Requirements

First of all, if you don’t burn CDs to play in your car anymore because you have the auxiliary jack or the FM transmitter or even the Bluetooth receiver, you need to step up your audio game. These options don’t tend to give you as much audio clarity as playing from the disc itself.

That said, don’t you just hate it when you burn a disc to play in the car and the player shows ‘no title’ or ‘unknown’? This can be annoying. After burning many discs with windows media player, and searching for plug-ins to make burning CD metadata (particularly track name) possible on the disc, I gave up on the idea.
Well, until I saw a little checkbox while burning a disc in iTunes.

If you haven’t been burning discs in iTunes, here’s a quick tutorial in the next paragraph. If you have, kindly skip the blue tutorial.

Click on the ‘+’ sign at the bottom left corner of the iTunes window to create a new playlist and name it whatever you want. Now drag your songs from wherever (make sure they’re in mp3 format otherwise iTunes will try converting them hence creating a new copy of the files possibly on your hard disk) into the selected playlist in iTunes. Click ‘File’, select ‘Burn Playlist to Disc’.

When your ‘Burn Settings’ come on, select your preferred speed – I usually leave mine at ‘Maximum Possible’. Select your Disc Format and gap between songs. If you’re so keen about a sound check you can check the box for that. And now most importantly, the reason why this entire article was written: check the box that says ‘Include CD Text’. This will store the name of the song, name of the artist, and the name of the album on the disc. That way, you don’t have to keep listening to ‘Now Playing: Unknown song, Unknown artist, Unknown album’ when you are driving to Elegushi.

NB: Please make sure when selecting your Disc Format, your drive is capable of burning the disc, and that your destination drive can play the disc.


Disclaimer: Copyright content – especially music – are properties of the individual owners and they should be used only as specified.

Hope this article has taught you how to get the most out of your in-car audio system LED display? Or even your Home theater with text support? Got any questions or comments? Leave them down below. Thanks for reading.

If you don’t already have one, get one. And before you start complaining that ‘oh no, not another account!’, wait. As long as you have a Gmail account that ends with ‘@gmail.com’, you’re good. It’s a free service so you shouldn’t worry about paying any fees. The reason you have to get an account is because you need it to set up the phone. Afterall, it’s a ‘Google phone’ so you shouldn’t feel too uptight about this.

2. Make up your mind on Hardware

The fact that Android is open source means that it is available on different hardware from different manufacturers; the most popular being HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson.  There are other manufacturers but these five have the best and most popular phones running Android.

Samsung Galaxy S II – Currently one of the highest rated Android phones 3. Know your specifications

After you’re done deciding on hardware, you need to make sure your phone is fast enough to give you a smooth user experience. The current generation of Android phones range from 1GHz single core processors to dual core processors! It is easy to get carried away and get a 800MHz processor because of the price but I warn you, the phone might disappoint you after your first major firmware update. The least specs you should be going for is the 1GHz snapdragon processor. The HTC Desire is a very good phone from last year and still is. It’s a good place to start your Android experience.

4. Skins

Manufacturers like HTC include a skin for their Android phones called HTC Sense (pictured). It is supposed to make for a more intuitive user experience but some people consider it an obstruction. Samsung have their corresponding TouchWiz and Motorola have their Motoblur. You might want to look into the phone you’re getting to make sure the skin is something you’ll like and will not be a nuisance. On the other hand, some phones come with stock android like the Droid X from Motorola and the  T-Mobile G2X from LG. This is raw Android without any fancy skin atop. I kind of prefer this because it is less demanding on your phone’s hardware.

All the other stuff, you’ll have to experience it yourself when you start using the device. Before you know it, your new smartphone will be your new best friend. And then you start pointing and laughing at your friends still rocking their symbians and blackberries (with all humility though) Android is a fun, easy to use operating system. Be reminded though, that user experience will vary across different hardware and make sure that you are exactly sure about what you want before you invest in one. Feel free to leave comments and ask questions! Thanks for reading!

To many, the browser is the most preferred application on their PC. It’s the first thing they launch as soon as the computer boots up completely. Even if it’s just looking up Facebook, reading news feeds or even doing research, how do you make the most out of your browsing experience?
With Mozilla’s Firefox being one of the most preferred browsers in the world today, here are some tips to get you browsing like a pro:

1. Use ‘Ctrl+W‘ to close tabs faster.
This is a general shortcut for all browsers but it has to be mentioned here. It is a lot easier to use this shortcut sometimes than trying to hunt down the little ‘x’ button.

2. Install just the add-ons you need.
It’s easy to get carried away by the large amount of add-ons at the mozilla repository but don’t be distracted. The more add-ons you have, the slower your browser becomes, hence the uglier the browsing experience. You don’t want this. So install only the ones you know you need to improve your browsing experience.

3. Use your search engines efficiently.
By default, the search bar is set to use the Google search engine. You can use the drop down arrow to see alternatives and use them when required. Wikipedia for example allows you to search the entire Wikipedia database. This is very useful considering some people do a google search first , and then click on the Wiki link.

There are many more tips to help you improve how well you maximise your browser and have fun while doing it. Try implementing any of these if you aren’t doing so already and you’ll notice the difference.

Please look out for a post on recommended add-ons in the near future. Thanks for reading!


If you have any tips for us, please include them in the comments. Thanks