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Registry Cleaner Software

February 29, 2008 at 11:56 pm · in Media Blog · Comments (10)

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I know many of you out there feel that registry cleaners will help speed up your computer. The truth of the matter is that they will NOT. In fact… using one can end up rendering your system useless if you don’t use it properly. I don’t recommend using them… EVER.

Programs like CCleaner are very powerful. If you run one on a brand-new computer, with a completely clean Windows install… they will still show “bad” registry entries, and try to remove them. To a non power-user who doesn’t know everything that should be in the registry… that can spell disaster. Remove the wrong key(s), and you could quickly kill your entire computer.

IF you feel you have to clean your registry, make a backup. ALWAYS take the time to export the registry, and back that sucker up. Also… why not educate yourself on the registry? Learn what is there, and why. Then, remove any bad keys manually. You’ll be much safer in the long run.

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NewEgg Daily Deals

February 29, 2008 at 3:07 pm · in Coupons · Comments (66)

We’re in the process of working out a deal with NewEgg to provide exclusive daily deals (look for more details next week), but in the meantime here are the current Daily Deals at NewEgg. Click here for even more NewEgg coupons/deals.

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How to Properly Clean your Glossy Screen

February 29, 2008 at 1:29 am · in General · Comments (72)

Jason sent me a great email, full of his tips for keeping your glossy screen in tip-top shape, and perfectly clean.

How annoying is it when you get dust or fingerprints on these glossy laptop screens and you cant get on with what your doing because of the huge mark right down the center of the screen. Hopefully these 5 tips will help you clean the screen and make it look like what it was brand new out of the box.

  • Switch the laptop off because you can see the marks and dust best when the screen is blank. Get a smooth damp cloth , This is important to make sure that cloth is just slightly damp and not dripping with water. Once you have this start to clean the screen in small circular motions and DON’T press down to hard or you may crack the screen.Continue to do this until you have covered the whole panel.
  • Get another Dry cloth (Preferably a microfiber cloth) and do the same again just to dry it off. You may still see some marks but don’t worry.
  • I personally use Furniture Polish on my screen ,but i wouldn’t recommend it on a new computer just in case ,but it gives a really nice shinny shimmering finish as if the laptop was new (What do you have to say about this Chris?).
  • On eBay you can buy these screen protectors for most 15 & 17 inch laptops i would definitely recommend these as this will keep the screen in a new condition.
  • Finally… if you eat food near or over the laptop pieces of this food may fall in between keys of the keyboard which means when you put the laptop in a case or bag they may fall out and stick to you new clean screen, so this means you should also keep your keyboard clean.

Flocking Orchestra Freeware (DT1)

February 29, 2008 at 12:21 am · in Media Blog, Fun, Games · Comments (15)

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We in the live community are software addicts. I keep staying up way too late, playing with different software. The other night, I was scanning my RSS feeds, and came across this app that didn’t sound very interesting at first… until I tried it out.

DT1 Flocking Orchestra is an interactive installation to play music by visually conducting flocking agents in the 3D virtual space. It employs flocking algorithms to produce music and visuals. The user’s motions are captured by a video camera and influence the flocks behaviour. Each agent moving in a virtual 3D space controls a MIDI instrument whose playing style depends on the agent’s state. In this system, the user acts as a conductor influencing the flock’s musical activity. In addition to gestural interaction, the acoustic properties of the system can be modified on the fly by using an intuitive GUI. The acoustical and visual output of the system results from the combination of the flock’s and user’s behaviour. It therefore creates on the behavioural level a mixing of natural and artificial reality. The system has been designed to run an a variety of different computational configuration ranging from small laptops to exhibition scale installations.

There is so much about this application that is tweakable. You can change literally every setting. It’s so cool, I was quickly addicted to it. There is an absolutely AMAZING story behind this program.

This collaborative work by Daniel Bisig in Switzerland and Tatsuo Unemi in Japan implements a mathematical model of flocking behavior that was developed in artificial life research. In its current form, it is inspired by a true story of a girl who has died from leukemia 50 years ago in Hiroshima. Her name is Sadako. She was exposed to atomic bombing when she was two years old. Her health was perfect during the nine years following the bombing. But all of the sudden she had to be hospitalised during February 1955. Lying in a hospital bed, she folding many paper cranes. According to a Japanese legend, by folding one thousand paper cranes, one’s wish becomes true. Sadly, her own wish remained unfulfilled and her life ended 50 years ago.

The images which texture the walls of the virtual space stem from photographs that one of the authors shot in 2003 at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima during a funeral ceremony of his friend. The image of the back wall depicts the Children’s Peace Monument which was established in 1958 by school classmates of Sadako. Every year, many groups of school students fold paper cranes and bring them to this monument where they swear to contribute to a more peaceful world.

Very, very cool. Be sure to check it out!

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PC or Mac for Education?

February 28, 2008 at 11:41 pm · in Media Blog, Apple, Microsoft · Comments (57)

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I received an interesting email the other day, from a subscriber who goes to University in Australia. I’m going to copy his email here for you all, and then do my best to answer his very though-provoking questions.

Hi Chris, I am one of your YouTube subscribers (B0BGE0RGE). I’ve been watching your switch from PC to Mac as your main computer. I recently made the switch from PC to Mac myself. But this email is not about individuals switching to Mac. It’s about educational institutions switching to Mac.
Currently, I’m studying IT at Uni in Queensland, Australia. Although when I look around the classroom I see half the students typing up notes on their MacBooks, everything we learn has to do specifically with Windows based machines (aka PCs). It’s been this way for the last 10-15 years at least, as far as I can remember. I learnt the Windows way of doing things all the way through primary school (elementary school in the states) and high school. I had just always accepted that that’s the way it is in schools. They teach Windows because that’s what everyone has in their homes. But nowadays this is not really the case. More people still use Windows machines than Macs. But if I can look around the classroom and see at least a dozen MacBooks, then that tells me it’s probably time to start incorporating Macs into IT education. The students are using them, and the teachers are using them. I found it amusing the other day in class that our teacher hooked his Mac up to the projector screen and used parallels to show us how to do something on Windows XP. More and more people are usingMacs. Isn’t it time for schools to make the switch too?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Should schools start incorporating Macs into IT education? Do you think that with more and more people switching to Mac they are going to have to teach both the Windows way and the Mac way of doing things? Or has Microsoft got such a tight grip on many educational facilities that schools will never anything but Windows at least while Microsoft is still around? Share your thoughts.

To me, it’s not about “Mac vs PC”. It’s about teaching people how to do things a different way. People need to be helped to understand the many different ways things can be done. I would not only teach OS X and WIndows… I would introduce Linux, as well. I know schools cannot afford to update their entire infrastructure. So, why not get students involved in the curriculum, using their Mac. Students teaching and learning from each other actually tends to work better at times, than having an Instructor do it. This is the beauty of the Internet… anyone has the ability to be a teacher.

It’s very important to not be biased one way or another. As Bob mentioned in his email, it’s not just a Microsoft world. Heck, it’s not just a Mac world, either. Things have evolved. We are in the middle of history being made, as far as choices. If you aren’t presented with the opportunity to learn, how then can you be a part of it?

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What Kind of Food do They Eat in Scotland?

February 28, 2008 at 10:22 pm · in Media Blog · Comments (12)

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I’ve never been to the UK, but I’ve always wanted to go. Heck, I’d love to visit Ireland and Scotland as well. I got an email the other day that I thought would be fun to make into a video. I get emails from all over the world. I really love hearing about your countries, and even the favorite foods of your locale. So Neil sent me an email with the top five meals in Scotland for me to share with you.

  • Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. Ever heard of this? Didn’t think so. This is his favorite meal. Haggis is not exactly the best-sounding food. It’s sheep heart, lungs and liver all mixed up and served in a sheep’s stomach. It’s YUMMY, trust me. Neeps are a watery vegetable with a sweetness to it. Tatties are potatoes, usually mashed.
  • Full Scottish breakfast. I don’t tend to eat this every morning, as it can be unhealthy. It consists of Black pudding (which contains oatmeal and pig or cow blood), baked beans, eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and fried tomatoes.
  • Stovies. Stovies is traditionally a left over dish from the Sunday Roast, using the tatties, meat and dripping leftovers all thrown into one pot. Meat used varies from chicken, beef and lamb.
  • Scottish steak. This is more of a worldwide dish. It has to be angus beef, fried with onions and tomatoe, and a pepper sauce.
  • Fish supper. This is really a carry-out meal. It consists of Haddock deep fried in batter with chips. Scottish people prefer this to things like hamburgers.

Send me an email to tell me about the favorite foods and meals from your country! I’d love to hear about it.

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Screen Color Correction with Pantone Huey Pro

February 28, 2008 at 9:55 pm · in Media Blog · Comments (11)

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Red has been my favorite color pretty much since birth. Color is important. Your computer monitors may be displaying color properly, but if you’re in a room that has light which isn’t complimentary to your screen… the color will be “off”. This can be a huge factor if you’re editing videos or something similar. I’ve always thought the color in my videos were fine. I mean… red looks red, and blue looks blue. So when a community member suggested I try this product, I was skeptical.

PANTONE huey Pro is designed for calibrating and profiling all types of monitors – LCD and CRT. Each individual package includes a huey measurement device (emission only colorimeter) with ambient measurement capabilities, and software for monitor calibration. huey corrects the color on your monitor so photos and designs print more accurately, game graphics are more intense and movies are more true–to–life. Easy–to–use right out of the box, huey adapts your monitor for changing room lighting and applies your personal preferences for viewing accurate color all of the time.

You install the software, then answer a few questions. You then affix the huey to the monitor, and it makes a recommendation for you. Once it had changed my settings, I was blown away. At first, I couldn’t believe it. I had thought my colors were fine before this. I walked away for a few minutes. When I came back, it just seemed so natural and amazing. I flipped back to my old color setup, and was shocked at the difference. I don’t want to say it was “night and day”… but it was very noticeable. I’m astounded at the huge difference… for the GOOD… huey made on my system.

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Online Collaboration, Meetings, and Teleconferencing

February 28, 2008 at 9:47 pm · in General · Comments (3)

The digital collaborative software / service market is just starting to heat up, I believe - with the proliferation of broadband (coupled with the rising cost of travel). New services are popping up every month, making it much more likely that non-technical industries will start adjusting to adopt this new, largely efficient form of communication. New?! Hasn’t it been around forever? Seemingly so, but I’m still trying to get people to understand that you don’t need to be physically in the same room as someone else to get a point across to them.

Together, with a handful of friends from our live channel, we’ve come up with a list of cases for online meeting and collaboration. A big THANK YOU to Kat, Fort, Freekie, CCMike and everyone else who contributed ideas for this post. You need not be geek to apply:

Education

  • Teachers could visually demonstrate their curriculum to students without having to travel. Also in IT Education, online meeting software enables instructors to present Powerpoint presentations, couple that with product demonstrations.
  • Interactive remote delivery… the teacher leads the meeting, and shows the students how do something. The Instructor can then give control to various students, and let them interact with it. This would allow the entire class to benefit from seeing other students actually getting to use the object on the teachers’ desktop.
  • Students could use it as a study tool. When your study-buddy doesn’t live next door, using an online meeting allows you both to interact with each other easily.
  • Tutoring… allow the student to attempt the task themselves. The tutor can step and and show them how it is done using the visuals if necessary.
  • Meetings could be held amongst teachers from their homes if needed. This could include “In-Service” days, extra training, etc.
  • Online collaboration software would excel in helping to “home school” those students who may be ill and unable to attend regular classes. They could participate in their class via the Teachers’ desktop.
  • A Teacher could hold virtual office hours. This would allow students and teachers time to meet and discuss problems and resolve issues with homework when actual time in an office setting isn’t possible. This benefits the teacher greatly, since they won’t have to extend their hours in the classroom. The meetings could be held from the Teacher’s home.
  • Online meeting software could be used for distance lessons for students outside normal bus routes.
  • Business meeting for Staff and Administrators could be held via an online meeting, rather than them having to go out in bad weather or spend gas money.
  • Students could retrieve lesson plans online, thereby doing away with “I was sick and didn’t know what the assignments were!”.
  • Using an online meeting could save on travel expenses for wide-spread schools and staff and the distribution of teaching materials.
  • Sent in from one of our community members: “One of the areas as a part-time evening student is the fact that - well - this is the only time I get to deal with fellow classmates and lecturers or tutors is in the evening. There is a gaping hole that could be capitalized on: a ’student-friendly’ platform to collaborate on projects, whether they are group-based or final-year-solo dissertations that are supervised by a tutor. How OFTEN I have felt the need of a white board when I am writing an email to a tutor explaining something in 1200 words when simple voice and a graphics tablet would be far far far easier.”.

Enterprise

  • Online meeting software could be used for internal training of new initiatives and products.
  • Ordinarily, business meetings usually need to be scheduled well in advance, as they require everyone to be in the same place at the same time. Online meetings can be setup in seconds to deal with emergency issues… and can add and remove members from the meeting without being disruptive.
  • Companies could save on travel costs. Instead of paying for employees to travel, eat and stay in a hotel to attend meetings in other locations, a desktop-sharing online meeting could be used instead.
  • A live online meeting would come in very handy when it’s time to demonstrate a new product to an existing (or even new) customer.
  • An online meeting could be used to give competency tests to potential employees, without them having to come into the workplace. This would let the test-giver ensure the applicant is giving correct information without “cheating” or getting help with the answers.

Personal and Telecommuting

  • An online meeting would greatly eliminate the need to travel into the office to view a Powerpoint or sales presentation.
  • Having online meetings would allow companies to demonstrate software and scenarios visually that cannot typically be done over the phone. This will allow the Telecommuter to spend that time at home… getting more work done (since they aren’t traveling), and saving them money on gas, tolls and the like.
  • You could have online meetings with distant relatives to keep them up-to-date on your life. Share videos, photos and even documents with each other easily.
  • Get your friends together using an online meeting if you can’t all schedule time away from home.

Independent Contractors

  • An online meeting can be used to demonstrate your knowledge of a certain product or principle to a potential client.
  • As with large companies, Contractors could use online meeting software to conduct business at times, saving on travel costs.
  • Many independent contracts do not have a regular office, usually they have only a home office (or room in their home). Online meeting software allows them to still collaborate in “real time” with their customers, without having the customers come to your home… which can make you appear unprofessional.
  • Many Independent Contractors service customers from out of state, or even Internationally. Online meetings will make it much easier for both parties to conduct business quickly and efficiently with each other.
  • Desktop sharing software can be used to diagnose IT issues with client hardware.
  • Many people enjoy being able to test new software and discuss it openly amongst themselves. Using a meeting software such as these would allow them to not only discuss their opinions, but also show each other specific example quickly and easily.

Small Business

  • Small businesses would benefit financially the most from using online meeting software, as they may not have huge travel budgets. They can perform virtual sales calls to pitch their product or service.
  • As with larger businesses, small companies can use an online meeting to demonstrate their capabilities and products to a potential customer.
  • Small businesses are sometimes served better by not having all of their resources at a single location. This makes a traditional meeting impossible, and flying people in from out of town is uneconomical. Online meetings save time and money.

Other

  • A desktop-sharing application could be used by emergency departments (fire, police) to coordinate large-scale efforts, such as with a forest fire. Using a notebook and wireless signal, the person in command on-site could easily communicate back and forth, being able to see where everything has been directed. Equipment could be ordered in, and support people could be maneuvered easier.
  • Businesses with a “home base”, such as truss design and construction, could coordinate with their on-site crew at any given time. If changes are made to the blueprints, an online sharing meeting client could be used to communicate and show those changes to the crew Foreman.
  • The medical profession could actually make excellent use of online meeting software. Training could be given, patient care could be collaborated on using diagrams and such, and even Administrative or patient-care meetings could be conducted amongst people in several locations.
  • In many places, Government offices are located in separate buildings from each other. Think of the amount of money the taxpayers would save if we no longer had to pay for travel expenses (and lunches!) for government officials. They could instead use a collaborative online meeting software, thereby conducting business much faster… and much more inexpensively.

In the interest of transparency, Citrix is one of our sponsors (with GoToMeeting and an exclusive sign-up process for my friends) - but we compiled this list as an independent exercise. After all, what good are these Internet-based tools if nobody knows why they’d want to use them? Mashable has quite an exhaustive list of links.

So, what online collaboration tools do you use, where, and why?

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Scoble’s Tie

February 28, 2008 at 9:46 pm · in Fun · Comments (8)

Here’s a new Web Site
that doesn’t do anything different.
We can click and click and
in two days we’ll forget.

This is the new Web.
This is the new Internet.
Web 2.0 is defined with ease:
Work twice as hard as you did before.

More browsers,
More incompatibilities,
More arguments,
More social,
Less substance.

At least we still have Scoble.

Scoble's Tie

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How to Create Your Own Wallpapers with Oxidizer

February 28, 2008 at 9:36 pm · in Media Blog · Comments (16)

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I normally get my wallpapers from a variety of different web sites. That’s about to change right now, though. The wallpaper you’re seeing on my desktop right now… I made myself! It was made in about 10 minutes, using Oxidizer. Oxidizer is an open-source application for Mac OS X which allows you to generate your own wallpaper.

Fractal flames take many shapes, here’s some crude examples made almost literally at random by Oxidizer. Only the colour scheme and the positioning have been altered. Here are some of the features you will see in this release:

  • Increased Leopard Compatibility.
  • Oxidizer now starts in the centre of the screen.
  • Fixed Crashes related to colour selection from the Color Well palettes.
  • Fixed an issue where Genomes generated in the Breeder or GenePool that used Final XForm could render differently in the main editor.
  • Fixed a Core Data issue where the first genome loaded into the editor would not get a preview render.
  • Copies of each genome rendered is now saved in ~/Library/Application Support/Oxidizer rather than log

You can find all of my new daily wallpapers (along with the poems to go with them) in my blog.

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ShinyWhiteBox Coupons / Stomp Coupons / iShowU Coupons

February 28, 2008 at 7:04 pm · in Coupons · Comments

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ShinyWhiteBox is currently offering their Stomp / iShowU bundle for only $32 when you use coupon code PIRILLO1. The bundle usually sells for $42 and separately the programs sell for $29.95 and $20 respectively, so this is a great deal. This coupon only runs through the end of February, so you better act quickly.

Stomp takes in big videos and spits out small ones, and does it so easily, even Grandma can do it. A helpful list of included presets for popular devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Video, Apple TV and YouTube) make converting videos a snap. Creating presets is as simple as 1 – 2 – 3 and you can save them into preset folder for managing multiple presets. It also has a dead-easy cropping feature. Drag a box around your video and Stomp crops the movie. That’s it, no more searching for parameters or pixel width. You can also scale videos with a single click. Manipulating your videos has never been this easy.

There are a ton of cool effects you can add to your videos. Here are just a few of them:

  • Linear gradient
  • Sharpen with a sliding scale
  • Exposure higher or lower
  • Color changers and color effects
  • Distortion levels
  • Geometry to change the scale and prospective
  • Blending

Those are nowhere near the only effects that you can apply to videos. But… you get the picture. This program is just unparalleled. If you want to “slice, splice and dice” videos, this isn’t the tool for you. For that, you’ll need an actual video editing program. However, if you want to crop your video, make some changes to how it looks, and compress it for uploading… then this is what you need.

With iShowU you can capture and record video from your screen into a Quicktime movie, in realtime. Create tutorials, make a demo for the web, record your favorite game (World of Warcraft!), collaborate on UI design, show tech support what’s really going on with that broken program.

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Top Ten List of Free Windows Programs

February 28, 2008 at 12:54 am · in Computer, Software · Comments (50)

Josh sent in an excellent list of his top ten recommended Windows programs… all of which are absolutely free! Here they are, for your use if you wish.

  • Audacity is a free program that allows you to edit your music and sound files. It is open source and it is very to use. For someone looking to start podcasts, this program is for you. You will get used to the features it has in a matter of minutes. This is perfect for starting off in editing music and sound files.
  • Winamp is a great music player for those looking for a alternative to the common “iTunes” software. It comes with many features and plug ins as well. You can play all your music files and save play lists as well. It also plays many music files that other music software cannot normally play.
  • Trillian is an all-in-one messenger that uses very little resources. It includes, MSN, AIM, ICQ, JABBER(G-Mail Chat), YAHOO, and even IRC. This is for you if you are a person that always has at least 4 messengers running at a time. There is a Pro edition to this, which is sightly better, but the basic one is just as good because it is free.
  • CPU-Z is a small program that displays your current computer specs. For example, it can show you your Motherboard name and even how much RAM you have. This is good to know when you are looking for those drivers and you forgot the name of your motherboard.
  • WinRAR is a great program that allows you to compress your files to a smaller file size. I suggest using this as a default compression program. There are others such as Win7, but this does the same job.
  • UltraVNC is a client to server based program that allows you to access another computer. Just start the server on the computer you want to gain access to, and then use the viewer on another computer to view that computer. I suggest getting UltraVNC and not RealVNC. It seems to be faster and overall more robust.
  • TrueCrypt This software allows you to encrypt any drive you want to and as you move files to that drive, the files encrypt automatically. I suggest using this if you need to keep important information away from people that want to know things.
  • Skype is a voice over IP program that allows you to communicate for free for pc to pc calls. The only downside to this of course is that you need credit in order to call to land line phones. However, the price is cheap t