Spiderman’s Web

If you’ve ever watched TV shows or movies online that were not available on Hulu or its network site, chances are you’ve probably watched video on some pretty ugly sites. It’s probably ad-ridden, ugly, in Chinese, and an overall eyesore. That’s were Zorro comes in. Here’s the developers description of the program:

Zorro is a utility to completely blank the screen except for a rectangular area selected by the user. This is especially useful for watching videos on your computer without being distracted by other programs.

Like it says, you choose an area of your screen which you would like to see. Using some magic which is unknown to the common man and the pressing of a hotkey, it blanks out the rest of the screen. I’ve found this very useful for watching videos on foreign sites (especially when it has Chinese/Japanese subtitles). In my opinion, it makes watching video a whole lot nicer and it also doesn’t hurt your eyes as much. Zorro is also useful to block out some of those pesky toolbars at the bottom of a full screen video. Although I use it for mostly video and what not, I’m sure this is very useful for productivity as well. For example, if you always check the time or your email, this can be a helpful way to keep you focused. That’s just one (lame) example, but I’m sure there are many other ways to use this flablawesome program.

The Hookup: Gabriele Ponti

P.S. Just incase you want to watch the Conestoga Drum Line Special, here it is.

(by far my favorite iPod ad)

You’ve already heard our two cents over the iPhone 3G and it’s SDK (oh here’s Pedro’s write up on dat SDK), so let’s look at Apple’s new update to it’s grossly popular iTunes/iPod lineup. I’ve heard a lot of rumors that past month or so. Some of them came true and some of them didn’t. Some features weren’t even rumors! Here are some of my opinions of Apple’s announcements (by product).

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Nah, actually we’re just gonna show you how to speed up Windows Explorer. On a PC, especially in Vista, you might notice a slight HUGE lag when you open up Windows Explorer. You know it’s not your computer since you put in a bunch of memory, upgraded the hard drive, put in a new graphics card, etc. But Explorer is still freakin’ slow! Here are a couple of tricks to help ya out:

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The only thing more annoying than having to march with a huge base drum for two weeks straight has to be lookin’ at those user folders (Music, Videos, Documents, etc) when they are missing their icons. You know, they’re replaced with an ugly, regular folder icon (eww). When you look at all of your user folders, it looks pretty ugly with only one icon being beige while the rest have cool green folders with pictures in ‘em. Chances are, you probably erased the “desktop.ini” file in the folder (it’s hidden). You probably didn’t do it yourself, but I bet you have a program that did.  I’ve seen many ways which highlight different ways to fix this problem. I find this way the easiest. Here’s how it’s done:

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The Hookup: Let’s Learn Linux

For Your Information: It seems that my schedule has been at bit booked lately (coughbandcampcough), so please expect to see a post (or two) by tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks for Understanding,

T-Hawk

Your Friendly Neighborhood Editor

One thing that I really liked about Windows Media player was the fact that it had some really cool built-in visualizers. My family uses them for parties, I use theme when I clean my room, and I also use them when I have nothing better to do (a.k.a. procrastinating!). I don’t use Windows Media Player anymore, but I am still long for a good visualizer. On iTunes, you really only have one option, which hasn’t been changed for 5+ years. So, I thought that maybe I could download some more. Let me tell ya, there are close to no visualizers for iTunes. Sure, there are a couple for Macs, but on a Windows machine? Ha! You’ve got to be kidding me. I probably should’ve named this post “The Only 3 Visualizers for iTunes”. Although they are few in numbers, these are actually pretty cool! (Note: These are all for Macs and PCs)

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Over the past week, I’ve been hanging out with the family at a nice hotel in Utah. The only problem is that it’s a  shared network and provides no way to connect my iPhone via SSH. Since I needed to edit some permissions via SSH, the Total Commander or iPhone Browser method just won’t cut it. Now, whether your stuck at a hotel or just can’t connect to the Internet, this little trick will do wonders when you need it. (Note: For PC only)

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While you may not like the Who, this little web page you might like. Whether  your scared of heights or you just can’t make it to New York, some cool Russians got a b-eau-ti-ful view of Manhattan from the top of the Empire State Building. Here’s what the description says (curtosy of Google Translate):

Mouse over a panorama, hold the left button, change the direction of view in any direction Priblizit  (?) or delete, left “SHIFT” or “CTRL”
Choose a plug for viewing panoramas. We strongly recommend using DevalVR and full-screen mode.

Overall, if your bored, I say why not go ahead and give it a shot. If you want the full screen mode, check out the DevalVR plugin.

The Hookup: (Uhhh, everything is in Russian so the site name is unknown!)

It’s been about a month now since the App store has been released to the general public and there have been some good and some bad applications. From drinking beer to checking stock quotes, you can find almost anything in the app store. One of the most awesome apps on there right now has got to be the MLB At Bat app. Combined with a clean interface and up-to-date scores, it is worth the five bucks. So, let’s take a look around…

Home Screen

1. First, you got a nice interface to greet you up front. Kudos to the MLB software geeks who created this app. It shows you all of the games for the day, along with each games current inning (or start time) and score.
2. In the settings (which we’ll see later), you can set a favorite team to display at the top of each day. So, instead of scrolling down to see by how much the Phillies are losing by, you get to see them lose right away!
3. Tapping each game will show you the current line score.
4. Along with the line score, each game has the current pitcher and batter. For the pitcher, it will display his current game record and ERA. For the batter, it will display his hits per at bat and their batting average.

There are three screens which you can scroll to. By scrolling to the left, you’ll see yesterday’s games along with the line score and the both pitchers’ new game record and ERA. Each game will still have its video highlights available for your viewing pleasure. By scrolling to the right you’ll see tomorrow’s games, which I’ll talk more about later in the post.

Under the "4" you will see a little world icon, which will take you to the MLB Live pitch-by-pitch page (optimized for mobile viewing). This will show who is on base, pitching, and at bat. The at bat summary includes what the ball was called (foul, strike looking, strike swinging ball), how fast the pitch was and what the pitch was. There is also a cool picture which shows where each pitch was thrown. Overall, a cool web app, but it would be awesome to see this feature implemented into the app.

Video ‘n’ Stuff

1. Nothing much to see here. By tapping the little video icon next to each game on the home screen (see above picture), you’ll get a screen highlighting major plays of the game. The little blue dot, like in iTunes, indicates whether or not you’ve watched it yet.

The video load time is not too bad. Over Wi-Fi, it loads fairly quick, but not ZOMG THAT’S FREAKIN’ FAST speeds (also known as "FiOS" fast). Although it’s fast enough to watch right away. Over AT&T’s EDGE network, it’s not that quick, but bearable. According to the MLB description of the app, it will "automatically detect your network settings and play video encoded for either EDGE/3G or Wi-Fi bitrates."

Ye Olde Settings

1. Here, you are able to set your favorite team. I wish that you could pick two of your favorite teams, as this would be very cool for people who like more than one team (GO DODGERS!!!).
2. If you would like to change your update frequency, you have the options of 1 minute, 30 seconds or 15 seconds.
3. You can also set the default video playback setting from Fill Screen to Fit Screen.

As you can tell, there isn’t much too see here, but are useful in most cases. Note: This comes with the 1.1 update. So, if you have this app and have no idea what I’m talking about, go check the App store for an update!

Until Nextime

1. By scrolling to the right, you’ll come to tomorrow’s games. By tapping each game, you’ll see the start time, name of stadium, and each team’s pitcher along with there current game record and ERA.
2. The little world icon will quit out of the app and open up a new MLB web page in Safari. The only new feature it will show is the predicted weather conditions for the game. It will also display the predicted pitchers and time, but you can see that in the app already.

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Overall, a neat little app which is a must for all MLB fans out there with an iPhone or iPod Touch. What sets this apart from other apps is the fact that it also shows video highlights from each game. I haven’t had any problems so far with the app and hope I won’t find any either. The only thing I would like to see is the pitch-by-pitch feature found on the MLB’s web app. It would also be nice to see MLB news and standings, but I don’t think we’ll see that anytime soon since it’s more of an app you check for scores, not for reference. If you have a lonely Lincoln sitting in your back account, I say go for it wait for next season! If you don’t like baseball, well, shame on you.

The Hookup: iTunes (this will open up iTunes)

P.S. The Phillies did lose 8-2.

UPDATE: According to the app description, this might only be available for the rest of the 2008 season. Here’s what it says:

MLB.com At Bat will provide this breakthrough service for the remainder of the 2008 season - including playoffs and World Series.

Seriously? Well, that just made this app suck balls! If I were you, I’d wait for next season. It is worth paying for it the rest of the season, but I’d rather buy Super Monkey ball if I had known that. I seriously hope they offer a discount next year for those of us who have already paid for it (preferably free),

A lot of people think that Microsoft wasn’t thinking when it came to Launchers. The closest thing they have come to that would be the new Windows Search function built into the Vista start menu and the Quick Launch toolbar, both found on the Windows Task bar/Start bar. Well, did you know there’s some hidden functionality in that ol’ taskbar of yours? Take a look and you’ll see what I mean:

To Small to See? Click it!

Using the “Create Taskbar” function on the toolbar, you can create your own categories of icons to put on the bottom of your task bar. It’s sort of like the Mac OS X Dock for PC, except without the eyecandy. If your going for something small and simple but quick, this little “tutorial” is just for you. Actually, this has nothing to do with using the “Quick Launch” toolbar, but it does make for a good title.

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