The interface of this music player is very familiar if you have used iTunes or anything similar to that in the last few years.  You have your tracks listed in the main window, different folders and collections in the far left pane and you can also use it to listen to internet radio too.  Internet radio providers Last.fm, SomaFM, Magnatune, Icecast and Jamendo are all supported.

Clemintine has a lot of great features, here are a few worth mentioning:

• Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists.
• Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX.
• CUE sheet support.
• Visualisations from projectM.
• Lyrics and artist biographies and photos.
• Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC or AAC.
• Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organise your music.
• Fetch missing tags from MusicBrainz.
• Download missing album cover art from Last.fm.
• Cross-platform – works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Native desktop notifications on Linux (libnotify) and Mac OS X (Growl).
• Remote control using a Wii Remote, MPRIS or the command-line.
• Copy music to your iPod, iPhone, MTP or mass-storage USB player.
• Queue manager.

If you are looking for a new way to listen to your music and your current music organizing program is giving you the blues, be sure to give the Clementine Music Player a download. It has a familiar interface and is really easy to use.

htaccess Cheatsheet

mod_rewrite Cheat Sheet

htaccess cheatsheet from Google Groups

There you have it.  Know of anymore good htaccess tips or cheat sheets?  Leave me a link in the comments and I’ll go check them all out.

Looking for a new way to manage your web site? GetSimple is the newest content management system to get my attention, and I have to say – it does look impressive.

Probably the one feature that got my attention the most is it doesn’t use mySQL to store information, or any sort of database at all.  It does it through the magical wonderment of XML.

We don’t use mySQL to store our information, but instead depend on the speed and accuracy of XML. By utilizing XML, we are able stay away from introducing an extra layer of slowness and complexity associated with connecting to a mySQL database. Because GetSimple was built specifically for the small-site market, we feel this is the absolutely best option for data storage.

What are the requirements? 

• UNIX/Linux host
• PHP 5.1.3+
• Apache
• No MySQL Database
• 6 minutes to spare

Even the documentation is light for it, with only six pages telling you everything you might need to know about how to get running with GetSimple.  Filed in as “looks interesting, but really need to play with it” GetSimple looks simple enough to use, and friendly enough for everybody to enjoy. 

A fast and lightweight PHP-powered set of forums, PunBB is a script you may not have heard much about but I can promise it is well worth looking into.  The goal of this script is to be faster, smaller and less graphically overpowering in comparison with other forum scripts out there.  That alone makes it a good option if you are on a shared web hosting account.

The requirements to get PunBB are fairly light too:

• A webserver (preferably Apache).
• PHP 4.1.0 or later (PHP 5 included).
• MySQL 3.23.17 or later, PostgreSQL 7.0 or later or SQLite.

To install, all you need to do is upload the script to the location you want it on your web hosting account, and then run the install.php from the forum’s root directory, then follow the on screen instructions.

One thing I don’t like is the fact that they have various versions of the script to download from the main page.  You have PunBB 1.3 and PunBB 1.2.  This is an annoyance for me with several scripts out there.  Personally I like just having one download link with the latest version right there in front of my face.

PunBB is also extendable.  After you install it, you can take your choice of which extensions you want.  They can do anything from giving you a CAPTCHA to register and post to adding poll-like features.

Give PunBB a shot.  Why?  Well, as they put it because less is really more.

Bonus -  be sure to check out our other free forum script reviews!

To check out the demo, click here.  So what does set Habari apart from the crowd?

Habari is being written with a firm understanding of the current state of blogging. Most other blogging packages have been around long enough that their responses to things like comment spam and Digg site overloads are bolted on after the fact; whereas Habari is being written from the beginning to take these things — and more — into account.

Here is some video of it in action.  You can check out the official site for a few more screenshots too.

Download Habari, and give it a shot.  If you run into any issues, you might double check with your web host that all the requirements are met.  The only bad side is they have some pretty oddball must-haves in there.

Want to keep up to date whenever your Google Reader has fresh new content to read through?  There are several browser plugins that will do this, but not many for the operating system itself.  I have three solutions though to cover all of the operating system bases:

• Google Reader Notifier (for Windows)
• Reader Notifier (for Macs)
• GrNotify (for Linux)

Now you should have no problems at all keeping up with my RSS feed.  Feel free to subscribe and pass it around to others. 

I wish I had a clue of what the designs behind Ubuntu were thinking – the interface was already ugly and now they want to go uglier?

As I mentioned in the comments over on CyberNet, this is one reason why I am personally looking a lot more at linuxmint.com and the like.

I came to the realization that I was just going to have to live in a world where I need to download this program to watch this, download that program to watch that. Sure there were solutions like VLC player – but those solutions are not exactly known to be too “user friendly” and just seem to be lacking something.

That was the case till I ran across SMPlayer. This is the first video program that has gotten me excited in a long time. SMPlayer is a new multimedia player. It handles both audio and video superbly. Using the award-winning MPlayer as engine it is able to play just about every video and audio format without the need of external codecs.

So what is a guy wanting to play with Linux, but doesn’t want to do the whole partition dance need to do? Go give Wubi a whirl.

From start to finish, Wubi just makes it almost dead brain simple to get Ubuntu up and running. As a matter of fact, over the past two days I’ve played with Kubuntu and Ubuntu trying to decide which one I like more. When your done with it – you can just uninstall it like you would any other application and it is gone from your system. No messy clean up and no sticky mess.

Good because this article is about the process of installing Ubuntu Linux right along-side Windows XP Pro, my expectations and what actually happened. Egads, you say! Are you nuts? No, in spite of the rumors I’m quite sane and if you read on you’ll see why.

Been keeping up with the latest news on the Vista home front? All the bugs that are beginning to come out in the light? Again? Hear the horror stories about the costs of the upgrades? The extra hardware that’s needed to make sure that Vista will run like it’s advertised? It can be intimidating to say the least. Well read on gentle readers as I have a sound solution for you and your computer. The sweet part of it? All it’ll cost you is a little time. That’s right, it’s free!

What Are You Talking About Ubun-who?

Now, before you start the nay-saying, let me explain. Linux (of which Ubuntu is a distribution or distro) is based on what’s called Open Source Software. It’s not proprietary like Windows which allows it to be free for everyone to use as they wish. An entire global community works together on many variations of Linux. Each one has it’s followers like Ubuntu which this article will follow.

Some might say that “you’ll get what you pay for and if it’s free, it isn’t going to be much good!” Wrong again! I’m here to tell you that what you get with Ubuntu is a full-featured, rich operating system that will blow your mind away.

Follow along as I work my way through the process of installing Ubuntu’s Ver. 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) along-side Windows XP Pro on my desktop PC, what I expected from it and what I end up with. I’ll include what you’ll need to accomplish this task so easily that you’ll wonder what you were nervous about in the first place.To be honest with you, I was terrified that I’d screw up my PC if I tried to monkey around with it. But to my absolute amazement, it all went smoothly.

Getting Yourself Ready and Started

I downloaded the ISO file from Ubuntu’s website, burned it to a CD and checked it to make sure the image was a good burn. Keep in mind that an ISO file should be burned as slowly as possible for it to work properly. I also downloaded an ISO image of an app called GParted (free for download) for future use. More on this later.

Now, this is where your details might differ slightly from mine but no worries, mate! It’s all gonna work out.

I have 2 hard drives mounted in my PC. One was for storage and the other for apps and all that other junk that we accumulate over time. I also have 2 external hard drives connected by USB. Yes, I have a lot of junk!

I chose to install Ubuntu on one of my internal drives because I had moved all my files to the external ones. So, I had one to play with. You can install Ubuntu on the same drive as Windows if you wish. It will happily co-exist there with Windows and you can boot to either at anytime.

Next, you’ll read about how easy the installation went, any issues realized and what I wind up with.

Article by Scott Wilson – Scott has been involved with PC’s, operating systems and web development for around 6 years. Once he figured out how to turn a computer on he’s never been quite able to turn it back off again. He’s been continually adding to a weblog to help pass on information relating to the world wide web. You can find out more about Scott and his work at MerlinsMinute.com.