Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Snazzy Videos for your Website

Have you ever fancied having a snazzy promotional video on your website, but you don't have a video camera or the time to put something together yourself? Well head on over to animoto.com and create your own professional looking videos by simply uploading a series of photos:

http://animoto.com/

Short videos up to 30 seconds in length are free and the resulting videos can be directly embedded into your webpage or linked in emails you send out. Great stuff!

Wednesday, 5 November 2008

An application has expectedly quit.

Windows 3.x has come to the closing moments of its long life.

On 1 November Microsoft stopped issuing licences for the software that made its debut in May 1990 in the US.

The various versions of Windows 3.x (including 3.11) released in the early 1990s, were the first of Microsoft's graphical user interfaces to win huge worldwide success.

They helped Microsoft establish itself and set the trend for how it makes its revenues, and what drives the company until the present day.

For many computer users 3.x was the first Windows-based operating system they used, and the software established the iconography of Microsoft's flagship product.

As it was updated the software started to make PCs a serious rival to Apple machines, as it could take advantage of much improved graphics, had a broader colour palette, and could use multimedia extras such as sound cards and CD Rom drives.

Microsoft maintained support for Windows 3.x until the end of 2001, and it has lived on as an embedded operating system until 1 November 2008.

Creating Tutorials

Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
It is estimated that Macromedia Flash Player is installed in more than 90% of the PCs. Using Wink you can create content viewable across the web in all these users' desktops. Similar applications sell for hundreds of dollars, while Wink is free with unrivaled features. So spread the word about Wink to your friends.
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Free Sound Editor

Need a free sound editor to work on music or sound bytes.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

* Record live audio.
* Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
* Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
* Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
* Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
* And more! See the complete list of features on the above linked site.

Audacity is free software, developed by a group of volunteers and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).