Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon
Join Dr. Bill as he examines the wild and wacky world of the web, computers, and all things geeky! Hot Tech Tips, Tech News, and Geek Culture are examined… with plenty of good humor as well!
Today is he 50th anniversary of the Lego brick… and you know how Google likes to change it’s logo on the website to “honor” such things… well here you go!
Kinda cool! I thought it looked pretty neat, so I am sharing it. If you happen to go to Google during the day today… and who doesn’t use Google? Check it out!
Vista is bloated, it is ugly, and it’s mother dresses it funny! OK, OK, I am being silly… but there is a lot of “buzz” about a new, free program that DOES strip the bloat out of Vista, called vLite! The idea is to take all the Vista “junkware” out and strip it is it’s bare essentials.
Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones
“A free software tool that promises to strip down the Windows Vista operating system — which even some Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) officials have called “bloated” — to a minimalist state is attracting big interest on the Internet. vLite, created by developer Dino Nuhagic, automatically removes a number of non-essential Windows Vista components in order to pare the OS’s heavy footprint by half or more. vLite allows users to preselect numerous Vista features for automatic removal prior to installing the OS on their personal computers. Among them: Windows Media Player, Windows Photo Viewer, MSN Installer, Wallpapers, SlideShow, Windows Mail and other utilities. ‘It’s not just about hard disk space. There is also an increase in OS responsiveness and you don’t have to tolerate all kinds of things you don’t use,’ said Nuhagic, in an e-mail to InformationWeek explaining why he launched the project. vLite, however, isn’t for the technically timid. The software warns that the changes it imposes on Vista are ‘permanent, so be sure in your choice.’ Nuhagic said he doesn’t know exactly how many downloads vLite has seen — but a forum that asks users to submit suggestions for the next version has drawn almost 50,000 views. The emergence of tools like vLite reflect the frustrations voiced by many computer users over Vista’s bulk and resource requirements.”
Are you watching more video off the web? Spending “quality time” with YouTube? Or, are you just doing more “mindless surfing?” Apparently, a lot of you are!
With writers still striking, is the Web substituting for TV?
“According to one recent study, people are spending more time on the Internet than usual during the Hollywood TV writers’ strike. According to another survey, more than half of all the people on the Web have watched online videos. The Internet is displaying more and more of the ramifications of a TV replacement, if results of a couple of major surveys published this week are a good indication. In one of those reports, MindShare found that, due to repeat programming on TV, nearly half of respondents are spending more time than usual online during the Hollywood writers’ strike. Although this particular study didn’t delve into what the dissatisfied TV viewers do when they go online, it’s probably a good bet that many of them are viewing videos — as opposed to reading text-based Web pages — online. Another recent study did focus on what people when they go online. Like the MindShare study, the study by Burst Media was conducted as an online survey. Burst questioned people 18 years of age or older. According to Burst’s results, 72% of respondents have viewed online content, a number that’s up — although only slightly — over the 69.5% who gave the same answer in a similar study done by the company the year before. Those samples, however, were taken, during a time long before the Hollywood writers’ strike. In this year’s survey by Burst, the majority of the respondents in each age bracket said they’ve watched video content online, including 58.6% of those 65 years of age and older. Moreover, across all age segments, 58.8% viewed video on the Internet at least once a week. But online video viewing turned out to be most frequent of all among 18-to-24-year-old men, 33.7% of whom said they watch some type of online video content at least once a day. What types of video content is popular on the Web? Not that surprisingly, it sort of mirrors the kinds of materials that people watch on television. Across all age groups, news clips turned out to be the number one choice, followed by music videos; comedy videos; movie trailers/advertising; TV show video/clips; entertainment news; sports/sports news; and cooking videos.”
So… first off, I LOVE the VLC Player, and I am still using that… but if there was a second choice for me, it would be this one… the GOM Player! You may say, that isn’t exactly a rousing recommendation… well, it is and isn’t… players are personal preference, and I just like VLC Player’s features and such… but this one is really nice too and you may find it more user friendly!
“GOM Player supports most popular codecs (AVI, DAT, MPEG, DivX plus many more) with its own embedded codec system that you won’t have to look for appropriate codecs everytime you can’t play a certain video format. For those codecs that require a license that cannot be distributed, GOM will automatically lead you to an open-source codec web-site. Watch video files while you are downloading them! GOM has a registered patent for playing broken AVI files and files that are still being downloaded. So try one of your broken AVI files or one that you are downloading right now. You’ll find it amazing! GOM supports a lot of advanced features for advanced users. You can customize the player by creating your own skin, setting toggle keys, VMR modes, detailed resolution among others. It also provides features such as an overlay mixer, real-time index rebuilding for AVI files, unicode support, key frame based RW/FF and many more!”