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Flip Video Camcorder Tip: Get One

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
at 10:54pm

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If you buy only one new tech gadget this year, you really should look at getting a Flip Video camera. This thing is literally plug-and-play. It doesn’t matter if you have a PC or a Mac. If you have a USB port, you can use this camcorder. Simply point the camera at what you want to video, push the button, and voila! It records. It truly is that simple.

The one that I bought holds about 60 minutes’ worth of video. I actually bought two of these, one for me and one for my Dad. I wanted to see if it really is as simple to use as it claims to be. Within ten minutes, my Dad had opened it, set it up and recorded his first video. That just goes to prove the ease of use for this little device. Just shoot, plug it in, and share your work.

Even for a Techie, this is a great little device. The upload to YouTube feature is very simple, but the audio compression is not great, in my opinion. Keep in mind, when you plug in the camera, the computer will recognize it as a USB device. You can simply browse on your system to find the device, and locate your video files. You don’t have to use the software that comes with it, nor upload directly to YouTube. You can take your .avi files and do what it is you need to do with them.

This little camcorder definitely gets the job done. The price is unbeatable for what you’re getting. There simply isn’t a comparable device on the market right now, when you consider price, ease-of-use, and quality.

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Roxio Coupons: Popcorn, Creator, Crunch, Toast

Thursday, February 21st, 2008
at 3:56pm

If you’re thinking about buying a Roxio product anyway, you might as well save some money on it - right? Well, here are the latest coupons for Roxio products:

Find More Coupons

You’ll be TOAST if you don’t CRUNCH the numbers and become a CREATOR who saves money (so you can buy more POPCORN at the grocery store).

Open Source Media Player Alternatives

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
at 5:41am

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This live call involved a gentleman asking me for a good free alternative to Windows Media Player. He’s had a lot of trouble using WMP, and doesn’t really like it.

The chat room immediately went nuts on this request, yelling (typing, of course) out names of various media players. Everyone has their favorites, it seems. My first suggestion is VLC, and the other one is MPlayer. Both of them are free, and work very well. In fact, the new Google Video player is based on VLC.

MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems. It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

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How to Buy an MP4 Player

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
at 2:31pm

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One community member wrote in to say: “Over the last few years I have come full circle when it comes to MP4 players. So here are the 5 steps to choosing the right player for you.”

  • What do you need it for? If you want your MP4 player for listening to music and taking your favorite video clips with you to watch when you have a minute, you’ll probably be looking for a small screen player with 2 – 8 GB storage. Or if you’re looking for a device to use on the train to watch that TV show you missed last night or on an airplane to watch a movie or two, you’ll be looking for a larger screen player so you don’t strain your eyes with between 10 and 120 GB of storage.
  • Choose Your Brand! I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this but whenever Apple comes out with a new iPod, Creative will come out with something a month or so later that does just the same thing, looks a lot uglier but costs a lot less too. So if you’re a big apple fan with no budget, go for the iPod. If you’re not bothered either way, save some money and take the creative. Alternatively, if you’re just going to use it for watching videos, get an Archos.
  • Chose Your Model! With each different model you get a different screen size. If you’d rather have a small player, you’ll be looking at the new iPod nano with its sleek design and versatile storage, the new Creative Zen MP4 player with between 4 and 16 GB of storage, or the new Archos 105. If you prefer the larger player, you’ll be looking at the Apple iPod Classic, iPod Touch or the iPhone, the Creative Zen Vision M or W or the Archos 406, 506 or 706.
  • Protection. As with all small consumer electronic products, you’d be a fool not to buy a case. The Archos is the only device that comes with a half decent case. The others just come with those pouches to keep away dust and scratches. These are no good if you knock or drop the product so invest in a hard wearing case. It might also be worth looking into extended warranties and accidental damage cover. These things are expensive don’t forget.
  • Get the most out of your product! Now that you know what you want, look into the extra features and see how they will benefit you. You’d be surprised what features are on these devices. Wifi and internet browsers, card readers, AV input/output ports, docking stations, TV recording features… There’s a lot more than meets the eye to these players and most people don’t realize it!

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What Do You Want Your Media Player to Do?

Thursday, January 10th, 2008
at 2:48am

Via my YouTube inbox, comes a response from tanakax25:

In your video explains the “Top Five Reasons to Buy a Zune” you mentioned the inability for the Zune to play games, and use any form of communication. You didn’t necessarily put down the Zune for it, but it did, in a way, sound as though they were “cons” to the device. First off, communication, in my mind, should not even be mentioned in this video, as you know (or I expect someone like you)to know, it is just plain stupid to compare an ipod Touch / iPhone to a Zune, or anything else in the Zunes category. After all, the iPod Touch is in a league of its own. and the iPhone, well, its a phone. On to the games, well, all I can say is, “who cares?” Really, they’re just games. Maybe others care, but they can decide for themselves if it’s really that important.

I’m glad that Microsoft is finally giving the iPod a run for the money, but still believe that mobile gaming and communication are becoming increasingly crucial - especially with Sony announcing support for Skype on the PSP. The iPod alerady has a small set of games, and wait until you see what happens after Apple releases their iPhone SDK.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Zune - and if you have a Zune now, I’m confident the best is yet to come. Microsoft must continue to push out firmware updates regularly.

Favorite Sci-Fi Movies of All Time

Thursday, November 8th, 2007
at 8:30pm

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Bwana, SC_Thor, SWAT, Wirelesspacket and I had an excellent conversation via Ventrilo the other night, discussing different Sci-Fi movies… what is good, and what is not. It was impossible for us to come up with a concrete “Top 5″ list. There are just too many good ones to pick from! Here is our list of videos that we all agree are excellent:

  • The Last StarFighter
  • Time Bandits
  • Star Wars
  • Equilibrium
  • Blade Runner
  • The Fifth Element
  • The Matrix
  • Labyrinth
  • War of the Worlds
  • Tron
  • The Navigator
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  • The Explorer
  • Operation Takedown

What are your favorites, and why? Can YOU actually narrow it down to only five favorites?

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Do You Own the Music, or Does the RIAA?

Friday, October 5th, 2007
at 4:15pm


Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

http://live.pirillo.com/ - The lead attorney for Sony BMG announced publically that copying music you legally purchased for your own use is illegal. The round table had a field day with this one.

Four of my friends joined me for this discussion: Kat, SC_Thor, Wirelesspacket, and last but certainly not least… Datalore.

Song BMG has gone on record, stating that “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’.”

WHAT?! If I buy a CD, she’s saying I cannot save it to my own computer, and then listen to the CD in my car? Or… I can’t listen to it on my iPod? All of these items were purchased legally, including the CD. So why in the name of everything I hold precious can I NOT listen to MY OWN MUSIC?

The music industry has gone too far. They are hurting financially so much due to file sharing, that they are now making it nearly impossible for people to legally listen to their own music. Album sales have decreased dramatically. Yes, that’s true. However, telling me I cannot listen to the music I BUY from you in any way I want is not going to help your bottom line, Sony. All that is going to do is ensure I don’t purchase ANY music from you ever again.

Stop the insanity.

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Real Urge for Music

Monday, September 3rd, 2007
at 5:51pm

I’m an URGE subscriber, so I didn’t bother to activate a Zune music subscription when I first got the device. URGE is pulling out of the Windows Media Player, apparently - and we have to contend with RealPainfulExperienceNetworks again…

This is AdamR from the chat room. After watching your video about music subscription services, I was wondering what you thought of MTV bailing on URGE and Microsoft and switching to Rhapsody / RealNetworks. Also, how will this effect URGE inside of Windows Media Player 11 and how will it affect your subscription since you said you couldn’t live without music subscription, and weren’t really pleased or comfortable with Rhapsody or Real.

The reason I ask is because I live inside of Windows Media Player for my music and have been considering an URGE subscription. However, I don’t want to lock into something if I’m not going to be forced to use Rhapsody / Real (which I absolutely refuse to taint my computer with) sometime down the road.

I personally see this as a huge opportunity for Microsoft if they would just play their cards right. They need to ditch the Zune software, put PlayForSure support into the Zune, and integrate what used to be URGE into their collection of Live services and push that forward.

I don’t like the Real / Rhapsody Player on Windows - but I’m thrilled to report, however, that a Rhapsody / Real music subscription works just fine in Firefox on OS X (a few browser UI quirks, but the music is playing fine). To me, that’s all that matters - being able to pay a single fee every month to access all my favorite classic and new artists… screw this ala carte shit.

And DRM? Par for the course, unfortunately…


Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

Windows Media Center Problem

Saturday, August 25th, 2007
at 3:23pm

Paging Charlie Owen… Charlie Owen, to the operating room…

Hi, my name is Ken and I’ve been having some trouble with windows media center on my HP media center computer. Whenever I open windows media center it comes up with an error message that says messenger failure. I know messenger is installed but it comes up anyway. I then tried to uninstall and reinstall rollup 2 because that’s what some help forum said to do but it won’t reinstall. I just hooked up the cable to my computer so I could watch TV with media center, my PC has a built-in tuner, and now is says tuner not available: the tuner is currently in use by another application or is not working.

On the Messenger front, I don’t know if it’s the Windows Messenger, the Messenger service, or MSN Messenger. Are you logging into your Passport account, Ken? Is the Internet connected to the machine when you get the error? On the tuner front, I wonder if there’s another video app that’s open in the background (for whatever reason)? I realize it’s a bit extreme, but consider clearing out many - if not all - of your Startup items via MSCONFIG.EXE.

And then, there’s a Windows Movie Maker Problem…

When I open movie maker an error message pops up saying “The collections file is not valid or is corrupt. A new empty collections file has been created.” When I try to open a movie maker file it says “class not registered”. When I try to capture video it doesn’t work. I tried to uninstall it from add/remove programs and it isn’t in the list. So as you can see I’m in a bit of a mess, which brings me to my solution if I can’t find any other way to fix these problems.

Hrm. Sounds like you may need to register a few files (to the operating system). Try entering: regsvr32 quartz.dll (from the Run command field in your Start Menu). If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to kick ‘er up a notch.

My Solution, unless you have a better idea…

At first I was going to restore my computer to an earlier restore point, sometime in May, but I tried that but it didn’t work twice. So I’m going to try to use the system restore discs, but once again I have a problem, I am missing CD 1, is there a way to restore your computer to factory order by some other mean other than the CDs the computer came with, if not I’ll have to see if I can order CD 1 from HP or something.

P.S. To top it all off I can’t double click on most icons, it just won’t open, I have to right click and open that way. Not sure if you know how I could fix that. I’ll probably end up buying a Mac in the future.

So, Ken lost one of his system restore CDs (why wasn’t MCE put on a DVD?) and he’s having issues with the Explorer shell. It’s a sad state of affairs when he’s ready to trade it all in for a completely separate set of frustrations: OS X. It’s not that Windows is bad, but… people are just sick of putting up with half of these problems. Can’t say I blame ‘em, either.

Users are impatient - and rightfully so.

YouTube Advertising Problems

Friday, August 24th, 2007
at 8:03pm

There’s a vocal majority (or is it a minority?) up in arms about the addition of advertising to certain YouTube channels. In many ways, the community-at-large is upset for good reason - and in other ways, they’re shortsighted.

Lower-third “pop up” advertising doesn’t impress me at all - the model is intrusive and overtly unintuitive. Why would I want to interrupt the playback of one video to watch yet another video that I know full well is an advertisement? It’s a poor way to integrate sponsorship!

I also don’t like pre-roll or post-roll placements (which is the primary reason I don’t have an intro or outtro in most of my recordings). However, if there is an evil to be chosen - this is likely to be the advertising model that most people would accept (though not necessarily appreciate). Why didn’t YouTube go this route to begin with? I bet most viewers wouldn’t have noticed this change at all - since MANY of them have some kind of intro / outtro integrated into their videos already.

My videos are obviously sponsored - and through YouTube, the community is growing every day. Of course, my advertising model isn’t as scalable as the one YouTube is trying to seed - but that’s what makes my approach work well for sponsors. We’re able to tailor integration so that people who are active with our efforts aren’t necessarily turned off by the presence of outside brands. I’ve written about this at length, and have compiled quite a nice “call to action” for potential sponsors.

This can be a win-win-win-win - but only if it’s done in a more proper fashion for all. I wish YouTube would have consulted members of their own community before deciding what would be best for them (or for advertisers, for that matter). I bet they’d have just as many people complaining about a logo change, let alone a strategy to help offset costs for the service that has been free from the very beginning.

And those naïve enough to believe that other video networks would never put them in such a position will wake up to reality soon enough. Fleeing YouTube is done at your own peril - if, as expected, those complaining about any kind of change are in a vocal minority.

Web Music Communities for the New Musician

Monday, August 20th, 2007
at 1:52am

From “shaggysi0” in our live chat:

I really love music. I play guitar and bass and use the PC as a recording tool, currently running Adobe Audition for music production, which I find is a good, feature-packed, but easy-to-use application. About a year and a half ago, I was looking for a place on the web to share music that I had created. I was already familiar with SoundClick but the interface just didn’t do it for me….

I stumbled across iCompositions. I had a look round and signed up almost immediately, because I was impressed with the layout, the content, and the simple-but-attractive interface. The website is aimed mainly at… wait for it…. Macintosh users producing music with GarageBand and other production tools for the Mac. They don’t, however, discriminate you if you’re not using a Mac! But so many of the community members have recommended GarageBand and mac in general for music production.

This website opened doors for me, because community members comment and rate yours and each others work, and they also offer to “collaborate” with you, maybe on a remix, play an instrument on a piece already recorded, vocals on an instrumental, or whatever you want, really! It’s like going into a studio with some really talented musicians but all done from the comfort of your own home. I have written and recorded several collaborations with members of the community, and have made a couple of good friends on there. I think that, for music, this could be the way forward! Especially with a good community like iCompositions, which is my main “home-base” for sharing my musical work.

What are your views and opinions on this? and do you think this is worth doing some kind of video on, maybe to bring attention to this and other communities for people who are budding musicians (there can’t just be me in the chat surely?!)

Thank you for what you do in the tech community. See you later.

Hey, I’m all for sites and services that give you opportunities previously unattainable. I can tell you that when I put out the call for a weekly giveaway theme, we received a handful of very usable creations almost immediately.

DRM is Depressing

Thursday, August 16th, 2007
at 12:41am

DRM makes people sad, depressed, confused…

Hey chris, my name is Lucas Oliveiro, I am from Malaysia. First I’d like to say what a big fan I am of your work and what you do, I always wanted to ask questions but didn’t know how to go about it till I saw one of your videos asking the user’s to directly email you.

So now, first what is DRM? What is the purpose of DRM protected files? If while ripping a CD using Windows Media Player do I have the option to not protect the file with DRM? If the answer is no, is there any separate software which could do that.

I want to convert a WMA file to MP3, but I wasn’t finding any software that would be able to do this. The only solution I had was to record the WMA file in real-time with Media Blaze Pro, and the sound quality was really bad. Please let me know is there any converter software and not real-time recording software.

I don’t see the point of this protection; the CD which I rip was an original disc, and I need to convert the file so that I can save it to my mp3 player. Are all WMA files DRM copy protected? Or is there other types of copy protection? How do I remove this DRM protection if it’s already there?

Chris please help me out, Whoever who created this DRM thingy must be really smart… duhh…. he expects us to carry around our desktops and laptops listening to our tunes on Windows Media Player… and I thought gone were the days where the people would carry around their stereo… HELP ME!!!!! Cheers, mate!

Media Center TV Tuner

Saturday, August 4th, 2007
at 4:07am

When I first read Dmitry Shulga’s question, I thought it wouldn’t be too much of an issue - but for safe measure, I asked Jake for his most expert opinion:

I have been watching your videos on youtube and you’ve got me hooked. You really know your stuff I am sure you could somehow handle my question, if not, I understand that you aer a busy man. Well, here goes, I am looking into investing into a desktop computer which comes with a built in TV Tuner and Vista/Media Center pre-installed. There is a possibility that once I get this desktop my outdated wireless adapter will not work with since it works fine on Vista (the whole driver issue may have something to do with it). My question is, if I want to re-install the OS, I would install the XP SP2 which I own, would that still give me access to use the TV Tuner even though my XP version is not Media Center? The TV Tuner with the desktop comes with no additional software so it uses the Media Center.

Jake responded: “Assuming it’s a name brand tuner, there’s likely software available from the manufacturer. Probably the biggest challenge would be in getting a compatible MPEG-2 decoder for the tuner, which may or may not be provided in the online support section of the manufacturer’s website. There’s always Sage TV or Beyond TV as alternatives which should be compatible all the way back to Windows 98.”

Seattle-area Blogger Meetup with KOMO-TV

Friday, July 20th, 2007
at 1:45pm

KOMO-TV and its owner, Fisher Communications, has graciously agreed to serve as host for a blogger meet-up at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday August 2nd. The event will be at Fisher Plaza, 140 Fourth Avenue North in downtown Seattle. Light hors d’oeuvres and refreshments (alcoholic and otherwise) will be served and everyone who attends is promised a cool piece (or pieces) of KOMO swag. That’s right; we’re digging deep for this.

This is a social event, so come prepared to meet and make new friends. If you know of a local blogger who’s not on the list here, please let me know or feel free to invite them, too. We’d like to meet everybody.

KOMO-TV is interested in getting to know bloggers in the area, and what better way to do that than with a little party? Again, this is a social event; there’s no agenda for the station other than helping facilitate this meet-up. Fisher Communications recognizes the significance of the personal media revolution, and they want to listen and pay attention to what you’re saying. I think this is a good way to start.

KOMO-TV news anchors will be there, so don’t forget to bring your camera! You’ll also be able to take pictures of yourself (and your co-anchors) at the anchor desk.

Please use the RSVP function of this Evite to let us know if you’re coming. We want to make sure we have enough food for everybody. If you have any questions about this event, feel free to contact Leanne Dillon from KOMO-TV at (206) 404-6055.

We should all use “komomeetup” as the tag for photos, videos, blog posts, etc.

Free Desktop Wallpaper Sites

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
at 2:15pm

When I set backgrounds for my desktop(s), people in the chat room often ask where I get them from. In some cases, direct links from the chatters themselves (I’m always on the lookout for awesome 2560×1600 images). Anyway, here you go - a semi-comprehensive list of free desktop wallapaper sites:

Granted, not all wallpapers are free - but some are certainly worth paying for.

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