Month: January 2008

It might sound like a generic name for a Spice Girl but Spicebird is actually one of the most exciting communication suites to have been developed in a long time.

If it fulfills its potential, Spicebird could spell the end of Microsoft Outlook’s dominance and be a permanent fixture on desktops everywhere. If it doesn’t, it will be remembered as a poor spin-off of the moderately successful Thunderbird e-mail client that Mozilla developed. Spicebird isn’t actually being developed by Mozilla although it is based on the Mozilla Gecko engine. It is in fact being developed by Synovel and features principally an e-mail client, calendar and and an IM client based on Jabber. Everything has been integrated in an intelligent way so that if someone sends you an important date by e-mail or via the chat, you’re prompted whether you want to add it to your calendar’s agenda. The suite has also been developed with a focus on integration with Gmail so if you’re a user, all your contacts can be conveniently imported immediately. Spicebird also features a nifty RSS reader to keep you ahead of the latest news from your favourite sites. And like Outlook, it warns you when a meeting or appointment is approaching on your calendar.

At the moment, Spicebird is still very much a work in progress and in the future will include new languages and many more extensions to enhance it’s performance. However, there are still many basic things that still need to improve before it can seriously rival Outlook including a more advanced contacts list and much lighter RAM consumption. In terms of the e-mail client, there are undeniable similarities between Mozilla’s Thunderbird and Spicebird but unfortunately, the two don’t seem to have been integrated very well so importing your contacts isn’t possible.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that this could be the Firefox of communication suites and I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Spicebird website for the final version later this year.

I’ve always loved music but I’ve never been particularly musical. The best I managed at school was to learn how to play the triangle. I did attempt to learn the recorder but the classes were so boring – all we ever played was ‘Three Blind Mice’. If the classes had been a bit more fun, maybe I would have stuck at it.

Nowadays, you can use software to aid the learning process whether you’re learning to play an instrument, notation or even how to read and write musical scores. Music Memory is a good place to start as it helps test your powers of notation recognition and ability to reproduce it on your keyboard. If you’re tone deaf, this program will soon reveal it. If you’re just starting out on the guitar then Frets of Fire won’t exactly improve your playing skills but it will give you an idea of what sequence of chords and notes sound good.

Piano Hero on the other hand is a more serious attempt at improving your piano skills. It turns your keyboard into a virtual piano and can be focused to test either your left or right handed skills. Meanwhile learning to read music is one of the hardest aspects of becoming a musician but Note Attack is a great aid which turns the notes into targets that you have to shoot at.

If you can’t be bothered putting in the effort to learn an instrument or reach for the stars, then you can still live out your fantasies with Rock Legend where you play a part in a struggling band. You have to deal with everything from rehersals to adoring fans although unfortunately, there’s no groupies.

So you’ve decided to start your own blog. Congratulations! Whether you intend to create a professional blog or simply write a personal diary, blogging is an excellent hobby that keeps you in touch with the rest of the world. It lets you meet new people, learn different perspectives and share anything you like, from news headlines to your newborn son’s first photos. Once you’ve made up your mind, it’s time to get down to business. Here’s a list of all the software applications and online services that may be helpful in your blogging adventure. Remember that perseverance is the key to success! Try to update your blog on a regular basis and you’ll soon see the results.

• First of all, you need to choose the blogging platform you’re going to use. The most popular ones are WordPress, Blogger and to a lesser extent, LiveJournal.

• If you don’t fancy writing your posts on an online editor, you can use a desktop blogging tool like W.bloggar, Post2Blog or the Blogger extension for Word.

• When it comes to capturing images for your articles you have a wide array of options, where Screenshot Captor, SnagIt and EasyCapture are probably the best choices.

• After taking a snapshot you’ll probably need to improve or retouch it in some way. Download a graphic editor such as PhotoFiltre, PhotoScape or Active Pixels for these easy editing tasks.

• You may also need to make video captures to record screen activity. These videos are great to explain software tips or show off your skill in a particular videogame. You can capture them easily with HyperSnap-DX, WeGame or AviScreen Classic.

• Podcasts are another element of added value for your blog. Create them with Wildvoice Podcast Studio, ePodcast Creator or PodProducer and use them to develop more extended content and reach your readers in other formats.

• Blogging platforms usually provide a bunch of ready-to-use templates but in case you want to use your own design, download a coding editor such as Dreamweaver, UltraEdit-32 or EclipseStyle and let your inner artist loose.

• Besides an attractive design, web promotion is also a key element in your blog’s success. Use Good Keywords to find the right keywords, Link Popularity Check to track your search results and AdSenseDesktop to manage your ad revenue.

If you’re an aspiring DJ or create your own music, sampling is one way to add dimension to your tunes. It’s thought that sampling goes back as far as the early 60’s when James Tenney sampled ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ by Elvis Presley. The Beatles were one of its early pioneers but it wasn’t until Rap music came along that the technique really became widespread.

In those days, sampling was an expensive process involving multi-track suites and lots of studio time. Nowadays you can start sampling in seconds for free with a multitude of different software. There’s nothing more annoying than when you want to sample a great bassline or beat but there’s a vocal track over it. The brilliant Vocal Remover is a simple plugin for Winamp which solves this problem in seconds. The plugin isolates the vocal track and with a simple slidebar, you can reduce the volume of the vocals to the level you want or eliminate it entirely. However, the results vary according to the track you’re sampling and so if you need something a bit more powerful (and are prepared to spend some time learning how to use it) then Reaktor is a powerful editing suite that can sample just about anything and enrich it with effects.

If you’ve got a massive collection of vinyl, then you can also sample these too. Although it can’t sample directly, RIP Vinyl allows you to record your vinyl in digital format and from there, you can sample the tracks in a program like Reaktor. Spin It Again does the same job but also allows you to grab cassette recordings too.

Bear in mind though that if you’re intending to use your sampling for commercial gain, you must be very careful who or what you sample. A useful reference for this kind of thing is the Sampling Law website which gives some useful advice on this often grey area. In addition, if you’re interested to find out from which song the samples used in your favourite songs came from, check out the Second Hand Songs database.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a bit on the side and nowhere is this more true than on your desktop. Sidebars can make your life easier in all kinds of ways – making applications easier to access, files on hand quicker, removing the need for shortcuts all over your desktop and much more.

Probably the best, and certainly the most popular out there, is Vista Sidebar XP. One of the innovations in Vista was the introduction of sidebars but this program proves just how simple it is to add to XP. The sidebar offers widgets of various kinds including clocks, weather forecasts, RSS readers and many more. Less popular but along the same lines is Thoosje Vista Sidebar which does pretty much the same thing although the developers claim it uses 50% less RAM than Vista’s Sidebar. Meanwhile Windows Sidebar Styler takes both of these programs one step further by giving you greater control over how the sidebar is customised and allowing you to add unlimited widgets due to the support of Windows Presentation Foundation.

Not all Sidebars try to emulate Vista though. DameK UltraBlue for example is an entire makeover for XP that includes a nifty Sidebar. That said, it does bear more than a passing resemblance to Vista’s sidebar although it’s based more on the early prototypes of the operating system when it was known as Longhorn. Other sidebars try to emulate Yahoo! Widget Engine such as Desktop Sidebar whereas Aston is very much it’s own product taking an original but basic approach to sidebar management.

If you want to get an idea of what sidebars look like or what they can do, check out this useful example of how they can be used in Vista:

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Decryption of DVDs is not always about copying them. Sometimes you need to decrypt a DVD to extract a certain audiotrack, subtitle or enable you to add some of your own and then re-burn it. The problem is that DVD encryption techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated. In the fight against piracy, production companies are having to stay one step ahead of those that want to decrypt DVDs and then copy them for their own commercial gain. If you are having problem decrypting one of your favourite DVDs, one of these should eventually work:

• DVD Decrypter – The most powerful solution out there – decrypts just about anything

• AnyDVD HD – Another powerful decrypter that also removes region codes from DVDs

• DVDFab HD Decrypter – Ultra lightweight decrypter and simple conversion process

• RipIt4Me – Claims to be able to decrypt all those DVDs that DVD Decrypter can’t

• Easydivx – Designed specifically for those that want to decrypt and then backup in DivX