Saturday, December 26, 2009

Make A Customized Ringtone for Your New Phone

Ringtones are just fun. Nothing can change your mood instantly like music, so you can’t go wrong having something you really like play on your cell phone every time it rings, or goes to voicemail, or signals you have a text.

Make A Customized Ringtone for Your New PhoneOur WavePad Ringtone Maker opens up the world of options. If you can think of the song, you can get it on your cell phone. How easy it is to load onto your phone once it’s an .mp3 or .amr file depends on your phone, but getting the song and turning it into that file is so easy with WavePad.

So easy you may want a different ringtone for every person stored in your cell phone’s phone book. I know someone who has AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds” loaded for their boss’ number, and The Beatles’ “Love Me Do” for his wife.

All you do is import any audio file or rip an audio track directly from a CD into WavePad. You can then cut, copy, mix or even add effects to the audio track to create your own personal sounding ringtone. When done, save the track as either .mp3 or .amr and it is ready to be loaded onto your phone via cable transfer, Bluetooth or infrared.

Voila!

And you can go places never thought of before with ringtones. It not only supports wav (multiple codecs), mp3, vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, and ogg, but the sound editing functions include cut, copy, paste, delete, insert, silence, and auto trim.

Give it a try. We’d love to hear what sort of music you choose and how you mix it up to make your phone a walking jukebox.

Keep in mind that WavePad is also a fully featured professional sound editor for Windows and Mac OS X. It lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can, cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Single Software Applications are the Way of the Future
You Don't Need to Buy the Whole Suite Anymore

business software building blocks The days of needing to purchase an entire software suite are behind us. At NCH Software we have designed our software suites so that each product can be bought individually and still integrate with other individual applications. This gives businesses more control and flexibility to purchase only the products they need without spending money on products they will never use. Customization becomes available to businesses of all sizes so they can craft solutions to best fit their individual needs.

This approach to separating out the units of a software suite is particularly beneficial for smaller businesses just getting started. A small business has fewer needs than a more established company and less capital to put into a fully fledged system with all the bells and whistles. With our software you can start out with just the features that you need and easily add on more features and more products as your business grows. The benefits of this type of scalable system of buying individual products as you need them should be obvious.

For example, most new businesses with limited personnel are going to hire a consultant part-time to manage their accounts, but they are still going to need to invoice their customers. Having the option to purchase a standalone invoicing program like Express Invoice is a great solution in this case. Later, the business can upgrade to Express Accounts as they begin handling more accounting in-house, or integrate with Inventoria for inventory management control. The flexibility of upgrading and integrating as needed caters to the environment and economic needs of a small business owner.

Your telephone system is another area that should be able to grow with your business. As you bring on employees you will need extensions. You might want to set up an information line to answer frequently asked questions when no one is in the office to take a call. Maybe having on-hold music and messaging is something you need. With the NCH Telephony Suite you can add on features like these to your basic system as you grow into the need for them. There is absolutely no reason to purchase features like call conferencing capabilities that you won't ever use, but it is always available if someday you do.

We have had a lot of positive feedback from customers about this approach to selling software. We would never dream of making someone pay for the entire software suite if they didn't need it. Integrating the products together gives you the ability to design a custom software solution, piece by piece, for exactly what you need.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Learning to Play the Song Stuck in My Head with TwelveKeys Music Transcription Software

TwelveKeys music transcription softwareLast March I took a trip to Hawaii and came home with a ukulele and no knowledge of how to play it. It wasn’t the first time I’ve tried to teach myself an instrument. Six years ago I worked in the music department of my alma mater and had the key to the instrument room. I tried the tenor saxophone, the bass clarinet, and the oboe. Simultaneously, I was working on mastering my new banjo, and was switching between recorders and crumhorns in other ensembles. The entire time, I was reading music and was extremely reliant on having someone work out the notes for me.

The ukulele has changed the way I learn music. It’s such a small and portable instrument I want to bring it with me on all my weekend excursions, camping trips, and picnics. I envision myself taking requests and, like a jukebox, being able to instantaneously play a rendition of any song. But in order to become this on-demand type of uke player, I need to develop some skills that plain old music reading hasn’t taught me. Luckily, I have a good ear and NCH Software’s TwelveKeys music transcription program.

I’ve been singing a song in my car on the way home for weeks and have been longing to learn the accompaniment. But where to begin? How do I know what the first note is, or what key it’s in? How will I learn it efficiently if I’m running back and forth between the CD player and my chair?

TwelveKeys music transcription softwareToday, I downloaded TwelveKeys and a minute later had loaded the song and was seeing the notes I needed to learn wiz by. What TwelveKeys does is highlights the frequency of the song’s notes in a graph and lines them up with a keyboard, so you can see and hear where to begin. As the first note came at me, I paused the music and honed in on it, and made TwelveKeys sustain the tone until I was able to locate it on my ukulele. In another few minutes, I had the basic notes of the intro picked out and was able to play along with the song slowed down enough so I could keep up. Learning my song was so much easier than I had anticipated!

Now I’ll be able to practice by looping the sections I’m focusing on. I’ll master the picking pattern that runs throughout the song, and after that I’ll add strums and other fancy riffs to make the song my own. Next time I get fixated on a tune, I’ll load it into TwelveKeys to transcribe. And maybe one day, I’ll be able to take a few requests.

Learn more about TwelveKeys music notation software and see for yourself how easy transcribing music can be by downloading the free 14-day trial.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Inventoria, a scalable stock inventory program
Can make your tiny business look big and busy

A recession is the perfect time to start a new small business, or upgrade the one you have. Consumer needs are changing now more than ever, and those with the most agility--small-business owners--can step forward to identify and meet those needs.

Customers are attracted to businesses that are busy and effective, and small business owners can achieve that goal with the right tools. Starting up a business or expanding one is much more risky today than it has been, especially when credit is so hard to come by. That’s just one reason why integrating technologies with effective cost saving benefits are so important to setting up a business for continued success.

For Internet businesses, or any small retailer, here is an inventory management tool we have been working on with the help and feedback of more than 2,400 early adopters who test and tried the beta edition. These testers gave us such great feedback that we guarantee the majority of users will be able to get the program installed and working in 3 minutes, and can help make you look like a bustling storefront without needing to spend hours in log books manually calculating and tracking your stock.

inventory management and tracking from delivery to the sales floor and more The program is Inventoria professional stock management software that enables inventory management for a single retail store or track inventory at several locations. Inventoria can generate purchase orders to be sent directly to a vendor, and alerts can be set up to let you know when it is time to reorder. One of the new features added to help save you time—and money—is the ability to scan in products by barcode. The reports generated by Inventoria allow businesses a simple way to track sales and prices—essential for future planning.

Inventoria is a Windows-based program that can also be used in conjunction with NCH’s Express Invoice to automatically adjust the volume of stock when an invoice is sent out.

We encourage you to give Inventoria a try. Visit www.nchsoftware.com/inventory and download the free 14-day trail and experience the benefits of this inventory management software for yourself.