Send songbook to secondary laptop

[wildnights1]

I have been thinking of using a second laptop instead of books at one of venues, is it possible to send just the songbook to another computer for the singers to use to look up songs?

[ddouglass]

After you "create" the Songbook, then just copy the songbook.RTF file to the second laptop. You will have to open it in Word or Wordpad, but I am not sure this would be practical for them to be scrolling through without some kind of program being setup with a search capability.

[WDEWDAD7]

You can do this if you have a program like Musicbox deluxe. I have thought of this myself. However, you have NO safeguard to prevent people from MESSING up your book. Or removing or deleting things. I have heard of a program where singers can look up thier song then send it to the main computer. However, I have yet to see this program. Daryl.

[wildnights1]

I don't think I would go anywhere near that idea, I just want something to let them know what songs are available so they can ask me to put them in the lineup.
It would be close to me so I could see what they're doing to avoid them messing it up too much. and if that did happen, I guess I could reformat and reload it.

[mindonstrike]

If you've got Access or Excel you could just open a copy of songs.mdb and let them view that. That way they could use the "find" feature to find songs. Or you could just put Hoster on there so they can preview the songs before singing them.

Sam

[rihari1]

Looking at the same idea using Excel but instead of using a laptop using two second hand HP small desktops in close proximity, on both would be songs in alphabetical order and the other would be of artists and their songs.
The cost of doing this I find is far cheaper than printing a number of books also quicker for additional songs that are added.(no printing of extra pages)

[marklwood]

I've had a lot of ideas over the years for songbook replacements. None of which I have implemented but only dream of.

Large laminated posters on the walls with the entire songlist. (lighting may be an issue) The beer distributor has comitted to printing these free with ads for their products.

Acrylic covered tabletops divided by Genre. (put the heavy metal guys in the back)

Extra comp/laptop to do searching from possibly linked to the show comp with a messaging system. (breakable hardware could be enclosed with lexan and use waterproof keyboard/mouse) I do forsee some people "hogging" this.

Old palm pilots with custom linux distro and a read-only PDF file to search from. (I still like this one if anybody has the SKILLZ) I have found these as cheap as $10 if bought by the dozen.

E-book readers. (expensive hardware that can be broken/stolen)

The latest is a cell-friendly searchable web page. They provide the hardware and you only need to keep the list updated.

I could see one of you enterprising young men setting up a hosting service for this one. Front page, pick your bar. go to list and search away. Fuzzy logic on search for illiterate and/or drunk people. Put ads on the page or charge the venue an annual fee.

[rihari1]

I've had a lot of ideas over the years for songbook replacements. None of which I have implemented but only dream of.

Will be trialling my concept this weekend

[marklwood]

Originally Posted by rihari1

I've had a lot of ideas over the years for songbook replacements. None of which I have implemented but only dream of.

Will be trialling my concept this weekend

Keep us posted on this one. Give us details like:
SIze of the crowd at the venue
Size of the crowd around the computers
# of singers in rotation
size of your songlist
people wanting to monopolize the computers etc etc.....

I did get my songlist posted on the internet and have told people to go there and search for songs at their leisure. Write down the numbers and bring them with you. I've only had 3 or 4 people take me up on it but they were very happy.

I also thought about developing a mailing list to send monthly updates of new songs to those that are interested. I would be willing to combine your idea with this one and let them enter an email address in the search computer if they want to be put on the list.

Anybody know how to host a very large pdf file or excel, html, etc for use on a MySpace page? Most of these youngsters have a myspace and can be kept informed through that. Also if I could host the file there, it would only be a matter of approving friend requests for those interested.