Swarmplayer

If anyone downloads torrents for TV shows then the downloading experience got a little bit more sweet.
Swarmplayer in conjunction with EZTV has created a modified VLC index to play a torrent as it downloads. This ofcourse only applies to torrents with the .tstream extention. Currently in it's alpha stage it is very buggy, but this breakthrough in PVP technology could change the face of the way we download torrents indefinatly.

(This picture illustrates how to download a .tstream file from EZTV. (Click to enlarge))

Google reader, Google chrome and Google Andriod.

I think it's time I got to mentioning the slow but sure google world takeover. Slowly google has been building and releasing different apps these include:

(If you are a user of blogger you are probably familiar with google reader.)
Google reader (for those not acquainted) is googles own browser based feed reader for the general user. It looks similar to iGoogle it displays all your feeds in the left menu tile and the content in the right. It's pretty genius and I'm not sure how I coped with my feeds before it came out.
But as they say a picture is a million words.


Google chrome is google's contender to the mortal combat that is the browser wars. Even though it is currently in its beta phase it still seems pretty solid, even after it refused to import my firefox bookmarks. It's smooth, fast and uses the latest Java of its time. It's biggest contender being firefox i'm not sure how it will pan out also safari boasts it's new squirrelfish Java webkit. Both could potentially be fatal to the google platform but a lot of die hard fans might just use it regardless.


Google android, after taking it's internet limits to near capacity they must of thought that their next task would be to create an open source mobile phone platform.
What is Google Android?
Google Android is the worlds first complete, open, and free mobile platform. Google Android is being developed by a group of 30 technology and mobile companies, also known as, The Open Handset Alliance.

Open? What does that mean?
Open as in open source. This means you can make tons of applications and services. Now I know this may sound like the iPhone, but it is completely open source, the iPhone isn't.

You can build applications and services on top of the default ones that already exist in your phone, you can even replace those default services with custom ones.

What phone will Android work with?
As far as I know right now, this is all hush hush, but it is confirmed that Android will work with touchscreens and 3g phones.

Sounds cool, what applications are there so far?
Well, since Google already released the SDK, there are many award winning applications already developed. (With the release of the SDK, Google provided an emulator of the phone that works exactly like the normal phone would, so you can test out your apps).

Since there are too many to list, just check out the award winning ones on this page. http://code.google.com/android/adc_gallery/
Sourced from here.

The boy who sees without eyes

There's a show that runs on TV sometimes called extraordinary people, you may or may not have heard of it but it is amazing. Well I forgot about this show until today when I was looking for videos on Clive Wearing for psychology. In youtubes recommended for you box popped up this little 5 part story of Ben. Ben Underwood lost his eyes to cancer when he was a toddler but something crazy happened, he began to see with echo location. Well here's the videos:

Great open source software.

I try my hardest to not spend any money and get the most out of something, some people call this being cheap but I like to think of it as being cost efficient. Most people know of a free alternative to something but not a lot know that there is probably an open source equivalent to anything.
My list will illustrate some of the best open source things to get your work done or waste your time with.

To start I will get the known out of the way.
Open office


Open office is a free equivalent to microsoft office boasting word, powerpoint, access and excel, it even has it's own quirks of an image manipulation program and an advanced calculation program. Being a hefty 200mb download and about 400mb on disk it is still the better use because if you can't afford office yet you have hundreds of .doc or whatever from school. Open office can still read and manipulate office docs for use back in office, how cool is that.

Sumatra PDF


Some people may or may not be aquianted with a PDF file, these files are very genius. The most renown for a PDF veiwer is Adobe's Acrobat. Even though Acrobat is free it has a very load slow time and can be very clunky. Sumatra is a very versitile PDF viewer being light weight and easy to use. A must have.

Audacity


Audacity is an open source audio editor which is easy to use and very versatile in it's functions. I use this alot for production of music and podcasts/internet radio and the like. It's a wave length editor and multi media recorder.

Construct

Construct is an open source directX sprite powered game creator, create anything from a 2D side scroller to a Pseudo 3D FPS game. Using basically drag and drop commands and a paint.net style sprite creation this program is very fluid and easy to use. Side by side to game creation it can also make a variety of programs from media players to .dll's.


Paint.net/GIMP


Both of these are open source equivalents to photoshop.

Winamp


Winamp is a media player with a huge compatibility rate. It supports anything from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis and AAC. With a plugin catalogue comparable to that of firefox it can be turned into anything you want your media player to do. (I host an internet radio station using it). It can also manage external data like Ipods and other mp3 players.

VLC


VLC is the winamp of videos, it plays anything from AVI to MKV and 3GP. I have YET to find a video file not compatible with this player. It also has the same compatibility with music making this the best media player out there. The best part is that it is lightweight, almost half of that of say WMP and iTunes

Vista and hamachi.

Since my computers been dead (graphics card is dead) I've been using my laptop connected to my primary monitor.
The strange thing about is that on the laptop is vista home premium. Now I've been using XP for a couple years and my laptop properly for about a week and since it has vista I thought fuck it, why not have a play. Because in about 3-4 years everyone will be on vista anyway because that's what technology does. (No one still uses 95 do hey ;)) So yeah, me and the guy down stairs have one thing in common. DOWNLOADING. Now this doesn't cause too much of a problem because we can acknowledge seeding/speeds/bandwidth and accommodate fine. But the minor issue is that what we download sometimes is the same thing. Well, I say sometimes but about 80% of the time we download the same thing. So that's on average 2gb of data...twice.
We've been trying to combat the problem and the agreement now is that if he downloads it before I do he will tell me and I'll use a USB to get it off him.

We'll call me lazy but this is 21st century yeah, so without having a direct network I have found a little jem Hamachi.


This is by no means new and I've known about it previously before but it was not until today where I actually got to using it.
Hamachi is a VPN service that easily sets up in 10 minutes, and enables secure remote access to your business network, anywhere there's an Internet connection.
It works with your existing firewall, and requires no additional configuration. Hamachi is the first networking application to deliver an unprecedented level of direct peer-to-peer connectivity. It is simple, secure, and cost-effective.
It comes in two sets; Basic and Pro (What doesn't these days) Pro comes with 3 licenses:
Month: $4.95
6 Month:$23.70
Year: $39.00
And basic is free for home, private and public use. Anything business related has to be purchased.
No this thing is IMMENSE anything from file sharing to emulated LAN activity it's great. easy too use and pretty awesome anyhow.

Vista, all I've heard about vista is bad things, it doesn't do this, it does do that. Granted it has a few annoying quirks like the insistence of permission for everything you do. But I can see why, I mean if you download something that uses a background installer for a virus or something vista will be like HEY SUMMITS TRYING TO INSTALL YOU WANNA LET IT and you'd be like naaaaah. So yeah, it has a sexy GUI and and runs quite smoothly on my laptop. This system hog bullshit is pretty annoying I mean have you tried running XP on a 95 optimised machine? It's the future, stuffs going to need better hardware.
I know this seems a little far past the bat to be defending vista when it's been out long enough for acceptance but I just deemed it necessary some input.