Back surfing in the YouTube

Last week provided me with a bit of a surprise when I idly counted the number of past columns stored on my computer.

My first year or two's columns were lost when we changed computer systems at Independent Newspapers but I found that I had the latest 399 of them saved. The first of these was written in late 1995 and was about the then newly-launched Zip and Jaz drives.

Hard drives were still pretty expensive in those days and the Zip and Jaz offered users the chance of saving files onto removable floppy-type disks, with the Zip offering 100Mb of storage, and the Jaz 1Gb. The Zip cost R1400, disks R92 each, and the Jaz R4089, disks R783 each, which explains, I suppose, why there weren't that many around in these parts.

This column brings the saved total up to 400 and, when I figure that I probably had about 50 printed each year, with a year off here and there, that adds up to a lot of writing and even more head scratching, to come up with topics to write about.

It is inevitable over such a long time, I suppose, that some things will come up more than once, but I have always tried to preserve a discreet interval between such occurrences. This time, however, I'm going to throw all my good intentions out of the window and go straight back to YouTube, which I discussed only a few short weeks ago.

I heard mention somewhere that there was a video of Fats Domino and Ricky Nelson singing I'm Walking, and I enjoyed it. Then, I couldn't help noticing that there was a version sung by Fats alone, so I had to see that as well.

Then I saw that there was a recording of him singing Walking to New Orleans and one of him singing Jambalaya with Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles. Then I noticed that there was a Creedence Clearwater Revival version of Jambalaya as well; my bandwidth bill was getting out of hand again, and I hadn't really got going yet.

The awful sneaky thing about YouTube is that it shows you a list of related videos once you've finished watching the one you've chosen. I found the same thing when I looked up American comedian George Carlin, who died on June 22, and found that there were a mere 2920 videos of him performing, or of people paying tribute.

He had many classic routines and it's hard to choose a favourite from among them but I first listened to his views on death, which I found hilarious and unexpectedly poignant, given that he had died a few days previously, and was now finally in the position of knowing if he had been right about life after death.

Another great routine was his Seven words you can't say on TV, which is very funny, but may offend those with delicate sensibilities. It also got him into trouble with the law on a number of occasions but luckily, the concept of free speech prevailed.

A couple of the videos on YouTube I've found so far have not really been that at all, but a picture of the album cover or artist that is displayed, while he or she performs. But even with that, and the high cost of bandwidth, YouTube is still a better deal than the expensive and dreadful DSTV.

Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below?.

Who let the fox out? Woof! Woof!

The big news on the web browser front at the moment is the launch by the Mozilla Foundation of a new version of their excellent Firefox browser for Windows, Mac and Unix computers.

Browsers are an important tool that many of us take for granted but which we use every day for browsing websites, using online office programs and, in many cases, for our e-mail needs as well.

For many years I used Microsoft’s Internet Explorer but a couple of years ago I joined the growing flood of users who had made the change to using Mozilla’s Firefox as their primary browser.

Firefox 3 was finally launched on June 17, after a delay of a few hours, and achieved a world record as users downloaded more than eight million copies of it in the following 24 hours. This record was being certified by the Guinness World Records organisation as I wrote this column.

There is a fancy map on the Firefox site showing the location, by country, of people who downloaded the new browser. It seems that 39287 South African did so, just under the New Zealand 42619, and way more than the 495 downloaded by Zimbabweans.

Anyway, on to the program itself, which looks fairly similar to Version 2 except that it’s a good bit snazzier. At a mere 7Mb in size, it doesn’t take too long to download from firefox.com, and it installs like lightning, without the need to reboot your computer.

It will inherit all the bookmarks and browsing history any previous versions of Firefox you had installed and it will also import them from Internet Explorer. The most noticeable addition to the browser is the Smart Location Bar which tries to predict what site you want to go to.

Modestly known as the “Awesome Bar”, the feature is activated as soon as you start typing in a web address. It searches through your bookmarks and browsing history to produce a list of possible sites containing the letters you’ve typed.

You can select the site you want from the list, as it appears, or you can carry on typing if it doesn’t. I didn’t like the feature at first because it didn’t show the sites I wanted, but the cool thing is that it learns from you. It soon worked out that, when I type a G, I usually want to go to Google, and it is much more useful after having used it for a couple of days. There is an in direct way of turning off the feature if you can’t bear it; the program’s Help feature will tell you how.

I think that Firefox 3 is the fastest browser I’ve ever used and it seems to have lost an annoying habit I encountered with Version 2, where I sometimes had to click twice on a picture or text link. Other noteworthy new features include the ability to bookmark a page with one click, to delete all your private information from the browser’s memory with a keystroke, and parental controls.

One neat feature that I also appreciate is a quick way of subscribing to sites which have feeds, such as blogs, by creating a Live Bookmark. New articles and posts on that site are then listed for you whenever you select the bookmark for that site.

Should you upgrade from the previous versions of Firefox or Internet Explorer? The answer is yes and yes.

Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below?.

Just doodlin' around

Arranging a meeting with only a few participants is hard enough but it starts becoming very difficult as the numbers increase.

I'm not a corporate or bureaucratic type, thankfully, but I have often been involved when it comes to setting up events where numbers of people from various walks of life have to meet for one reason or another. The first two people in the arrangement can generally agree on a suitable time to meet but then you start running into problems.

The third person will invariably say that they could make that day of the week and time, if only it was a week later. You agree on an amended date but it turns out that the first person can't make it next week and will be away on leave thereafter, until the middle of the following April.

There are some heavy-duty users whose electronic calendars can talk to other people's calendars, and decide on suitable meeting times between themselves. For the rest us, however, there seemed to be no choice but to battle on using e-mail and phone to arrive at the best meeting time.

My informant Andre DuToit recently let me know of a free web-based service which you can use to streamline the process of setting up any sort of meeting and event. The site, called Doodle, is the brainchild of a Swiss company and can be found at www.doodle.ch.

It is not your typical website loaded with bells and whistles and it actually looks pretty plain, until you get used to it. This is good from a performance point of view because, being entirely text based, it is not weighed down with bandwidth-hungry sound, animated graphics or video.

The concept behind Doodle is very simple and, once you've signed up, you can initiate two different types of poll. The first type is a date and time poll where you get the opportunity to enter a choice of possible dates and times when your event can take place.

The system then generates a web page with the list of dates and times on it, and gives it a unique web address. You send this to all the people who are going to take part in the event and they all visit the page and vote for the dates and times that suit them best.

You then go to the page, where you will be able to see what choices each person has made, and can then quickly decide when to hold the event. The other type of poll that you can have is a simple choice between a number of items.

That's one that the family can use to choose which DVD to hire on Friday night, or which the church group can use to vote on where to go on the annual outing. The Help feature is quite brief but I shouldn't think that anyone would have a problem getting Doodle to work.

It is very simple to use because it is only designed to do one thing and is not loaded down with lots of features that need to be learnt. I think Doodle could be a very useful time saver but, of course, it won't help with people who forget all about the meeting. [Been there often enough :-) ]

Doodle is called Doodle because it's a short word, easy to remember and sounds like fun. I can imagine that there might be some problems for you if you're incautious enough to tell your friends and workmates that you're going to be doodling later; it might be misconstrued an invitation or, even worse, as harassment!

Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below?

Riding the YouTube

YouTube was in the news again recently with the release of a survey that showed the vast majority of kids between two and 11 were turning to YouTube when they wanted to be entertained, rather than traditional TV stations like Cartoon Network or the Disney Channel.

It should perhaps be explained that YouTube is an Internet-based site where anyone can upload video material where it can then be viewed by anyone who cares to, and as often as they want. Based on my experience with certain young relations who were prepared to be entertained indefinitely by the one-minute countdown feature on my watch and that darn dancing baby on my computer, I was not surprised in the slightest that the as-often-as-you-like thing would endear YouTube to the younger set.

What did surprise me, however, was how rapidly other age-groups took to it as a valued source of entertainment and, even, learning. My record at spotting trends is hardly spotless, which probably explains why I was much inclined to write the service off as bit of a silly idea in the beginning.

I couldn’t imagine people actually wanting to watch arbitrary videos put together by palookas but it turned out that many of the contributors to the site weren’t that at all. Many of them were, in fact, highly talented video makers with something to say, and their numbers were soon boosted by real professionals such as the BBC and Associated Press.

The YouTube site says that around 10 hours of video are uploaded by users every minute of the day and, even if only a tiny fraction of that is worth watching, there’ll still be a lot that of interest for just about any taste. I started out in a slow way watching the odd video posted by photographers I admire until I found myself watching a couple of hours a month.

In the old days you would have to buy the book to get the lowdown on the great photographers and their methods, but now you can watch videos of people like Annie Liebowitz, who recently shot the queen, and Joe McNally actually working on their photo projects or talking about their pictures. I don’t even know how many photographers contribute to YouTube but a couple of the ones I’ve noticed are David Tejada and Bert Stephani; just go to www.youtube.com and type their names into the Search box.

I was reading a blog where the writer suggested that readers go to YouTube and look up ‘British Army Photographers’. That turned up a lot of videos including an excellent short program on Sergeant Will Craig, who basically tells you a bit about his life and shows off some of his excellent pictures from the frontlines in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. Fascinating stuff, and there’s lot more besides that.

I’d be lying if I said that YouTube was the answer to all our entertainment needs because, for one thing, you have to have a good broadband Internet connection, and even that sometimes pauses and jerks like an old 8mm film. What you can do in that case is hit the pause button, to stop the video clip playing and wait patiently while it is downloaded onto your computer, and then hit play again.

While fiddling with YouTube preparing for this column, I was unwise enough to type ‘Allo ‘Allo into the search box and it came up with a fistful of stuff including whole episodes of what is definitely my favourite sitcom. ‘What a mistaka to maka!’, in the words of Captain Bertorelli, because the discovery promises to chew up a lot more of my time and expensive bandwidth.

You, too, go and find something you like. Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below?

Feeling the Buzzword at Adobe

Some weeks ago I wrote that Adobe had ventured into the market for web-based programs with the launch of Photoshop Express, a free service you can use to store and edit digital photos.

Now they're at it again with an online suite of services lumped together under the collective name of Acrobat.com. They are still in their Beta testing phase that there may still be glitches and errors lurking around.

Acrobat.com is free and its quick and easy to sign up if, funnily enough, you go to www.acrobat.com. Once you've input a few details including name, e-mail address and the password you want, the system sends you an e-mail with a link you have to click on, before you can get going.

You're presented with a very clean and nicely designed desktop which gives you access to all the site's features including a word processor called Buzzword, an area called My Files where your files are stored, a Share feature which allows you to share these files with anyone, a tool that you can use to create Adobe Acrobat files, albeit only five times for free, and a web conferencing tool.

Importing existing files into the site is as easy as as clicking on Import in the Documents menu, while clicking on New fires up Buzzword and lets you start on your document. Buzzword is a very neat little word processor and is quite powerful ,in that it allows you to import pictures, and flow text around them, create tables and lists, and apply all sorts of formatting.

One neat little feature in the status bar at the bottom of the Buzzword page keeps a running total of the number of words in the document. It would be even better for those of us paid by the word, if it let you know how much you had earned so far in the current session.

The real test for a word processor, for me, is whether it is good enough for use in writing the article about itself. Buzzword was definitely good enough and, while I didn't t test all the features in the writing of this article, it did work very well and I liked it.

Ironically, the Insert Picture command only allows you you to select a picture from your local computer and not from those stored in your Photoshop Express account. I'd expected that my Express username and password would work on Acrobat.com but it didn't, a fact that is sure to change in the future.

I really liked Photoshop Express and now, I am also a fan of Acrobat.com and am fast coming to the conclusion that Adobe has got this online application business taped in a way that few other companies have yet managed. Their offerings are still both on test but are both already very good and, in time, are quite likely to tempt people away from using programs installed on their computers.

Using software installed on central servers is called cloud computing and, while not a new idea, it is a concept that is coming back into fashion. Installing or updating a program, for example, takes much less time if you do it once, centrally, and don't have to go around to each user's computer; been there and done that!

The only snag with cloud computing is that nothing is stored on the local computer, making you absolutely dependent on the connection to the server. There were a few occasions while writing this article when Buzzword reported that the connection to the server had been lost, which was a bit scary, but it always re-established itself. In such circumstances, my first reaction is usually to blame it on Telkom but I suppose there is a slight chance that the Adobe server was over-busy.

Why not leave a message by clicking the link below?