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)

TV’s -  a forefront in entertainment media for many families all over the world, they have been upgraded and updated in size and functionality with more and more channels being added (even rubbish ones! – hard to believe I know!) bigger screens, smaller components, new plasma and LCD technology, Freeview, Sky, Cable, Hard disk recorders, and then of course HD!

Now then, Here’s a question for you to think about (and answer if you so wish in comments) – Where are they heading next? – are they going to get rid of TV’s and replace them with projectors, will we see convergence in TVs and PCs? Are they going to give us more on demand programs?, Interactive programs? – are they the future?

Question is … What do YOU think?

(how’s that for interactivity?)

And lastly, I’m glad to inform you all that my laptop after having Vista SP1 installed last week is still surviving! – I haven’t noticed any difference at all in terms of speed – which is what I was hoping for when transferring files but oh well, maybe it’ll make my laptop more secure and stuff so sorry to disappoint those who wanted it to fail – after saying this I have touched wood, set a recovery checkpoint and of course backed up backed up backed up :)!