Express Talk is the First Hands Free Softphone

If you use a softphone like Express Talk on a regular basis you've probably noticed how convenient it is to have your phone on your computer. The newest feature added to Express Talk makes it the first and only softphone available with convenient hands-free voice-control, making it even easier to use your softphone on a day-to-day basis.

Version 4.27 of the Express Talk VoIP Softphone released this month added the new Voice Commands feature. With Voice Commands you can use your voice to harness the power of Express Talk while it stays hidden in the background. Not only can you dial any phone number simply by speaking it, you can also call anyone who is listed in your phonebook (home, work or mobile numbers, on any line that you wish to use) by simply speaking their name. In addition to being able to make calls with your voice, you can also answer incoming calls by saying "answer" when the phone rings. Opening the phonebook and dial list are two more things you can now do with your voice, and more features are sure to come.

If you have Windows 7 or Vista, you already have the speech recognition technology on your computer. All you have to do is train it to better recognize your voice and you're ready to go. While the easiest way to use Voice Commands is to let it listen all the time, you can have it only listen for commands when you press the hotkey. You can also configure a system-wide hotkey that uses the key combination of your choice. Express Talk lets you change the words used to perform each command in case you would rather use phrases other than the defaults.

Create Custom Typing Exercises

Who couldn't use a refresher course on touch typing? If you have actually tried some lessons or typing programs recently, you may have found that the standard typing lessons don�t match up with what you want or need to work on. If that's the case, you should try importing your own custom exercises into KeyBlaze typing tutor software to really focus on your weaknesses and hone in on the kind of typing that you do.

Your custom exercise should be saved as a .txt file, so check out Doxillion document converter if you already have documents in another format. When you have your text files ready, go to the Tools tab in KeyBlaze and click the Import icon. Select the type of exercise you want to import, browse to the location, and click Import. The exercise, or speed test, will then be listed in the program ready for you to use.

Organize your Bookkeeping

It may not be tax season but that is no reason to let your business bookkeeping fall behind or into disarray. Express Accounts has an intuitive design that allows you to start managing your finances within minutes, so you can save time organizing your incoming and outgoing cash flow. Track more than just transactions, store client and vendor information, manage inventory levels and more with this easy and robust accounting software.

Throughout the year, track the performance of your business and watch your business grow. The task bar displays a current overview of your company's financial status and quick access to more than 20 essential accounting reports.

Express Accounts makes staying on top of your business accounting easier, which will save you headaches when tax times does roll around again, and your accountant will thank you for keeping everything organized.

Edit Song Tags to Organize Your Music Collection

If you have a large music collection you have probably collected songs from lots of different sources, and may find that some of your music's ID3 tag information is incorrect, inconsistent, or even missing. Stamp ID3 Tag Editor is a fast and easy way to correct, update and add ID3 tag information to music files, including the artist name, song title, album, year and more, which can help keep your music library organized.

ID3 tags can be added to the properties of MP3, WAV and OGG audio formats. These tags not only make it easier to find and organize music on your computer, but audio players also use this information to display information about the song you are currently listening to.

To make changes to the data on your songs, browse through the folder explorer on the left side of the Stamp MP3 Tag Editor main interface. The songs list for the folder will be listed in the top right, and the meta data tags for the selected song(s) are shown below the music list. Enter the tag details for the song or songs you have selected, then simply click Stamp to save your changes.

Where to Learn to Make Music

Guest post by Drew Hendricks

Today music is no longer just the domain of the romantic, it isn't enough to have a "good ear." Music is a good program for creative students and in the highly complex world of digital music, advanced training at a college is a must. Musicians and sound engineers need training on the complicated equipment for their craft.

There are both traditional campus and online options for studying music and both STUVU Ranked Schools and eHow rankings highlight Berklee College of Music as one of the best music production schools in the country. It is one of the oldest. Located in Massachusetts, this college's stock in trade is that it is very popular among jazz musicians. It's been popular since the 1940s when it was founded.

Music production college is distinctly different from conservatories or traditional colleges of music. These schools focus on the recording or capture of music. Their courses of study emphasize the mechanics of sound fidelity and recording. Traditional colleges of music focus on performance. Among these schools are: McNally Smith College of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, Berklee College of Music, The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University's Tisch School of Arts and Indiana University at Bloomington.

There are many methods for locating a music production school. Ehow ranks the schools by their curriculum and student scoring. Stuvu ranks music production schools by student's comments. Hackcollege uses the size of the student enrollment as a quick sort for quality of program.

Because the schools tend to lean towards specific genres or aspects of music production, the best way to determine which school works best is determine what the students wants out of the school. Is it an improvement of existing skills so that a certificate is sufficient? Is it a career in music coming out of school? That will probably require a fully-accredited degree approved by an institution like CHEA.org or something comparable. Make sure that the school is accredited.

The next step is to figure out the type of music that the student is most interested in, because the faculties tend to be somewhat oriented along musical types. Is it rock-n-roll? Jazz? Classical? Then identify the school that has the best faculty for that endeavor. University of Texas, for example, is close to a lot of country music, rockabilly and country-rock crossover music labels. Berklee has many jazz musicians on its faculty. McNally and some schools in Los Angeles, CA have a more rock connections. Find the school whose faculty's musical interests mostly closely reflect the genre of the student's interest. Using this methodology, students will find that they are music production being trained by people whose interests they share.

Remove Background Noise from Audio with WavePad

If you have ever made an audio recording where there are a lot of things going on, like recording an interview at coffee shop, or meetings and lectures with lots of people in the room, you are probably quite familiar with the unwanted background noise that will be a part of your audio when you go back to listen. Sometimes just having a lower quality microphone will add to this background noise, even when you are in relatively quiet surroundings. But the good news is that WavePad audio editor provides an easy way to remove this unwanted noise so you don't need to move all your recording into a studio to get a crisp sounding file.

To remove that unwanted background noise, load your audio file into WavePad.

1. On the Effects tab, click the Cleanup button and select Noise Reduction, Audio Spectral Subtraction. Click the preset drop-menu and select voice or music, then click OK to apply.
2. Then again from the Effects tab, click the Cleanup button and select Noise Reduction, Multi-band noise gating. Select a preset, then click OK to apply.

If the presets aren't giving you the best results, try using lower levels on each type of reduction until you find a combination that leaves you with just the audio that you want to hear. Download WavePad audio editing software today to try the noise reduction feature for yourself.

New Music Industry Book Takes You Behind the Scenes

Go behind the scenes of the music industry with Scottish producer Rory Nicoll, author of the new book, HIT CLICK, a must have book for anyone in the music industry. HIT CLICK is packed full of exclusive interviews with industry leaders and artists, contact information and reviews, offering collective wisdom on all aspects of the music industry, from the alchemy of a hit record to the business side of music.

NCH Software is honored to have been included in the book's reviews of music software. Nicoll concludes that "NCH does exactly what it tells you it will: It provides easy to understand software solutions to many of the activities required of an audio engineer." In another excerpt from the review, Nicoll states:

"I've spent about a day and a half experimenting with various NCH audio programs and one thing that continually surprises me is just how powerful the programs are. With each application measured in MB, the entire suite can be loaded at once without causing any detriment to even the oldest hard drive. The applications run quickly. Speed is always good. The functions are simple to find and they are overall user-friendly."

To read more about all aspects of the music industry, you can find HIT CLICK: Thriving In Tomorrow's Music Industry released today and on sale now on Amazon.