Making Windows Easy

GooReader Puts Google Books On Windows

Alan — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 05:00:51 PDT

GooReader is a free program for Windows that allows you to download, search, and read the books and magazines available in Google Books.

Right now it is Windows only (XP, Vista, 7) but the plan to make it available for Mac, as well as smart phones.

Aside from a beautiful interface (much better than that of Google Books) the real big selling point for this is simply being able to download the books to you PC. Now you never have to go searching for the book online again and you can browse it while traveling, when you may be out out WiFi range. Books and magazines save in PDF format.

You can search by author or title. Once you have found the book you want then you can just click the Create PDF button.

It’s a simple, elegant solution for have any book or magazine available on your PC. And, withe the PDF format you can also transfer it to many eBook readers, such as the Kindle.

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3 Cool Music Sites You Should Know

Alan — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:00:04 PDT

If you’re looking for music online, and you have already been through the regular stops like Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker, then here are three sites you may not have heard of before. Each is slightly different and each is worth checking out.

Grooveshark

Grooveshark has actually been around for a few years now, but they are catching on lately. And that’s a good thing. It may be because they have finally begun to get contracts in place with some of the major labels. And that’s an even better thing, because I don’t want Grooveshark to go away. I use this site quite often.

It allows you to enter in a search for a song or artist and then stream the result. You can’t download the song, and unfortunately there’s no link to buy it yet, but the great thing is that it allows you to stream the song, in it’s entirety, so you can see (hear) if you really want it. Then you can surf over to Amazon MP3 and download and buy.

MixPod

MixPod in an AOL property that allows you to upload your music to their cloud and then listen anywhere on any PC, Mac, or mobile device. It will work with web browsers and mobile phones. Whatever changes you make will be propagated across all platforms you use. You will have to install their uploader program that will immediately begin uploading your playlists and most recently listened to music, but then will allow you to choose what is uploaded next.

Shuffler

Shuffler is probably the newest site of the three. It’s free web site that scans the web and merges the content from various music blogs into genre-based channels that you can then click on to play.

Once you pick a genre a simple player will appear at the top of the screen and begin streaming music. A dropdown list is available in the player to let you easily change channels (genres). That’s really all there is to it. Sites don’t get much simpler than this. And that simplicity makes for a fun experience.

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VLC For All of Your Media Playback Needs

Alan — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:00:36 PDT

VLC is a free, open source media player that work with, not just Windows, but Mac OSX and many version of Linux, including some of the most popular such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Debian, and Red Hat.

If have a file that won’t play in Windows Media Player then get a copy of VLC instead of looking for some other player that works with certain file types – such as QuickTime. For a complete list of supported file types (which does vary from Windows to Mac to Linux) you can click here.

Once downloaded and installed, VLC is pretty straight-forward. If you have file that you want played, then the simplest thing to do is right-click the file, choose Open With and then choose VLC.

There is no real configuration necessary, but if you are the type who lickes to muck around with this sort of thing, then Tools => Preferences is for you.

You can skin it, set audio and video preferences, turn on sub-titles (if they are available in your file), and change the hot keys you use for such basics as Play, Pause, Stop, Fast Forward, and Rewind.

One particularly cool feature is located under View =>Customize Interface. This is something many apps should consider adding. There’s much to be said for letting users decide what they want to see and not see.

There are many plugins and extensions available as well.

All of these features are great, but they are really only for a few users, because all of the defaults that come with a fresh VLC install are perfect for the average user. This is the probably the best “replacement” for Windows Media Player. Even if you don’t make it your default media player, every Windows users should still have it installed for the occasional oddball file that we all come across from time to time.

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TunerFree MCE For Media Center

Alan — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 05:00:20 PDT

TunerFree MCE is a source of “IPTV” for Windows Media Center. Essentially, it’s a source for online TV/video content placed within the confines of Media Center.

Once installed it appears in the main menu of Media Center under the heading MillieSoft => TunerFree MCE.

After you click on TunerFree MCE it will bring up a number of available channels that will, no doubt, delight our British readers. It includes many, mostly British, network selections.

But, since I know a number of people who really want British TV available if the US, I don’t think it’s just out Anglo readers who will love this plug-in. There are many Americans dying to see shows such as Dr. Who, Top Gear, etc in a more timely fashion.

It’s a great app and plays well with Media Center by integrating itself into the menu perfectly. Obviously, being a US citizen, I wish it had US channels available. An app that worked this well, and displayed US channels, would be something many of us would actually pay for. For British Media Center users this is an incredible addition. I think all of you in UK will love it.

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5 Good Sources For Windows Desktop Backgrounds And Themes

Alan — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:00:09 PDT

Windows 7 gives users the ability to have truly stunning backgrounds and themes. If you don’t want to use your own digital photos then there is no shortage of others you can use. You can set just a background or an entire theme.

The background (or wallpaper as it’s often called) is just an image on your desktop, which has been around in Windows for many version now. For a quick tutorial on rotating wallpaper you can click here.

Themes are newer to Windows. They change not just the wallpaper, but also such things as color schemes and fonts.

Windows Personalization Gallery

The First, and most obvious place to start is Microsoft themselves. Their Personalization Gallery has a number of very high quality themes and backgrounds. You can browse by category or search for a particular type of picture you are looking for. A simple Download or Get Now link under each item makes it very easy to install.

Windows 7 Themes

Windows 7 Themes is a great stop for anyone looking for themes and wallpaper. The site is not the best designed, and it can seem a bit spammy in places, but the good themes are there if you look. They offer many movie, video game and car types of themes.

AddictiveTips

Addictive Tips has a cool set of 26 themes available for Windows 7. They range from Woodstock to Waterfalls.

Bing

Perhaps the best way to find images to use for your Windows wallpaper is to simply do an image search in Bing for Windows 7 Wallpaper. If you are only using the image for wallpaper on your home PC then, as long as it properly licensed then you will no problem.

Google

The same image search in Google will yield similar results and, of course, personal use rules apply just the same.

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3 Twitter Video Clients

Alan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 05:00:26 PDT

Many of you probably use Twitter. And some you probably are familiar, and have used, one of the several popular photo-sharing sites that work with Twitter. But, probably less of you are familiar with the video-sharing sites that work with Twitter. So, if you fall into that last category then this article is for you. We are going to take a look at the three of those video sites.

There was one site I was planning to include called 12Seconds. I had used it several times and liked it, but when I accessed the website I was greeted with the following message:

12seconds.com expired on 08/07/2010 and is pending renewal or deletion.

Ah, the world of new web apps. Sometimes they just don’t make it, and when they disappear they take your stuff (in this case a few videos) with them.

TwitVid

TwitVid is probably the leader in this space (don’t confuse it with the, apparently, now defunct TwitVid.io). It’s simple and it’s included, as the default, in quite a few mobile (including TouchTwit which I use on my Windows Mobile phone) and PC twitter apps. You sign in with your Twitter login and password. You can upload video of up the 2 GB in size, which is more than enough, I think. In addition to being included in many popular Twitter apps, there are standalone app available for iPhone, Blackberry and Android. Plus you can upload videos via MMS and and Email.

yfrog

yfrog is a service that can handle both photos and video. The have mobile apps available for both Android and Blackberry, plus they are included in several Twitter apps – and, yes, some are iPhone apps. Some of the apps it’s available on include Twitter for iPhone, Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, PowerTwitter, Twittelator, Twitterific, Twitdroid, and TwitterBerry.

TweeTube

While Tweetube retains a strong user base, it has never caught the traction of the other two service I looked at. They do offer quite a lot though. They not only handle video, but also photos, webcam videos, YouTube video sharing, and website URL’s. They offer compatability with the iPhone as well. You can share picture via email and even share links and bookmarks. This is a site that deserves to get more recognition than it has. Perhaps some Twitter app makers will begin including it as an option sometime soon.

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Get Your News In One Place With Google Reader

Alan — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 05:00:07 PDT

Some you reading this are doing so in your RSS Reader (or Feed Reader as they are also known), but I suspect, from what I have been hearing, that you are in the minority.

But, for me, RSS Readers are not dying. I use mine more than ever. What better way to get to a lot of news with a minimum amount of typing and clicking around?

What I have been using is Google Reader. There’s nothing to download because, like most Google services, it’s a web app. It’s right there whenever you go to Google so it’s easy to get to. And almost every news site on the web has an RSS feed. And, I am not just talking about headline news sites like CNN, but sports news, tech news, and science news, to name just a few things.

Google Reader has two columns. The left contains your feeds (web sites) and the right contains the headlines and articles. Also, in the left column, you can drag and drop sites into folders that you have created to separate news feeds, such as sports and science. At the top of the left column is an Add Subscription button and at the bottom is a Manage Subscriptions link. When you click the manage link you will get a screen that allows you to add folders, move feeds around to different folders and delete feeds.

If you find your self visiting certain sites on a regular basis this will make things much simpler by placing all of those sites in one, easy-to-use location.

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TxtBear – A New Way To Share Documents (Or Not)

Alan — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:00:17 PDT

TxtBear is a very interesting new site that allows the sharing of documents, both publicly and privately. They bill themselves as “The Swiss Army Knife for documents”.

At the moment the site has no ads and is free to use, so, as with many new sites, I don’t know revenue model. I assume they are hoping one will emerge as they become established. It seems that a charge for extra storage or a “pro” model would be the logical way it will head, but that is just my speculation.

This is one I was anxious to try out. It seemed like a scaled down version of Dropbox (our review) or Drop.io (our review). There wasn’t a mention of requiring a sign-up, file size restrictions, storage space restrictions, or any of the other stipulations involved in Dropbox and Drop.io. It’s hard to tell though, since when I clicked on the FAQ to was presented with a blank page!

So, let’s get started using TxtBear. I thought I’d try it out with a simple word document that contained no personal information whatsoever.

On the main page of the site there are two radio-button options – Private and Public. Below that there is Browse option so that you can locate the document on your PC that you want to share, and of course, the Upload button.

After choosing Private and locating the file in my PC’s My Documents folder it turned out that I didn’t need to click the Upload button – it started right away.

When it completed it took me to screen that resembled a PDF document (a simple weekly calendar) displayed via the web. There are options for such thing as search, view (zoom in and out), page through documents (if you have uploaded multiple documents) and, on the far left, share. The share option allows you to share via Facebook, Twitter and many more options.

(the Share button is highlighted in red in this view)

I chose email and figured I would send a copy to my wife. It seems I missed the part where a sign-up was necessary. The box that popped up informed me that when I entered my email address and password I would automatically be registered. That’s fine, since I expected to have to sign up, back at the beginning of this test.

I really didn’t want to share in Facebook or Twitter, since this was just a test. But my email attempts failed. The URL to my document, which was put in automatically by TxtBear, kept giving the message “Error: Bad URL”. I tried switching the URL to the automatically created txt.li short URL, but that resulted in the same error message. The Word file is a .doc, which in on the list of supported files.

I decided I would give it one more shot, with a differently named copy of the same file. I received the same Error message regarding a bad URL.

When I returned to my email account I found a a message from them that I needed to click to confirm my address – standard procedure, except that the email gave my user name and PASSWORD in CLEAR TEXT! Maybe not a huge deal, given that my email is over https, but it’s still not what I want to see. After confirming my sign-up I returned to the web site and now had my user name and log out option at the top of the page.

There is, incidentally, no way visible to get back to previously uploaded files.

It seems this site needs some work. I didn’t test the other sharing methods, but Email was a fail. Maybe it was a temporary system problem that just happened to occur at the wrong time, but I doubt I will be back to try again. There are other services I can use, so I really don’t need to spend time playing with one that doesn’t seem to be quite ready. I guess the Beta tag wasn’t a joke here, in fact maybe it should be Alpha.

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3 Free Alternatives To Media Center

Alan — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 05:00:50 PDT

I have used Windows 7 Media Center on my living room PC since it was in Beta. But, prior to that, my HTPC was running XP Pro and I tried out several media center programs. Many of you are familiar with what is probably known as Media Center’s number one rival (if you can call it a rival) – Boxee. I prefer to think of Boxee as an add-in and not a substitute, though. But, there some other noteworthy competitors out there. All three of these are free and open source.

Media Portal

I used Media Portal for almost a year. It’s pretty comparable to Windows Media Center – it has Music, Movies, and TV, among others. It does come with weather built-in, which is a third-party add in in MC. Video playback requires a third-party player. You can use Windows Media Player or VLC Player. When I was running it, I used KMPLayer.

There are quite a few plug-ins available and a number of different skins. Plug-ins are also not particularly hard to write if you want to tackle one yourself. It requires some knowledge of C#, but there are quite a few instructions available online to get you moving.

A few weeks ago Media Portal released 1.1. They do quite a good job of updating to fix bugs and add features. You certainly can’t go wrong in choosing this for your HTPC.

XBMC

XBMC in a combination of XBox and Windows MC. It has the standard menu items of music, pictures and video, but the big drawback is the lack of TV/DVR support. This relegates it to more of an add-in, or maybe the main media center app for those who are not using their HTPC for TV.

It has some great features though. It is compatible with almost any media center remote and you can even use your Android phone as a remote. It is network aware, meaning it can serve up media from remote locations. Unlike Windows MC it does not require a third-party plug-in to play a DVD from an .iso file. And, best of all, it’s compatible with every major audio and video format.

A word of caution though – I did have a bit of a problem getting the picture right on my LCD TV. I can’t say for sure that it was the fault XBMC, but the other media centers I tested did not have a problem recognizing my TV.

Linux MCE

Linux MCE stands out out here for several reasons. First and foremost, unlike the other two programs I just listed, it does not run on Windows, but, instead, replaces Windows. It IS Linux after all. I also think this is the best alternative available to Windows MC, and that’s because of the other reasons it stands out – namely that it does everything MC does and some more.

From the start you will notice that Linux MCE is gorgeous. The screens are really stunning, as you can see from the screen shot above – of course the background picture is up to you. Next, you will notice the things it does that MC does not (at least not without plug-ins). It will run your whole house if you’re ambitious enough to configure it and can invest the money in the devices necessary. It can control all of your home-automation from lighting to HVAC to burglar alarm to telephone. And, of course, you can use your cell phone as a remote.

Now, like all Linux distros, it’s free, so don’t think you will need to invest money in home automation gadgets. Those are just a bonus if you want to spend the money and do the configuration work. If not, then you will still have a great media center box that will do everything you want including TV/DVR, music, movies, pictures, etc.

Of course, another way it is like all Linux distros is that you will need a little geek cred to get it up and running, but it’s not too hard for an average PC user. And you’ll be the envy of your friends when they see your setup.

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3 Cool New Web Sites

Alan — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 05:00:37 PDT

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It’s time to take a look at some cool new web sites that we have recently found. This time we’ve found something for the hikers out there (I am one of you, so I love this one), something for the web design amateurs (I’m there too), and one for the weather geeks (that’s me too).

AllTrails

AllTrails, is a new hiking web site which is still in Beta. It allows you find and save trails. You can keep a list of the ones you’ve hiked and a wish list of ones you want to do in the future. I also provides list of events in your area and let’s you give reviews of the hikes you have done. You can search for trails in any area. It’s still new, and the list of trails is still a little light, especially in some areas. But it’s off to a good start so I expect new trails and locations to be added at a pretty quick pace. They are also a partner of Facebook (you can sign-up with Facebook Connect) so that should help them grow quickly.

CoolTempate

CoolTemplate is a great new web app for building web templates for HTML, WordPress, Joomla and ASP.net. It’s a simple interface that allows you to create a template for you web technology of choice. I would expect more differnet types of templates to be added as time goes by. Be aware that the templates are not compatible with Internet Explorer 6, but hopefully all of you are off of that. Although, I know many businesses are still using IE6.

The service is completely free. The site does have ads, but we all have bills to pay.

Weather Vortex

Weather Vortex is neat site for all of the weather buffs and would-be meteorologists out there. It’s great source for looking up something you have seen and wanted to know more about – like a particularly weird cloud type. They have great info on the hows and whys of tornadoes as well as spectacular pictures of them. The pictures are particularly fun to look at. It’s fun to just browse around, even when you aren’t looking for anything particular.

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