CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
Here are just a few ways you can use this software:
- You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program
- Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions?
- You can create video tutorials for school or college class
- You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer so you can show technical support people
- You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell
- You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover on your favourite software program, before you forget them
Sizer is a freeware utility that allows you to resize any window to an exact, predefined size. This is extremely useful when designing web pages, as it allows you to see how the page will look when viewed at a smaller size. The utility is also handy when compiling screen-shots for documentation, using Sizer allows you to easily maintain the same window size across screen grabs.
SundayWorship, recently updated to version 1.2, is a Bible verse and song projection software for church services or other events, developed by Gary Sims and his friend, Matthew Steed. I know there are plenty of programs of this kind, some of them free and/or open-source, but in spite of that, many times I see our churches use various improvisations, such as PowerPoint slides and funny look-up strategires. Maybe this is because existing programs fall into two categories: they are either too expensive, or more expensive than a worship leader or church committee is willing to spend, or is free but is trying to achieve so much that it’s full of menus and features that simply scare you away.
SundayWorship is, I think, somewhere in the middle: it’s very easy to use, has practically no learning curve and the price is, very good. Below are some of the program’s features:
- Ability to add a large number of songs in the database
- Very fast start-up time, super-fast search in songs or the Bible (new in version 1.2, searching within the song contents, not just title)
- Bible translations included: KJV, ASV and Romanian Cornilescu (more can be installed)
- Project one verse or an entire passage at once.
- Two displays, one for previewing, privately and one LIVE
- Ability to display announcements, notifications, on top or bottom, along with existing projections (songs, verses)
- My favorite: ability to create schedules with pre-selected songs or verses, for use in worship programs.
New in 1.2 are, among others:
- Specify preferences regarding the display of Bible verse references.
- Video playback
- Live webcam or camera playback
- Searching contents of songs
Other features:
- Importing/Exporting of the entire database to XML.
- Ability to specify authors or song copyright information and searching through it
See more at www.sundayworship.net – here you can obtain a 30-day trial version or buy a license via PayPal.
EASEUS is giving away version 4.1.1 of its professional partition manager software until February 1st. This edition supports 64-big operating systems as well, as opposed to the free version.
Here are some of the features:
- Windows 7 32 bit and 64 bit compatible.
- Extend system partition to maximize computer performance.
- Resize/move/delete/format/create partition and lots of useful features.
- Backup all data or copy entire hard disk to another without Windows reinstallation.
- Operate directly on the disk map with the drag-and-drop and preview the changes.
- Create bootable CD/DVD in case of system boot failure.
I know you may think: I don’t really need this NOW, but what about when you DO need it? Head over to their site and get it.
I know this kind of slideshow is pretty comon stuff in the jQuery world as well as other frameworks but I thought the Apple-like Slideshow gallery presented by Tutorialzine was pretty slick and managed to very closely resemble the one used on Apple’s website.
Of course you will customize it if you are going to use it on your site, aren’t you? View the demo here and the original tutorial here.
I recently came across a very slick (and free) menu framework. It’s very customizable, the authors even showcase a few popular menu imitations using their framework (see Nvidia imitation, Adobe or Vimeo).
Here are some of the features from the site:
- Modular, with themes. Not only HTML is separated from CSS, but even CSS definitions are categorized into structural and thematic types. Thus creating a new css drop-down menu means creating only a new theme since structure is permanent. What is more, creating a new theme is easy with available templates and takes 10-15 mins.
- Easily deployable. The code and files are well organized. Available channels to hook up to your CMS or other tools as well as existing websites in XHTML format.
- Easily transformable. Can be transformed by changing class name only. Available transformations: horizontal, vertical left-to-right, vertical right-to-left, horizontal linear, horizontal upwards.
- Cross browser. Configurations available for Windows Internet Explorer 5 or later, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later, Opera 7 or later, Apple Safari 2 or later, Google Chrome 1 or later, etc.
- JavaScript only for IE. Minimal JavaScript code only for IE 6 or earlier. Can be used with popular JavaScript libraries Jquery or Scriptaculous. Everything else is pure CSS.
- Super Fast. Having the above mentioned features it is not affected by any disturbances whatsoever.
- Continuous development. The project is constantly revised and improved.
via Free CSS Drop-Down Menu Framework – LWIS.NET.
jCarousel is a jQuery plugin for controlling lists of items in horizontal or vertical order. The items can be either static HTML or loaded via various methods (including AJAX). The elements in the carousel can be scrolled back and forth, with or without animation.
jCarousel – Riding carousels with jQuery.
Wish I had found this thing a while ago when I was developing my own auto-complete functionality. This extremely small jQuery plug-in (about 7 Kb) looks and works brilliantly. The plug-in takes advantage of jQuery more than other plug-ins that do the same thing, is styled ONLY with CSS (and uses no images) and is very responsive. It creates all the necessary elements dynamically and only needs a regular INPUT box.
It is a very customisable plug-in, the data can be supplied to it in either an object on the page or loaded in JSON format from a URL. And of course, it’s free.
jQuery pageSlide by Scott Robbin is a great plugin for sliding the entire web page on one side and revealing a pane with information. This can be used to provide context-help for example, when clicking a link in your application or to provide options for an application and after saving them, slide the page back to its initial state.
Great work by Scott Robbin, inspired by Aza Raskin.
Download the files from the GitHub project setup for this purpose.
So many times I wanted to just lie down somewhere and watch something on my iPod touch but the video was sitting on my desktop, unconverted, so the device was not able to play it. A while ago I stumbled upon this brilliant pair of apps: Air Video . I say pair because they are a server that runs on your Mac or Windows PC and an iPhone app that is the client.
I could not believe it until I tried it: the server gives you access to the videos on your shared folders and even if the videos are not converted for the iPhone, it converts them using a conversion queue OR converts them in real-time! It takes a powerful-ish desktop for the real-time conversion to work, but it had no problems on my older Pentium D. The videos started playing after about 20 seconds of buffering.
The videos can be in almost any format. This is brilliant because you can get access to your entire library of videos without copying them to your device. Streaming works over your wireless connection from your local network OR even via the Internet. You can adjust the conversion quality and resolution.
The free iPhone app only allows a certain number of folders/files to be retrieved from the server, so if you have a lot of videos you should probably buy the 2.99$ app that gives access to your full library. Network discovery happens quite fast, it detects the machines on the local network that run the server.
The new Air Server beta that is available on their website now includes Subtitle Support.
This is a brilliant set of apps and really get the job done. Hope you find it useful.
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