2.27.2008

Make Google Talk show music information from foobar2000



Google Talk 1.0 added a cool new feature. It now has the ability to display whatever music you’re currently listening to as your “status” — a line of text that displays below your name in other peoples’ buddy lists. At present it works for iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player and Yahoo Music Engine. But alas it doesn’t work with foobar2000 :(, which is quite a favourite with audiophiles.

But here is a workaround by which you can get Google Talk ( GTalk ) to show music information from foobar2000 ;) . For that you need the following :

Here are the steps to show the current song in foobar2000 as your status in Google Talk ( GTalk )

  1. Install Google Talk and foobar2000. :P

  2. Extract foo_winamp_spam.dll to the foobar2000\components directory.

  3. Create an empty file in your foobar2000 directory (e.g. c:\Program Files\foobar2000) called winamp.m3u. You can do it opening notepad and then saving the empty file as winamp.m3u.

  4. Apply this registry file by double-clicking on it and selecting Yes. (Note: If you installed foobar2000 to a directory other than c:\Program Files\foobar2000, you will have to open this .reg file and edit the path within to point to your foobar2000 installation directory.) ** use the registry file at your own risk **

  5. Now start Google Talk and change your status to “Show current music track" and also play some music in foobar2000.
Google Talk will now show the song you are listening to in foobar2000 as your status. Hope that helped you. :D

Thanks : foobar2000 3rd Party Plugins forum
Source: http://manast.blogspot.com/

2.25.2008

HD Tune 2.55






HD Tune is a Hard Disk utility which has the following functions:

* Benchmark: measures the performance
* Info: shows detailed information
* Health: checks the health status by using SMART
Power On Time / Health Status features
* Error Scan: scans the surface for errors
* Temperature display



There's another utitlity -- HDDlife (shareware), which also tells the exact time the hard disk has been used.
It is always good for checking your new-bought used hard disk.