Screenr

Screenr is a free web application program that lets you create and share screenshots. You don’t need to download or install anything so you can make screenshots the minute you open the Screenr site. This screen recorder software is compatible with any computer, be it Mac, Windows or Linux-based. Screenr is designed for both business and personal use. Make awesome presentations, interesting slideshows and tutorials then share it with colleagues, friends, and family. Screenshots can be directly linked and uploaded to your Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail accounts.

Jing

Jing is a web-based software application that allows users to make screencasts and screenshots easily. This program works with any Mac or Windows-based computer. You can choose to get the free basic version or the upgraded plan for a fee ($14.95/year). Jing is a highly useful when you have to explain things or give out instructions to someone. This is a great tool for teachers, students, and businessmen. Jing makes sharing information on the Internet fun and engaging. In addition, screenshots and screencasts made from this application can be uploaded directly to your social media site and email accounts.

CamStudio

CamStudio is an open source application that is designed to let you record and capture content that is being flashed on your computer screen. It is completely free and can be used with computers that run on Windows XP or Vista. Use this for both your personal and commercial projects. With Camstudio, you can easily create great looking presentations, tutorials, and demonstration videos. This application is very user friendly and can be mastered in minutes.

Debut Video Capture

Debut Video Capture is a screen capture product of NCH Software. For now, this application only works with Windows-based computers. As well as recording from the screen, you can use both internal (webcam) and external (camcorder) video capturing devices when recording videos with this application. You can also use this program to record streaming video on your computer. Virtually any video file that can be shown in your PC screen can be recorded and captured by Debut Video Capture. This program also allows you to enhance and edit video clips. You can choose to save your work on your computer or burn it directly to a DVD. The basic version is free and is intended for personal use. For video professionals, you can choose to purchase their commercial version ($39.95).

Amazon has just entered the streaming music business with the launch of Cloud Player.  Amazon Cloud Player is a music player that lets anyone upload their music to Amazon’s servers and play them via the web or Android. 

Cloud Player comes in two types, an app for the web and an Android app counterpart. No app for the iPhone as yet.  Both players allow users to upload their music, create playlists and organize their music. And because it’s a cloud-based platform, users can access their music and settings from any compatible computer or Android device.  At the moment,  you can only purchase music directly for Amazon Cloud Player from the American Amazon.com site.  UK site isn’t supported so far. .

Users are given 5 GB of free storage, but can get 20 GB if they purchase an album through Amazon. It’s $1 per GB after that. The new Amazon Cloud Player service adds a new “Save to Amazon Cloud Drive” button for saving MP3s to the cloud, as well as an option to upload music from a hard drive to a user’s Cloud Drive.

The short screen-cam below gives a quick demonstration of Amazon Cloud Player.

Step 1. Add music to Cloud Drive

Purchase a song or album from the Amazon MP3 Store and click the Save to Amazon Cloud Drive button when your purchase is complete. Your purchase will be saved for free.

Step 2. Play your music in Cloud Player for Web

Click the Launch Amazon Cloud Player button to start listening to your purchase. Add more music from your library by clicking the Upload to Cloud Drive button from the Cloud Player screen.  Use Cloud Player to browse and search your library, create playlists, and download to your computer.

Step 3. Enjoy your music on the go with Cloud Player for Android

Install the Amazon MP3 for Android app to use Cloud Player on your Android device. Shop the full Amazon MP3 store, save your purchases to Cloud Drive, stream your Cloud Player library, and download to your device right from your Android phone or tablet.

Will Amazon Cloud Player succeed?

Is Amazon Cloud Player direct competition to subscription based services such as Spotify?  Most definitely.  But I’ll tell you the reason Amazon Cloud Player will fail.  The success of Spotify and other cloud based subscription services is because people don’t want to own music any more.  Why spend $8 on a Album you’ll only listen to for a month?  Most Web 2.0 people are perfectly happy “renting” their music when they want it.  I’m surprised that Amazon haven’t gone in this direction. Only time will tell.

[via Mashable]

Epressr is a neat web application that lets you quickly create online Flash content for your website, or rich presentation material. 

You can upload your own media assets such as video, audio, images and animations to the Empressr media library, import them directly from other sites like Flickr, Google, Yahoo and Photobucket or link to digital media from around the web.   It’s ideal for creating engaging content with charts, tables and audio.

Empressr is a Flash application so it’ll run happily in any web browser.  Simply point your web browser to Empressr, and create yourself a free account.  You can then start a new blank presentation or import an existing one.

One the left of the Empressr window are the slides,  the right contains the property and object panes, and in the centre is where you can create your content.

On the right you have access to tools to create Text, Shapes, Tables and Charts.  

The text properties are fairly limited and allow you change the font, colour and alignment. You can also create links to web pages.

The shapes object in Empressr allows you to create circles, rectangles, triangles and stars.  But that’s about the lot.

The table functionality is also fairly limited, and you’d be better using an HTML table if this is all you need in your page.

The real gem in Empressr is the Chart functionality. You can create very quick column, pie, line, area and bar charts.   It’s also really easy to edit the data by using the pop-up dialog box.  Here you can add rows and columns of data, swap the axis, and change the colours of the bars.

Empressr also allows you to add a background image, and an audio file which is ideal for voiceovers and background music.   You can also changes the transition between slides from a range of swooshes,  squeezes and stretches.   You can change all these by selecting the Master Properties from the menu bar.

If you already have a Powerpoint presentation which you want to publish, Empressr allows you to import those also. You can upload a PowerPoint file to Empressr and use its slides as pictures (One slide equals one picture) or as a fully editable presentation in Empressr (with some losses.) There is currently no support for any download functionality, but they say it’s planned in the near future.

There are several ways to share your creations. You can make a presentation public on the Empressr site, email or embed the code, or simply use the share button to grab the embed code or select the auto embed into a number of social network sites like Facebook and MySpace or even place it on your own site.

At the moment,  Empressr is still in beta stages but you’ll be able to access your presentations once Empressr launches.

There is currently no limit to the the amount of storage you have. In the near future, however, they may introduce limitations on storage and bandwidth and will roll out pricing plans for these.

Here’s an example we prepared earlier using Empressr.  We’d prefer it if the content started immediately, but I guess we can’t have everything.

Other Options for Flash Web Content

Microsoft Office Live is great for online editing of Powerpoint,  but it doesn’t support embedding of the material in a web page. No support for Google Chrome either.

Google Docs has great support for creating and editing online presentation material, and also allows you to quickly embed the material in a web page using an iFrame. Using the Spreadsheet functionality, you can publish great looking charts of any type including scatter and radial.

Zoho Show also has really good support for creating and publishing online presentation material, and also allows embedding in a web page.

Visit Empressr.com

This guide shows how to rip and download DRM-free music from Spotify.   The music we’ll download from Spotify is DRM free so you can play the tracks on your favoured MP3 players. In order to rip from Spotify you’ll need a piece of $20 software,  plus an Open (free) account with Spotify.  There is some reported success by decoding the Spotify locally cached files but the method we’ll use is to simply capture the music stream from Spotify.

Ripping from Spotify is still an area of legal contention,  but unlike downloading using PTP file sharing, ripping from Spotify can’t be detected.

The Spotify Open account provides 20 hours of free music per month enabling you to download 20 albums a month from Spotify.   With the Spotify Open account some of the latest albums are initially blocked so try checking back in a couple of weeks.  In addition,  you can sign-up for different Spotify accounts and enjoy an unlimited number of 20 hour streams. Sign up for an Open Spotify account here.

I recommend Total Recorder or Replay Music for capturing the Spotify stream.  Replay Music has the advantage of automatically detecting gaps to split the Spotify stream into different tracks. You can get Replay Music for $21,  and Total Recorder for  $18.

In addition, I recommended disabling the Windows sounds to stop these appearing on the Spotify recorded audio stream.  Do this in Windows 7 by right clicking on the desktop > Personalize > Sounds.  Under sound scheme select “No sounds“. Under Windows XP, follow this simple guide.

I’ll use Replay Music to capture the Spotify stream,  so you need to download and install a copy.  You must open the Replay program before opening Spotify and make sure Spotify is not running in the system tray. 

Open Replay Music and first check some settings by selecting Settings.

Under the Input settings, ensure Input Source is set to Audio Driver, and under Splitting check Automatically Split Tracks is selected.  Finally,  under Output, select a decent output format – MP3,  256Kbps.   Select OK.

Next, cue up the music you want to rip from Spotify, so open up Spotify and search for the album you want.  Now, go back to Replay Music, and select Start Recording, and another dialog box will appear. Enter the name of the Artist, Album, Genre, and also choose to add the tracks to iTunes or Windows Media Player.  Click OK to start the recording.

Flip back to Spotify, and ensure that the Volume level is at max.  Right click on the Album and click Play to start the Spotify stream.  By starting to play the album in this way, it ensures all the tracks are cued up in the correct order.

Sit back and listen to the Spotify stream – we’ll remove the adverts shortly.

Because this is recording from your internal sound card,  you can change the volume on your speakers without affecting the recording.  

Replay Music will try to automatically tag the downloads from Spotify.  Sometimes this works, other times it doesn’t and it depends on which album you download from Spotify.  Replay Music will also automatically split the Spotify stream when it detects a silent part.  In addition, you’ll probably see some tracks as “Not recognized”, which are the adverts played in the Spotify stream.

The folder where the Spotify files are saved is displayed in the green box at the top of Replay Music. 

How to remove the ads from the end/beginning of the track

There are certain occasions where Replay Music fails to split the advert from the Spotify stream.  If this happens, I recommend a free utility called MP3splt.  Listen to the MP3 in your favourite player and note down the time that the track should have been split.  Assuming you’ve installed MP3splt into “C:\Program Files\mp3splt”, copy the offending MP3 file to this folder.  Use the following command to split the file at the right time.

mp3splt trackwithads.mp3 0.00 MM.SS EOF

This command tells mp3splt to split the file called trackwithads.mp3 into two parts at the time MM.SS – minutes and seconds. The 0.00  denotes the beginning, and EOF the end.

On this guide I  wanted to talk about how I’ve managed to setup a media centre at home on a shoe-string budget by re-using lots of old and aging tech.  This budget media centre has been setup for years now, and has worked extremely well for music, media, music and the internet.

In terms of hardware you’ll need the following.

• Aging Laptop. An old recycled laptop from yester-year. Nothing expensive and ideally it’ll have a minimum of 1GB RAM and Pentium Mobile 1.6Mhz.  You don’t need to worry about wireless connectivity as we’ll use a better solution. It also needs to have 2 USB ports.  You can pick up a ThinkPad T41 from ebay for £100-£150.
• Microsoft MCE remote – you’ll use this as your remote to control the media PC. You can pick these up from ebay for around £10 if you don’t already have one.  I had one provided with my desktop PC,  but never used it, so it was a freebie for me.
• Microsoft MCE Keyboard – this is a wonderful media centre keyboard.  It’s fully functional, light-weight and easily slips under the sofa when not in use. It uses the remote receiver mentioned above to connect to the PC.  The touch-pointer mouse takes a bit of getting used to,  but once you get the hang of it, it’s very easy to navigate.  This isn’t an essential piece of hardware, but does make life easier when the laptop is hidden away under the TV.  You can pick one up for around £20-30.
• HomePlug Ethernet Adapters. These wonderful devices allow you to use your network over the power lines in your house.  I’ve found this much more reliable than Wireless networks.   You can pick them up for around £40 from Amazon.  You simply plug one end next to the media centre laptop, and the other end into your wireless router.   These are perfect for streaming media over the internet. You’ll also need an RJ45 network cable to connect the laptop to the HomePlug.
• VGA cable connector.  We’re going to be using the VGA port available on the back of many new TVs.  You’ll need this for hooking up your Laptop to your TV.
• Audio Cable. You should be able to use the headphone socket on the laptop if you get a cable to connect the audio to the TV – the VGA cable above will only send the video.  The most likely cable you’ll need here is a 3.5mm stereo plug to 2 phono-connectors.   But check what your TV or amplifier needs.

In terms of software,  I currently use and can highly recommend the following.  There is plenty of media centre software around,  but I really like Meedio for its simplicity and tweak-ability.

• Windows XPSP3. I love Windows XP for its stability and support for so much media software. I’ve tried Linux based Media centres,  but I always come back to this.  If you have an older copy, it’s best to reinstall it fresh onto the Laptop so you can tightly control what you install.
• Meedio.  This is the main Media Playing software we’ll use.  I’ve been using it for years with no problems. I’ve always found it fast and reliable as a media centre on an aging PC.   There is a wealth a plugins and skins so you can change it to however you like. The main codebase isn’t currently available on the website as it’s been ported to the open source MeediOS.  However, you can still download the latest and greatest version of Meedio here.  You’ll soon be able to download the open source MeediOS here.
• VLC Media Player. You can either download all of the codecs you’ll need, or simply download VLC.   This has all of the codecs you’ll need, and Meedio can be configured to use this player inside it.  I’m a huge fan of VLC and it works really well with Meedio. If your media won’t play with this,  it probably won’t play with anything.  Download it here.
• RemoteKC. I’ve talked about this before on voato.  This will allow you to use your MCE remote control as a mouse and keyboard. It’s really useful when you have to type some text into a search box.  You can download it from here.

Step 1 Install Windows XP. You don’t need to connect up any of the hardware just yet.  Install a fresh copy of Windows XP onto the laptop.  If you’ve already got a copy installed you need to switch off as many applications as you like, and clean up the laptop to make it run as fast as possible.  There is another article on voato which will help you clean up an older installation of XP.  The best tool mentioned here is TuneUp Utilities which you can use to switch off lots of the unused Windows Services. Don’t bother to install antivirus software, it only slows it down.  Always download media and software using a different machine which does have AV software installed. You’ll need to turn off all the auto updates. and security centre to stop it nagging you.   You can follow this guide for how to do that.

Step 2 Install all the software. Download and install VLC media player first. Meedio relies on the VLC software and CODECS for playing video so I’ve always found it best to install this first.  This is a great feature of Meedio and I’ve always found it to be highly reliable for playing media using VLC.   Also,  since VLC can usually play any format,   it means that Meedio too should have no trouble with many formats.   Once VLC has completed installation, you should then install  the Meedio software.

Step 3 Configure Meedio. Once Meedio finishes installation,  there are a couple of options you need to configure.  You can access the Meedio Configuration application to configure the location of your music, video and pictures.  You can also change the sequence of the menus and add additional applications to the menus.

The two main things you need to configure at this point are the VLC media player and remote control.   To configure Meedio to use VLC player, go to Full-time plug-ins and ensure VLC Plug-in is checked.

To configure the MCE remote and keyboard, you need to download and install the MyMCEE plugin. I’ve saved a copy here for you to download. To install the Plugin simply double click the downloaded files to run the plugin executable, Once installed, select Input from the main configuration screen to make sure that MyMCEE is selected as below.  This will then allow you to use your MCEE remote and keyboard with Meedio.

Step 4 Hook up the hardware. The main thing you need to consider here is where your new Media Centre laptop will be located.  Ensure you don’t hide it neatly away in a cupboard, as it will soon overheat.  Under the TV cupboard  is ideal. Plug the VGA cable into the back of the TV, and also the audio cable.  Plug in the Infra-red MCE receiver into one of the USB ports. Finally connect the home-plug to the PC using a network cable and ensure that the other home-plug is connected to your router.  You may also need to ensure that all your media is “shared” on your main PC.

Step 5 Launch Meedio and enjoy your media. If you’ve done all of the above correctly, you should be able to fire up Meedio and navigate all your media using the MCEE remote.  There are dozens of great configurations you can use with Meedio, including web browsers, BBC iPlayer, YouTube any many more.

Useful Sites
Browse All Plugins for Meedio
Meedio Forum

Meedio Mirrors
Meedio-Ultimate_1.2_Beta.part1.rar
Meedio-Ultimate_1.2_Beta.part2.rar

RemoteKC is freeware and allows you to use your Windows Media Centre remote as a mouse and keyboard. Extremely useful when you want to browse the web from your sofa. RemoteKC works inside many different media centres including MCE, Team Media Portal, Meedio and so on. RemoteKC also works directly in Windows XP, Vista, Win7 and allows you to navigate the desktop, use a web browser or control a media player.

By pressing the * button on your Media Centre remote, RemoteKC cycles through Suspend mode, Mouse mode and Keyboard mode.

In mouse mode, you can use the arrows or the number pad to move the mouse pointer. If you use the arrows, use "OK" to click. If you use the number keys, the 5 key clicks and the surrounding keys move the cursor in the direction that that key is from the 5. Use 0 to click and hold, such as for dragging a file (press 0 again to release), and use the # key to right-click.

When you are in Keyboard mode with RemoteKC,  you can input text using the remotes number buttons as a triple-tap keyboard (like you would for text messaging on a cell phone). This is ideal when all you need to do it type one word into a search box.

In Suspend mode, only the * key is active, allowing you to turn RemoteKC back on. When you are not using the remote, or when you want to use the remote with only its original functions, the program should be in suspend mode

RemoteKC is available as both an AHK file (requires AutoHotkey) and an EXE (no additional software necessary). The EXE does not require installation – just double-click RemoteKC and it will start running.

Download RemoteKC [via Autohotkey]
Download RemoteKC [via Team Media Portal]

YouTube is the defacto choice of video sharing and streaming on the web,  but the lesser-known 4 extra neat services from YouTube labs are definitely worth checking out. These are new ideas and tools provided directly from the incubator to allow you to watch YouTube on a large screen TV, reduce the download size of video, and create a party playlist.

YouTube Feather Beta 

The "Feather" project is intended to send YouTube video pages with the lowest latency possible. It achieves this by striping out many of the advanced features available to the viewer and making use of advanced web techniques for reducing the total amount of bytes downloaded by the browser. It is a work in progress and may not work for all videos. It’s currently an opt-in beta for "Feather" support on YouTube.

YouTube XL

The XL version of YouTube is ideal for watching YouTube video on a large screen monitor or TV. Using a whole bunch of JavaScript, it provides large scale buttons,  and easy access to top rated videos.  It also provides a super-sized search facilities and allows you to sign into your YouTube account.

YouTube Disco

YouTube Disco recommends similar music tracks to you, allows you to create playlists and discover new music. You tell YouTube which artists you like, and it suggests similar artists and adds them to your playlist.  Select the auto-play option to On and it automatically plays the next track off the playlist.

YouTube TestTube

TestTube is the official incubator and test bed for new YouTube ideas and creations. This is where the engineers and developers test out their latest creations which are still work in progress. There are a couple of additional tools on here including caption tube for subtitles, and an experimental HTML5 viewer.

Downloading video content from BBC iPlayer, YouTube and other video hosts, has always been problematic despite the wealth of web sites popping up which claim to help download videos.  With this tool you’ll easily be able to download video from any of the sites listed below.

StreamTransport is only 2.79MB and a tool for Windows to allow you to download video from any of the sites below.  It’s also able to browse and download video clips from video hosting websites of HTTP, RTMP, RTMPT, RTMPE, RTMPTE protocol, and these cover the overwhelming majority of major video websites.

• BBC iPlayer
• Hulu.com
• Youtube.com
• Google video
• Myspace
• Yahoo! video
• CBS
• MTV
• Megavideo
• Photobucket
• Dailymotion
• Veoh
• Demand Five

How to use…

• Simply point your web browser at the site you want to download video from,  copy and paste the URL into the address bar at the top of the app, and click start. 
• The app then inspects the stream of media from an inbuilt web browser.
• You then just have to click the Download button, and wait for the video to download.
• Once it’s completed, click the Locate button and you’ll be taken to a location containing the FLV file.  You can then play file this with any compatible player – our favourite at voato is the excellent VLC media player.

We did experience a few glitches with the download of video not completing from iPlayer and YouTube,  but worth persevering with.

Visit StreamTransport to download the latest version.

DVDShrink is a compact tool to enable you to backup DVDs very easily. It comes with “built-in decryption algorithms” which can help overcome any protection you find when copying a DVD.  DVDs are also sufficiently large that it can be difficult to copy them onto any other media.   DVDShrink has built in features to help compress the DVD content into a suitable size so it can fit on your hard disk or CDRs.   You should have no problems creating a backup of a DVD to a couple of blank CDRs.  It doesn’t get any easier than this.  Simply insert the DVD you want to backup,  select a location you want to copy the DVD to,  and away you go.  

In order to download DVDShrink you’ll need to search for it at the official DVDShrink Website and Forums.  A user guide is available here.

It has fairly advanced functionality you’d usually expect to find in other high end tools such as layers, special effects, and a variety of plug-ins maintained by the large community of supporters providing some very advance features.  Paint.NET was originally intended as a free replacement for Microsoft Paint, but has since grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. 

Special effects include blurring, sharpening, red-eye removal, distortion, noise, and embossing are included. Other powerful tools include the Magic Wand for selecting regions of similar colour, and the Clone Stamp for copying or erasing portions of an image. 

Visit Paint.NET

It also supports playing of DVD, Audio CDs, and VCDs.   So no more more hunting around for that missing codec. And with such a huge user base,  VLC is certainly one of the most stable players we’ve used for a long time.  It is probably the only media player you’ll need. It’s streaming capabilities allow you to easily stream music and video around the home,  and its resyncing features certainly help you deal with any time-lag issues.  Finally, as you would also expect,  it’s also highly skinnable.

What’s your favourite media player?

Visit VLC for the best free media player.