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Use VLC Player to record desktop
For years whenever I wanted to do some screencasts or record what’s on the screen, I have been using Techsmith’s great Camtasia software or Windows Media Encoder. Today from a FaceBook wall post I learnt that the free & open source video player – VLC Media Player has this feature in every copy. The steps to follow are just four, first is to select Convert/Save option from the Media Menu, then in the dialog box that appears select “Capture Device” tab, then select "Desktop” in the Capture Mode option, increase the frame rate (for smoother animation provided you have powerful graphic card) and then press “Convert/Save” button. That’s all.
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Blog moved from DasBlog to WordPress
After using DasBlog (.NET & Lucene.NET based Blog Engine) for over 7 years I decided to move to the most popular blogging software in the planet – WordPress. I like DasBlog for its simplicity – it was flat file based (just XML files for content and images stored in file system) so no Database configuration/maintenance, most of the common configurations are available from the Admin panel and more complex changes can be done by editing the ASP.NET source code, it supports AKISMET comment filtering, MetaWebBlog API for blogging from Windows Live Writer & above all just works out of the box. But in the recent months it was showing its…
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Software Licensing 101
In my firm Vishwak Solutions we conduct periodic programs on various topics for self-improvement, health, technology & productivity. Last month we began a pilot program called “Vishwak360” the objective of which is to expose everyone in the organization to every department & its function – to give a 360 view of what’s happenings. I delivered the first talk and I spoke on Software Licensing – probably the driest subject, when selecting the topic I decided if I can get the audience interested through this then all the subsequent talks are going to be lively & enjoyable. Over the years software licensing has become very complex and it need not be…
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Must have software in your PC for 2011
What are the must have software in your PC for 2011, apart from the OS (Windows or Mac OS)?. Below are my favourites which are present in all the 3 PCs I use, most of them are available for Windows 7 & Mac OS 10.X. Drivers & Antivirus After you install OS (Windows or Mac OS), connect all your peripherals like Printer, Scanner, Camera one after the other and ensure to install the necessary drivers. Most cases going with default Windows 7 (or Mac OS) driver might be the best, except for your Graphics Card & Printer for which the OEM given software offers more features & performance Microsoft Security…
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Copying VCDs & DVD to PC
Recently I purchased some old Tamil Movie VCDs, I wanted to copy them to my PC so that I can carry them in my Zune player or to my Digital Media Centre in my house. When I tried to play one of them, it played very well on my DVD player but not on my PC (Windows Media Player or VLC Player). On PC they played only with Nero Showtime software. After some digging, I learned these are VCDs that have been written with 800MB of data – more data than normal 700MB CDs, and many applications may have difficulty in reading them. I tried copying them using XCopy/Windows Explorer/Robocopy…
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What I find wrong with the Stephen Fry’s video?
Before I proceed let me state my position on this topic: I am not against Open-Source Software, at the same time I I believe like all other literary (creative) & engineering works software too needs to be based on a sound viable commercial model. I came across this video of Stephen Fry celebrating 25 years of GNU and introducing “Free” Software. Being an award-winning broadcasting professional Mr.Fry has done a great job of delivering a simple yet powerful message on what he believes on. But his introduction to “Free” Software and especially his plumbing analogy to be incorrect and can misguide the general public. (Please see the video below before…
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Cross browser Vector graphics
If you have tried to do a decent chart or graph or any line drawings in HTML/CSS you would have felt extremely frustrated, more so you want it to be cross-browser compatible. Though SVG and VML have been around for years, the support for them is not uniform between browsers. Recently in a newsletter from Sitepoint I came across Raphaël – a small JavaScript library (less than 19Kb in filesize) written by Dmitry Baranovskiy of Atlassian, that allows you to create and manipulate vector graphics in your web pages. It’s simple to use and supports Internet Explorer 6.0+, Safari 3.0+, Firefox 3.0+, and Opera 9.5+. Internally Raphaël uses VML in…
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Virtual Box is now free
Virtualization (the ability to run multiple OS simultaneously) is gaining lot of traction nowadays. In the PC world this started initially with VMWare and Virtual PC (which Microsoft acquired from Connectix) for development and testing purposes soon gained popularity in the servers. In servers virtualization is used to consolidate servers and applications into fewer servers and also used for running legacy OS and applications. Today the entry barrier is greatly removed for Virtualization software with many of them available free (as in free beer), following is a partial list of them. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 for desktops Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 for servers VMWare Player for desktops VMWare Server…
