Google Books Gets a Major Update
Google Books has made the headlines mostly with the controversy surrounding the project rather than with the product itself. But this hasn’t stopped the search giant from improving it and it has just announced a major update adding some very useful features.
“Today I’m excited to announce that we’re rolling out changes to Google Books that give readers and book lovers everywhere new ways to interact with the words and images contained within the books we’ve brought online. We’ve also made it easier for users to share previews of their favorite books on their blogs or websites,” wrote Brandon Badger, product manager for Google Books.
The most important new feature is a much simpler way of embedding the books on other websites. The Mountain View-based company now provides a small code snippet that should make sharing a book just as easy as sharing a YouTube video. Read more
Pavement P.U.M.A
Okay, forget all my previous Christmas present lists, the new one has only one item on it, a Segway/GM P.U.M.A. That stands for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility and basically it’s a sit-down Segway, for two people. Like the Segway it scoots around on two wheels, balanced by lots of chips and motion sensors; the small wheels front and back are only for use when the machine is parked. It looks like a real hoot to drive; there are videos on the Segway site and You Tube that are well worth watching. It’s electric, obviously, so it’s very green and apparently it will be capable of going 20km between charges. Read more
Firefox and enjoy HD video on YouTube
Developed for plug-in called Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox, Mozilla browser to open high-quality YouTube videos automatically changes.
Greasemonkey script to use the first plugin to be installed. Then the “YouTube HQ + 720p” script can be added at www.userscripts.org. The only high-quality YouTube video after the move is not play, you can scale the HD-Ready resolution 720p well.
Moreover, for slow computers or Internet connections can be made in low quality video playback.
Elonex One T+ £99 PC, First Impressions
You may recall me mentioning the Elonex One PC back in February, a pocket PC that would sell for the astonishingly low price of £99. Well, at that time no samples were available but I was intrigued enough to send off my £10 deposit, on the promise that it would be delivered in July. Needless to say it never arrived and not only did the delivery date slip, in the meantime Elonex produced an upgraded design, called One t+ (almost certainly a rebadged CNM Minibook), which they offered to those who placed orders, at no extra cost. – the One T+ now costs £120 online. (The original One, with its quirky ‘upside down’ design always looked a bit suspect…) To cut a long story short, involving several unanswered emails and even more delayed delivery dates, mine has just been delivered. Read more
Make YouTube YourTube
YouTube is great, well, some of it anyway, and even occasional visitors will see a video that they would like to download to watch again or send to someone else. There are lots of recording utilities on the web but this one, called Better YouTube has to be one of the easiest to use. It’s a Firefox add-on and it only takes a few seconds to install. Thereafter, if you see something you fancy simply click the ‘download this video’ link that appears just below the player screen and the download of the chosen video, as an .flv file, starts automatically. Incidentally, if you haven’t got a .flv player on your PC then I can thoroughly recommend the subject of a previous Top Tip, called VLC, which plays just about anything.
How to Watch YouTube videos on your Windows Mobile device
Do you want to watch YouTube videos from your Windows Mobile device? It turns out it’s easy.
There’s a site that’s specifically designed to enable this very facility called http://www.ytpocket.com. And yes, this works on both WM Professional (aka Pocket PC) and WM Standard (aka Smartphone), and it’s completely free.
Try it out: Read more
Welcome To Macintosh: The Documentary
Well it appears that 2008 is going to be the year of the Apple documentary. Last week I mentioned the upcoming MacHeads The Movie, and now comes Welcome To Macintosh. It looks a little less fanatical than MacHeads. There’s a trailer and teaser out, but I could only find the teaser on Youtube, so I have it posted after the jump. The trailer is the good one though, so you’ll have to follow the link on the next page to watch that sucker, but it’s worth it. Best line in the whole video, from an Apple employee: Read more
List of 15 Download and Convert Videos Sites
List of 15 videos sites easy to you to download your favourite videos and convert video file format from normal flv to the 3GP, MP3, AVI, MOV, or MP4 (iPod, PSP) formats into your computer.Just enter the videos URL you can download all your favorite videos like Youtube, Google, Metacafe, daily motion and others videos sites to your computer. Read more
Microsoft Reloads the Windows Vista Wow
Well, Microsoft has really geared up for 2008, and is reloading the Windows Vista Wow. In early 2007, as Vista hit the shelves worldwide, the Redmond company accompanied the operating system with an estimated $500 million marketing campaign. The new initiative is somewhat less expensive and focused on the YouTube video sharing service. Read more
Heads-Up on a new Wearable Camcorder
If you are going on the piste this winter or you are into mountain biking, skateboarding or off-roading then here’s a neat little widget available soon that might interest you. It’s called Vholdr and it’s a self contained, wearable, armoured, camcorder measuring just 95 x 53 x 34mm and weighing only 136 grams and it works in snow, rain, mud and just about anything else you care to chuck at it.
It records audio and video (640 x 480) onto SD memory cards (50 minutes per gigabyte), and the lithium polymer battery lasts around 2 hours. Read more
