provides. Paint.Net provides those features, and it is fast, simple and it is free. Paint.NET supports: Crop, Resize, Gradient, layers, Photo Effects and much more.

5 reasons why Paint.Net is the right Photo Editor for you

1. It has a lot of great features for a free Photo Editor.
2. It is available in 10 different languages.
3. It comes in a simple 3.5 MB installer.
4. It can automatically take advantage of a 64-bit CPU if you have one.
5. You can download a lot of Plugins if you need additional features.

Click to enlarge picture

Minimum System Requirements for Paint.NET

• Windows 7 (recommended), or Windows XP SP3, or Windows Vista SP1 (SP2 and Platform Update recommended)
• 800MHz processor (dual-core recommended)
• 512MB of RAM
• 1024 x 768 screen resolution
• 200+ MB hard drive space
• Optional: 64-bit mode requires a 64-bit CPU and a 64-bit edition of Windows

You can download your own version of Paint.Net for free. Before you install the program you might want to check out the Paint.Net FAQ

Be aware that Paint.NET depends on Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with SP1. If you don’t already have it installed on your computer it will automatically be installed.

Have you ever used Paint.Net? What do you think of it? Please leave me a comment below.