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Microsoft has new taken its My phone application to the open beta stage which means anyone can try it. With My phone you can
As someone who has both broken and lost a phone, getting all your data back is a nice thing to have.
You can sign up for the My Phone beta at http://myphone.microsoft.com/mkweb/Start.po?mkt=en_US&ocid=eml_enus_WMTA_T_EM (http://myphone NULL.microsoft NULL.com/mkweb/Start NULL.po?mkt=en_US&ocid=eml_enus_WMTA_T_EM)
Some people (“Us old school folks) know that there was a time that a computer could be used without using a mouse. The feature referred to as Keyboard shortcuts still exists today (even though most current users don’t have a clue that its there).
So in the interest of not getting this question 1,000,000 more times here are some very helpful shortcuts for Internet Explorer.
ALT+D – Put focus in the address bar, and select whatever text is there
CTRL+ENTER – Put ‘http://www.’ and ‘.com’ before and after whatever text is in the address bar
ALT+LEFT – Go Back
ALT+RIGHT – Go Forward
BACKSPACE – Go Back
ALT+HOME – Go Home
F11 – Enter/Exit Full Screen Mode
F5 – Refresh
CTRL+F5 – Refresh from the site your on (Forces re-download of page instead of refreshing from cache)
ALT+V, B – Toggle the Status Bar
ALT+A – Open the favorites menu; then type the first letter of the favorite you want
F6 – Move focus between major UI elements (Toolbar->Explorer Bar->HTML Page->Toolbar)
TAB – Move focus between minor UI elements (Link->Link in a page, Address Bar->Go Button, etc)
SHIFT+TAB – Like TAB, but the other way
SPACE – Scroll the page down (same as the PageDown key)
These shortcuts apply to all normal windows applications, not just IE:
ALT+SPACE, X – Maximize the window
ALT+SPACE, R – Restore the window
ALT+TAB – Switch between top level windows
SHIFT+F10 – Display the context menu (similar to Right-Clicking)
This list is just for Internet Explorer, there are more shortcuts for Windows and other software.
For those of you (like me) who downloaded and installed Windows 7 beta in January of 2009, its time you save your files, uninstall Windows 7 beta and either go back to Windows XP or Vista (or whatever you had before 7) or time to download the RC (Release Candidate*) for Windows 7 and install that in the place of the Windows 7 beta. Starting on July 1 (which is a month away) the beta version will shut down automatically every 2 hours. Then on Aug 1, the beta edition will not function at all. So it is now time to either continue the upgrades or go back to your previous stable version.
If your interested in downloading Windows 7 RC you can find it at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx?ITPID=google (http://technet NULL.microsoft NULL.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205 NULL.aspx?ITPID=google). The 7 RC will be function until March 1,2010 which gives you 9 months to play with the latest edition from Microsoft for free before having to go out and buy it.
(*The term release candidate (RC) refers to a version with potential to be a final product, ready to release unless fatal bugs (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Computer_bug) emerge. In this stage of product stabilization (read QA cycle), all product features have been designed, coded and tested through one or more Beta cycles with no known showstopper (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Showstopper)-class bug. From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle))
One thing I didn’t bring up in the original article is that if you have a Windows media center pc, then you already have the hardware needed and all you need is the software for editing. Windows media center has some editing software but it is really basic and will not cover most feature that someone who is looking at doing this will probably want.
The Pinnacle software is sold without the hardware around $39 to $49 dollars. I still would recommend for features / price / easy of use, the pinnacle software for your project.
**Also as usual, I do not have any endorsements with Pinnacle or anyone else I mention in my blog. Those who get mentioned, do so based on my own use or a customer that I support use of the product. Any and all opinions are based on experience and nothing else, your mileage may vary.
I was just asked tonight by a friend, “I have camcorder movies, how do I get them on the computer/DVD”. Well I figured this would be a good post as this isn’t the 1st time I’ve been asked that question.
For those of us who still have and use either a VCR (yes that thing that was known as video tape for us old folks) or a camcorder that uses a tape (VHS,VHS-c,Super-8 to name a few) there are a few options to get our videos to digital. They range from $29 to a couple of hundred dollars depending on how fancy you want to get. The rule here is “you get what you pay for”. If you buy something cheap, your digital copy will look really cheap and it wont be worth the time and effort you will put in. If you buy top of the line, it will be super fancy and complicated and you will probably give up before you get your project done (unless your a super geek). For the average user you have a couple of middle of the road options (between 80 and 110 dollars), of which I recommend (as I have used it), the Pinnacle Dazzle Video Creator Plus (which has a suggested retail price of $89.99 but I found it online for $79 on sale.
Dazzle video creator has a hardware and software portion to it. The hardware allows you to connect your camcorder or VCR to the unit and then connect the unit to your computer via USB. The unit is very simple to use, once you connect your VCR or camcorder to it and connect the unit to your computer, windows will recognize the unit as new hardware. After that you can use the software that comes with Dazzle (which is the Pinnacle studio) to copy the video to your pc.
Once downloaded on your pc, the same Pinnacle studio software can be used to add titles, montages, graphics or titles and to edit what you have downloaded (No one needs to see the 5 min footage of the floor as you were walking around Disney). Once you have your video completed to your liking, then the Pinnacle studio software can be used to save the file to DVD (A DVD recorder is needed on the pc to save to DVD, not that you wouldn’t already know that but you cant tell me I didn’t tell you).
You can find more information on the Pinnacle Dazzle at (LINK) http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Dazzle/Dazzle+Video+Archiving/Dazzle+Video+Creator+Plus+HD.htm (http://www NULL.pinnaclesys NULL.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Dazzle/Dazzle+Video+Archiving/Dazzle+Video+Creator+Plus+HD NULL.htm)
1) When doing any video processing (saving from tape, editing, saving to DVD), do not do anything else on the pc, the more you do, the more resources on the pc will be used for something other than your video and the more you risk having the video not look as good as it should. (So no watching YouTube or playing online games while working on this).
2) Dazzle Video Creator Plus has a function that they say will let you take the video directly from the tape to a DVD without saving on pc. This is the only feature that I haven’t gotten to work right, the movies just don’t look good that way. You can try it, but I suggest just download to pc and then burn, its a little longer process but I think (my opinion) its better.
I was recently asked by a friend if there was a way to save the audio from YouTube videos. At that moment, I couldn’t think of anything, however, the “interwebs” are an amazing thing and you would be surprised at what you can find.
I found a page called ListentoYouTube ( http://listentoyoutube.com/ (http://listentoyoutube NULL.com/) ) which is very simple to use. Just copy the link from the YouTube page your looking at, paste it on the ListentoYouTube page and select go….in a few moments you will see a link for download mp3. Just click there and you will be able to preview or download the music you were looking for.
The page for ListentoYouTube does not have any links or ways to search YouTube itself so you need to be able to find the links yourself. That is how they keep themselves out of trouble. Also since all YouTube video’s are in the FLV format, it isn’t naturally CD quality to begin with, so your audio copy will not be in CD quality.
I don’t go to YouTube looking for my music, but everyone in a while i do find something that i would like to keep the audio for (Mainly for ringtones) and this is a great way to do that. Best of all its a free service.