Category Archives: Software Review

Software Review: Perian, a Swiss-Army Knife for Video

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During the February 1st, 2010 Mac Geek Gab Podcast cool stuff found segment, John and Dave talked about Perian.  Perian is the self proclaimed Swiss-Army Knife for Quick Time.  As the site states:

“Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.”

As a OS X user I get emails from family members with video, that most often will not play in Quick Time, until no. Previously I had been using the plugin, Flip4Mac, but a small number of video files still failed to play.  After installing Perian, many file formats became available via Quick Time. The best part about Perian is that it is free and is compatible with Quick Time and Quick Time X.

Software Review: Evom, a VisualHub Replacement?

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One of my all time favorite OS X third party applications was Techspansion’s VisualHub.

It was able to covert a video file into many different file formats. However, the developer decided to call it quits back in 2008 and though the utility is still useable there has not been an update since that time.

Finally, after a few years a candidate to replace VisualHub has emerged.

The fine folks over at The Little App Factory have developed Evom. Best of all it is free! Evom is able to convert video files into several file formats including Apple TV, iPod, HTML5, YouTube, Flash, AVI and many more. Like many people, if you have lost the ability to make VisualHub work or are new to OS X, please give Evom a try.

Testing Twitter Tools WordPress Plug-In

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I was looking for a way to automatically update my twitter feed with blog posts.  I came across this review that talked about using programs such as RSS to Twitter and Twitter Feed, but they require my username and password.  I just wasn’t willing to give that information to anyone.  Then I continued to read and the solution presented itself:

“If you have self hosted WordPress blog, you can simply use Alex King’s Twitter Tools plug-in to Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post”

The plug-in from Alex King is exactly what I was looking for and after a few minor tweaks, success. You can follow me on twitter JT_Ray.

A New Touch

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So I did it, I bought my second iPod.  Ariving this past Monday was a 8 GB iPod Touch.  This device is just the iPhone without the phone.  Of course having access via the 3G network or Edge would be nice for surfing the internet and taking advantage of the apps that require the internet.  It works great on my home network wirelessly.  My experience with Safari for the iPod Touch was what I hoped the LG Voyager could have been.  Everything worked great from the first time that I plugged it in.  Syncing with iTunes was flawless.   The free apps I have downloaded all work well and are ton of fun. Being able to accessing email, updating iCal on the run is great. Video play back much better than my 5 Gen iPod.

There are some things that make it hard to replace my aforementioned 5th Gen. With a 8 GB of capacity it makes it difficult to add my all of my music to one device. Yes I could have bought the 32 GB version, but who has that kind of money. The screen of course get pretty dirty, but hey it is an iPod Touch. Battery life is a bit weird. I have had to charge it each day I have had it. I am not sure if it is the wireless, video playback or brightness of the screen. After reading the specs I am thinking I am actually getting a decent battery life. Aside from that I am very happy with my iPod Touch. I am sure that I have just cracked the surface at this point and will continue to enjoy it.