New iOS 5 features and some current free alternatives..

Yesterday seen Apple announce the forthcoming iOS for iPhone / iPad / iPod....there are some good new features to the OS but personally I would have liked to have seen some cosmetic changes too, like the ability to change themes and lock screens etc.

With so many App's in the App Store...currently 425,000...I am sure there may be better suggestions for alternatives to some of the new features than I am going to post here...
(The new iOS 5 will not be available to download until Autumn - unless you are an Apple developer, in which case you can get it now.)

To begin, here are some new features presented in an official Apple video..

These are some current alternatives to those new features currently available...some are very good in comparison I think, while, in fairness, some are not going to be as good as the Apple iOS updates..

BioShock Infinite

If a promo video was ever going to make you buy a video game then surely its this one.


Based in 1912 the main character in the game must rescue a woman trapped aboard the collapsing "air-city".


From the games Wiki page -
"Booker DeWitt is hired by mysterious individuals and tasked to infiltrate an air-city and rescue a young woman named Elizabeth, who has been held aboard the air-city for the last twelve years. Though DeWitt finds Elizabeth easily enough, he quickly discovers that Elizabeth is central to the civil war raging in the city as each faction seeks to use Elizabeth to turn the tide of the conflict in their favor, forcing DeWitt and Elizabeth to trust each other in order to escape. To complicate matters, the pair are chased by Songbird, a large, robotic bird-like creature who had been Elizabeth's friend and warden over the last twelve years of her imprisonment. Songbird was designed by its creator to feel betrayal should Elizabeth escape, comparable to an "abusive husband" "


The game won't be available until 2012, but in the meantime we have this very mouth-watering promo video which shows gameplay footage.


This video needs to be watched in full screen for the best effect.

Microsoft shows off Windows 8 in action

The video below has been released by Microsoft, showing Windows 8 as it will be.

This new version of Windows seems to have its feet firmly planted in the tablet market, it's "apps apps apps" all the way....but, although the video doesn't show it too much, a familiar Windows desktop layout will also be present and correct, so upgrading shouldn't be too confusing.

New Google Image Search

It's slick...definitely thumbs up from here in the shed...


This is whats new :

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you put your mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”

Google Image Search

Socialnomics

It's a changing world...

A free, no-install, reliable way to block adult content being accessed on your computer

It's a question I get asked a lot from people due to the PC Repair work that I do....I have in the past recommended K-9 software as it was free and did a good job of what it was supposed to do, I still do recommend it as it has a lot of features which are controlled by a password of your choosing...i.e, if you wanted to access a site that was blocked by the software, you can over-ride it temporarily with your password.
Open DNS also has a good free service called 'FamilyShield', and in their case no software at all has to be installed, just add a couple of DNS server numbers to your network adapters properties...if that sounds a little daunting then this video guides you through it....or read a guide and more info *here*
It should be noted though, that although the Open DNS solution is simple, someone can very easily remove the DNS entries with sufficent knowledge.


The I.P's to be added to your DNS {for Open DNS FamilyShield} are -

208.67.222.123
208.67.220.123







Firefox's New Feature - 'Tab Candy'

Tabs are a great addition to browsers, it's not that long ago since browsers didn't have tabs and you would have multiple windows open of Internet Explorer or Netscape or whatever browser you had at the time.
A problem that Firefox is going to try to address in the next version of it's browser is how confusing having a lot of tabs open can be...
The new feature, shown in the video below, is still in testing mode...and for those that would like to get a hand's-on play with it, or those that like to download early versions of future browsers, you can download it *here*


An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

TubeChop : Cut to the Interesting part of any YouTube video..

Following on from the "Free Video Cutter" post, this neat and simple online tool makes it easy to take, say, the interesting two or three minute part of an eight or nine minute YouTube video and share it on forums, blogs or email...and you don’t even have to go to YouTube for searching videos and their urls. Just put your keywords in TubeChop seach engine and get the videos. Once you have the video, just use the left black bar and right black bar to select the time frame which you want to chop. Left black bar is for staring time and right black bar is for the ending time of video. Move it around and fix it.
When your video gets chopped, you can embed the chopped video to blog/website/forum (forum rules permitting) with the supplied code.


go to TubeChop *here*

Download Your Facebook Photo Albums

Facebook photos can accumulate in a lot of different way, your own uploads, photos you added from other sites {like a funny / interesting picture} or people have tagged you in photos....saving those photos to your hard drive can be a bit long winded, especially if you are like me and have hundreds of photos..
This software simplifies the task...
Fotobounce – it’s a free Windows-only utility that helps you manage photos in your Facebook (and Flickr) accounts right from the desktop....You can download photos, upload new ones or simply view your existing photo albums as a slideshow without downloading them locally.


download *here*

Free Video Cutter

It's small, basic and free....and it does what it says on the tin..


It will accept any video you may have and edit it down to the clips or scenes that you need....it works with all the major formats, including flash, so ideal for cropping any videos you download from youtube or the like {use keepvid.com for easy downloading from youtube, dailymotion, etc}


download *here*

How to Skip Trailers and Ads on DVD's...

It should be noted that there are some DVD players that you have to press  STOP –> STOP –> STOP –> PLAY.


On computers, taking Windows Media Player as an example, press STOP then PLAY on each section until you get to the main title.

Remember the original default wallpaper for Windows XP ?

Well, it was a photograph of a real landscape in Sonoma County, California, taken by photographer Charles O’Rear. 
Here's the xp wallpaper...

And here is the same place photographed at different times...

DVDStyler

Sometimes it can be hasstle making a DVD, especially if you are trying to make one from different sources or file formats...well, DVDStyler couldnt make it much simpler...it can take all the major video formats { including AVI, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGG, and WMV, and codecs like MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, Xvid, MP2, MP3, and AC-3 } and make a DVD disc {drag and drop} and without any hasstle...

It also makes grabbing you favourite collection of youtube videos {download them from keepvid.com as mp4 files} and make a DVD for tv playback easily.

download *here*

*note - try not to install the toolbar during installation.

Microsoft Office Live - Free Web Version of Microsoft Office

This is a free version of Microsoft Office {Web-based versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote}, it can only be used through your web browser and is stripped down compared to the desktop suite, but it's free.
Word documents are saved in docx format only, not a choice of doc and docx {docx being the newer version of saved word files}
...again, it's free...and for casual users may be the very thing to suit them.....you also get a whopping 25gb of online folder space for your files....meaning you can access your 'office' and 'office files' on any computer, anywhere, at any time..


more *here*

Pale Moon Browser

This is a Firefox-based web browser, but what the makers have done is to strip away anything they can from Firefox which may have an effect on performance, such as - automatic updates to the browser, crash reporting, accessibility features...but the support for Firefox add-on's remain.


'Pale Moon' claims to be up to 25% quicker and lighter than Firefox and is especially suitable to lower-powered computers or slower internet connections.


Download and more info *here*

The future of car parking..

Next time I bring the Merc to Budapest I'm going here to park it...

Kidzui - safe and fun internet for kids..

This is something i tell a lot of people with young kids about...a fantastic little piece of software, our youngest child uses it and loves it..
Basically it is a browser, but the content is designed for young children...i would say under 8's...i imagine 3-4 year old's will especially like it.
..it has ton's of flash games, childrens websites, and specially chosen youtube videos...

The browser can be 'locked' so you can walk away knowing the child can't minimize the browser and go messing with other files on the pc.
..if you have a child between 2-8 i'd highly recommend this...like i say, we have had it on our house pc for a good while now..
..there may be a short registration process, but this only has to be done once...

free download from here -

http://www.kidzui.com/

National Geographic Photography Site: desktop wallpaper collection..

For those that have seen the National Geographic Photography site then they don't need telling that they feature some of the most impressive high quality photographs to be found on the net. What folks may not know is that the site has a special 'wallpaper' section..

..there are in fact two different National Geographic URLs with two different wallpaper sections, here and here.

So...What Is Google TV?

This video introduction by Google explains it best...

It's due to be released in 2011, and as can been seen in the video, it will combine freeview channels with the best video content on the web...all delivered to our existing tv's through a new add-on box...

YouTube 'Leanback' - Videos for TVs

YouTube's just added a new Leanback format that's supposed to be perfect for watching videos on a large screen. It loads your subscriptions and videos from your friends in fullscreen format with total keyboard control.
Not over-impressed here in the shed so far, but it's early days and it'll be developed on as time goes on...

http://www.youtube.com/leanback