“Can you take a look at my computer?” is the dreaded question your clueless family member will ask when you’re home for the holidays. Let’s review some common computer complaints and the easiest solutions.
Windows only: Open-source application XBMC has received all of the attention in the media centre arena lately, but it still can’t replace your TiVo. MediaPortal can, and it just hit its official 1.0 release. MediaPortal is a Windows-only media centre application that was originally spawned as a fork of XBMC almost five years ago. Today the application has been entirely redesigned, and apart from offering much of the same functionality of other popular media centre applications, MediaPortal works with hardware TV tuners to add DVR functionality to your PC. We showed you how to roll your own DVR and media centre with MediaPortal a couple of years back, but now the full featured MediaPortal is better than ever. As an added bonus, now that MediaPortal has hit that official 1.0 release, the MP developers are starting to ramp up for MediaPortal II, which aims to bring a better design and more stable architecture to MediaPortal. MediaPortal is a free download, requires .NET 2.0 or higher. I haven’t used MediaPortal extensively since we last covered it, so if you’ve got more experience with it, let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
MediaPortal [via GeekTonic]Mac OS X only: Free, open-source application GlimmerBlocker adds a new preference pane to your System Preferences that brings system-wide ad blocking to your Mac. Just install GlimmerBlocker and let it do its work. You can add custom filters, track your ad-blocking history, and even allow your iPhone or iPod touch to use the GlimmerBlocker filters on your network. Firefox users already have the beloved Adblock Plus extension, but if you ever use a different browser or you’d prefer to manage your ad blocking through a robust preference pane, GlimmerBlocker does the trick. GlimmerBlocker is a free download, Mac OS X Leopard only.
GlimmerBlocker [via Cool OS X Apps]All platforms: A new version of the most popular media converter for Lifehacker readers, Handbrake, adds several useful features like universal input (it’s not just for DVDs any more), better video quality, and now integration with VLC to do DVD decryption. Download version 0.9.3 and see the full release notes here. [via]
Released a few weeks ago only to the developer version of Chrome, Google has now pushed out a full-on bookmark manager in the latest beta going out to users (version 0.4.154.25). Make sure you’re running the latest build (choose About Google Chrome and hit the update button), and then you can hit Ctrl+Shift+B to launch the new Bookmark manager, which isn’t as fleshed-out as Firefox 3′s but is a huge improvement over the older version. There are no tags or smart folders, but there’s a search box (of course) and a Recently Added area where you can quickly see newly-bookmarked URLs. See the rest of the updates and bug fixes in the new version here. Now that Chrome’s been out for three months and much of the hype has died down, are you still using the new browser from Google?
[via The Download Blog]YouTube has adjusted the video clip player’s size from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 (generally used for HD TV). As a result, many clips will have black bars on either side to fill in the new space.
Firefox only: If you frequently deal with bookmarks that have limited future utility, the Tark (Temporary Bookmarks) extension can set an expiration date on them. For instance, if you bookmark auction listings or some other time-dependent item on the web, only to find you forgot to clean out the temporary bookmarks you’d created, you can attach an expiration date of one week to one month for the bookmarks. When the expiration date has arrived, Tark simply drops the notation on the bookmark and converts it to a regular one. You can however designate a bookmark folder as a graveyard and all expired bookmarks will be dumped into it. Installing Tark does not affect regular bookmarking procedures, and bookmarks that you assign an expiration date can be converted to regular bookmarks at any time. Tark is a free download and works where ever Firefox does. Tark (Temporary Bookmarks) [via gHacks]
Editor: Say hey again to Keir Thomas, author of the new book Ubuntu Kung Fu, who stopped by to share some more of the best material from the book, in a follow-up to his post, Some Productive Ubuntu Kung Fu. Read on to get Thomas’ suggestions for speeding up boot times, reducing delays, getting the codecs you need, getting better DVD playback and more on your Ubuntu desktop.
Aussie hard rockers AC/DC have come up with an unusual promotion for their recent Black Ice album — an ASCII art video for the lead single “Rock N Roll Train” which is embedded in an Excel spreadsheet. The theory is that this should let people at work access the video even if their IT department has blocked video and music feeds — after all, everyone needs to be able to download spreadsheets, right? The reality is a little more complicated: Excel 2007 users will likely find that the active content features needed to access the video will be switched off by default, and if your administrator has blocked your ability to switch them back on, then there’s no Young brothers for you. But if that’s not an issue, it’s an impressive piece of work. AC/DC [via Inside Office Online]
Seems like the combination of a touch-screen interface, reliable push email (take note, Apple) and more or less unlimited browsing is making the BlackBerry Storm a pretty appealing choice. Having originally planned a December 1 launch, Vodafone (which has exclusive local rights to the smart phone) has now pushed back the on-sale date to December 5 after being flooded with “thousands” of queries. Customers who have pre-registered for the phone will be sent an email on November 27 and given the option of ordering online, with the promise that those phones will be couriered out on December 4. (But if you didn’t pre-register, tough luck — the option has now been removed.) More »
