Windows only: If you’ve wanted to put the subtitles for a video directly into its own file for maximum compatibility across players and platforms, VirtualDub and VobSub will help you merge the two. Why would you want to embed your subtitles, when almost all popular media players—like the ever-useful VLC—will load subtitles along with the master video file? Smaller media devices like the iPhone and PSP won’t recognise subtitles, and burning your subtitles to a disc for playback in DVD players is an absolute crap shoot of compatibility. If the subtitles are part of the video file itself, they can be displayed on any device that can display the video. Simon at technology blog MakeUseOf has put together a step-by-step tutorial on using the free programs VirtualDub and VobSub to embed subtitles into video files. If you don’t already have the screen text for your video, make sure to check out Sublight (Windows) and Subdownloader (cross platform), which we’ve recommended for searching and matching subtitles. VobSub uses the VirtualDub engine the same way as the previously reviewed DiVXLand Media Subtitler, although the interface on VobSub is slightly more user friendly. The entire process outlined below involves a re-encode of the video file and is quite CPU intensive, so expect the process to be nearly real time—a two hour movie takes roughly two hours to embed with subtitles. Hit the link below for the full native subtitle lesson. Photo by WorldIslandInfo. How to Add Subtitles to a Movie or Television Series [MakeUseOf]
Windows/Mac: Foxmarks, our favourite way to keep Firefox bookmarks synced across computers, is now offered for Internet Explorer and Safari, giving anyone with multiple computers or browsers a pain-free way to keep it all together. Foxmarks offers basically the same type of background bookmark-syncing awesomeness for IE and Safari as it does for Firefox, with a few key exceptions:
No password syncing: A tough break, but not too hard to overcome by using Dropbox as a cross-platform password syncer. No syncing bookmarks to your own server: Probably not a deal-breaker for most users, but we hope it makes a showing some day soon. iPhone sync only for Mac Safari: Actually, this isn’t a feature Foxmarks even offers for Firefox, so it’s kind of a bonus.If you’re still down to try out Foxmarks in its newest forms, head to the Foxmarks downloads page and grab your appropriate installer. I lack a Mac system, so I’ll be stepping through an Internet Explorer setup below. More »
Google Apps users may be noticing an “Offline (beta)” link in the upper-right corner of their Google Calendars. That’s right—Google’s rolling out offline browser access to appointments, and, for once, Apps users get first dibs. If you see the offline link in red, hit it and, if you’ve enabled any other kind of Google offline access with Google Gears, like Offline Gmail, you’ll get a familiar experience. You’re prompted to enable offline access, and to install Gears if you haven’t already:
This shouldn’t come as news to anyone who watches their food intake, but takeaway food is still contributing way too much salt to our diet. ABC News reports on a study from World Action on Salt and Health (AWASH) which found that 75% of the food offered at popular outlets contained more than half of the maximum recommended daily allowance (four to six grams) of salt. Cutting back makes sense, and if you do indulge, don’t go mad and add extra salt to the chips. Picture from Wikimedia Commons Fast food industry pressured to cut salt levels [ABC News]
As expected, Australia has its first official Android phone with the launch today of the HTC Dream, initially available on Optus The arrival of a locally supported Android model is welcome, as is the news that Google applications won’t count towards data usage. But it’s a pity that the price plans are the usual-for-the-market mishmash of access costs plus extra phone charges and other minor conditions. In practice, this is the big-picture story for 24-month contracts: $74 with 500MB of data, $92 for 700MB data and unlimited texts, $122.95 with 1.5GB of data and free calls to any Australian number, and $132 for a similar deal with 3GB of data. Nick at Gizmodo reports that the phone isn’t locked to an Optus SIM, but since it’s not being sold as a standalone, it’s still effectively an Optus-only deal. Optus Dream
Like the look of newly released Google Latitude but creeped out by the privacy implications? This video demonstrates how to set and control your privacy settings with Latitude so your location info remains under your control.
It’s no surprise that YouTube uses a IP-based guess at your location to stop video content being accessed depending what country you’re in, but it turns out it also makes use of your account information to block other content, with sometimes pointless results. If you’re signed in to YouTube and your account settings say ‘Australia’, for instance, then attempting to access any entries on the official YouTube blog will instead redirect you to an empty page on the Australian YouTube blog. You can fix that particular problem by changing your location settings to ‘Worldwide’ (click on the word ‘Australia’ at top left, then choose ‘Worldwide’), though Google says it’s looking into a more permanent solution for this bug. More »
Windows only: File space usage application Free Disk Analyzer quickly and easily finds the largest files that are wasting space on your drive. Once installed, you can locate the largest files by selecting a drive on the left-hand side, and then choosing the Largest Files tab on the bottom, which sorts by file size regardless of the directory they are located so you can quickly identify files for deletion. Hidden behind the options panel you will find some even better settings—the ability to filter by file type, or only analyse files larger than a specified size, making this a great utility for cleaning up your drive. Free Disk Analyzer is a free download for Windows users only. For a similar utility with more eye-candy, take a look at previously mentioned DriveSpacio.
Free Disk Analyzer [via Freewaregenius]Windows only: Free system tray application Windows 7 Shortcuts brings the best Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts to your pre-Win7 desktop. It was good before, but now a few of its shortcuts even improve where Microsoft left off.
Included in the new release are several bug fixes, a working preferences dialog, and improved windows docking. Where Windows 7 uses Windows+Left/Right arrow to dock windows to the sides of your monitor, Windows 7 Shortcuts adds more fine-grained control and options for all Windows+Arrow key shortcuts. Check out the Windows 7 Shortcuts Release History for a better idea of what changes you can expect.
Windows 7 Shortcuts [Exclusive Lifehacker Download]Windows 7/Vista only: Sidebar gadget gCalTasks tracks your time with a couldn’t-be-easier start/stop timer that saves your current task directly to Google Calendar. Installing the gadget is easy—just double-click on the downloaded file to add it to your sidebar, and use the wrench icon to add in your Google account details (works with Apps too). Once you’ve authenticated you can choose which calendar you want to send your time tracking data to. (It’s probably best to create a new one to keep from cluttering your regular schedule.) At this point you can start tracking your time by simply typing what you are working on and clicking Start; when you’re done, hit Stop to save your data up to Google. At the end of the day you can check the Agenda view in Google Calendar to see a nice list of everything you worked on throughout the day. The gadget has a few issues—most noticeably it’s too wide to fit in the sidebar so you really have to use it on the desktop, but the bigger problem is the lack of automatic sync, requiring you to remember to use the Stop button to save. The benefits of being able to easily track what you are working on and save to the accessible-everywhere Google Calendar outweigh the problems—and make this worth a look for anybody looking to keep better tabs on their time. gCalTasks is a free download for Windows 7 or Vista users. If you are looking for a hands-off, completely automated solution, take a look at previously mentioned Productivity Meter or Slife instead. Do you have a preferred solution for tracking your time? Share it in the comments.
gCalTasks [via Download Squad]
