VLC Media Player is a free opensource media player which can do a few things which make it a great all around video manager including:
- Playing nearly all video types with no need to download additional codecs.
- Backing up (or ripping) DVDs to an electronic format you can save on a hard drive
- Convert video to ipod video format
See Lifehacker’s post on mastering your digital media with VLC for more details.
One of my hard drives recently crashed and I lost my mp3 music library, however my music was still on my iPod. After doing some research, I found Music Rescue, software that rebuilds your music from your iPod including ratings and playlists. While the software is free, you’ll need to pay around $20 to avoid having to click a prompt for every 50 songs that are transferred. I purchased the software and it worked very well.
I have always been interested in how people decide who they will vote for. Pick your Candidate is a web site where you enter your position on various issues (e.g. abortion) and the importance of each issue to you. The site compares your responses to the candidates’ official positions (from 2decide.com) and lists the candidates in order of how similar their views are to yours. Try the site to see which candidate shares your views.
Flickr has always been a great way for me to back up my digital photos. My hard drive crashed recently, so I used Flickrdown to download multiple sets from flickr at full resolution instead of downloading each picture individually. Flickrdown is free windows software that creates a folder for each album and uses picture titles as filenames.
One of my favorite things about living in NYC is that so much is accessible without the need to get in a car. Walk Score is a free web tool that calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. on google maps.My place scores 94 out of 100, how about yours?
If you’re looking for a new place to live, walkability is something to consider. Here’s more information on walkability and a list of walkable communities in the US.
I have several weddings coming up, and needed some help finding gifts. I found the wedding channel.com’s Find a Registry feature, and it worked for every wedding.
In my line of work, I need to communicate (sometimes) complicated ideas in a way that people can easily understand. The Periodic Table of Visualization is a great reference for different ways to represent information. Warning, the page may take a while to load up, when you mouse over each element an image will appear.
I came across this top 12 list of Google Search tips and here are my favorites.
Previously Google Cheat Sheet
I just tested this great media converter site Media Convert out by converting a video from youtube to an MP3 so I could have the song on my ipod. It worked well (select google video as the filetype) and it’s free. It works on document, archive (zip), image, sound (ringtone), and video file types.
Note this link has been posted in the links I digg section for a few weeks.
Digg is a user driven social content website where all content is supplied by users submitting their favorite links. I have a bookmarklet which let’s me submit my favorites with 3 clicks… so I tend to digg links more than I post them here. So next time you visit erikjaeger.com and you already read the most recent post, check Links I Digg under Recommended Sites.
Virtual NES is a directory of hundreds of old NES games that you can play in your internet browser with no need to download anything. If you can’t get used to using the keyboard to play, you can buy a USB version of the original Nintendo controller at Retrozone. Pictured here is Metroid, one of my favorites.
I spend quite a bit of time on a plane and while music has its place, sometimes I need some mental stimulation. Productive Strategies: Free Academic Podcasts is a repository of free podcasts from various universities on various topics.
A few of my photos (including this one of Paul Revere in Boston) were selected to be part of Schmap city guides. Schmap is free PC software (no spyware) that incorporates Flickr photos and other dynamic content into easy to use guides of major cities around the world. I’ve checked out a few cities and the content has been pretty good.
Flickr-Storm is a picture search tool that searches the tags of photos people have on flickr and keeps a history of the pictures that you click on. Flickr Leech is another fine image search tool which fills your screen with thumbnails and allows you to be more specific to Flickr user groups, and pools. They are both very fast and you can easily get access to hi resolution versions of the image. I use these tools when planning vacations, to see pictures of potential places to visit.
workFRIENDLY is a web site that reformats any web page to look like Microsoft Word by removing photos, reformatting the text, and adding a Word Header. It’s great for surfing the web at work.