DIYers IT Zone

save2pc is a free tool that downloads videos from Youtube or Google Video and saves it as Avi or Mpeg or Flv file to your local computer.

save2pc allows you to easily grab and save desired youtube video. The user interface of save2pc is very simple, so you don’t need any technical knowledge to use it. No need to use scripts for web browsers. Just run save2pc and start downloading!

Features:

* Easy to use
* Download from Youtube
* Download from Google Video
* Save youtube video as an AVI file
* Save youtube video as an MPEG file
* Save youtube video as an FLV file

A beta version of Windows Sideshow has been made available for Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0. Even though the software is a developer-intended beta, you can still try out its current features.
Windows Sideshow is a technology that Microsoft rolled out in Windows Vista. It supports a secondary screen on your mobile PC and allows you [...]

More: continued here

In addition to many benefits brought to us by mobile phones, there have been a few drawbacks as well. Especially, related to ethics/culture/social issues of the mobile phone use.
Don’t you just hate it, when during an engaging presentation, show or movie, a mobile phone of some as#$%^&&, sorry, forgetful person, begins to ring? What [...]

More: continued here

It was so easy to tell what is what and what for when we only had mobile phone and laptop to carry around.
But today, with the proliferation of smartphones, PDA phones, communicators, MID’s, UMPC’s, sub-notebooks and what not, sometimes it’s pretty difficult to know where to put any particular device and how best to use [...]

More: continued here

It seems that these days mobile phone is becoming a hub to any any other electronic device/function. You know - digital camera, TV, media player, GPS navigator, perfume dispenser…
But not everyone may be happy that it is a phone first. Maybe they would like their device to be something else first, and the phone only [...]

More: continued here

One of the biggest problems in mobile phone development are the limited resources that can be crammed into a small portable body. Various trade-offs to screen size, power consumption, CPU capacity, amount of available memory, etc; have to be accommodated in the name of portability.
At the same time, everyone around seems to be carrying some [...]

More: continued here

DVD slideshow GUI offers a very simple way to make your own slideshows. Just import your images, export them as an authored DVD-image(.iso) and burn it!

But DVD slideshow GUI offers much more:

• 180 different types of transitions.
• Animate your overlapping images using zoom, pan and rotate.
• Add videos(avi/avs) to you slideshow.
• Add music, motion backgrounds, borders and subtitles.
• Export to dvd video, dvd audio, dvd chapters, dvd subtitles, avi, flash, avisynth script, storyboards, single images with backgrounds, etc.
• You can even make and add your own transitions(grayscale bitmaps or in avisynth code) and Post effects(avisynth code) and share them through the forum.
• Import any type of image, any size.
• Change image order move, copy, paste for one or more slides.
• Code your own avisynth transitions.
• Random transition.
• Add your own avisynth, Free Frame, Photoshop CHA/AMP effects.
• Import Exif data with photos.

ALSee is simply the best picture viewer for real people. Everything you need to view and edit your digital camera photos is in ALSee. There’s no feature bloat with things that nobody uses or understands. Opening, viewing, editing, and saving pictures has never been faster or easier.

Features:

BitMeter is a useful and free bandwidth meter that can perform real time monitoring on internet speed and bandwidth usage. This bandwidth meter features an appealing and colorful interface. The upload and download speeds are represented via colourful graphs. Each colours represents different upload and download speed. The update of the information is in real time. Besides tracking your internet connection and bandwidth usage, BitMeter can also alert users via audio notice about the current upload or download speed at regular time intervals. It will also prompt users if the internet connection is disconnected.

- More via My Digital Life -

A fresh install from the Ubuntu disk does not include the wifi and webcam drivers by default, so you have to install them manually. If you can connect to the internet by ethernet (wire) from your laptop then do so.

If you can connect by ethernet

Go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources -> Updates tab.

Check the box saying “Unsupported updates (hardy-backports)” and close the window.

Open a terminal window and type

sudo apt-get update

and then

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-hardy

This is a meta-package that will install the relevant modules for your kernel version and keep them up to date whenever you install a new kernel version. After a reboot your WiFi and/or webcam should work now, and hopefully bluetooth but I’m not sure whether these modules will enable bluetooth or not.

If you cannot connect by ethernet

Go to the following page and download the file for your processor (AMD or Intel) to a removable storage device (eg. Pen drive). The file you want to download is under the header “Download linux-backports…” from here

Put the pen drive into your laptop and double click to run the .deb file you downloaded from that page. Install the package (you’ll need to use your sudo password).

After that, a reboot should have your wireless and webcam running (if you have a webcam). However, you should now do all of the tasks listed under “If you can connect by ethernet” before any new updates. This is because kernel modules are kernel version dependent, and you need the meta package to ensure your kernel module is kept up to date with any new kernel versions.

Sound

Sound should be working with the default Ubuntu install on an Inspiron 1525, but with some limits, namely Pulseaudio won’t work with all programs installed on your computer so you might be limited to only one application being able to produce sound at a time.

For a simple solution, just open Synaptic, search for “Pulseaudio” and install all the packages it lists.

You may not need to, but it may be best to reboot after installing these pulseaudio packages, to ensure the server and your desktop environment loads all of these new packages and uses them.

More: continued here