Featured Firefox Extension: Drag & Drop.io Makes Sharing Files Dead Simple

A little known feature to those that don’t use a Microsoft Zune is the fact that Zunes have the ability to “reverse sync” back to a computer. What this means is that you can connect any Zune to any PC running Zune software and copy over music, videos, or pictures back to the PC. Matt recently blogged about this over on ZuneInsider when he surprised a friend by showing him how to he could copy an album from his friend’s Zune back to his own PC. He notes that he already owned the album in this example, but the secret here is that un-DRM’d content – like much of the content sold in the Zune Marketplace as well as on sites like Amazon’s MP3 store – makes this possible. With less restrictions on how the content can be moved around, accessed, and played, you aren’t as locked down as when you purchase DRM’d content like the majority of the music still sold today on iTunes. Not only is this helpful for letting friends share music with each other, it’s also a great feature for anyone with a multiple-PC household and more than one Zune or for taking your tunes to your office PC. For step-by-step instructions on how this is done, check out Matt’s post.

Reverse Sync Your Zune | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

In the dog days of summer when there’s absolutely nothing new on television (except the Olympics), it’s time to start watching the web—and you need the right tool to do just that. The free, cross-platform internet video player Miro can automatically download online video series via RSS feed or BitTorrent, play almost any format you throw at it, and keep track of what you’ve watched and what’s new and queued up for you. More and more independent producers are putting out fabulous video content on the web, but keeping up with it by visiting your favorite video hosting web site or in your regular feed reader can be almost impossible—but setting up Miro is like getting TiVo for web video. Let’s take a look at how to subscribe to free internet television with Miro.

Miro’s TiVo-Like Features

In short, Miro is a video "podcatcher"—software that uses video feeds to automatically download new episodes for you and keep track of what you’ve watched and not watched. Kind of like an inbox for your video subscriptions, here’s what Miro looks like with a few subscriptions set up.

(Note: This screenshot is from a Mac, but Miro works on Windows and Linux as well.) There you can see my subscription to the great Google Talks YouTube feed, and Miro separates what’s available on the feed, what clips it’s already downloaded to my hard drive, what’s unwatched, and what it’s in the process of downloading in an easy to use interface. On the left hand column, you can see my current subscriptions, and how many unwatched items each has in the green circle.

Since I often can’t take time out of a workday to watch longer video clips, I like to run Miro on a computer connected to my actual television, so I can relax on the couch and watch my subscriptions full-screen during TV time. Here’s a rundown of the killer features that make Miro ideal for keeping up with online video:

Online Video: Miro is Your TiVo for Internet Video

Windows only: Free software YouTube File Hack is a standalone application and Internet Explorer integrated menu item that downloads videos to your desktop from the popular video sharing site. Simply run the application, enter the URL of the YouTube video you want to view offline, and press the Download button. When all is said and done, you’ll have an FLV file for watching offline (we recommend the free VLC player to do so).

To use the Internet Explorer integration, navigate to any web page, right click on a YouTube video link, and choose the "Download this YouTube Video" option from the right-click menu. (Note that the "Download this" menu item displays regardless of whether a video is present or not.)

YouTube File Hack is one of several ways to download YouTube video clips. Let’s review just a few of our favorite options:

• The All-In-One Video Bookmarklet works in IE or Firefox and requires no installation—just drag and drop it to your browser toolbar.
• The Better YouTube Firefox extension adds a "Download this video" link to any YouTube page in Firefox.
• Vixy.net and Viddownloader takes the URL of a YouTube clip, converts it to a format of your choice, and offers it for download.

For more video handling desktop and online apps, check out our top 10 free video rippers, encoders, and converters.

Currently, YouTube File Hack works within Internet Explorer only; the software is a free download for Windows only. What’s your favorite way to download YouTube clips? Let us know in the comments.

YouTube: YouTube File Hack (and Others) Download Clips to Your Desktop

While Google has the Earth’s most excellent reference, Microsoft takes the prize for information and imagery from across the universe. The recently released and fabulous freeware WorldWide Telescope is the most ambitious attempt to bring the power of massive space- and ground-based telescopes onto your PC. Along with the incredible pictures of black holes, nebulae, and radiation clouds, you can take guided tours of celestial objects led by eminent astronomers and educators.

WorldWide Telescope - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com

A conference calling tool gives host and participants a phone number to call. Other ooVoo users who call this conference line get plugged right into the audio that’s a part of the video chat, and just like the video recordings, this audio gets archived, too. Call-in lines support up to six people, meaning users can have up to a dozen participants–including those on the video side. Note that this service isn’t free. An optional companion for ooVoo’s video player can be used for screen sharing or file sharing, and fun facial overlay tool that applies digital masks either to users faces or to backgrounds.

One of the best features is support for high-quality video streams, but two qualms users have had with the service are the compressed-sounding audio quality and datastream delays. More than annoying, one or more seconds of lag can force a heated debate to grinding halt. Still, ooVoo makes for a strong alternative to other VoIP and conferencing software.

ooVoo - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com

Twitula: Another Twitter App for Windows Mobile | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

TweakVI Basic download and review - tweak and optimize Windows Vista from SnapFiles

There’s an acronym from the past for you.  Run Time Improvements (RTI).  I am always looking for ways to squeeze another speed improvement out of Windows Vista.  In fact, a few weeks ago I made some changes to my Dell Latitude D820 and it made a very real difference in how the machine performed.

Before I list out all of the stuff below, keep in mind I am willing to sacrifice some features for the sake of overall system performance.  I’m usually looking for all of the horsepower out of my machine for a couple of reasons.  Video encoding or virtualization workloads.

I don’t need eye candy for those two purposes.  I don’t need a search index.  I don’t need the system to anticipate what the next ten programs I am going to launch are going to be.

If I dial back some of these features in Windows Vista, am I losing some key features?  Absolutely, positively yes.  However, information is power so get ready because I’m going to arm you with some of my tricks and you can decide what you like and dislike.  One thing before we move on… I don’t recommend turning off security features but I do make one exception to this rule.  More on that later.

Fast And Easy

I like to keep things simple so we’ll start with the easiest first.  Remember the dialog box just below?  I know you’ve probably stumbled across it.  It’s in nearly all of the operating systems we’ve produced yet most people don’t make any changes to it.

I do. These settings alone can have a rather profound change to the way application windows and dialog boxes display, move, minimize or disappear.  Eye candy takes horsepower and don’t underestimate the visual impact.  Before we get to the disable list, lets talk briefly about two of them.

Animation and fading take cycles from the CPU and GPU.  When you have a weak CPU or GPU, the animation and fading effects end up looking like they are slow motion.  I’m exaggerating a bit, but your eyes are actually very good at picking up motion changes.  I have several machines ranging in age from less than a year old to more than five years old.  And the speed of the CPU and GPU in those machines varies greatly.  Therefore the new fast quad core machine can drive these effects the way they were designed to be seen.  But even the quad machine will show a noticeable improvement.

The Performance Options Hit List – turn these off

• Animate controls and elements inside windows
• Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
• Fade or slide menus into view
• Fade or slide ToolTips into view
• Fade out menu items after clicking
• Show shadows under menus
• Show shadows under mouse pointer
• Slide open combo boxes
• Slide taskbar buttons
• Smooth-scroll list boxes

Now you might be wondering how to get to these options since I neglected to tell you.  You can get to them in a similar manner across most of our operating systems and as usual, there’s more than one way. 

1. Click the Start button or in the case of Windows Vista, click the Vista Pearl.
2. Right mouse click Computer.
3. Click the Properties menu item.  This effectively takes you to Control Panel | System in Windows Vista.
4. Click the Advanced system settings Task item in the top left portion of the window.  This requires administrator privilege so you’ll need to respond to the Windows Vista UAC prompt.
5. In the Performance section, click the Settings button.

Now that you have made these changes, you should see the difference in how the applications behave.  This made a dramatic difference on my two slowest machines.  It was very helpful in particular on on my Dell Latitude D820.  Now that we’ve made some changes to the user interface responsiveness, lets look at disabling some optional features and services in Windows Vista.

Read on..

Keith Combs’ Blahg : My Favorite Windows Vista Runtime Improvements (RTI)

As part of the Windows Live Wave 3, the next refresh of the Windows Live Services due out later this summer, the Windows Live Photo Gallery will offer a new version of their software – one that will automatically identify faces! The faces in the photos will be able to be identified with tags, which will make the whole tagging process a lot easier to do – since the software will do it for you. We can’t wait to get our hands on this one! The next release of Live will also be “taking advantage of the profile concept with Live,” according to Brian Hall, General Manager of Windows Live as reported by ZDNet. The private beta of Windows Live will launch this summer.

Windows Live Photo Gallery Will Recognize Faces | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10.

When moving, copying, pasting, browsing, and getting information about your files feels like tedious work—and it can in the feature-sparse Windows Explorer—you need some power add-ons that can help. Instead of completely replacing Windows Explorer with an alternative file manager, you can pick and choose the extra features you want and add them piecemeal. Let’s take a look at some free power add-ons for Windows Explorer that make dealing with your growing file collection faster and easier.

Note: Installing every single one of these toolbars and add-ons may slow down Windows Explorer, so pick and choose the ones that give you the features you need.

QTTabBar Adds Tabs to Windows Explorer: Get the tabbed browsing experience in Windows Explorer with the QuickTimeTabBar add-on. Once installed, right-click on the Explorer toolbar and select the QTTabBar toolbars, which add both tabbing and other features, like access to recent tabs and file previews. QTTabBar works in Vista and XP with .Net Framework 2.0 or later. QTTabBar homepage, original post.

Explorer Breadcrumbs Adds "Breadcrumb" Folder Trail: Move up and down your folder hierarchy with ease by adding a "breadcrumb" folder trail to Windows Explorer. This little ditty is a a bit buggy—it didn’t work for Adam in his original tests, but it has worked for me—so proceed with that in mind. Explorer Breadcrumbs is a free download for Windows 2000 and XP, donations requested. Explorer Breadcrumbs homepage, original post.

Windows Explorer: Power Up Windows Explorer with Free Add-ons

Iphone 2.0: Turn Off Crash Reports to Speed Up iPhone Sync

Yesterday, CERT released a notice that many DNS vendors are vulnerable to a particularly evil form of DNS Cache Poisoning. Furthermore, there are companies like Road Runner which redirect you to spammy sites when you typo domain names instead of just reporting an error and letting your browser show a 404 or whatever.

There are better alternatives to getting 404s, dealing with a slow ISPs ability to fix their DNS, and even dealing with ISP’s who have sold out and are directing you to spam when you make an honest typo. I recommend OpenDNS. They are prebuilt with anti-phishing technology to help protect you from criminals, they don’t use ad-laden pseudo search engines that don’t help you at all, and they are fast. Finally, they were one of the only DNS providers who were not vulnerable to the latest security threat.

If you are looking to use a better DNS service that actually helps you then I suggest OpenDNS. It’s so simple to get started and they walk you right through it. It can be as simple as changing the DNS in your router or updating the DNS in your network settings on your computer.

Why you should use OpenDNS. | The OSM Blog

After the WWDC ‘08 Keynote, everyone wanted this iPhone game, it received almost as much hype as the iPhone itself. Super Monkey Ball from SEGA definitely has some good qualities, however it does have some bad qualities as well. First off, this game costs $9.99 which might be a little steep for some.

Super Monkey Ball sports some great graphics and almost proves itself as one of the best games created for the iPhone. There are over a 100 leves to play which means you might not get bored from this for a while.

So without further delay we would like to offer you the cracked version of this game. We would also like to inform you that this release has not been tested on jailbroken/unlocked iPhone’s running firmware 2.0 which is impossible at the moment for the lack of an unlock out there.

How do you install this game?

1. Make sure you are on firmware 2.0

2. Download the Super Monkey Ball Cracked game and extract the Monkey Ball.app folder to your desktop.

3) Copy Monkey Ball.app into /Applications via SSH and set it to 775

4) Create a folder called “Documents” in /var/mobile/ and set permission to 777

5) Reboot your iPhone // Kudos to iamheretostay for the find!

We have also launched a forum dedicated to sharing cracked iPhone apps. Please join us there.

Once again drop us a line if you like this release

Super Monkey Ball iPhone - Cracked | Haklabs

The interface is simple and utilitarian, although spiked with format-icons and a big banner announcing the program’s name for no reason other than to put lipstick on the pig. The left navigation menu has collapsible links to the various formats you can convert to, based on type: video, audio, image, mobile device, and ROM device. Below the massive title banner, the central pane sports decorative icons until you start the conversion process.

Once you’ve selected your files, you can change the output quality to presets or custom settings. Hit Start on the Toolbar of the main window to begin the process, which is surprisingly fast for smaller video files. FormatFactory excels at batch conversion without error. It does, however, eat up much of your processor while it’s running even one conversion.

Because there are so many file formats out there and even more codecs, it’s likely that FormatFactory will fail to convert at some point. Nevertheless, FormatFactory is a solid, free, catch-all converter, with excellent tools–lacking only a more sensible interface.

Download

Featured Freeware: FormatFactory | Software news, tips and opinions from Download.com editors - Download.com