Just like the screen shot above says, I just love this snapshot. I was looking for a good example of a cluttered and unorganized desktop but knowing who’s screenshot this is I actually know, unlike how it seems to the eye, this is a very organized desktop. This is usually not the case though, she is the exception to the rule. I have never quite understood why some of the most organized individuals in real life are the most digitally unorganized on the planet? There is obviously a digital gap or digital divide between the two, and actually having an organized life has no correlation what-so-ever with being organized in the digital world.
I know several people who would never even leave a single tiny scrap of paper on the floor or anything out of place in their house, yet their computer desktop is strewn with random files all over the place, and if you were to venture inside the main halls of the computer, you’ve got boxes thrown here and there, furniture in the wrong places, and pieces of data everywhere… and they never ever clean house. It just keeps piling up and piling up like digitized version of Hoarders on A&E TV. Being digitally organized really is a beautiful thing to a techie geek, but it actually does serve some function and purpose as well, just like keeping your house clean serves a purpose. I realize some people just don’t care and don’t have the time to mess with it, but just because you can close the lid to your laptop and not have to look at it like a bunch of papers on your living room floor doesn’t mean it’s beneficial?
When those two organizational sides of life come together it’s pretty cool to see, but for those of us who need a little help from the digital side of organization practices, here are two of the very best apps that might help keep both sides organized and looking nice. There are some alternatives to these below, like pen and paper or other digital note-taking apps, but in terms of keeping it simple and very organized, these two are the best.
The best part about both of these apps is they function in the cloud. Things that don’t function in the cloud today are more than just slightly annoying, they are becoming obsolete (great current example would be the difference between Apple’s iBooks and Amazon’s Kindle App), especially when you need to access the information somewhere other than a computer locked to an actual desk. I know for those techies that read my blog these two apps are old news but there are still some people I run into each day that don’t know the value of these two apps. There are many more, if you have a favorite just let us know in the comments.
Evernote :: Remember Everything
Evernote is the very best note-keeping, paper-storage, sticky note, program out there. I have tried to not like Evernote but it has almost no rival in functionality, price, and features. Evernote will allow you to capture just about anything on the Internet you want and store it away in a folder (or notebook) to be accessed late via website app, desktop app, iPhone, iPad, just about any mobile device, from just about anywhere. It’s main use for me has been for scanning papers into pdf then uploading them to a notebook called receipts or something of the sort. They have a great free desktop version, perfect for just drag and dropping files, and you can share notebooks with coworkers or friends. There is a paid version but it’s cheap and offers a higher sync volume per month. Well worth the money if you use Evernote a lot.
DropBox :: Simple Online Cloud File Management
For extremely simple file management away from your desktop Dropbox is the only cloud based file solution that works seamlessly with your existing file management system. They also have a free and paid version and the paid is also well worth the money if you use more than their allotted free 2GB of space. Dropbox works just like another file folder on your computer but resides in the cloud, allowing you to access the files from anywhere, anytime. The only drawback I have found to Dropbox is it’s limited storage (2GB use to be a lot of data storage but today is almost nothing). Because they allow you to share folders with other people this 2GB’s of space can be used up almost immediately unless your shared folder peeps police their files well. Dropbox is the perfect solution for moving large files to other people without really getting into the world of Bit Torrents.
What’s your favorite organization app?
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I recently purchased a copy of John Shaw’s eBook called John Shaw’s Digital Processing, A Personal Workflow using Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 (a great book if you are a photographer looking for some insight into post-processing and the digital workflow process, well worth he $25) hoping I would be able to convert it to an ePub file and read it in iBooks on my iPad. I was able to convert his previous eBook, John Shaw’s Photoshop Field Guide, but have just about given up on his new one, the structure of the PDF looks to be just too complicated to convert, but I am going to use his two eBooks as the example since one will convert and one won’t.
I have searched long and hard for a how-to on converting PDF files to ePub files so you can read them in iBooks or a variety of eBook readers, and have found almost no consolidated information, so here it is. There are several reasons why converting PDF files to an ePub file is not the easiest thing to do, and they often seem to error out or format improperly. This how-to guide is written for the intention of taking a PDF eBook (or any PDF file) for loading it into iBooks in iTunes for use on your iPad, but the same process can be used for most all eBook readers.
Some Basic PDF Info
All PDF’s are not made the same. They all have different formatting, some have images, some are just plain text, some are print screen save-as files, you can basically take anything you can see or print on the Internet and turn it into a PDF. The reason is most everyone everywhere can read a PDF, and most have the free version Adobe PDF reader (at this writing the current version is Adobe Reader 9.3.2).
Because these files can be created by almost any means, often they do not make the greatest, prettiest looking, eBooks, and it is not an exact science to get a PDF to an ePub file, even harder to get it to look nice on your eBook reader. Your final outcome is going to depend on how the file was created in the first place, not something you have control over most of the time. Some PDF files because of their structure will never be able to be converted to an ePub file and you will have to look at alternatives like a good PDF reader like Goodreader on the iPad.
Ways to Convert PDF’s to ePub Using ePub2Go or Stanza
Once you have your PDF file you want to convert, you can try the quickest and easiest PDF to ePub converter first, and if that doesn’t work, then move on to the next alternative. First thing to try is a site called ePub2Go. This is basically the ONLY online PDF to ePub conversion tool you can access for free and without downloading another stand alone app or program.
Step 1 :: ePub2Go The process is pretty simple, just click the link the pdf is on my computer then let them convert the file. Once it’s finished just click on view or save it on my computer and your done.
If you get finished with the conversion and you get an error message you pretty much have to move on at this point. You can get a variety of errors like the screen shot below. That is just one of the error message you could get, but once you get that, you won’t be able to convert the file using ePub2Go.
Step 2 :: Stanza The next thing to try would be to download a free copy of Stanza by Lexcycle (download available for Windows or Mac), a great generic type eBook reader, and convert the file using the desktop app or program. Stanza has moved their main product line to the mobile eBook reader but they have a great conversion tool in the desktop app.
After you download and install the program it will prompt you to open a file. Just open your preferred PDF file. You will probably need to adjust the number of columns and on larger screens, depending on how the PDF is created, it may or may not look formatted properly, but this will be similar to your final ePub output file.
Next just go to the file menu and choose –> file –> export book as –> ePub. You can also see there are a host of options available to convert the PDF to a Kindle file and many others. If that works, great, if it doesn’t, you are quickly running out of options. Stanza also has a tutorial on how to convert files as well that is very helpful.
Step 3 :: Adobe Acrobat / HTML / Word / Plain Text If step 1 or 2 doesn’t work then you are left with trying to manipulate the file into behaving properly enough to do a conversion, but even that may not work at this point, this is the last ditch effort before you have to just stick with reading the PDF.
If you have Adobe Acrobat (not the free reader but the full version of Acrobat) you can export the PDF as a variety of file types (but not an ePub). Many times you can export a file as an HTML file and fix the issues the PDF had that caused the conversion to ePub error and then try step 1 or step 2 above after you have corrected the problem. Explaining how to correct the file in HTML is beyond the scope of this article but it’s often easy to see where the conversion is getting hung.
In the case of my above issues with Shaw’s newest eBook, I tried to export it as a Word Doc, RTF, HTML, and Plain Text and due to the complexity of the PDF it just wasn’t feasible to convert the file in a readable format. In that case, I am going to just pull it over to my iPad using Goodreader and read it as a PDF.
I was surprised how few PDF to ePub file converters were really available. I did leave off several paid for programs that convert these file types but most of them just use the same process as step 1 and 2 above and I really wouldn’t pay for the programs myself. You can get a PDF to ePub Converter trial from CNET, PDFtoEPUB from DNAML Software, or PDF to ePub from DONGSOFT, but all are pricy alternatives after the trial runs out.
Coming up I will finish this article with taking the new ePub file you have created (or the PDF that you couldn’t get converted) and showing how to load it into iBooks using iTunes. How do you convert your PDF’s?
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After work yesterday I spent a good few hours trying to recover what became a corrupted iTunes Library xml database file. For those who don’t know, I am a pretty big music fan, but I am also a huge data collection nut.
Some people are pack rats with paper things, I am a data pack rat, which means I should also be a backup freak, which I am not, but I do a moderate amount of backup, which usually saves me some headache, but not all.
So what do you do when the iTunes Library xml database file you have been using since 2001, for over 8 years and 5-10 different computers, gets corrupted. You let the stupid thing recover itself and don’t inadvertently hit the “stop” button, or you just start all over. In a brief thought of “what is this thing doing” I stopped a recovery effort that iTunes was properly making to put a final stamp on the library file in which it was overriding at the time.
An Old iTunes Library File, Built Since 2001
I had been collecting this play data since I started burning mp3′s back in 2001. I could look at any one of my (approximately) 17k music files and see when it was last played, how many times it had been played, when I added the file to my collection, and what start rating it had, now, I see empty boxes. After determining that I could not recover the corrupted file, I faced a few choices. Use the latest backup I had, which was from July 13th, or start over. July 13th may not sound bad, but I have probably added 25-30 albums since that date, and I have absolutely no way in the world to determine which albums those are to add them back into my library one at a time.
Had it been a couple of days that would have worked, but to try and remember each individual cd added when they are all now alphabetically filed would be impossible for me to determine.
How iTunes Works With a PC
Just in case anyone needed a quick iTunes Library file tutorial so something like this doesn’t happen to all their hard work, he is a real brief overview (and I am in no means an expert at all). iTunes uses two main files, stored in the “music” folder of your “my documents”. These files, are the iTunes Library.itl file and the iTunes Music Library.xml file. The .itl file controls or stores all your play count data and the .xml file is the database library of music that is called from the .itl file.
What this means is the xml file can be rebuilt by the iTunes Library file (if you let it), so as long as you have a copy of this file, you can just do a quick copy and paste into the proper directory and all your historical data is there.
Backup Your iTunes Library Files, Now
The moral of this blog post would be, backup often, backup frequently, backup now. iTunes Library files are probably one of the easiest backups to make. Just go into your music –> itunes directory, copy the two library files, then paste them into a new folder called “backup”. iTunes actually does this for you every so often, but is the frequency that itunes backs up your data frequent enough? For most, probably. For me, wasn’t even close but I also wasn’t really paying attention, so now I get to start over. At least I didn’t loose the music files, only the really cool data that goes with it.
[update] I was able to use the newest saved file and then import my new music added since that file. At this point don’t ask me how, it was a huge mess and I really don’t know how I got it back but I did. Backups are now running daily. Can’t wait until I get a MacBook and have to try to take my pc based iTunes file and convert it.
[update 2] it seems my itunes library now will not find the songs, some 17,800 songs unless I manually point each one, one at a time to the proper location. I am sure this had something to do with me moving my music files to an external hard drive… but I have tried to change the drive letter iTunes looks at and that does no good. At this point, after being able to recreate my itunes library in July, I think now in September the library history is finally going to kick the bucket. I had a backup this time from yesterday, but it does no good when it won’t locate the files on the hard drive.
This is extremely frustrating but I am about to buy a MacBook Pro anyway and will have to move my itunes library over at that time without any history anyway. So, here’s to 5 to 8 years of music history, down the tubes. I am now reimporting all of my music from the external hard drive and slowly converting everything over to the Apple Lossless file format instead of mp3. This should improve the sound quality and hopefully work with my ipod, iphone, and mac book.
