File Conversion

Ever been in a situation where you wanted to convert a file from “x” format into “y” format? Maybe you wanted to convert a video into MP4 so you could watch it on your iPod? Maybe you’re interested in web design and you want to convert a short video clip to a flash file on your web site. Maybe you like to use a particular program for image, audio, or video editing, and you’ve obtained/created media in a format that the program doesn’t support. Format Factory is an easy-to-use program that will help you convert files between a variety of formats. It’s completely free.

“Xmarks” the spot

Do you use more than one computer? If so, have you ever been frustrated by the fact that you have some bookmarks on one machine and other bookmarks on another machine? What do you do if you want to bookmark a site while using a public computer?

Xmarks (formerly called Foxmarks) has one possible solution. Xmarks is an add-on for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari that allows you to synchronize your bookmarks across multiple computers. After downloading and installing a very small file, you will be asked to restart your browser and create an Xmarks user id. Your browser will then upload your bookmarks to an Xmarks server. From then on, browser will sync with this server on a regular basis. To make full use of Xmarks, you should install it on every computer that you use regularly (for example, your UOIT laptop and a family desktop). In my experience, the Xmarks add-on is best suited to Firefox. I don’t think that it works well with Internet Explorer.

Caution: There is an option that allows you to sync both your bookmarks and the passwords that you have saved on your computer. Use this option with caution, particularly on computers that you share with other people.

TinyURL

TinyURL is one of the web tools that I use most frequently. The web site says it all:

“Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you’ve come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.”

More recently, TinyURL has provided the option of creating a short, custom URL. For example, I made a TinyURL for this blog: http://tinyurl.com/uoit3511.

I highly recommend bookmarking the site. It works particularly well if you make a link on your “bookmarks bar” in Firefox.

Tweeting on Twitter

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging tool designed to combine some of the features of blogging with social networking. Each post, or “tweet”, is limited to 140 characters (the length of a text message). Each user maintains his or her own twitter page, at http://twitter.com/username. Although anyone can view a twitter page, most members of the twitter community subscribe to other people’s posts by “following” other accounts. Sometimes one might follow a friend, but more often than not, users tend to follow news media, celebrities, or strangers with common interests.

Twitter has its own language that allows users to talk to one another. For example. if you want to publicly tweet a comment to someone who is following you, you preface your tweet with the “@” sign. For example, if I wanted to comment to someone with username “smithj” about my favourite summer past time, I might tweet:

@smithj I also enjoy camping.

If someone else tweets something that you like so much that you feel a need to mention it on your twitter page, it is common to acknowledge the original source by prefacing the tweet with RT (For Re-Tweet). Thus:

RT Do you like canoeing as well? smbuoit@smithj I also enjoy camping.

Sometimes tweets are categorized using the ‘#’ symbol. This symbol functions as a category. If you visit the twitter homepage, you can find the most popular topics being tweeted about

You can update a twitter feed using the web, a desktop application, or using your mobile phone. Text messaging twitter would be quite expensive in Canada unless you had an unlimited plan. Most people use desktop applications, or applications designed for their smartphones. Some popular applications are Tweetdeck and Twhirl. My personal preference is for Tweetdeck. There are also applications written for the iPhone and the Blackberry.

WARNING: Twitter’s popularity is on the rise, which unfortunately means that there are more risks to using the service . Many of the risks are the same as if you use an MSN account for instant messaging, or if you use Facebook for social networking. If you start a twitter account, however, you need to be aware of privacy issues:

• Be wary of providing personal information. Remember that your ‘status’ is public, so it’s probably not a good idea to tweet about when you’re leaving your house on a vacation.
• Anyone can follow your account. It’s a good idea to review your followers on a regular basis, and delete those that you don’t approve of. Rule of thumb: If something doesn’t seem quite right, block it.
• Spammers love using twitter to get to accounts. There have been some reports of marketers skimming random twitter feeds to determine a user’s likes and dislikes before sending them a specialized ‘spambot’ to follow your account.
• Some “followers” are advertising less than reputable services. Block them immediately.
• Remember: Twitter feeds are public information.

You might wish to have a private twitter account, visible only to those who you follow and who choose to follow you, to help alleviate these concerns.

RSS Feeds

RSS, or Rich Site Summary, is a web feed format that allows you to subscribe to content from blogs, newspapers, podcast sites – anywhere that an author has decided to syndicate their content. Although you can visit these sites with a web browser, you might want to try using a Feed Reader. Readers check RSS feeds the same way that an email program monitors your account for incoming messages. You can organize your feeds in much the same way that you might organize your inbox – by category. If you subscribe to podcasts using iTunes, you’ve already been using a type of feed reader to manage your podcasts

Feed Readers can be online, such as Google Reader or Bloglines, or desktop based, such as MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird,  or SharpReader. The type of reader that is best for you will really depend on how you want to read RSS feeds. I prefer SharpReader because I often catch up on RSS feeds while I am offline, perhaps while I am travelling. SharpReader allows me to download RSS that I am interested in to my computer before I go offline.

UOIT offers a number of RSS feeds here. You might want to try subscribing to one or more of these feeds as a start.