I saw this video a while back and its just popped up again in the good old rss but I still think its brilliant. The EEE Pc is charming me over evermore with its ability to run xp now and this touchscreen mod which would mean not having to use the tiny little touchpad. I was also looking into an oqo umpc but the eee with the touchscreen mod is cheaper and newer than the oqo model 1. Has anyone had any experiences with the EEE Pc – is it really that usable?

Update:- I’ve just noticed that the iPlayer Beta is now available here and its looking amazing and the stuff below still applies, but to be honest I don’t want to update it all.

I’ve just heard through the grapevine of rss that the iPlayer will be getting a version 2.0 in beta form very soon which will run alongside the normal version for a while and then replace it eventually. The new version attends to one main feature - radio. The BBC Radio ‘Listen Again’ or iPlayer radio will be fused with the iPlayer potentially doubling iPlayer visitor numbers apparently. Other changes include:

•  Radio fused with iPlayer
• ‘Last Played’ - shows your most recently played items for you to go back to and continue watching if you haven’t finished it.
• Full Schedule showing all of the schedule for the BBC (presumably) which then indicates what is available on iPlayer
• ‘Yesterday on TV’ - pretty self explanatory, basically for those people wanting to see what they missed last night and catch up.
• Rss Feeds - not sure why you’d want these, perhaps so you cant watch something as soon as its available or to keep in touch with a particular program
• Bigger playback window for watching in normal mode
• Better radio quality - presumably higher bit rates

Source

As some people may know Firefox is just the best browser on earth and right now they are trying to get a world record – the most downloads in one day so therefore please help set the record!
So far there have been 1,904,770 downloads and it runs until 6pm tomorrow (18/06/08).
On top of that Firefox 3 is just brilliant, adding extra features on top of the old versions and a faster speed apparently.
Download it here:
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord

And for my next suggestion, I recommend ‘Synergy’, its brilliant – its able to connect two networked computers and have them both be controlled by the keyboard and mouse of one of them – the server. It even works across platforms – Windows, Mac and Linux.
Currently I have it on my desktop and laptop but it’s also recommended to have it in a home cinema setup so a laptop can control the media centre. It’s a bit hard to set up and threw back a few errors but eventually its working. You can get that here

First of, another apology – This time I think I’ll blame exams again, gladly my last one was on Friday so they’re all over and I also started a new job today so that should get back some sort of schedule which will be good, so I’m sorry, I apologise!

Now, onto the tech!
The biggest thing I’ve seen recently has been the new iPhone that of course is a bigger deal in the US than it is here but I’m thinking the new one will be a big success here – the reason? – That would of course be the price. The new pricing scheme on the o2 website is:
8GB = free on the £45 and £75 tariffs, £99 on the £35 and £30 tariffs.
16GB = free on the £75 tariff. £59 on the £45 tariff and £159 on the £30 and £35 tariffs.
On top of this I believe its going to be on pay as you go which will probably make sales jump through the roof (ebayers me thinks).

And finally – What I’m looking at
I really want a new gadget however I cannot afford one and I need to save money to learn to drive, so instead, I shall write about it. I’m liking the look of the OQO Model 01 -  its like a Nokia Internet tablet but runs a full version of xp and has a digitiser on the screen and a qwerty keypad under the screen which slides out, in all it just looks awesome and because it’s a few years old its only around £300 which is doable for me, if I hold off on all other spending – which I wont I have to wait to get a new gadget.

Has anyone got something like this? - I see it to be a bit like a EEE Pc because its small but its a bit more expensive and better - touch screen already there (rather than having to add it) and nice big storage and stuff.

A little while ago I made this blog - here

And I can confirm that I have managed to make it! - demonstrated below, I had to have the lights off as it works by finding fingers locations based on light and the way it shows when touching the glass. The video is low quality as it was filmed on my normal camera (Kodak V1003) because my camcorder was in the box being used for the whole thingymabob.

Thanks to the creater at: http://ssandler.wordpress.com/mtmini/

To start off I’m going to apologise for not being around for a while – I’ve been busy leaving school, not in the naughty truant way but in the normal it was my last week of school way and me being the busy person I am was dealing with multiple things, yearbook, a playground project I’m working on (redesigning one of the local playgrounds) and sorting out my last ‘Silver Surfers’ lesson (teaching local OAP’s how to use computers) but that should mean that now I’m able to have a bit more time … oh wait – no, I still have exams, silly me
Onto the blog - Cryptic title, not so cryptic Blog – my question is, how are tutorial books and dvd’s still around when the internet is just full of free tutorials, videos and guides that do a perfectly good job (If not better) of showing people how to do stuff – including the tutorial section of IT Pro!
I’ve recently got into After Effects and Photoshop and I don’t think I’d ever dream of going out and buying a guide book like ‘Photoshop for dummies’ just because of the multiple sites dedicated to the purpose offering step by step tutorials often on more tasks than a book, they also have huge forums of suggestions and help for specific problems. Along with that there are some fantastic videos taking you through every step you need to do – in real time, rather than reading a little book and looking at small black and white pictures.

The website that got me into it was http://www.videocopilot.net - this guy is brilliant and has made loads of tutorials guiding you through the basics of After Effects through to the expert uses of the program as well as plug ins and he has even developed packages of extras that can be bought – which are a much better use of the money that you’d normally spend on tutorial books because they actually give you something in return, along with all that you can download the project files which are used in the tutorials (I know you can sometimes get them with books but come on – these are free!)

Basically – I think that the tutorial book is going to be a dying trend unless something changes and for some reason the internet is turned off or something.

When I first saw this I thought that it wouldn’t be that easy to make or that it would require some parts which I just wouldn’t have but the reality is that I am SO going to be able to make it and hopefully, it will actually work.
It looks cool just from the perspective of being able to do what we’ve seen in those Youtube videos of multitouch screens for ages.
I would highly recommend visiting here and checking out the video below, I will be trying to make it and will hopefully succeed. Wish me luck!

Heres something entertaining to look at whilst perusing the internet. I was just editing a photo in Photoshop for a friend (taking out an ex) when I remembered an article I read a while ago about someone who had used Photoshop to recreate an image of the cartoon – Jessica Rabbit in order to make her look like a real person. The person used source images mainly of Angelina Jolie and just done an amazing job in making it look realistic especially the hair which I find incredible considering I never find it easy to work with.

Anyway, theres also a video of the whole process and a high resolution image too on ‘Pixeloo’:

http://pixeloo.blogspot.com/2008/04/jessica-rabbit-untooned.html

http://pixeloo.blogspot.com/2008/04/jessica-rabbit-process.html

I am a software addict – I love what software can do, the different tasks that it can perform and the completly wide array of those available, for photo editing there are loads, from the free Gimp and Paint.net to the Fireworks and Photoshop, they are all brilliant and so adaptable, with the plug-ins available for Photoshop its difficult to imagine what it can’t do in the field of photo editing.
Video editing is just the same with the preinstalled – Windows Movie Maker to the Sony Vegas Pro, Cyberlink Powerdirector, MAGIX Movie Edit Pro and finally Adobe After Effects (and Final Cut Pro). I’ve recently been following through loads of the tutorials done by a guy called ‘Andrew Kramer’ on http://www.videocopilot.net/ and I must say that they are brilliant, I’ve found them to be the first place for anyone to look to learn Adobe After Effects – they are fantastic and cover loads of different things related to applying effects to footage but also creating videos without pre-existing footage.
I do of course use web browsers the most followed closely by office software but I’ve also found that I’m using more and more pieces of software – video editing, photo editing, web design, flash animation and so on – there is just an endless supply of time consuming activities which can be made fun. Sure they can also be used in companies whereby I dare say they’d become less fun to use but I find them very amusing to use.

So – anyone got any recommendations for software for me to get addicted to?

Facebook is becoming a bit of a bigger deal than Myspace did from what I can tell, its talked about a bit more and seems to have taken off in a bigger way, considering that – do you use it at work? – are you allowed to use it at work?

Some places I know have banned it, and there has been some controversy to allowing access based on other workers seeing what you’ve been saying about them and so on for example if another worker see’s your status update as ‘working with X and they are just getting annoying’ then bosses won’t be too happy when rifts form.

Going back to what Facebook is – I think it’s amazing, I don’t use it as much as I could but I do think that its premise and uses are brilliant in terms of what applications are available and what people are developing for it, they are rather clever and whilst its slightly unclear what ‘web 2.0’ really is, I think that Facebook counts – it has user contributed material, allows masses of communication and performs many functions (most of them useless of course but who cares?)

What does everyone think of Facebook then? (I’m keeping on the user contribution bandwagon – it will pick up one day)