Called Rich Snippets, this feature is meant to provide Google users with insight into the content different sites make available. Instead of having to enter site after site to find one that has the desired music, searchers will see relevant music displayed in the Google results, though users will still have to visit the site to retrieve it.

While new for music, this is part of an ongoing program that has been active since 2009. Search results can already display Rich Snippet content related to events, people and reviews.

Implementation of Rich Snippets does require action on the part of webmasters. Google can’t identify music on a site unless a specific markup is placed in a site’s code, identifying content as music that could be relevant to search results. To start the ball rolling, several large music sites including MySpace and Rhapsody have already made their sites compatible.

Don’t be surprised if music snippets don’t appear in every search. The official announcement made it clear that introducing the new markup to a website was only a pre-requisite, and didn’t guarantee that snippets would appear in all or any results for that site. As usual, the specifics as to when they will and won’t appear have not been disclosed by Google.

Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog

I don’t know if the guy behind the counter has updated his system, but I certainly have. I used to be a disgrace to the fraternity of digital packrats. Not anymore, because I have tidied up my act. From movies to songs, you ask it”¦I can bring up all the information you might need with a click. Thanks to a bevy of collection managers I have tried out.

Ant Movie Catalog is the latest open source movie organizer that I am sieving my movie collection through. And I have been pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of this Open Source software. Ant Movie Catalog is a free open source movie organizer that you can download and install or download, unpack and run without an install. I opted for the later. The download size is a tiny 3.5MB.

When you take the first look at the screen, you might feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of fields that need to be filled out. For a true movie lover, that’s candy for the eyes because all he wants are details and details about his favorite movies. But for him also, it would be a migraine inducer if he had to fill it all up by himself. But then why should you when the web can do it automatically for you.

Here’s how I did it for the first bunch of film titles I put into the collection.

In 3 clicks, get all the information on your movie

Ant Movie Catalog not only goes into a lot of details for a movie but it makes it easy to get all that from a host of film databases. To fill out all the fields for a movie, you need to just click on Movie ““ Add”¦Put in the name in the Original Title field box and then either click on the Get Information toolbar icon or go via the menu (Movie ““ Get Information ““ From internet using a script).

The scripts are where all the riches of Ant Movie Catalog lie. You have about 238 scripts at last count. You can try any one of them. These scripts are nothing but codes that help the software get specific information from online movie websites and online DVD stores. Familiar biggies like Amazon and IMDB are there of course.

Run the any of the scripts; for similar named titles. Select yours and let Ant Movie Catalog collect all the values for the fields. You can customize which fields to include in your database.

You can add a bunch of titles in one go and complete your collection with a few clicks. Ant Movie Catalog also facilitates import of movie titles from other file formats.

Ant Movie Catalog also connects any movie to online movie info sites like ““ IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, DVD Empire and DVDZone2. You can add more sites from Preferences.

So many ways to visualize all that information

Ant Movie Catalog is an information hound’s delight. There are many ways to order, categorize and display all the movie information collected in the database.

You can group movies by any of the field values. For instance, group it by borrower to see which of your friend has begged, borrowed or stolen which title. Or by Media Type to give you an idea of the format you have used to archive the movie.

For the guy who has an eye for pie charts and bar graphs, the Statistics feature is an information mine.

Ant Movie Catalog has an added Loan Management feature. Using it, you can manage the movies that your friends have borrowed from you. You can add borrower names and keep tabs by checking in and checking out the titles that you lend out.

The feature that I use most often is the Export to another file format. You can use any of the six available formats to send out a detailed list of your movies. For instance, I use the HTML format to send out the titles I have to my friends.

And of course, you can print out your entire movie list with lots of customized templates to choose from.

Ant Movie Catalog may lack the glamour but it catches the grammar of an efficient and comprehensive collection manager. Some extra bits like a feature to track movies by how many times we watch it would have helped.

But it squeezes in all the information it can find and presents it straight. For the sake of having all the movies info at your fingertips, that’s all you want in the end.

Ant Movie Catalog version 3.5.1.2 is compatible with all Windows versions up to Win XP. The site says that – the compatibility with Windows Vista and 7 is not perfect, but that does not prevent the program from running normally.

Do you use any open source movie organizers? Which is the one for you?

In less than five minutes, I had not only renamed all of my iTunes music files exactly as I wanted them, but also organized nicely into folders sorted by artist.  Want to know how to rename iTunes files yourself?  Read on!

Organize and Rename iTunes Files and Folders

Before starting, I’d like to note that The Godfather 0.71 is still in beta; however, you can download the stable version 7.0 from the same site instead, if you prefer.  When you open the program, you’ll see, at first glance, what appears to be a somewhat complicated interface.  Don’t worry!  It’s not as complex as it seems.

You want to begin by selecting the main folder in the left-hand explorer pane that all of your music is stored in.  It can be the entire C:\ drive, or a specific folder where all of your music is stored.  In my case, I had imported everything into an “iPod Music” folder within the My Music directory, so that’s what I selected.

After selecting the folder you want, click Scan (the magnifying glass button), and every music file within that folder and its subfolders will be populated in the results.  You will see an “If Renamed“ column.  The program defaults to an “Artist Name ““ Song Title“ format, and shows you how the file names would appear here.

If you wish to rename your files differently, you have a plethora of options.  Above the Scan button, under Format Options > Use Variables, you will see a “%A – %T” field.  These are your variables.  If you click the down arrow to the right of that field, you will see a menu including all of the variables available to you.  Input the variables you like (mine were %T – %A for Song Title – Artist Name), and click the “Apply“ button to see the “If Renamed“ results.

If you’re not sure what the different row colors mean, you can view them by going to File > Options and clicking the “Colors“ tab (or by referring to the screenshot below).  There, you can also change the default colors if you like.

When you’re ready to rename your iTunes files, click the “Rename“ button, and The Godfather will quickly take care of the rest!  It will also report any problems it might have encountered or files that it skipped.  You can see those results in the lower left corner of the screen, as well as in the far right column in your music list.

The Godfather has many other features in addition to renaming and reorganizing your music files and folders, such as creating playlists, finding duplicates, encoding and decoding with LAME/Ogg Vorbis/MPCEnc, and editing ID3 tags.  You can refer to the program’s “Help” menu for an HTML help index that will explain more about the program’s additional features.

We have written a lot in the past on naming and organising your music library.   Here are some of those posts :

4 Easy Ways Fix Music Tags & Organize Music Library
Organize Your Music Collection Effectively With Media JukeBox
Organize and Manage Your Music  Collection with MediaMonkey
Organize and Tag Your Music Library with MP3Tag
6 Ways to Sync Music to Your iPhone Without iTunes

Do you know of any other great music management programs?  Tell us about it in the comments!

When you take a picture with a digital camera, your camera embeds information into your image which contains a thumbnail, as well as the type of camera you used to take the picture and some other interesting tidbits.

You might be thinking – SO WHAT? If I am posting my picture online what the frick do I care if the thumbnail of my image is embedded. Sure if you have nothing to hide than you should not be worried.

But if you are snapping pictures with a stolen camera or you are editing your images to hide something contained in them ““ then you should be aware of MetaData, and know how to remove that metadata from photos. That’s right the thumbnail is NOT updated as you edit the image, it is the original thumbnail. So if you are photoshopping yourself – make sure the original picture didn’t show you in a compromising situation!

We have seen instances in the past few years of people getting nailed because their fancy smancy camera embedded their GPS location into their MetaData. Even a not so techie person can view the MetaData and use it against you! There are plenty of sites for that, CameraSummary is one of such image data extractor websites.

Let’s teach our paranoid friends how to remove their MetaData from pictures and ease their minds.

We can start by downloading a small application called JPEG & PNG Stripper. It is a 75KB file that does exactly what it promises. There are not many options and you really cannot go wrong. It is a simple drag and drop operation that will clear up your skeletons in the closet.

No matter what you are trying to hide or protect, this awesome free application will scrub your images down lickity split. It also has command line options and you can do entire folders in one shot. You are actually saving a small amount of space as well because that MetaData does have to live somewhere!

Let’s take a look at how it works. You simply fire up the application called Stripper.exe. It does not need to be installed, just run it and drag a file to the window to be cleaned.

That’s it. It is as simple as that! We confirmed that the MetaData (or lack thereof) has been totally scrubbed ““ never to be seen again.

From the Author’s Website:

The image quality IS NOT AFFECTED. Includes command line support. Just specify a folder or file on the commandline (wildcards allowed)

And here are the options for my fellow command line geeks:

/GUI={0|1}
/IGNORE-READONLY={0|1}
/PRESERVE-DATETIME={0|1}
anything else on the command line is treated as a folder or filename (allows wildcards)

examples
stripper /gui=0 c:\path\test.jpg
stripper /gui=0 c:\path\test.* /ignore-readonly=1

Do you remove your MetaData from photos? Do you use MetaData for some other sort of snooping? Put us on in the comments!

In the digital age, watermarks are defined in a different way. There are basically two types, used for different purposes.

Visible Watermarks

Visible watermarks are simply pieces of text or images which are overlaid on the main image either for marketing purposes or to discourage unauthorised copies. Sometimes these watermarks are also used for censorship.

Many stock photograph sites use visible watermarks to prevent the theft of images, and butcher the images to the point where they are not worth attempting to purloin. Some sites show thumbnails without watermarks, and then surprise you with crosshairs in the larger versions.

A local one I sell images through in New Zealand, mychillybin for instance, does this. (A chillybin is a thing you take with you to the beach to keep your cold drinks in)

Some folks like to add either informational or annoying watermarks to images on photo sharing sites such as Flickr. Personally I find this as annoying as people tagging buildings in the city streets, but I can understand the motivation.

Invisible Watermarks

At first glance this seems patently absurd. What’s the point in a watermark you cannot see? But there is technology available which can insert information into an image which cannot be seen, but can be interrogated with the right software. You can’t prevent the theft of your images this way, but you can prove that the image that was stolen was yours, which is almost as good.

I’m going to stick with visible watermarks today.

Tagging your images

So how can you add watermarks to your images? Easy.

You can do this either online or using an application on your PC. The online options tend to be easier. The offline ones tend to be more comprehensive.

Online, one of the simplest options is PicMarkr.

Upload up to five of your images from your PC, or grab them from Flickr first. You can optionally resize the images as well, but if you have a way to do that before you upload them, the whole thing will be much faster.

PicMarkr can apply text, image or tiled watermarks.

Insert the required text, change the font colours and transparency if necessary, and choose which corner of the image you want the watermark in. I’d be ever so grateful if you didn’t put them in the centre. I’m sticking with the Kiwi spelling, by the way. I hope you can keep up.

Click continue.

You can download the images again, or move them to Flickr.

Browse to the image you want to use for a watermark. Bold and simple is best.

Click the Upload button.

Decide on the location within the image for the watermark, and click Continue.

Download or transfer the results.

I’d be reluctant to use this one unless I was feeling awfully paranoid, or had a desire to get into marketing in a big way.

Tiled watermarks are repeated in a pattern all over the image. You again have the choice of text or image, and it all works the same way as the options above.

Alternative sites providing similar functionality include:

If you prefer to apply tiles to your images offline, there are a number of options. I usually fall back on my friend IrfanView, but there are many options, including a not-for-free pro version of PicMarkr just for Windows.

A word of warning. It’s very easy in Irfanview to accidentally watermark an entire folder of images, overwriting your original files. No, I haven’t done that. My sins are far greater. But I’ve seen it done. Copy your images to another folder, and only overwrite those ones. Do it now!

You can easily apply text watermarks this way, with a great deal more control over the font, placement, colour, alignment and transparency.

Just fire up Irfanview and browse to the images you want to deal with. Hit the ‘b’ key on the keyboard or choose File | Batch Conversion from the menu. Select the files to which you want to apply a watermark, and then click the advanced button. If you saw my post on adding borders to images a couple of weeks ago then you might have already been in here. This time we want to take a look in the “Add overlay text” option.

As you can see, there are a number of options that you can use to set the watermark up exactly as you want it.  Let’s work through them quickly.

X-Coord and Y-Coord are the offset, in pixels, from the start corner. Margins, if you like. Width and Height are the size of the usually invisible box the text sits inside. Start Corner is the same as the alignment options we set in PicMarkr, except that there is, thankfully, no centre option.

Add your watermark text in the box, appending date, time and a copyright symbol if required.

Irfanview has one outstanding feature that might be of use to you here. It uses placeholders and can change the watermark for each image. As a simple example, you can put the text ‘$N’ in the text box, and each image will be watermarked with its own filename. Click the Help button for more info.

Adjust font size, colour and alignment as you please, then click OK to return to the advanced settings page. After checking that you haven’t inadvertently left any other options turned on, click OK again to return to the Batch Conversion page.

Take a moment to think through the options you’ve chosen, make sure you’re not overwriting anything you shouldn’t, and click Start Batch.

That’s it. You’re a star.

Metadata

One more note. Another way to tag your images with your information is through the use of metadata. You can’t see that in the image itself, but many photo viewers can show you the information. I’ll cover that another day, I promise.

If someone has stolen your images, would you know? Take a look at TinEye to see. It’s not the most comprehensive tool out there, but for instance when I ask it to look for my most popular image on Flickr, it tells me that four other websites (none of which I authorised) are using the image.

What else do you use? And what sorts of watermarks do you add? What sorts of unauthorised adventures have your images been on?