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Broadcast yourself on the net with Sopcast

As we wrote in reviews for PPLive and TVU Player, television via streaming P2P is part of the future of broadcasting. The two previously cited programs are good examples of the technology yet in Sopcast they might have found a more than worthy competitor. This streaming P2P television application offers a wide choice of channels in a very sleek looking interface, whilst letting you broadcast your very own TV program over the Internet.

Sopcast’s interface is easy enough for any type of user. You can register yourself on Sopcast, a prerequisite if you want to broadcast your program but if you just want to view TV, you can log in as an anonymous user. We found that Sopcast probably offers the widest choice of channels of all P2P TV streaming applications, and organizes them via categories like sports, news or gospel tv. To view a channel all you have to do is double click the one you want and it will open a Windows Media Player side window. This truly separates Sopcast from the rest of the P2P TV streaming applications. By playing the channels in Window Media Player it allows you to set the size of the screen, adjust sound levels, keep a history of channels viewed…basically everything you can do with the famous media player. Furthermore, Sopcast is the only P2P streaming TV application we encountered that allows you to configure settings like port selection (extremely useful to maximize the use of your bandwidth and get better quality playback) or select among 12 different languages.

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Vista delayed – eye don’t care

So, it seems Microsoft may now not be able to release its Vista RC1 candidate on time due to interoperability problems with existing hardware and software, potentially delaying the pre-release until after the autumn. While we wait for more developments from Redmond’s lumbering software giant, why not give one of the innovative new online OS services a shot?

Web-based operating systems are becoming a great alternative to Windows, as they offer you the ability to work from the same desktop wherever you go – a dream for Net café dwellers everywhere. eyeOS is a new open-source development which treats you to a sweet assortment of features including directories, a competent text editor, messaging, a web browser and an RSS feed reader. You can also download and add a range of applications such as games, productivity utilities, image editors and mapping services. Check out the online presentation (complete with a divine electro backing track) to see why it may be time to say ‘hasta la vista’ to Windows.

Enjoying the freedom of speech

For those of us whose sights are trained on a computer screen all day long, reading in-depth articles on our favourite blogs or sifting through long emails is the last thing we want to do at the end of a day at the office. Imagine our delight then when we came across a program that promised to read all this text for us as we give our eyes a well-earned rest.

The beauty of TextAloud is that it not only reads out anything you copy and paste into the voice window but also allows you to save the resulting speech as an audio file. Effectively this means you can transform any web page, email or text document into a podcast to download to your MP3 player and listen to at your leisure. File sizes are kept to a minimum so it’s possible to save entire novels as an audio file of less than 1Mb.

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Labeling your photos in Picasa

Picasa is our favorite photo album manager, because it’s free and incredibly intuitive.The first time you launch it, it’ll scan your PC for all available pictures and organize them by folders. When you connect a digital camera it’ll recognize it and allow you to create a new album inserting date, location and adding a small description. The chronological structure in Picasa is a good way to keep your collection organized, but better yet, we encourage using labels. Just right click on one photo or a selection and choose “create new label”.

They work like tags so you can add an infinite number of labels, like “camping”, “school”, “friends”, “party” and create specific albums. And if you’re registered on Hello, you can send an album to friends in just a few clicks. Take the time to label all those photos, it’ll give you all sorts of original photo albums.

Streamline your system with SmartPC

System optimisation is a bit like security in that those who understand it, know how important it is and how to alter their browsing and usage habits to achieve it. However, there are a huge number of titles that claim to offer a helping hand in streamlining your system, many of which promise the world but don’t deliver the goods. The makers of Smart PC have put plenty of effort into making an original interface but have they carried that over and made a tool that lives up to its name?

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Softonic’s Tip: Maximize your iTunes

Have you ever wanted to manage your iTunes music library, but though of it as too much of a hassle? To modify track info and organize playlist data, you can download and launch scripts, found on Doug’s AppleScripts but compared to the choice for Macintosh users, the offer for PCs is sparse to say the least.

That’s why we’re using this opportunity to put forward a few Windows applications that complement the iTunes experience. The iTunes Album Artwork Locator will finally allow you to pick up all the cd covers you’re missing and insert them in your iTunes. MyTunes is one of Softonic’s favorites, because it’s a cheeky little program that will finally allow you to share and copy (yeah really) tracks from other users’ iTunes libraries. eTunes is the program of choice if you have a massive collection of tracks and you just want to get all the information in the ID3 tags sorted quickly. Then there’s PodPlus to transfer all kinds of information like pictures, RSS feeds, forecasts or notes to your iPod. Who says life ends with iTunes?

Software pirate goes down for six years

An infamous US software pirate has been given a six year prison sentence after raking in $4.1 million from selling hooky applications. Danny Ferrer peddled copied versions of Adobe, Macromedia and Autodesk software on his site, buyusa.com, between 2002 and October 2005.

Ferrer, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of criminal copyright infringement following an operation that reportedly cost developers more than $20 million. The crook had amassed an impressive collection of loot which he was made to surrender to the authorities, including two Cessna planes, a Rotorway helicopter, a 1992 Lamborghini, an ambulance, a flight simulator and a 28-foot speedboat.

As tempting as it is for us to sell you ripped off software and buy ourselves an island in the Seychelles, you can download legitimate trials of Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash from Softonic.

The sports fans have it all

Have you heard about Yardbarker? Apparently it’s the sports equivalent to Digg whereas you can post your articles, rate others and come up with relevant news for your favorite team or player. The Internet and web 2.0 are changing the way we interact with the news and this is illustrated via all the exciting sports-related software out there.

If you don’t have cable TV, you can use TVU Player to watch it streaming over internet. This application uses P2P principles to allow users to connect to channels from all over the world. That’s how I got to see some World Cup games last June. I also recommend installing SpyderBar, a customizable ticker, to receive your constant dose of sports news. For all the statistics die hards out there, League Pad is what your looking for. You can download results, standings and team information for football and soccer teams in the States and create whole sorts of statistics out of it. Little league coaches will take a liking to MotionClip!. The best way to use it is to record your team’s game, upload some sequences on your PC and use the application to analyze player movements, reactions and set pieces. At least it’s a cheap and modern way of working on your strategy, like a pro.

PocketDivXEncoder – free, high quality video compression

After the huge success of portable MP3 players, it was only ever going to be a matter of time until mobile video took off in the same way. As portable movie players become more and more popular, the temptation to buy one of these sleek, spanking new devices becomes almost unbearable! But wait! As the proud owner of a Pocket PC or Palm PDA, you probably already have the hardware necessary to enjoy video on-the-hop. All you need now is a piece of reliable, free software to convert and optimise your movie files for mobile use. PocketDivXEncoder is that piece of software.

The installation procedure for this application was a breeze, mainly because there wasn’t one! It was refreshing to see that a simple program didn’t need to touch the registry in order to run, let alone force us to restart the computer (as all Nokia’s apps do). So as soon as you download the program, you’re ready to go. The program itself was pretty easy to use, with controls and settings which should be familiar to anyone who’s even come close to thinking about video compression in the last five years. For those who haven’t, all you really need to do is tell the program which device you’ll be using and it’ll do all the work for you.

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