Backing up your blog...

Has never been easier than the little gizmo bloggerbackup from those lovely people at Codeplex.

Drop by if you want an easy way to backup a blog.

How to use Pazera Video Converter...

Ok so you have a nice shiny Ipod and want to put movies onto it. Here's how...

First, get over to www.download.com and download a copy of Pazera Video to Ipod Converter.

Start Pazera Video to Ipod Converter. You'll get a box like this...

Next you need to add the movie files from wherever you have them on your hard-disk. To do this click the Add Files button in the top right of the program.

A box will appear showing you links to the folders on your computer.

Find the file you want to convert and select it.

Pazera Video to Ipod Converter will add the file to the list of files to be converted.

The next step is to tell Pazera Video to Ipod Converter what type of file you want it to be converted to. To do this click the drop down box with profile written on it at the left hand side.

In the drop down box click the settings that you wish to use (Go for the Mov - Ipod/Iphone - Best Q - MPEG4 - 1500kbps - AAC 160kbps - 640x480 option.) and select it.

Click the button that has <-Load written on it.

The Video Converter will load the settings needed.

Make sure you have the output directory pointing to the directory you want to save your converted file in otherwise Pazera is set to save the file in the original directory by clicking the Browse... Button

Find where you want to save the file and select it. As you can see above I have selected the directory G:\Ipod Videos.

Done all that? You should now have a screen that looks a bit like this.

Finally check that the program knows all the information it needs to do the job you want it to. In the image below I have highlighted the things you have to do in order for the program to complete as desired.

Check that the File/s have been added.
Check that you have the right directory to save the converted file in.
Check that the profile settings are correct.

Done all that? Good. Now all there is for you to do is for you to click the Convert button which is located to the right of the Add File button you used to add the video you want to convert.

A screen like the one below will pop up and your video will be converted.

...Note... This is not an instantaneous thing so have some patience and wait until the program tells you it is finished. You'll notice a small bit of text, just below the black part of the screen with the video information that says Done, when it is.

To finish just hit the close button and shut the program down. And that, as they say, is that. You have now converted a movie file to a file that can be uploaded to your Itunes library.

Enjoy.

*Software used in this demo...

Pazera Video to Ipod Converter.

Play by FoxSaver®

"Stop already with the Firefox shit will ya!"

I hear you yell at me from the comfort of your home and quite frankly all I have to say in reply is... Try living my life and having something worth writing about at the end of the day... This is the reason I'm doing another shambolic attempt at tech reviewing and informing you all of the latest shit i have plugged into FireFox 3.

First up is a really nice little FireFox media player plugin called Foxytunes. Foxytunes is an addon that enables you to control your media player from inside FireFox. Compatible with WinAmp, iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, Pandora, foobar2000, Windows Media Player, Xbox Media Center, Musicmatch, Quintessential, J. River, jetAudio, XMPlay, MediaMonkey, Media Player Classic, Sonique, wxMusik, Real Player, XMMS, Noatun, Juk, Amarok, Music Player Daemon, Rhythmbox and many others Foxytunes is a useful little addon if you like to listen to music while you surf the web.

Another small addon I have just installed, and am loving it, is Twittytunes. Twittytunes is a nice little addon made by the same builders responsible for Foxytunes and allows you to post the title of whatever song you are currently listening to onto your Twitter feed.

---

*Update* Twittytunes also appears to work with the blogger post editor and allows you to show whatever song you are listening to onto your blog as a signature. Like so...

----------------
Now playing: Happy Mondays - Step On
via FoxyTunes

Ain't that cool and skeezy?

So, there you are...

With a nice shiny Ipod and very little music to drop onto it. So what do you do? You give it to your friend and they drop a load of their music onto your Ipod until you can build up a half decent library of your own.

And that's when the problem starts. You've build up your own library of tunes and movies but there are some tunes of your friends that you have discovered are in your taste and want to keep them. Itunes won't allow you to rip from an ipod to your library and you are now faced with downloading the tunes from wherever you downloaded your own songs from (Everyone say Piratebay) and there goes some more of your precious time.

But worry no longer folks because there is a nice little program called Idump that takes care of this problem and enables you to rip from an Ipod to your PC with ease. Grab it now, before apple finds out and shits all over it.

Last night...

I was raving on about how impressed I was with the website drop.io and decided that I should spend an hour or two today getting into the thing and seeing what was what.

But as the saying goes, the best laid plans gang aft agley and after less than a minute I was distracted by another site and felt I should let you all know about it. Cooliris is a neat little plugin that allows you to view the media from a site in a nice 3D environment.

Particularly nice for Google Images, Picasa albums and media rich websites, Cooliris and Coolpreviews speeds up your browsing and works with Firefox, I.E, Safari, Bebo, Myspace, Facebook, Youtube and many, many, more.

During the evolution of this blog...

I've used many different sites to host pictures or other media files but I've never found one as good as Drop.io. Drop.io allows you to drag and drop many different format files from web pages or your desktop with ease.

After only five minutes I have found that Drop.io...

• Allows you to customise your drops look.
• Allows you to put a button on your blog so people can drop files to your drop.
• Works with twitter.
• Allows multiple users to drop files to the same drop.
• Has RSS feed capabilities.

You can drop by my drop (Did you see what I did there?) and see what's what by clicking here. I know I'll be playing around with it for the next week or so and recommend you do too. This thing could be huge I tells ya, HUGE!