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Description: Tips and tricks for portable media player owners, video enthusiasts, music and audio recording junkies, gadget geeks, and home theater how-tos.
Last Update: 15:50:56 03/06/2006
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Additional Info
First Fetched: 00:16:49 01/31/2004
Last Updated: 15:50:56 03/06/2006
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I'm fully in the Windows Media Center camp in the debate over using Tivo vs. using MCE. At the same time, I got my parents a Tivo because I knew they wouldn't want to mess with all the complicated setup in using a media center PC to record and view television. I think everyone could benefit from the media management aspects of a media center PC because watching a slideshow on your television is closer to the old slideshows I grew up with in the living room and whole house access to a common music library just makes sense. Still, Tivo's simplicity is its biggest asset. You don't need to be a geek to enjoy Tivo. Xbox 360 integration take the MCE experience in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go. digital501 offers an interesting comparison of the two home media managers, with the conclusion that the end game is all about money. I think this is where everyone gets confused. Tivo popularity has nothing to do with cost, although there is a perception that $300 for a ...
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If you haven't ever seen what search spam looks like then you've never used Google, Yahoo or MSN Search to find anything. All the search engines are loaded with bogus entries, rich with keywords aimed to take fake sites and bad information straight to the top 10 entries on any search engine with a crawler. These are often pages loaded with links and no real information about the supposed topic you clicked thru to find. Covering Search Engine Strategies provides a rather unique opportunity to meet the people behind these back handed search marketing tactics, as well as the people who work at trying to stop them. These black-hat search marketers achieve an almost rockstar like status among the search engine optimizers of the world because they've made a game of beating the system and rake in five and six figures monthly as a result. While the results suffer, the annoyance isn't as obvious to the casual surfer because these aren't the people who barrage your inbox with advertisements ...
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With powerful new features that allow you to edit previously placed objects, capture embedded links, add interactivity to your captures and save to PDF, SnagIt 8 makes it easier than ever before to capture, edit and share anything on your screen. Download the free trial
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7 Wonders is a marble game with roots in the Bejeweled style of game play, but with a whole new spin. The goal of the game is to match ancient runes to clear game pieces, amassing bigger bonuses for bigger combinations. 7 Wonders follows a story line that takes you from the Great Pyramid of Giza all the way to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Along the way you'll discover new rune types, find powered runes and try to create massive combos to run up the score. The marketing for the game is a bit silly in promising travel through enchanting Mediterranean islands and the glory of ancient Greece, but game play is fun and who ever pays attention to marketing anyway? Don't get stuck without any moves or you lose the game. Sixty minutes of game play is enough to get you hooked.
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If you watch Anime on a regular basis, chances are you are also storing a few videos on your hard drive. RealAnime specializes in converting DivX Anime files to other formats, although it's not limited to only converting anime files. Open the app, select the anime video you want to convert, choose your settings, and output an optimized file using x264 and AAC for an optimized video experience. RealAnime also supports RMVB output associated with RealVideo 10 via Helix, Vorbis audio and OGM wrapper files in addition to MP4 and Matroska MKV. If your original file includes multiple tracks of audio or video, RealAnime supports selective output for both. While the app was written with anime in mind, I tested it with other video files and found the results to be solid. If you need to convert multiple files, a better option is MediaCoder [Windows 2k/XP $0.00]
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A ton of requests hit my inbox for apps to catalog your DVD collection. It's tough to find the perfect solution because everyone has a different preference for the way they sort their data. Eric's Movie Database (EMDB) is a simple utility for cataloging both DVDs and digital movie files stored on your hard drive. Most movie details are imported via IMDB using a title search. EMDB supports adding your own ratings to movies. The app also stores specific information like audio and video codecs for digital files. Add your own cover images for each DVD or import the image from IMDB. Export movie lists as text delimited files or print them for your records. Keep track of loaned DVDs to make sure your friends aren't too forgetful. If you currently catalog DVDs with another solution, the app supports importing comma delimited files of DVD data. The big missing piece in EMDB is a way to grab data based on barcode, but I'll forgive that since the app is free. [Windows 2k/XP $0.00] Other ...
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Bob asks, What do you recommend for a video camera for video blogs at a reasonable cost? No matter what video recording solution you currently own, the real key is to just get out there and start creating. You can always purchase the perfect tools later. Having said that, it's important to consider several factors (including cost) when you're planning to video blog. Recommending a particular video camera or style of camera depends greatly on the subject and style of your video blog. If you are always providing talking head commentary with very little on screen action, camera options more open than if you plan to shoot a weekly video serial with several participants and scene changes. Here are the key things to think about: 1) Who is your target audience? 2) How is your video blog staged? 3) How big is the video camera? 4) How much time does it take to import and edit the files? 5) What format do you plan to distribute the files in?
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Dennis writes, I have noticed a lot of lossless format items being posted in the binaries.mp3 groups on usenet. What exactly is lossless and what do you need to play or create these files? Lossless audio files are compressed audio files that are smaller in size than uncompressed WAV audio without any loss in quality from the original file. Compression formats like MP3 actually remove detail from the original audio in order to reduce file size. Lossless audio stores audio details in a more efficient way, reducing the space required to store the audio information contained in the file, without changing the quality of the audio. Lossless audio formats can be thought of as similar to the way zip files reduce the space required to store a document, without actually altering a document. Playing back lossless audio files and creating lossless audio files varies depending on which specific lossless format you are referring to. There are a number of lossless standards, including a lossless ...
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If you have a cable box with built in HDTV PVR, the FireWire connection on the back of the box may be your gateway to accessing the recorded files. The cable companies are typically required to make all ports on a cable box functional and there are a number of online projects around working with the PVR boxes over FireWire. In many cases, you will need an app to work with the HDTV transport stream files once you record a few shows. HDTVtoMPEG2 is that solution, with features for eliminating commercials or unwanted sections of a recording and the ability to convert HDTV transport stream files to a standard MPEG2 file playable in Windows video apps. If you want a more user friendly experience, a shareware app like VideoReDo may be a better option, but for basic HDTV transport stream edits, HDTVtoMPEG2 is up to the task. [Windows 2k/XP $0.00]
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Day one of SES New York included some interesting sessions. A morning session on Searchonomics offered some interesting metrics on the study of search behavior, with Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer and Bill Tancer of Hitwise making the potentially snoozer topic of search behavior seem fascinating. If you want to understand how and when people look for things online, these are the people who know, from the inverse correlation between searches for hybrid cars and SUVs to the fact that the peak searches for diet sites happens on January 1 and drops consistently throughout the year, bottoming out around the end of November every year. Podcast Search hit closer to home with Daron Babin of Webmaster Radio, Ethan Fassett of the Yahoo Podcast Search team and Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit covering topics related to making your podcast easier to find in the search engines. This is much more complicated than simply submitting a podcast to iTunes and hoping someone discovers you. Darin ...
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Last day to submit is March 3, 2006: TechSmith is giving 5 of Jake Ludington's readers a free copy of SnagIt 8. The trial version of SnagIt 8 is good for 30 days. To have a shot at 1 of those 5 free copies, all you need to do is take screen captures. The trial version of SnagIt includes a SnagIt Stats feature that shows how many screenshots you've taken and how many days are left in your trial. To win you need to be one of the 5 people to take the most screenshots over a 5 day period. Here's how it works: 1) Download the SnagIt 8 Trial 2) Install the software and start taking screen captures 3) When the trial says you have 25 days left, send a screenshot of the SnagIt Message Center with the number of captures and days left to snagit@jakeludington.com 4) If you are one of the 5 people with the most screen captures you get a free copy of SnagIt 8 Sample of SnagIt Stats Screen The last day we will accept submissions is March 3, 2006, so be sure to download SnagIt 8 and start grabbing ...
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Egyptian-themed marble mashing fun is back with Luxor: Amun Rising bringing 88 new levels of challenging marble chain action. On each level, you must clear the screen of marbles before the chain reaches the pyramids the princes of Megiddo threaten to overthrow the pharaoh. Your winged scarab launches marbles into the chain, creating combinations to shrink the chain and ultimately clear the board. If you liked the original Luxor, Zuma and the recently launched Karu then you'll certainly dig Luxor: Amun Rising. Play free for sixty minutes.
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I downloaded a movie and when I opened it there were several .rmvb files. How can I combine those into files into one so that the movie isn't interrupted while I'm watching it? Large downloads are often broken into smaller chunks to make them more manageable for compression tools or to speed the upload/download process. Tools for joining RealMedia Variable Bitrate (RMVB) files are becoming more popular as a method of distributing video online, thanks in large part to Real making source code available via the Helix Community. While it's possible to get RealMedia authoring tools directly from Real, there are a few solutions available for editing and joining files through independent software developers.
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I recently clicked a link to download a movie and when I unzipped the file it contained something with a .ogm extension. Windows doesn't recognize the file. Is this a virus or did I do something wrong? While it's always smart to scan any download for viruses, the OGM extension is typically associated with video files. OGM is the Ogg Vorbis video container format, similar to AVI or MP4, that generally contains Ogg Vorbis audio and a video stream that is often DivX, XviD or Theora video format. To play an OGM file, you have one of two easy options.
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DivX has long been a popular movie download format, but streaming DivX video online was never really possible. DivX Web Player solves this problem by providing a browser plugin to stream video inline. Unlike past DivX efforts that hit Windows first and often take some time to filter into the Mac community, DivX is coming out of the gate with support for browser playback on both platforms simultaneously. The DivX team makes it easy to setup, providing a simple Web form where you paste in a link to your video, put in the width and height and they generate the code for your Web page. The first time someone watches an embedded DivX movie, they need to install the browser plugin, but after that, they are good to go. If you're simply interested in watching streaming DivX content online, you can download the plug-in so your computer is already prepared when you first encounter embedded DivX.
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For all the grief we've given companies who bundle third-party junk with their products over the years, I'm seeing a really disturbing trend in the software space. Yahoo and Google seem to be desperate to get their toolbar on my computer in a manner that borders on deceptive. I'm not talking about downloading the toolbar directly from Yahoo or Google. I'm not even talking about downloading the version of Firefox that clearly tells users it includes the Google Toolbar. I'm talking about instances where I download one application, only to find out it's trying to get me to opt out of installing a toolbar from either Yahoo or Google. These are tactics learned from the spyware industry.
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TextPayMe is a new payment service to make simple cash payments via cell phone, similar to the way Paypal handles sending payments via email. After signing up for an account, you simply send an SMS message with the text pay 7 2065551212. In my example, pay tells the service you are sending payment, the '7' represents a payment of $7 and the number is the person you are paying. After sending the message, you receive a call, enter a confirmation code and the transaction is complete. This has some cool potential to fill in a big gap in the service currently available from Paypal. For instance, if you go out to dinner with 19 friends, instead of splitting the bill 20 ways, simply have the other 19 people text one person the money and pay a single bill. Both sender and recipient get a confirmation on the spot, so there's no question the money transfer took place. Even better, TextPayMe puts $5 in your account just for signing up. How often do you get free money.
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From the name of the app, you'd think this was a list making tool for some coalition against reading. Rather Books2burn is a smart solution for Mac OS X users wanting to convert text-to-speech. The app converts any text file to uncompressed AIFF audio using the on-board Apple voices. After converting text, you can convert the AIFF files to MP3 or AAC using iTunes to reduce file size for more use on your iPod. For much better voice quality, I highly recommend trying out the Cepstral voices, which are also Mac compatible and offer much more human sounding voice translations in a variety of world accents. My one complaint with books to burn is lacking better ability to fine to voice pronunciation in the app, which makes perfecting pronunciation of obscure tech phrases and sci-fi names complicated. [Mac OS X $0.00]
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TechSmith is giving 5 of Jake Ludington's readers a free copy of SnagIt 8. The trial version of SnagIt 8 is good for 30 days. To have a shot at 1 of those 5 free copies, all you need to do is take screen captures. The trial version of SnagIt includes a SnagIt Stats feature that shows how many screenshots you've taken and how many days are left in your trial. To win you need to be one of the 5 people to take the most screenshots over a 5 day period. Here's how it works: 1) Download the SnagIt 8 Trial 2) Install the software and start taking screen captures 3) When the trial says you have 25 days left, send a screenshot of the SnagIt Message Center with the number of captures and days left to snagit@jakeludington.com 4) If you are one of the 5 people with the most screen captures you get a free copy of SnagIt 8 Sample of SnagIt Stats Screen The last day we will accept submissions is March 3, 2006, so be sure to download SnagIt 8 and start grabbing screens.
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Fujitsu recently sent me a Lifebook P1510D to test and review over the next 30 days. I'm going to use that time to see if I can pare down my normal backpack full of travel gear into a much lighter load. My goal is to see if I can travel with the Lifebook, the M-Audio Microtrack, a microphone, PSP, cell phone and the necessary support cables; completely abandoning a full-sized laptop and all the junk I might be inclined to stuff in my larger 3 compartment backpack. Last year I picked up the bag pictured at the right from REI, which has room for about the equivalent of 3 hardback books when fully stuffed. The Lifebook fits perfectly, with plenty of room for the rest of the gear I need to travel with and a little room left over for the random stuff I always take just in case. I'm going to make a test run this week while my office is still recovering from our basement flood and I'm out at Podcast Hotel toward the end of the week. Assuming all goes well, this will be my travel bag for ...
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While I like some of the online photo sharing alternatives, Flickr remains my default for uploading photos (when I remember to upload them, that is). There are a ton of ways to make Flickr more useful, including assigning yourself a human-readable URL, uploading photos via email (which makes it easy to upload via cell phone) with varying degrees of privacy, email tagging, posting to multiple blogs and a whole host of options for sharing photos with other people. Lifehacker recently put together a reasonably comprehensive list of features designed to maximize Flickr functionality. The advanced email tips are probably the best of the bunch, offering some useful tips that make uploading via cell phone a workable alternative for camera phone snaps.
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Few things are more frustrating than losing data to a corrupted media file. I recently ran into a corrupt WAV file on a Compact Flash card and couldn't copy the file because after a few seconds of file transfer the copy process failed. Enter WAV Saver, a simple utility designed to salvage audio data from WAV files (more alternatives for this process coming soon). The app works by copy the contents of a WAV file to a new file, saving whatever bits are possible. If the WAV merely has corrupt headers or didn't properly mark an end of file, WAV Saver should copy the whole thing to a workable file without a hitch. In cases where the storage media is the problem, WAV Saver is fallible and can only copy a file up to the point where an error is encountered, but it is a better solution than losing WAV data altogether. In some cases, repeating the operation a few times results in capturing more of the audio file, depending on if the corrupt sections of a drive are merely flaky or truly ...
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Leif writes, I have cable internet at home (cox) and Earthlink high speed at work. After being on line and shutting down, I get the message "Others are logged onto your computer, Shutting down now will...". What is going on and how can I prevent my computer from being used as a relay station for some hacker? Windows XP includes a number of cryptic error messages and nothing is more unnerving than the possibility that someone or something might be logged into your computer. A little more explanation in the message would go a long way to clearing up the confusion. The good news is this message has nothing to do with a hacker using your computer. There are two common explanations for what might be happening.
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Michael asks, Is there any way to get rid of "branding" on a computer? Where computer manufacture advertise there products when you start you computer. Depending on which computer manufacturer made your computer, you might have a simple splash screen displayed as the BIOS loads or you might be inundated with advertising throughout the entire boot process. These are two separate image locations requiring editing in multiple places and some confidence in your computing skills, as the BIOS option can potentially damage your system if done incorrectly.
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With powerful new features that allow you to edit previously placed objects, capture embedded links, add interactivity to your captures and save to PDF, SnagIt 8 makes it easier than ever before to capture, edit and share anything on your screen. Click here for a free trial
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Al writes, When I right-click and choose Delete to eliminate a file, it currently takes 30+ seconds to do it. Do you know how to fix this? The Windows delete behavior varies slightly depending on the way you have your Recycle Bin configured. The default behavior is reserve 10% of your hard drive for the Recycle Bin, with a Delete of any kind moving files into the Recycle bin, which makes the files appear deleted from Windows but doesn't actually eliminate them from your hard drive. If you infrequently empty your hard drive, this can amount to a fairly sizeable section of files on your hard drive being deleted but not actually gone.
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O'Reilly's Make Magazine has a great DIY community at Instructables.com where people post photos and steps for a wide variety of how-to projects. A recent post over at Gizmodo reminded me of one of my early favorites, posted back in April 2005. The project is a small amplifier for iPods and other portable players, designed to sit between the headphone jack and a speaker system of some kind. Steps walk you through acquiring the parts from Radio Shack and Velleman, includes some shots of testing out the project and a shot of the finished assembly. Ideally you want to download the manual from Velleman to help with building the project, which isn't entirely clear from the Instructables photo series.
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If you edit your own home movies or if your podcasting, you can simply never have enough sound effects at your disposal. You just never know when that obscure sound of a huge comet crashing into a planet might come in handy for adding some spice to an otherwise dull birthday video. Meanrabbit offers a ton of great sound effects, free for personal use, in several downloadable collections. Ideally, the company hopes you'll buy versions at higher sample rates, but for most personal projects, the free versions work great. Sound effect selections range from more practical sounds like telephones, trains, clocks, motorcycles and other parts of daily life to the more obscure sounds of dinosaurs, alien invaders and wild monkeys.
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Check into the Hotel Solitaire where each room contains a different variation on the solo card game. In each of 100 rooms, a different card game may be played against the clock or in an unlimited time mode. Some levels are locked, requiring you to beat certain games before you can get additional games, rooms and backgrounds for more play. Card backs are also customizable as you win games and complete additional floors. All your favorite solitaire variants are here, so check in to check out the solitaire card games at Hotel Solitaire. Sixty minutes of game play gets you started.
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FTP is one of the workhorse solutions I rely on but spend much time thinking about. As long as SmartFTP or Filezilla make it easy for me to upload and download, I'm not likely to change my habits anytime soon. At the same time, there are moments when I'd love a right-click option to quickly upload a file from Windows Explorer. Using Upload Express, I get the convenience of right-click uploading. By configuring a few of my common upload locations, I no longer need to load an FTP app for quick file uploads. This won't replace any of my heavy duty FTP file transfers, but for some of the repetitive tasks it simplifies my upload needs. [Windows 2k/XP $0.00]
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