Software


Connect Facebook Chat With Pidgin

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Link Facebook chat to Pidgin

First there was IRC, followed by services such as MSN Messenger or AIM and now everyone and their semi-literate dog are using Facebook Chat. Some would say that contacting your friends over the internet has never been easier, but personally I view FC (that’s right, I’m acronyming it up, I think living with an accountant may be rubbing off on me) to be a step in the wrong direction.

Now don’t get me wrong, Facebook was the perfect platform to build a new system on, it’s got a much higher adoption rate than anything else before, it just doesn’t work as I’d like. The problem? Who wants to leave a browser with Facebook open all the time, the chat window system of yesteryear was so much better. Now I’m sure there’re going to be people who disagree with me (when will people realise that I’m always right…), but for those who feel the same as me there is an alternative.

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Best Way To Sync Your Tweets To Facebook

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

If you use Facebook and Twitter, at some point or other you’ve probably wondered if you can link your status between the two sites. A cheeky Google search will have shown you a veritable plethora of ways to do this, but I found them all to be very underwhelming.

The problem is that your status in Facebook isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) used in the same way as your Twitter. I ended up wishing that I could select specific Tweets to go as my Facebook status, instead of blindly setting a whole load of meaningless @replies and retweets.

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Stream Your Whole Video Library To Your Phone, Over WiFi Or 3G!

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Air Video iPhone app

Well hello there, Internet! How are you? Why, it’s been a while now hasn’t it? Now now, there’ll be time for catch-up’s later; right now we have to get down to the good stuff. So a few days ago I was browsing through the App Store on my iPhone looking for something I’ve been trying to find for a while: a decent application to allow me to stream video that already exists within my home network. I happened upon a superb app, one which any self-respecting iPhone owner & media geek should certainly go check out – after reading this brief overview, of course! It’s name is Air Video, and I’ll tell you all about it just past the ‘Read More’ link. Come join me, won’t you?

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Firmware 4.5 Released For Zune

Monday, April 5th, 2010

ZuneHDSooner than expected Microsoft have released the latest upgrade for the Zune. If you speak incorrectly (ie American) you’ll notice that the date’s 4/5, coincidence..?

Yeah probably.

Anyway, anyone with a Zune should now be able to use Smart DJ, get personal music recommendations, browse the market place through your TV and (with much trumpeting and stamping around) natively play an expanded range of video formats including DivX. Take that majority of the world.

Installation went swimmingly for me in the UK, everything was boringly simple and all seems to work well. However Zune guru IceInPerson has mentioned people having problems with Smart DJ, so watch out.

Nothing much else to report… go get it already.

Oh almost forgot, they’ve also announced the new 64GB version of the HD, fantastic if you watch a lot of films and for making me feel slightly inferior with my mere 32GB.

Let me know what you think below, I’m off to laugh at Apple users for having to change the format of all their videos.


5 Desktop Applications You Didn't Know About, But Need

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Open-Source Logo

A lot of the time, when people buy a new PC/laptop, they just don’t know what software to install on it. There are a few key bits of software that everyone should have, that tend to make life a lot easier – in fact, many seasoned PC users won’t have even come across these, but I’m going to share some of the best bits and pieces with you today. I’d say that a decent amount of the best desktop applications available today are ‘open source’, meaning that instead of being developed entirely by one self-contained company, the software is open and available for anyone to work on and contribute to. It’s both a cool philosophy, and conducive to the production of very user-friendly and user-orientated software. So here are a few of my favourites:
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Use FlashHacker To Keep Your Video's Full Screen On Your Second Monitor Whilst You Work

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Anyone who uses multiple monitors has tried to have a video running in one full screen whilst working in the other. Needless to say it doesn’t work, which made me sad. Fortunately help is at hand in the shape of FlashHacker. It’s all very simple, download, close all of your browser windows, run, then click on Hack My Flash. That’s it, you should now be able to watch video on a monitor in full screen whilst working in the other – simples!

(For whatever reason I had to hack, unhack then re-hack my Flash to get this working… No idea why but if it’s not working certainly something to try… copy blindly! (I apologise, that’s a bit of an ‘in’ joke). Anyway, just a little something for my fellow multiple monitor users out there, hope it’s useful.)

Via – Lifehacker (A fantastic site – if you haven’t it’s well worth a read!)