Monthly Archive for April, 2007Page 3 of 3

Netflix is the coolest thing ever

Published
by
Austen
on April 6, 2007
in Movies and Technology
. 1 Comment

You may have heard of Netflix, you may use Neflix. If you do use Netflix, then you know that it is one of the coolest things ever. If you don’t, then I’m about to tell you why.

Initially, Neflix is an online service that allows you to browse for movies that you want. Then, you can add them to your Queue, or list of movies. The movies in your Queue are sent to you on DVD, via mail, in little slips. And amazingly, they never break. You then watch the movie, put it back in the slip, seal it, and send it back to Netflix with pre-paid mail. Then they’ll send you your next movie, usually within 2 days. It’s that easy. The different plans allow you to have from 1 movie at a time to 8 movies at a time. (The default is 2 or 3) and the price depends on how many movies you’re allowed to have at a time.

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Free and useful tools

Published
by
Austen
on April 6, 2007
in Life
. 1 Comment

These are all small programs and tools to help make life easier and better-looking. Oh, and they’re all free. And Windows only. (Although it could be argued that Macs basically have all of these things already covered)

  • Taskbar Shuffle - A simple app that sits in your taskbar and allows you to simply drag and drop your open program around to change the order. It’s as simple as that.
  • Royale and Royale Noir - Two beautiful Windows XP themes. (read my full post)
  • Did you know that you could right click on the taskbar, go to toolbars, and check on iTunes - then when you minimize iTunes, it will minimize to the taskbar with a mini set of controls: Rewind, Play, Fast Forward, and Volume. Awesome.
  • Rocket Dock - Recreates the Mac OSX dock. Very cool, works well even on old machines, and there are many options. I just use it for quick and pretty-looking access to programs without having to press “Show Desktop,” and then opening up all of my windows again.
  • EditPad Lite - Notepad with tabs and more (I haven’t tried it out yet, but it looks great)
  • SharePod - Super simple, and super awesome tool to put music on and take music OFF of your iPod. It’s located on your iPod, and allows you to manage your music, play it, and sync it. I would use it, if not for already being locked into iTunes.

Jott things down, minus the pen

Published
by
Austen
on April 5, 2007
in Other
. 1 Comment

Lifehacker posted about Jott, and (I think) my Uncle Bob read it, who then “Jotted” my Mom, who then told me about it. But what is Jott? It’s a little bit hard to explain, but I’ll try.

Basically, Jott is an online web service that allows you to call a number on your cell phone, and the, tell it WHO you want to “Jott.” You can either Jott yourself, or one of your imported email contacts (you did this on the computer earlier.) It then records your 30 second message. Then, about 5 minutes later you (or your contact) should get an email with your speech translated to text.

And now you ask: “But is the Speech-to-Text really THAT good?” And I answer: “If only it were so. It’s actually too good, and my sources tell me (my Uncle Bob) that they actually just have people listening to your message and transcribing it.”

So yes, the idea that someone is just “translating” what you’re saying takes away some of the coolness, but this tool can actually be very useful. For instance, you could be in the waiting room for a doctor’s appointment and you suddenly remember that you haven’t sent out Thank You notes yet - but no problem! You just pull out your cell phone and Jott the message to yourself, so when you get home there’s an email waiting for you literally telling you to send out Thank You notes! (Even though it’s already April)

I’ve tried many times to make contact with these mysterious Transcribers by talking to them in my messages, I’ve even played them music - but all atempts have been futile…

I have a quick question. Will Jott stay free after it’s out of Beta? I thought probably not, but if yes, then at the end of this sentence, put two periods, if no, put one period Please do this, it would mean a lot to me, I just want to know

So they go ahead and put no periods!

transcriber enjoy this music, it’s very good music. [inaudible]

“Inaudible”??? That’s it! A “Thank You” might of been a little bit more polite!

Movie Review: 300

Published
by
Austen
on April 4, 2007
in Movies and Reviews
. 1 Comment

300 is Lord of Rings + Sin City + 300 gallons of blood.

300 graphically depicts the Battle of Thermopylae, the ancient battle between 300 Spartans and 10,000 Persians. King Leonidas leads the 300 men, going against the wishes of the Spartan council. The majority of the movie consists of the different waves of attacks by the Persians, (almost) all of which are met with… lots of very pointy sticks. Meanwhile, back in Sparta, Leonidas’s wife (the Queen) is trying to convince the Spartan council to go and send the rest of the Spartan army to go and help King Leonidas.

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EMI will sell DRM-free music on iTunes

Published
by
Austen
on April 3, 2007
in Music and Technology
. 1 Comment

I know that this is a bit old, (a whole day!) but I just want to give my two cents on this little piece of news…

From Cnet:

EMI’s entire digital music catalog will be available in premium DRM-free form via iTunes in May, the music label said Monday at a press conference in London. Beatles tunes under EMI’s control, however, are not part of the plan.

Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. Rather, they will complement the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song.

When I read this, I just though “Good for EMI!” Now that they’ve done it, another major label is sure to follow, and soon it won’t be who’s selling DRM-free music, but who ISN’T. And seriously, I thing that the $1.29 deal is very fair. Sure, all of those 30 cents can add up, but it’s a small price to pay for actually OWNING your music - and it’s in higher quality. This idea is SOOO Apple, and I applaud them (and EMI) for making it work. Hopefully, you’ll be able to upgrade your old music also.

And about The Beatles. Who really cares anymore? People have been speculating about when they’ll be on iTunes for years! And everytime Apple settles something with Apple (heh), it’s like, “oh, now there’s a chance!” but then it doesn’t happen. Most people who want The Beatles already HAVE The Beatles. I mean, do you really think that anyone’s holding out on buying them until they’re on iTunes?

The Strokes

Published
by
Austen
on April 3, 2007
in Life and Music
. 1 Comment

I just obtained via flash drive (Shhh!!!) all 3 albums by The Strokes, plus a couple of their music videos from my brother Alex. (Yes, Alex also bought me Stadium Aradium - although I did ask for it)

So far I’ve only listened to their first album, “Is This It?” in full, but judging from it their music is very good. They’re not the best band EVER, but I found that the subtle harmonies in each song really grow on you every time that you listen to it, so I find myself liking them more and more. I have yet to listen to their newer stuff, but “Is This It?” is a solid first album, in my opinion.

Also, I have not forgotten about your other music suggestions. Mike and Bob, I bought some of The Clash, and Graceland is on my to-do list. I’ll keep you all posted as I discover new music to fill up my iPod with.

Software Idea: AutoPrint

Published
by
Austen
on April 3, 2007
in Life
. 0 Comments

Okay, imagine a piece of software that automatically prints out things for you, daily, weekly, monthly - whatever. Basically, it would work similar to how podcasts work on iTunes and iPods. Each day, it would download the most recent addition of whatever it is (latest stories, daily crossword, daily sudoku, etc.) from the internet (perhaps via RSS feeds???) and print it out for you at a predescribed time.

So then your daily latest news/puzzle will be sitting in your printer for you every morning, ready to be digested/figured out on the way to work. Wouldn’t that be great, and so easy to use? The program would be very customizable, and you could even add just normal blog RSS feeds to it, making it act as a normal RSS reader, too! Awesome!

Other possible names could be FeedPrint, PrintFeed, PrintRSS, etc.

Here’s my quick mock-up of it’s logo:

If anyone knows of a program that even remotely does this, then please post it in the comments!

The end of Netsua

Published
by
Austen
on April 1, 2007
in Humor and Life
. 5 Comments

I’ve been trying… really trying to post a lot on here, but I just can’t keep up anymore. The recent burst of posts were a lucky free weekend, and it will unfortunately probably be the last.

I just got my report card from school, and lets just say that I need to focus more on school work now. I’m really, really sorry - but I’m going to have (temporarily) shut down Netsua.com.

I’m not going to take the site off-line, but I’m not going to be able to post on the blog or make any changes anymore and I don’t know when I will again. I just have so much WORK, and I can’t keep up with it while also actively maintaining this site.

Hopefully, in the fut [...]

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