I’m sure there is a Windows application out there that sorts desktop files into folders automatically already and if there isn’t then somebody should develop one post haste. I complained about desktop clutter almost three years ago, ouch. It’s been on my development to-do list for some time and this morning after staring at my desktop I decided to ask the rest of the world if such an animal already exists. Here’s a picture showing the problem:

What I’ve been doing for far too long is manually sorting these desktop files by type into folders. Like image files are sorted into a ’screenshots’ folder and .txt files are sorted into a ‘writing’ folder. It wouldn’t be that involved having a program that watches the desktop folder and then auto sorts any file by type (or custom definition rule) into custom directories defined by the user. It could also be run as a scheduled task once a day to clean out the icons of the day and sort into date stamped archive folders also customizable by the end user. Like say I wanted to have the program auto sort each day’s desktop files into monthly folders like July2008, Aug2008, etc., but the default should be to just sort into one folder so one doesn’t have to make too many clicks to get to the file.

If you’re reading this and have the perfect Windows application in mind — freeware, donationware, shareware or commercial — please pipe up in the comments section below with a link. If it’s a commercial or shareware application feel free to use your own affiliate code and if it looks good to me and you’re the first to mention I’ll buy the program through your link. Or write a blog post and trackback in, your choice. If I only hear crickets on this one I may just have to break out Visual Studio and get this done. I need a useful little app like this.

If it does cost money for this application, it shouldn’t cost very much. This isn’t Photoshop. I’m thinking $20 or less. Thank you in advance for the help.

Update 10:16am PST: Wow, that didn’t take long. Major props to Dean in the comments below for pointing me to Belvedere by Lifehacker’s Adam Pash. Now look at my desktop (right). As the screenshot displays in the upper left corner I’ve got the recycle bin (emptied) and four shortcuts to the following directories:

icons - this contains shortcuts to all programs with the word ’shortcut’. Windows, by default adds the word shortcut to each shortcut on the desktop.
screenshots - all files matching .jpg, .gif, .png and .bmp are automatically moved off the desktop by Belvedere to this directory.
software - zip files are moved here
writings - .txt, pdf and html files moved here

My most commonly used programs are stored in Rocketdock which is right aligned and takes up a very tiny amount of screen real estate. I linked to my original post about Rocketdock in the comments area below. This is on the short list of useful programs I regularly use on Windows plus it gives it a little of that Mac flavor.

For Mac Readers, Belvedere is based on the Mac program Hazel ($21.95, just about the price I suggested a program like this should cost). I’m not sure what is out there for Linux, but a desktop auto clean-up program should be a standard accessory in every OS. If anybody knows of something similar that will help Linux users keep their desktops tidy, feel free to use the comments below to share.

Night Ranger Hole In The Sun is the newest album from one of the favorite 80s bands. Dawn Patrol (1982) and Midnight Madness (1983) were two awesome albums from a band that might have pigeonholed themselves as being too mellow, but these guys can seriously rock. 7 Wishes (1985) was the last studio album I liked a lot. Since the late 80s they’ve released five studio albums: Man in Motion (1988), Feeding off The Mojo (1995), Neverland (1997), Seven (1998) and their newest album Hole In The Sun. Where does Hole fit in their body of work? I’d say in the middle. It’s not among their best, but it’s no embarassment.

Warning: before buying this album through musicane - read the section at the bottom of this post

I’ve had Hole In The Sun in the playlist cycling and trying to get into it. The problem with Night Ranger is their first two albums were so good that everything that follows is being compared to a high benchmark. It’s a good thing they have some great musicians in Jack Blades who got together with Damn Yankees and more recently with Tommy Shaw in the project Shaw-Blades (recommended). Blades keeps the bass line down as well as Night Ranger vocals.

Brad Gillis is the whammy bar master axe grinder who was good enough to enjoy a short stint with Ozzy on the Speak of the Devil album covering Sabbath songs. If you don’t think that Gillis can play, just pick that album up someday. Add Jeff Watson as a co-guitarist (their description, not mine) and you have a solid one-two punch on the six strings. Hey, and Kelly Keagy is no slouch pounding the skins either.

As for the guy with the shades on the back of the Midnight Madness CD (Alan Fitzgerald?)? Seven seems to have been his last studio album with the band. Fitzgerald is also absent from "the band" page on nightranger.com. Disappointed to see him missing too as keyboards are an important part of the classic Night Ranger sound. Don’t worry, they have Great White’s Michael Lardie on the keys on the album.

Unfortunately you won’t find Watson or Lardie on the 2008 Night Ranger tour to support Hole In The Sky.

That’s right, Watson and Lardie have both left Night Ranger again already. Watson has been replaced by Joel Hoekstra and Lardie by Christian Cullen. Who are these guys? I’d have to Google them to learn more because apparently they aren’t important or well known enough to make "the band" page on nightranger.com yet. Why do they diss new band members like this? Somebody get their webmaster motoring.

Track List and review notes

1. "You’re Gonna Hear It From Me" - thundering drum intro with nice use of power chords and floor tom. Makes a statement that this isn’t album isn’t going to be as mellow as Night Ranger fans might expect. I like this one.

2. "Tell Your Vision" - Another good rocker track. Didn’t immediately like this one, but it grew on me quickly. Solo rips. The main riff reminds me a lot of another song by another band, but I can’t think of the name. This album is off to a strong start.

3. "Drama Queen" - I’m not sure who’s singing the main vocals on this one, but the vocals seem off. This one has a Def Leppard type of feel to it and would be better with Joe Elliot singing, especially with the whole "come on, come on, come on…" part. The dueling guitar solos are pure Night Ranger and great stuff.

4. "Whatever Happened" - breaking out the cry baby wah for the intro and outro, nice. Rest of song kind of reminds me of "All Star" by Smash Mouth. Would have liked to have more of that wah peddle doing something like Gary Richrath did on Wheels or Turning album by REO Speedwagon. A little too fluffy.

5. "There Is Life" - the first mellow track which starts with a piano. Think "Sister Christian" or "Sentimental Street" but without the strong lyrical hooks. The chorus is sticky, but it doesn’t have classic written on it. Not bad, not great, but solid and satisfying.

6. "Rockstar" - I don’t care for the tinty verse sound or the chorus. Seems too whiny. This is my least favorite track thus far.

7. "Hole In The Sun" - The guitar solo is great. Easily my favorite part of many lesser known songs like this by them. The rest of the song is just OK. This feels like we’re on B-side material.

8. "Fool In Me" - Acoustic guitar. The second mellow track on the album with a nice melody and lyrics but the bongo drums ruined it a bit for me.

9. "White Knuckle" - strong guitar intro and some effective keyboard work. This feels like one of those grow on you over multiple plays tracks.

10. "Revelation 4AM" - Another mellow track, some good bass work here.

11. "Wrap It Up" - this one’s not for me.

12. "Being" - mellow track number four and the weakest of the bunch. Would have rather seen them end the album on a rocker note.

13. Don’t Tell Me You Love Me (Acoustic) - see below

14. Sister Christian (Acoustic) - it’s nice hearing acoustic / unplugged versions but the inclusion of these tracks on the album seem more like a sales thing than adding anything that thrilling to the original versions. Don’t get me wrong, the acoustic guitar playing is skilled and entertaining, but I’d rather hear the originals.

Thinking that some fans might only buy the album if it comes with bonus acoustic tracks of past versions. Personally, I think if they want to do bonus songs, they should provide live versions of the new studio tracks so fans can get an idea of how the songs would sound live rather than trying to return to the hits well from the past. It makes sense that people are going to want to hear how the tunes would sound live on the upcoming tour. Bands that don’t do complete versions of their studio tracks live are missing a sales/marketing opportunity.

Rocky Musicane purchase experience
Purchasing the new Night Ranger Hole In The Sun album through Musicane 320kbps proved to be more challenging than it should have been. Musicane is in beta, so they should be given a little slack, but nightranger.com is promoting using them — and so am I in the top of this post, so I want readers to be on high alert.

First off I kept receiving "invalid token" errors when trying to pay via PayPal. Then I used my PayPal credit card and the transaction went through the first time, but also displayed error messages. When I logged into PayPal, I learned that they had charged me three times for the same album.

Grr. I fired off an email to customercare [->] musicane.com to see if they would please cancel the two extraneous charges and waited for a response. Right away I was given an automated ticket number to track the sale information, but didn’t hear back from a customer support person right away on a Monday. Not a great sign. I’ll update this section as to what happens, but I added a "warning:" message below the link above for readers. You might want to get this CD at Amazon or your local music store instead of buying online like I did.

The quality of the MP3 files is high, although it didn’t come with album art. I was able to get that from the Night Ranger official website.

Summary and grade
My first listen-through on the album yielded different feeling than subsequent ones have. It’s no Dawn Patrol or Midnight Madness, but you likely expected that. It’s not even 7 Wishes, but I’d put this ahead of Seven and tied with Man In Motion. There are a few scattered tracks that I really like here. I’ve never seen Night Ranger live and feel like this album and accompanying tour would be a good opportunity.  Do regret the fact that I can’t play any of these tunes on Rock Band or Guitar Hero (why not?), but that has nothing to do with my review grade that follows. Grade: B

Sunday morning and what else to search for on the web? The Jesus Christ middle finger gave me an itch and decided to scratch for more image queries for middle fingers and share the results. Google Images 1 - 20 of about 1,530,000 — yowsa, if you can believe their ‘estimation’ they have the most middle fingers of any place on the web:

Flickr middle finger as slideshow (Flickr shows 10,140 results). This would be one to put on one of those picture frames above your TV — or on your TV — to freak out guests. Flickr competitor Zooomr only has 7 middle finger pictures.

At least 3,335 are showing their middle fingers on Photobucket:

The middle finger photoshopped out of flames seems to be one of the more popular pictures. Popular at Imageshack too which has 4 versions of it in the top 10 results out of 267 total pictures.

I would show you the results for Smugmug but as of this writing they are having Amazon S3 image hosting problems:

Historically, Amazon has been very stable.  We’ve seen three of these in our entire history with Amazon (>2 years), including this one.  I expect, like the last two, that service will be restored shortly.

Don doesn’t seem to think this is a middle finger image moment. Those paying for Smugmug might think so. Moving on, webshots has 19,627 middle finger images and hey, not a one of them is that flaming finger.

I checked AOL pictures but didn’t turn up any middle finger photos. Am I doing something wrong there? Oh, and yes, there is at least one middle finger picture here. This makes 21 posts out of 4,777 where the words middle finger have been used over the last 5+ years this blog has been in existence.

Did I miss a good place for more middle finger images?

If you can hold your grudges over Metallica’s rocky past with the internet and sharing and look at what they are doing today with sharing their music online, it’s impressive. At LiveMetallica.com since 2004 you can buy Metallica concerts, often within 48 hours of the concert date in both MP3 ($9.99) and FLAC ($12.99) format. I’m not aware of many other bands that offer this much material, this soon, after concerts air. I still have my eye on buying the Key Arena concert we went to in 2004. These are mixing board recordings and the one in MP3 formath I have purchased thus far sounded good, albeit a bit disappointing at 128kbps.

At their newer site MissionMetallica.com you can register for free and gain free access to download several full past concerts plus get nearly daily updates on the upcoming album: Death Magnetic.

And speaking of Death Magnetic, the 7/17 update shares the album art for the new album (pictured above). You can download from MissionMetallica the album art in the following resolutions: 1280×1024, 1024×768, 800×600 as well as instant messenger buddy icons. One thing missing from the MissionMetallica.com website are RSS updates and podcasts. There are regular updates with some meat on the bones, check this screenshot out:

Optionally, you can choose to purchase three additional Mission Metallica experiences:

• Experience #2: $24.99 includes everything that Experience #1 (FREE) includes (whichI’ve written about in this post) plus download of Death Magnetic at midnight on street date at 320kbps + downloads of two entire shows from the summer tour + almost 2 hrs. of additional "fly on the wall" footage + 250 additional photos, ringtones of riffs from the new album + exclusive contests and $10 off merch or Fan Club membership at Metallica.com.
• Experience #3: $32.99 includes everything from Experience #1 and #2 + Death Magnetic CD with FREE shipping. I’ve got my eye on this one.
• Experience #4: $124.99 includes everything from Experience #1,#2 and #3 + a limited edition collectible 5LP 180 gram box with 5 individual sleeves.

Album art looks like Twilight Zone meets The Mummy. I’m psyched. I know, St. Anger was a letdown, but I’m ready for Death Magnetic and liking what the boys are doing with their music and multiple websites these days. If Death Magnetic is good they should go a long way to earning back some lost fans. Probably not the ones they were in favor of suing, but hey, it’s a start. Check it out.

My wife just brought me some fresh baked cinnamon rolls. A quick Hmm search revealed I’ve never written about cinnamon rolls before. In 5+ years nary a word said about one of my favorite breakfast-time desserts? Sacrilege!

Cinnamon rolls are best with a tall glass of cool milk. Any other cinnamon roll fans reading? If you don’t like cinnamon rolls, what other dessert catches your sweet tooth?

The picture is a bit blurry, BTW, because my growling stomach was shaking the camera

Chris at Zune Thoughts is another fan of AmazonMP3 (emphasis mine):

Additionally, on Friday’s they offer 5 albums for $5 each. Sure, they might be taking a loss on some of these, but they are getting me in the habit of checking in daily to see what they have to offer, and of course as long as I’m there, I may end up picking up a song or too.

The folks at Amazon are smart, Chris. They have found a way to make money using Twitter, something that people have been wondering how to do since it became popular among the tech crowd.

AmazonMP3 is doing everything Chris mentions above in their Twitter feed in 140 characters or less. I’m sure this is 98% automated and a great example of how to use Twitter to keep people updated as well as to encourage shopping.

 
In the last week along I’ve bought a complete MP3 album and a couple individual songs that started the shopping from deals in the AmazonMP3 Twitter feed, something I can’t remember doing from another Twitter feed. @amazonmp3 is the only Twitter RSS feed I’m subscribed to in my RSS reader, as well to be certain I don’t miss a single message. Highly recommended for online music shoppers.

Rock Band 2 is coming this September and CNET shared the complete tracklist of 84 songs which, if you don’t want to completely spoil the surprise, don’t follow that link.

A few of my favorites include a track of the upcoming Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy album (when will this album be released?) and:

The Who "Pinball Wizard"
Judas Priest "Painkiller"
AC/DC "Let There Be Rock"
Bad Company "Shooting Star"
Fleetwood Mac "Go Your Own Way"
Ratt "Round and Round"
The Guess Who "American Woman"

Rock Band is also releasing a feature that will allow 4 on 4 battle of the bands over Xbox Live. Oh yeah, bring it.

One of my earlier requests was that artists would be releasing complete albums for play in Rock Band and/or Guitar Hero the same time their new albums came out. Motley Crue (Saints of Los Angeles review) and Judas Priest (Nostradamus review) both missed out with their new releases, but Metallica will answer the call and release the complete album of Death Magnetic, due out in the Fall on Guitar Hero. I keep writing this is a huge opportunity for bands and clearly some are seeing this with comments from Metallica like (emphasis mine):

We are so psyched that we’ll be the first out of the gate with this simultaneous release . . . who knows, maybe a few years from now this will be the norm when your favorite band’s new record comes out.

Amen. This is shaping up to be an awesome — and spendy — second half of the year for music video games with sequels for both Rock Band and Guitar Hero, not to mention drums and vocals being added to Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero is also going to have a way for gamers to create and share their own songs.  Start saving those pennies now.

Going through the comment spam on another blog and had a good laugh. Because this doesn’t really fit any topic over on that blog, I’m sharing the God comment spam (pictured above, text below) here:

This website is very nice and colorful too. Its nice to have something to show others where you attend church and to show all the smiling people filled of the goodness of the Lord. You have a wonderful website here. May God rich bless you always.

Maybe Judy is not a comment spammer, and hopefully I won’t burn in hell for bringing the following things to light, but there are some problems with her description of the blog in question. Let’s take a look at the blog — it’s my TD Scripts Wordpress plugin and mod blog. Here’s a screenshot for reference:

 

Does the above design seem "colorful." The design is like 95% whitespace. Ok, maybe the blue hyperlinks (the internet default, yes?) are colorful. The text is mostly black, so no hit there.  She called the website "very nice" which I’m honored if she felt that way, but doubt that it’s sincere, especially when the comment comes with a link to a site trying to sell such wonderful things as Penis Growth Pills (sorry, no link here) and Penis Growth Oil. Judy, Judy, Judy.

So what should I read into a comment that leads readers to male enhancement stuff? Now I know "Judy" what will "show all the smiling people the goodness of the Lord." Something tells me God has seen penises of all shapes and sizes.

I took the liberty to check your IP location, "Judy" because, well, I’m sure God might appreciate a friendly remember where another lowlife comment spammer hails from:

Yes, I smiled thinking about how God feels about "Judy’s" penis enhancement comment spam. Assuming there are such places in the afterlife, comment spammers who combine religion and penis size deserve a one way ticket to hell.

With Toshiba dropping support for the HD-DVD format, the PS3 is picking up sales steam as a Blu-ray player.

via Bloomberg:

The PlayStation 3 outsold the Xbox 360 in the U.S. in the first five months of 2008 after trailing Microsoft’s console in 2007. New exclusive games, such as “Metal Gear Solid 4,” and the rise of Sony’s Blu-ray as the dominant high-definition DVD player may enable PlayStation 3 to hold onto its lead.

One has to wonder just how much of an impact that has had on beating the Xbox 360 sales numbers at the start of 2008?

I’ve never seen the logic in purchasing a standalone Blu-ray player versus buying a PS3. The prices are about the same and with the ability to update firmware in the PS3 it’s a no brainer. What kind of ruthless salesperson tells an uninformed customer to buy a standalone Blu-ray player?

The PS3 improved sales are not all about Blu-ray of course, noticeable improvements have been made on the Sony gaming front. HOME still isn’t here, but several high quality games have been released plus PS3 customers received token achievement system support in the form of trophies with 2.41 for free last week. I still haven’t bagged any trophies yet, but hope to be able to change that soon.

Microsoft isn’t standing around completely flat-footed though, they are dumping the Xbox with 20GB hard drive at $299 and introducing a new standard 60GB version at $349. The Xbox Elite with 120GB sells for $449 and if you’ve got the dough, that’s the one to get. There hundreds of Xbox Arcade games, not to mention movies and TV shows; you’ll want the extra hard drive space. Sony’s Playstation Network still doesn’t hold up to Xbox Live. I realize it’s pay vs. free, which is a debate in itself, but why can’t I play great PS3 games like Super Stardust Co-op across the network with another player? When Sony answers this call, the real gamer competition will be on.

I wrote last year that I felt this coming holiday season would be the first time we’d have a true competition between the game systems. In speaking of who will be in second place that makes sense (I don’t see Microsoft or Sony unseating the Wii this coming holiday season). That comment assumed that the PS3 would have HOME which is due out (in beta, finally) this Fall. Microsoft will release their Fall update to the dashboard.

Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii continues to kick both systems in the hiney sales-wise. Nintendo’s network is still a joke compared to Xbox Live and less so to the Playstation Store, but nobody seems to care. The Wii has catapulted Nintendo back into the game console manufacturer driver’s seat. So much for the one year lead Microsoft had with the Xbox 360. And I have yet to see Wii Fit in any store in stock locally. Step up the production already, Nintendo!

Don’t have much sympathy for counterfeiters, but I see a few problems with Laser Printers having special dots that reveal the serial number of the printer to the Secret Service. Why wouldn’t counterfeiters simply not register the printers? Or buy the printers second hand through a party that paid cash? Knowing the serial number and time/date sold doesn’t completely finger the buyer as the counterfeiter, does it?

“There’s nothing about this technology that limits its application to counterfeit investigations,” says Seth Schoen, a computer programmer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Some people who aren’t doing anything wrong may have their privacy threatened.” Schoen’s tests have found the dots produced by 111 color laser printers made by 13 companies including Xerox, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Brother.

Privacy concerns seem not to be the biggest issue here. The bigger issue is whether or not this would actually help track down the counterfeiter. I’m not Perry Mason, but while the serial number might identify the printer used, it doesn’t mean:

1) the counterfeiter is the same person who bought the printer.
2) the store can identify who it sold the printer to. Does every store track the identity of the printer sold. I know if you buy a warranty or something, the store will get that information, but what if a warranty isn’t purchased?

Even though I’m not a counterfeiter and don’t plan on ever being one this gives me even more reasons NOT to register any laser printer I buy in the future, as well as give the store personally identifying information about me with my purchase. I don’t like how stores always try and identify me for every little purchase anyway. I’m buying a CD and you need my phone number? Why?

However I use rewards and cash back cards and those identify me, so my purchases are already being tracked and identified by several places. Go figure.