Tech Help Site

So what is this new social media thing Twitter all about I hear you ask?

Well I have been on Twitter for about a year or so. It is a quick message writing service where you can publish notes that anyone can view. Kind of like a blog page but more like a ’status update’. Those who have used Facebook will know what I mean.

There has been a huge surge in popularity as more celebrity users come on board. Oprah did a special on it one day and the users doubled overnight or something.

Anyway – if you want a more comprehensive description of Twitter and how it works then it is off to YouTube which has loads of ‘How-To’ type videos about Twitter. The MakeUseOf blog has compiled a list of 7 good choices to start.

Check them out: Top 7 Twitter Tutorials on YouTube

If you do succumb to the Twitter phase then I have 2 suggestions.

1. Follow me @Noblejoker, and
2. Give Tweetdeck a try – it is the best desktop Twitter software I have used

This is a cool YouTube video animation based around computer drawn characters. I thought it was cool

Here is a follow up to a few things discussed at the January Mullies meeting

Broadband Pricing and Plans available in Ulladulla area

As always the Whirlpool Broadband Choice site is the place to compare your options. As discussed ADSL 2 plans are available now from Telstra and companies reselling Telstra services. The really competitive prices available in Metro areas aren’t here yet though.

Blu-Ray Disc Players/Burners

Someone asked about Blu-Ray discs. Blu-Ray discs (BD) are the new format of discs that can hold a lot more data than DVDs. Here’s the comparison:

More details at Wikipedia 

So as you can see the capacity of Blu-Ray discs is 10 times that of DVD. The extra capacity is needed for true High Definition pictures and sound on your home theatre and is also useful for backing up a computer where the extra storage means more per disc.

Just like when DVD tech first came out the prices of the machines and media (discs) started out ridiculously high. Burners were over $1,000. Last night I suggested they were still $300 plus but got an ad email today offering BD/DVD burners (for desktop not laptop PC) for about $220 delivered. Laptop burners would be much more expensive. And note the actual discs are pretty dear too – Individual 25gb discs are over $10 each. 5 DVD discs are similar capacity for less than half this price but not as handy as having all in one. Like everything else in tech BD will rapidly become cheaper and more common, or is that more common and therefore cheaper

Downloading YouTube videos & Saving the Audio

Stan asked how to save the audio from YouTube videos. A quick search took me to the Digital Inspiration website – a great blog written by Amit. I am subscribed to his RSS feed and you might like to check it out. His post on how to accomplish Stan’s task is here: How To Rip Audio from YouTube Videos

He suggests using the Vixy.net website to save the audio directly from YouTube. You simply input the URL, wait for conversion (it takes a while), then click to download. just like the site we found the other night ListenToYouTube I found this a process a bit flaky.

Much easier to just download the video (as a FLV) and convert it to MP3. To download I use a FireFox extension called Video DownloadHelper. But there are any number of free download programs and extensions available.

As mentioned at Mullies over a year ago you can use KissYoutube to download right in your browser – basically you just type KISS into the YouTube Address url and it takes you to their site to download the video.

Once you have the video on your PC I recommend Format Factory to convert it. You can convert the FLV (Flash Video) file to another video format or to MP3 to capture the audio only. The Format Factory is free and is great for ripping DVD’s to video files, converting pictures to other formats, or converting videos for use on portable players, ipods or phones.

Portable Music/Video players

As discussed with Romey it can be very frustrating with dealing with portable devices. Some manufacturers insist on making you use their software to load songs/videos onto a device. Then the software they give you wants to take over, duplicates your whole song library and clogs up your PC. Some players of course do not do this which makes life much easier. You can just drag and drop files like it was a USB flash drive.

Apple and Samsung (Romey had a Samsung T9 player) are difficult culprits but with iPods being so common a number of programs can interact with them. The choices for Romey’s Samsung are a bit more limited. But I believe that MediaMonkey should do the trick. It is a far more user friendly and very powerful music player and manager. If you don’t need to deal with video (it doesn’t do video very well) then I highly recommend it over Windows Media Player or other proprietary players. It handles Podcasts and Internet radio too. Because of the extra functions like syncing contacts etc on my Apple iPhone I still use iTunes and am quite happy with it but that won’t help Romey. I recommend downloading MediaMonkey and giving it a try. it shouldn’t duplicate your song library and hopefully will make creating playlists and syncing them with the player much simpler.

As always if anyone needs a bit more help with anything we discussed on the night or mentioned here then fire back a question and we will do our best to sort you out.

Grant asked me a question a few weeks ago and I thought I would share the answer

Do you know of any good free apps that can convert DVD video to Xvid or DivX? I have a Media player (think it only supports DivX) that is filling up and I need to convert to smaller formats

I have tried a few different programs and I am not totally happy with any of them. Among the ones I have tried are

WinFF and MediaCoder and both are open source and thus free

WinFF is a simple program to change file types. A couple of clicks and you are done. It doesn’t really support whole DVDs or FLV video from websites (like YouTube). But it’s handy if you want a simple program to change say an Apple QuickTime MOV file to DivX or similar

MediaCoder is a much more sophisticated program with many, many options. For the casual or new user it can therefore be very complicated. However it is powerful and offers lots of options.

Both WinFF and MediaCoder use the FFmpeg engine for decoding and are free and open source.

For ripping DVD’s to alternative files like DivX I use DVDFab with the mobile option. It has lots of settings for converting DVDs to formats for your phone, iPod or portable device. It is also my program of choice for DVD copying and back-up. Unfortunately this program is not free. You should also be careful when dealing with copyrighted materials.

To back up my opinions and provide a few alternatives here’s a link to a newsletter I read a while ago
http://www.windowssecrets.com/2008/09/25/04-Converters-maximize-your-video-file-options

Windows Secrets newsletter is pretty good. There’s a free version or you can get the paid version for $1 US (or however much you want to pay). Highly recommended reading!

When you are converting files for a specific device or purpose be careful what codec you select for the conversion. Grant will probably find his media centre can play at least some version of Xvid and/or DivX codec but it may be an older version. I have 2 different brand DVD players that play DivX and they play Xvid too. You just need to experiment a bit with what version of the codec you rip/compress to so for best results convert to the format that the player supports. Read the manual for the media centre and download the DivX codec version it specifies for maximum compatibility.

Being able to play the compressed files directly is great as you can fit lots of files on a single disc and still watch them in good quality. I have whole seasons of a TV show on a single DVD. Obviously you need a special kind of DVD player for this but they are pretty common these days.

The next question arises – what if I have a pile of compressed video, maybe from your camcorder or TV shows you have recorded, and you want to watch them or share with friends who don’t have a special DVD player?

You need to turn them back into a DVD of course and I will give you a list of programs to try for this too in a separate post.

Here’s a couple of lists and links to some free stuff available on the internet

The 150 Best Online Flash Games

Source: http://www.techcult.com/

Here is a list of 150 free Flash based games you can play online. They are divided by type like Arcade or Action and feature some very simple and some very complex games.

Give Throw Paper a go for 10 minutes of mindless entertainment or Fantastic Contraption (pictured) for some real thought provoking fun

55 Free Online Tools

Source: http://www.emmaalvarez.com

This list of some free resources available on the internet is from a girl named Emma. Rather than the games above these are useful tools to help you achieve something. Just like the specific programs you might have on your computer except these are accessible for free from anywhere via the web.

Warning: if you use these sort of online apps to do stuff be very careful about your privacy. Be conscious of what data you are sending out into the unknown.

I think Emma missed a few I would have included like:
Gmail (or Google Apps if you own a domain)
Google Reader
Auctiva for creating those eBay auction listings
AuctionStealer for winning the eBay auctions you bid on
Delicious.com for storing your bookmarks on line and sharing them
Blogger for creating and hosting a web blog
Flickr or Picasa Web Albums for hosting photos online
Last.fm for tracking and sharing your musical tastes
Online file storage like Box.net or there are heaps of others
and of course YouTube the world’s favourite online video sharing site

What online applications do you use or games do you play. Let us know so we can all check them out.

Here are some interesting articles/links from around the Internet

Web’s Best 50 Free Downloads

Here’s a list of 50 free programs for you to download. In truth many of these you will  already have or have heard of but you may find something new here. If anyone on dial-up would like some of these programs downloaded and burned to CD just let me know

The Cyber Crime Hall of Fame

Rules are made to be broken the same way networks are made to be hacked into. These are nine of the most infamous criminal hackers to ever see the inside of a jail cell.

Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos

There are 10 good videos on science type topics at this site. Videos best viewed with broadband but may work (eventually) with dial-up.

I like this one – water droplets in space!

Brain Games

Some Flash games to play on the net but these ones have a purpose. To sharpen your mind!

I like Split Words – This game requires you to form words from fragments. The words are compiled using a theme and may have two or three parts.

If anyone finds anything cool on the net send us through a link.

Kiss YouTube offers an innovative approach for downloading video clips from YouTube. No browser bookmarklets, no software to install, just remember the KISS “Keep It Sweet & Simple” principle.
While you are watching a video clip on the YouTube website, just add the word “kiss” to the video URL in your browser address bar and hit enter. The video is ready to be saved on your computer in FLV format.
For instance, if the Youtube URI is something like youtube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa, you can download the clip by adding the word “kiss” in front of the youtube.com domain name. Hence the final address becomes kissyoutube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa which will have the link to save that clip.
KissYoutube.com [Thanks Gina Hughes]

The Easiest Way to Save Youtube Videos: Kiss The Address Bar

The Easiest Way to Save Youtube Videos: Kiss The Address Bar at Digital Inspiration – Software Reviews, Internet and Technology Guide