Using Web and Technology to Enhance Your Life

Are certain audio files not loud enough?

Are you looking for a software to boost the volume of mp3 or audio files?

If so, I have just the solution for you.

One day I was listening to my music and found that my new headphones were not loud enough for me to listen to the track.

So I went about searching for something that would increase the volume level of that mp3 files that I was listening to.

And this is the best solution i that found: it’s called MP3Gain.

Not only is it free but it is also Open Source!

And it works perfectly.

I is able to increase the volume, without affecting the audio quality of the files. That is, its algorithm is completely lossless!

The details of how exactly it does this can be found on their website.

Here’s what they say about this matter:

MP3Gain does not just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear.
Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless. There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.

But the only thing that really matters to us is that it works!

Click here to download MP3Gain.

You can also use MP3Gain to normalize the volume level of different mp3 files so that you do not have to change the volume for each track as they start playing.

Mozilla Thunderbird is an extremely powerful and versatile email client. More over it’s free, open source and without a doubt my favorite email client.

When you create a new e-mail account from cPanel, it provides automatic configuration for Microsoft Outlook 2000 but not for Mozilla Thunderbird.

So here’s how you set you your email account with Thunderbird.

1. Open Thunderbird. On the Tools menu, select “Account Settings”.

2. Click on “Add account” or press Alt+A.

3. Select “e-mail address” and press next.

4. Type in your name and the newly created e-mail address.

5. In this dialog box, Select POP and enter the address for the incoming server. This is usually mail.domain.com (where domain stands for your … umm.. domain name). So mine’s set to mail.shypy.com

Deselect the “Use Global Inbox” checkbox – it’s a royal pain if you’ve got multiple accounts.

Step 5

6. Time to set the incoming username. It is either your username (from username@domain.com) or username+domain.com

This setting is shown by cPanel just after you create the email account.

7. Set the name to whatever you like. I set it to “Domain’s mail”.

8.  Verify all the details and go back and change any if required. Press finish and you’re almost done.

9. Click on “Server Settings” for the account and under security settings, select the radio button which says “TLS”.

10. Now you’re back to the “Account Settings” dialog box. Scroll down and select “Outgoing Server (SMTP)”

Click on “Add” if you haven’t already added any. Otherwise click on edit.

Set the server name to “mail.domain.com”.

Set the username to whatever username has been given to. Mine is username+domain.com

Do not forget to verify your port address with your hosting provider or server admin. The default setting is 25, but it may vary. Mine is 26.

And you’re done. So there it was, the step by step tutorial on setting up your email with Mozilla Thunderbird.

Open source software is any computer software whose source code is made available to public, permitting the end-users to tweak, modify and refabricate the software as per their requirement, for their personal benefit and that of the general public.

All this said, what is most important to the general public/ is that open source software is freeware. Hence you can use them as an excellent and highly competent alternative to expensive commercial software.

Here is a list of some of the best FOSS (Free Open Source Software), most of which I use myself:

Mozilla Firefox

Arguably the best web-browser at the moment, its popularity can be easily judged with how rapidly rising numbers IE users making the switch to Firefox.

FileZilla

FileZilla is among the best FTP (File Transfer Protocol) management software out there. It’s speed, ease of use, and simple interface make is stand out from the horde of FTP software.

Mozilla Thunderbird

The open-source replacement for Microsoft Outlook, it boasts of features like advanced Spam filtering, RSS/Usenet newsreader, etc.

Gimpshop – The web 2.0 version GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), Gimpshop is the open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop and has the same features and navigations as Photoshop.

7-Zip – It is a file compression utility with an extremely high compression ratio. It supports the .zip, .7z, and .tar formats.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is an excellent open source replacement for Microsoft Notepad, and can be used as a simple text processor, web development, and coding. It supports a variety of programming languages with syntax highlighting for languages like C++, C#, Java, PHP, Perl, CSS, SQL, VB, etc.

VLC Media Player

Possibly the most versatile media player available, VLC Player supports almost all of the widely used audio/video formats in the industry. Fast and hassle-free, it is the video player that most people vouch for.

Open office

The Open Source answer to Microsoft Office, it is a complete suite, which comes with replacements for MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access and MS PowerPoint.