Computers and internet

6 January 2006

Winamp – free music/video software

Jim Computers and internet, Free software reviews 4

Time for another free software review! This is one of those programs that I consider almost essential. It’s a program that is running on our computer almost every day. And yet, as I was writing this post, I discovered more things it could do that I didn’t even know about!I realize most of you already know about Winamp. After all, the Winamp website is listed by Alexa as the 708th most popular site on the net – that’s huge in internet terms. But for those of you who still don’t know about it, or haven’t thought about it in a while, it’s time to give it a chance.

Essentially, Winamp is a program that allows you to watch video and listen to audio, much like Windows Media Player. Created by Justin Frankel many years ago (and since developed by many), the program does what it does with style. You can listen to CDs, to MP3s, even to streaming audio off the internet (and you can even do it on a dial-up connection in many cases). You can listen in sequential order, or random order, or make your own order. You can watch video full screen or in a little box. You can watch pretty flashing lights while the music plays.

Winamp can be just a small bar on the top of your screen
One of Winamps fine features is its ability to use skins (changing the look of the player, and even how it functions) and plugins (basically to add functions). There are many skins based around movies, products, or just aesthetic appeal. You can always change the colour to match your desktop. And the plugins are endless. I found a great one recently. Since we’re often playing music in the house, we’ve found ourselves rushing for the volume control when the phone rings. No problem – I found a plugin that automatically turns the volume down when someone calls. How cool is that?Let’s see, what else? Well, there are many radio stations available from all over the world that you can listen to on Winamp (many listed on Shoutcast.com, but also listed within the player). That goes for video streams too. You can also listen to AOL radio on Winamp, among other things.

I set up a little menu on the bottom of my screen with playlists of the music I have on my computer. With a couple of clicks I can play all the music I have by one artist, or play a certain theme, or just play kids music. This is the beauty of Winamp playlists.

A pay-for version, which I haven’t tried, also allows you to convert music into MP3 format.

That’s just a hint of what you can do with Winamp. Perhaps its biggest problem is that there is just so much you can do with it – you’ll never finish checking out all the features, plugins and skins. But in the mean time, just download it, stick in a CD, and press play. You can learn from there.

21 December 2005

If you like animals…

Jim Computers and internet, Family, Just for fun 0

We just enjoyed a visit from Grandpa and Grandma Cottrill. We celebrated an early Christmas, and tonight we even went for a swim.

Grandma Cottrill is an animal lover, so here are a few links in her honour. These are the kind of links you’re likely to see in our Random Link of the Moment (as soon on our home page and other pages too). But this time, I thought I’d introduce a few in my blog.

First, here’s a fairly new blog site that is rapidly becoming very popular on the net – check out Cute Overload 😉 for really cute animal pictures – yikes!

Next, check out the video of this rather intelligent parrot – Einstein, as seen on Animal Planet.

Make your own weird and wonderful animals at SwitchZoo.

Finally, some of my favourite animal photos from our own photo album –

13 December 2005

2006 Evangelical Blog Awards

Jim Computers and internet, Missions 0

This past February I was first introduced to some missionary blogs through the Evangelical Blog Awards. Lo and behold, the awards are going to be given out yet again – and you can have input, if you act now!

There are 21 categories (if I counted right!), including Best Evangelical Missionary Blog, Best Evangelical Youth Pastor Blog, Best Evangelical Teen Blog, Best Overall Evangelical Blog, and Best Evangelical Family Life Blog. Nominations are open until the 5th of January – but don’t wait – go nominate somebody now! You don’t need to nominate for every category.

Of course you’re welcome to nominate this blog 😉 but there are plenty of better blogs that deserve a nomination. If you’re looking for missionary blogs, head over the Missionary-Blogs.com and nominate someone from the list. This contest was a great way for people to learn about new blogs that otherwise they would miss. If the contest can generate lots of interest this year, it may be back in 2007. But it’s all up to you! Go and nominate someone.

All you have to do is register for the forum and post your nominations [Link no longer available]. It’s that easy. Don’t wait until January!

25 November 2005

Canadians on the net

Jim Computers and internet 2

Guess what? Almost 1 billion people are now online. It’s estimated that it will go over a billion by the end of the year.

Perhaps not surprisingly, almost 1/4 of those are in North America. Of course wealth has something to do with it, but probably also cheap local calling, which was a huge stumbling block in other parts of the world for a long time.

But really now, what country is the most connected? I’ll tell you – Canada. With almost 80% of us online, we beat out the USA and Japan. And in our use of broadband we beat Japan and the USA (in that order) by 1.6 kilometers. And hey, it’s not surprising – Canada is also the home of the Blackberry (Waterloo, Ontario, to be exact). And one of the most successful internet companies was started in Montreal. If I’m not mistaken, Calgary is one of the most connected cities in the world (we have to have good technology here so that we can access our email on our way out to the mountains.) Wireless internet usage is expected to more than double over the next year.

Since we’re into stats, lets keep talking. Do you want to know what Canadians are doing online? I’ll tell you that too.

Almost all are sending email. Hey, we’re a social people

Most are checking the weather (it’s unpredictable around here, you know)

A little over half are looking for jobs

A little over half are also doing banking and comparison shopping

About half are instant messaging

I like my job, and I don’t have broadband, so I’m bringing down the stats in those areas. Other than that, I fit the profile. Thanks for these stats go to the Ipsos-Reid folks and Internet World Stats. By the way – about 1/4 of Canadians are drinking a coffee beverage while using the internet.

12 November 2005

Something different around here…

Jim Computers and internet 2

Yes, things are looking a little different around here! I decided to finally try out some different blogging software. Greymatter served us well for two years, but the software hasn’t been updated for a loooong time, and suffice to say blogs have changed a lot.

So, on a whim I transferred our blog over to WordPress. Like Greymatter, WordPress is free, and we all like free. It’s easy to change the look and feel, add interesting features, and keep it updated.

Right away you’ll notice a few new features. In the side bar there, you’ll see a list of recent posts that have been commented on, by nice people like you. You’ll see upcoming events, archives that are much easier to access than before, and even a weather report. Of course I’ve imported the list of countries that visitors to Finding direction come from.

So, let us know what you think and we’ll see how it goes. I was going to leave the blog alone until the day when I updated the whole site (whenever that day may be), but WordPress only took a few minutes to set up, so they sucked me in. 🙂

You will notice that every entry doesn’t yet have a category (beyond Misc). That didn’t import, so I have to change them manually, which may take time. Recent posts are all in categories.

29 September 2005

CoolRuler [free software review]

Jim Computers and internet, Free software reviews 0

CoolRuler is one of those little programs that every once in a while makes something a whole lot easier. The concept is quite simple, really. CoolRuler is a little ruler that appears on your screen. It can be horizontal or vertical. It can measure in centimeters, inches, pixels, or a custom measurement. You can move it around the screen and put little marks on it just where you want them.

There are all kinds of reasons why you might want to use something like this. If you’re working with graphics online or emailing to a friend, you might want to measure how big the picture should be. If you’re writing an academic paper, you might want to see just how big those margins really are. Anything that’s going to stay on your computer, or be printed out, might need to be measured with CoolRuler.

Sure, you may not want it now, but the day will come when you’ll remember what I said and go looking for it. So why not just get it now? It’s a tiny program available from FabSoft. Click here to go to the CoolRuler download page [edit: looks like the link is no longer available. Sorry! Contact me if you’re interested in Cool Ruler.].

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