cds
Organise
The Definitive Guide To Ditching Your Discs
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | Moving, needing cash, running out of storage space—they’re all great reasons to consider backing up and ditching your physical. Here are our recommended methods of saving, selling and trading your CDs, DVDs and video games. More »
Work
Nero Introduces Stripped-Down, Freeware CD And DVD Burner
4:00AM The How-To Geek | If you prefer Nero for your simple CD/DVD burning tasks but the price throws you for a loop, Nero introduces a stripped-down, freeware version of the popular dvd burning software. More »
Work
ImgBurn Updates To Version 2.5, Adds Advanced Features, Fixes Bugs
8:00AM Adam Pash | Windows/Linux: ImgBurn is the most popular CD and DVD burning tool among Lifehacker readers, and with the newly released version 2.5, it’s even better. More »
Fix
Turn Old CDs Into A DIY IPod Dock
4:00AM The How-To Geek | Got a pile of old, scratched-up coasters that you don’t really need anymore? You can repurpose them into a dock for your iPod, iPhone or other audio player. More »
Fix
Pop-Up Paper CD Case
3:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re a fan of papercraft and looking for a novel way to gift a CD or DVD, this DIY pop-up case is tough to beat. Chung Da Lam—a design student with with a passion for papercraft—has a variety of interesting papercraft tricks on his site, including this clever guide for turning a piece of paper into a folding beak that lifts your disc straight up when you open the case. Although the audio isn’t the highest quality the following video provides a great visual demonstration of the case in action: More »
Organise
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Dear Lifehacker, There has been a growing problem in my life that I have done my best to ignore and avoid for the last 12 months… alas, with a new Macbook Pro and iPhone, it is now un-ignorable. I have about 200 CDs sitting in a storage box complete with much treasured album artwork. All these albums are also in my iTunes library along with all the album art — which displays wonderfully on both my MacBook and iPhone. I also have 10 or albums in digital format which I have been doing my best to avoid building on for the sake of keeping the CD format as the primary collection. Due to the enjoyment of this digital organisation, I wonder if it may finally be time to say goodbye to the continued purchase of albums in CD format. My question: What the heck do I do with 200 CDs which I own (and I cannot sell –due to that ownership) and which are safely stored on iTunes (and backed up on Time Machine)? And should I avoid digital purchases and just find those albums on eBay for relatively the same or a cheaper price … which kind of rips off the artist doesn’t it? Thanks, Gareth
Dear Gareth, There’s a human tendency to view life as a series of either/or decisions: my music is all on my computer, so why keep the CDs? Reality is always messier, and allows for multiple choices. They might take up more space than your hard drive, but CDs have several advantages: you can easily play them in all sorts of locations, and you can easily re-rip them without having to reauthorise your PC every time you change (a major pain with digital music). And the artwork generally looks better.
Quite frankly, as someone who owns a lot more than 200 CDs, I can’t see storing that number as a major problem. But one solution is to file them in a storage box without the jewel cases, which saves a lot of room. As for your buying dilemma: if you want a whole album, I’d say buy the disc if you can. Save iTunes for singles and one-off track purchases. Of course, all this is only my opinion: if you’ve got some alternate advice for Gareth, share it in the comments.
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Dear Lifehacker: What Should I Do With My Old CDs?
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Dear Lifehacker, There has been a growing problem in my life that I have done my best to ignore and avoid for the last 12 months… alas, with a new Macbook Pro and iPhone, it is now un-ignorable. I have about 200 CDs sitting in a storage box complete with much treasured album artwork. All these albums are also in my iTunes library along with all the album art — which displays wonderfully on both my MacBook and iPhone. I also have 10 or albums in digital format which I have been doing my best to avoid building on for the sake of keeping the CD format as the primary collection. Due to the enjoyment of this digital organisation, I wonder if it may finally be time to say goodbye to the continued purchase of albums in CD format. My question: What the heck do I do with 200 CDs which I own (and I cannot sell –due to that ownership) and which are safely stored on iTunes (and backed up on Time Machine)? And should I avoid digital purchases and just find those albums on eBay for relatively the same or a cheaper price … which kind of rips off the artist doesn’t it? Thanks, Gareth
Dear Gareth, There’s a human tendency to view life as a series of either/or decisions: my music is all on my computer, so why keep the CDs? Reality is always messier, and allows for multiple choices. They might take up more space than your hard drive, but CDs have several advantages: you can easily play them in all sorts of locations, and you can easily re-rip them without having to reauthorise your PC every time you change (a major pain with digital music). And the artwork generally looks better.
Quite frankly, as someone who owns a lot more than 200 CDs, I can’t see storing that number as a major problem. But one solution is to file them in a storage box without the jewel cases, which saves a lot of room. As for your buying dilemma: if you want a whole album, I’d say buy the disc if you can. Save iTunes for singles and one-off track purchases. Of course, all this is only my opinion: if you’ve got some alternate advice for Gareth, share it in the comments.
More »
Work
How To Burn ISOs In Windows 7
6:30AM Adam Pash | Good news for Windows users looking to burn a quick ISO disk image to a CD or DVD: Windows 7 supports dead simple burning of ISOs. Burning that ISO to a disc is as simple as: Double-click the ISO file (or right-click and select Burn disc image. Click Burn. Not too difficult now, was it? Of course, it’d be even better if Windows 7 could also mount those disk images in addition to burning them, but… baby steps. In the meantime, you can still mount disk images for free with one of the many disk mounting tools we’ve featured in the past. We had a bit of trouble with the ISO burning tool crashing in our tests, but presumably those bugs will be ironed by by the time Windows 7 hits the big show (or maybe not — the basic DVD burning in Vista has always been a sea of bugs for me – Oz ed). If you’ve given ISO burning a try in Windows 7, share if you had better luck in the comments. More »
Work
Burn More Reliable Discs With QuickPar
10:00AM Gina Trapani | Reader ST discovered that aging data backup CDs he had burned had become unreadable, so now he uses QuickPar to make recovering data on disc with bad sectors possible. Here’s how he does it. More »
Design
Create Paper Cases For Photo CDs From Picasa Albums
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Paper Case, the previously mentioned bookmarklet that creates fold-able, track-listed cases for CDs and DVDs, can now create stylish contact-sheet-style cases for photo CDs from Picasa Web Albums. Check out a full-size example below. [via Cnet] More »
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