Learn How To Easily Extend Laptop Battery Life

When we say we want to “extend the life of a laptop battery” this could me a couple different things: It could mean you want to make the charge last longer, so if you’re out of the office the charge will get you through until you’re able to plug in again. Or, extending the life of your battery could mean you want to make the battery last as along as you can before you need to physically replace it. Both are directly determined by how you use your laptop. With a little conscious effort, you can utilize tactics that will keep your laptop running happily for years to come.

Increase Laptop Battery Time

You can increase the time between charges by doing some routine maintenance and changing a few settings.

1.      To begin, get in the habit of defragging your hard drive every couple of months. This reduces the amount of work your hard drive needs to do to access data on the drive. Less hard drive movement means less heat and less power drain.

2.      Next, remove any DVDs from your optical drive. A drive will spin if there is a disk in it, so make sure you do not have any disks in the drive.

3.      Turn off Wifi or Bluetooth if you’re not using it. These are usually on by default.

4.      Unplug any external USB devices.

5.      Reduce the brightness of the screen. This can be done using shortcut keys

6.      Hibernate your laptop rather than using standby mode. Hibernating the laptop saves the system current state and shuts the computer down, saving power.

7.      Kill unnecessary programs. Got to start and in the run box, type msconfig and hit ok. Under the start-up tab, uncheck any programs you know do not need to load each time your computer boots up. The less programs you run in the background, the longer your charge will last.

Increase The Lifespan Of Your Laptop Battery

Your laptop battery will usually last between two and three years. These tips will help ensure you do not unintentionally reduce the lifespan of your laptop, and may even help you extend its lifespan.

1.      Do not frequently completely discharge the battery. Continuously running the battery down to noting causes unnecessary strain on the battery and may reduce its life.

2.      Completely discharge the battery once a month. While Lithium-ion batteries don’t suffer from past battery memory issues, it doesn’t hurt to do a controlled drain once a month.

3.      Keep the laptop and battery cool. Heat is a battery killer. Do not leave the laptop in a car or exposed to direct sunlight for an extended period of time.

4.      If your laptop will run without the battery installed, remove it when you know your laptop will be plugged into direct power for a long period of time.

5.      Don’t buy a backup battery. You can buy a backup if you think you’ll need it, but be wary of keeping a battery on the shelf while you wait for the original to die. Ideally, you’ll want to buy a battery that was recently manufactured. If you do have a spare, consider rotating it in with the original so they both have a chance to be used. When not in use, store the batteries in a cool, dry place.

Batteries only last an average of two years, but performing these steps might improve that. You will eventually need to replace the pack when performance drops.

6 useful Wi-Fi tools for Windows

Free or cheap apps can help troubleshoot your wireless network, turn your laptop into a hot spot and more

We live in a mobile world; if you have a laptop (and who doesn't?), that means constantly connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi. You most likely use Wi-Fi not just when you're on the road at cafés, airports or hotels, but to connect to your home network too. You might even connect to a wireless network at the office. Here's the problem: Windows doesn't do a particularly good job of providing Wi-Fi tools. Yes, it will let you search for and connect to nearby networks, but that's about the extent of it. What if you want to get detailed information about every Wi-Fi network within range, troubleshoot your network, turn your laptop into a portable Wi-Fi hot spot or keep yourself safe at public hot spots? Windows is no help.
That's why we've rounded up these six downloads. They'll do all these things and more. Five out of the six are free; the other is inexpensive and lets you try it out first.

InSSIDer

MetaGeek's InSSIDer is a great tool for finding Wi-Fi networks within range of your computer and gathering a great deal of information about each. It's also useful for troubleshooting problems with your own Wi-Fi network.
For every Wi-Fi network InSSIDer finds, it shows you the MAC address of the router, the router manufacturer (if it can detect it -- it usually does), the channel it's using, the service set identifier (SSID) or public name of the network, what kind of security is in place, the speed of the network and more. In addition, it displays the current signal strength of the network, as well as its signal strength over time.

InSSIDer finds a great deal of information about nearby wireless networks and reports on what it finds.

How would you use the software to troubleshoot your wireless network? If you see that your network uses the same channel as nearby networks with strong signals, you'll know that you should change the channel your network transmits over and thereby cut down on potential conflicts. (Most routers have a settings screen that lets you do this.)
You can also use the software to detect "dead zones" that don't get a strong Wi-Fi connection. Walk around your home or office with InSSIDer installed on your laptop to see where signal strength drops. You can either avoid using a computer in those spots or else try repositioning the wireless router to see if it helps with coverage.
Whether you need to troubleshoot a network or find Wi-Fi hot spots to which you want to connect -- or you're just plain curious -- this is one app you'll want to download and try.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows XP, Vista and 7 (32- and 64-bit)
Download InSSIDer

Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

This is another excellent program that sniffs out Wi-Fi networks and shares pertinent information about them, such as how close or far away they are. Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector shows any nearby hot spots on a radar-like display. A separate pane offers detailed information about every hot spot it finds, including signal strength, the kind of network (802.11n, for example), the router vendor, the channel on which the network transmits and whether it's an access point or an ad hoc network.
In a pane next to the radar, Wi-Fi Inspector shows you even more detailed information about the network to which you're currently connected, including your internal IP address, external IP address, DNS and gateway information, and so on.

Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector uses a radar-like interface to show you information about nearby hot spots.

Why use Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector rather than MetaGeek's InSSIDer? Wi-Fi Inspector's simpler, cleaner layout makes it easier to see information about all of the hot spots at a glance. It also shows the relative physical distance between you and each hot spot on its display. And there's no denying the overall coolness factor of a radar-like display.
However, if you want more detailed information, including the relative signal strengths of all nearby wireless networks, InSSIDer is a better bet.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows XP SP2+, Vista and 7
Download Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

Connectify

This very nifty piece of free software lets you turn a Windows 7 PC (it only works with Windows 7) into a Wi-Fi hot spot that can be used by nearby devices -- your smartphone, for example, or devices that your co-workers are using in the same location.

Connectify turns your laptop into a mobile Wi-Fi hot spot.

The PC on which you install it will, of course, need to be connected to the Internet itself and have Wi-Fi capability so it can provide access to other devices. The computer doesn't necessarily need a wired connection to the Internet (although it won't hurt to have one); its Wi-Fi card can perform double-duty as Wi-Fi signal receiver and transmitter.
Setting up a hot spot is simple: Once you have a connection, run Connectify on your PC and give your hot spot a name and password. Your computer's Wi-Fi card will begin broadcasting a Wi-Fi signal that other devices can connect to, in the same way they can connect to any other hot spot. (Your PC card will broadcast in whatever Wi-Fi protocol it was built for. It also should support devices that use earlier protocols -- for example, an 802.11n signal should allow 802.11b/g/n devices to connect.)
Since your hot spot is password-protected, only people who know the password can use it; the signal is secured with WPA2-PSK encryption.
You can even use Connectify to set up a local network without an external Internet connection. Run it as a hot spot, and nearby devices can connect to each other in a network, even though there's no Internet access. You can use this for sharing files in a workgroup or setting up a network for multiplayer games.
Note that I had problems connecting my Mac to a Windows 7 machine running a Connectify-created hot spot, but I was able to make the connection with other PCs and devices.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows 7
Download Connectify

WeFi

Tools like InSSIDer and Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector are great for finding hot spots that are currently in range of your laptop. But if you want to find hot spots in other locations -- a part of town that you'll be in later in the day, for example, or a city you'll be visiting next week -- you'll want to give WeFi a try.
Like other Wi-Fi sniffing tools, WeFi uses your Wi-Fi card to find your current location and show you nearby hot spots. You can click on a link to see a particular hot spot on a map, along with its address. (Note, however, that in practice I found it was not always accurate.)
But you can also type in a different location to see hot spots near that location. Click the Wi-Fi Maps tab and enter an address; a map of that location will appear on Google Maps and you'll be provided with various details about nearby hot spots, such as type (municipal, hotel, café and so on), distance from the location and whether there's an access fee.

WeFi helps you find hot spots both near your computer and in other locations.

WeFi also helps you manage how to connect to hot spots. It can, for example, automatically connect you only to your favorite hot spots or only to hot spots that have been discovered by other WeFi members.
The basic version of WeFi is free, but there's also a version called WeFi Premium that you have to pay for. WeFi Premium finds and connects you to paid hot spots. The amount you pay for WeFi Premium varies depending on whether you want to pay an hourly rate, prepay for a certain number of minutes and so on. You'd be better off skipping WeFi Premium; it's much easier to find paid hot spots on your own.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows XP, Vista and 7
Download WeFi

Hotspot Shield

When you connect to the Internet via a public hot spot, you put yourself at risk because someone might try to sniff your packets or otherwise snoop on what you're doing online. Hotspot Shield, a free, lightweight piece of software from AnchorFree, promises to keep you safe by creating a secure VPN connection and encrypting all of your communications.

Hotspot Shield lets you use a VPN to protect yourself while using a public hot spot.

As you connect to a hot spot, simply run Hotspot Shield, and it will begin protecting you using the HTTP Secure (HTTPS) protocol. It launches a tab to show you that you're connected; to disconnect, click the Disconnect button on the tab. To connect again, click the Connect button. You can also connect and disconnect by right-clicking the program's icon in the System Tray.
You'll need to take some care when you first install Hotspot Shield. If you don't want its toolbar installed in your browser, uncheck the box next to "Include the Hotspot Shield Community Toolbar." Also, make sure to uncheck the boxes for setting Hotspot Shield Private Search as your default search, setting your home page to the Hotspot Shield Private Search page, fixing "Page Not Found" errors, and enabling you to get instant alerts from the software -- those options won't do you much good and will likely annoy you.
A few caveats: When you run the software, it will open a browser tab to the product's home page, which has ads on it. You can close that tab if you want; the program works fine without it open. Also, according to a page on the Hotspot Shield Web site, you might see targeted ads appear above Web pages you visit. That hasn't happened to me, although I've seen complaints elsewhere around the Web about intrusive ads. Finally, some people who have downloaded the program have complained that it is unstable, or they were unable to uninstall it. In my tests I didn't run across those problems, but be forewarned that others have reported them.
While AnchorFree offers Hotspot Shield for free, other companies sell similar VPN software products to protect you at public hot spots. ConnectInPrivate, for example, offers software and a service that costs $14.99 per month.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 (also Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6)
Download Hotspot Shield

Plug and Browse

If you use your laptop to connect to more than one wireless or wired network, you might be spending more time than you'd like switching network settings.
For example, if you're a typical notebook user, at work you might have a static IP address, a default network printer, a set of scripts that need to be run, proxy servers for security and a set of mapped network drives. At home, you might have a DHCP-assigned network address on a wireless network as well as a home printer, and you might use Windows Firewall but no proxy servers. And then there's that coffee shop hot spot that you visit regularly with its own set of requirements, such as a DHCP-assigned network address.
Each time you switch networks, chances are that you have to tweak settings such as your default printer, mapped network drives, proxy servers and so on.
Plug and Browse from Interactive Studios puts an end to all that manual configuration. It allows you to create profiles for all the networks you use, and then when you switch from one network to another, you simply choose the new network's profile. All your settings will be intact.

Plug and Browse makes it easy to switch among multiple networks, including Wi-Fi-based ones, without having to go through constant configurations.

A very nice touch is that you can tell Plug and Browse to automatically create a profile for you and it will grab all of your current settings for the network to which you're connected. You can still edit the settings after that if you need to.
Price: $39.99 (with 30-day free trial)
Compatible with: Windows XP, Vista and 7
Download Plug & Browse
Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld.com and the author of more than 35 books, including How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).
Read more about Wireless Networking in Computerworld's Wireless Networking Topic Center.

How to use HTML5 on your website today

Don't wait for the Flash-iPhone war to end: InfoWorld's hands-on guide tells you how to get your websites ready for HTML5 now

 There's been lots written about the politics and process of the emerging HTML5 specification (see "What to expect from HTML5" and "How HTML5 will change the Web," as just two examples), but what working Web developers primarily want to know is: What can I do with HTML5, and when can I start using it? The good news is that there's a lot you can do with HTML5. The better news is that there's a lot that you can do with HTML5 today.

But first, one major caveat: You need to know your audience, though, of course, this is true whether or not you want to start using HTML5. If the majority of your site's visitors still use Internet Explorer 6, then you have no reason to rush. On the other hand, if your site is primarily for mobile browsers on iPhones and iPads, what are you waiting for? But if your site falls somewhere in the middle -- as most do -- here are some handy guidelines to ramping up to HTML5.

What HTML5 features you can use now
Although the HTML5 specification is still a draft being worked on by a standard committee, significant portions are already deployed in Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox (with more to come in Firefox 4), and Opera -- and the forthcoming Microsoft IE9 is expected to adopt much of the draft HTML5 specification as well. The When Can I Use site is a great resource, providing detailed breakdowns of what each major browser supports for HTML5 and related emerging Web standards.
Another site, The HTML5 Test, displays compatibility scores, based on the number of supported HTML5 capabilities (out of 300), for each browser (you need to visit the site in each browser you want scored). As of June 12, 2010, the scores were:

• Apple Safari 5.0: 208
• Google Chrome 5.03: 197
• Microsoft IE7: 12
• Microsoft IE8: 27
• Mozilla Firefox 3.66: 139
• Opera 10.6: 159

There's clearly a core of HTML5 features that all the major non-IE browsers do support, which could allow "draft HTML5" websites to be deployed to a large segment of the Web-using population.

Starting from the top. You can use HTML5's doctype now; there's no reason not to. You can even do a mass find and replace throughout your site, looking for (for instance):


"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">


Which can be turned into:




Isn't that considerably clearer and more straightforward? If browsers rendered your pages as standards-compliant before, they will still do so afterward.
Get moving with video. Much of the press about HTML5's video tag has been about the current format battles. There are four competitors -- Flash, H.264, Ogg, and WebM -- all of which hope to be the format of the future, and none of which play in all browsers on all platforms. Sadly, it doesn't appear that browser vendors will agree on a common future format any time soon.
Given that news, it's perfectly reasonable to jump to the conclusion that the video tag isn't ready for prime time. But wait: The bright folks behind HTML5 foresaw this and made video format-independent. In fact, because video can contain multiple source tags, it ends up working out rather well. If your browser doesn't support the first option, it tries again with the second, then again with the third, and so on. It's even valid to fall back to Flash and again to a single image.
The HTML needed to handle this can be found at Video for Everybody, an open source project to support Web-based video using no JavaScript and no browser sniffing.
Semantically speaking. One of the biggest changes coming in HTML5 is semantically meaningful tags. Chances are, your site is full of tags like

and . HTML5 figures that when a preponderance of sites all have the same elements over and over, we should be using meaningful names like, well,

and

. And of course, we should then use CSS (cascading style sheets) to style those elements. But wait, you say: No version of IE has ever shipped with support for these elements, and that's a huge chunk of people! Does that mean we're out of luck? Thankfully, there's a work-around here as well; all you have to do is paste this snippet into the head section of each of your pages:

HTML5 Shiv is an open source project based on a simple discovery: If you create a new DOM element in IE, you can then style any elements with that name. That is, once you create a new DOM element like this: document.createElement("foo");. You can then add any number of tags to your page, and IE will style them. HTML5 Shiv contains a list of all the HTML5 tags that IE doesn't (yet) know about and creates them one by one, allowing you to then use and style them to your heart's content. Here are a few of HTML5's new semantic tags to get you started: article, section, header, footer, and nav.
Smart forms. Another feature of HTML5 is smarter form elements. If you're tired of writing the same old scripts that check (again) to see if visitors entered valid email addresses (or valid telephone numbers, valid URLs, and so on), you aren't alone. It should be reasonable for browsers to handle the most common types of data entry, right? Right.
Here's the syntax:


  



What about older/lesser browsers? Here's the cute part: If they see a type attribute with a value they don't understand, they set type to its default value, text -- which just happens to be what we'd want as a fallback for each of these.
HTML5-supporting browsers can validate each of these field types to varying degrees, but you'll still want to keep those validation scripts around, at least until IE9 is ubiquitous.
If you're wondering why bother changing if you'll still need those scripts, you've never filled out a Web form on an iPhone. If you have, you've noticed the keyboard change based on the type of input required: Email addresses get an @ sign up front, telephone numbers get a keypad, and so on. All you have to do to get that functionality is to change the type attribute on your input tags.
For even more smarts, there's a new attribute: placeholder. Its value is simply the placeholder text that you often see in Web forms, but now the browser handles it for you:

The form field automatically clears itself when the cursor enters the field, and then redisplays the placeholder text if the field is empty when the cursor leaves.
What HTML5 features you can use soon
Not all of HTML5 is ready for the spotlight, for a variety of reasons (and no, they don't all have the initials "IE"). Browser support is coming, though, and here are two elements that you'll be able to use in the not too distant future.
Fancy fonts. At one point or another, every Web designer has wished that they could force every computer visiting their site to install some favorite font. With the CSS3 @font-face property, you'll have that power. The holdouts here were Firefox (before version 3.5) and Mobile Safari (before iOS 4). If you have enough visitors with those browsers, you may want to hold off for a while.
However, there's no real reason why you should be trying to make every user agent render your site identically when you can just offer different fonts to different browsers. If you want to offer custom fonts to those that can handle them, with fallbacks for those who can't, you'll want to check Font Squirrel's @font-face Generator.
Shadows and curves. Further designer-pleasing features coming down the road are text shadows, box shadows, and radial corners on boxes. Again, if you can handle your sites not rendering in a pixel-perfect identical fashion on every browser, you could start using these today. Here are some examples, with help from the CSS3 Generator.
Rounded borders (Firefox 3+, Safari 3.1+, Opera 10.5+, Chrome 4+, IE 9+):

-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
border-radius: 10px;

Text shadows (Firefox 3.5+, Safari 1.1+, Opera 9.6+, Chrome 4+):

text-shadow: 5px 5px 3px #CCC;

Box shadows (Firefox 3.5+, Safari 3+, Opera 10.5+, Chrome 4+):

-webkit-box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #666;
-moz-box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #666;
box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #666;

What HTML5 features you'll use, someday
This category consists of elements and features that Web designers and developers have wanted for many years. Unfortunately, it may be a few more years before there's enough real-world support to be able to use them.
Brilliant forms. I referred earlier to smarter forms, which makes these new form fields downright virtuosos -- when they're widely supported.
A horizontal slider control allowing a user to move the slider to pick a number:

input type="range" min="0" max="100" step="2" value="50">

A color picker:

input type="color">

A date field (other valid values for type are month, week, time, datetime, and datetime-local):

If you need something that doesn't match any of these fields, you'll be able to create your own with RegExp (regular expression) patterns. Here's one for credit cards:

And finally, a way to tell browsers that a given field must have an entered value:

None of these tags yet have the cross-browser and cross-platform support they'll need to be usable, but when that time comes, you'll be looking forward to them.
Print-like layouts. Another CSS3 feature, which when fully implemented will add years to the lives of designers, is multiple column layouts. It's currently implemented only as test cases in Firefox and Safari.

-moz-column-count: 3;
-moz-column-gap: 20px;
-webkit-column-count: 3;
-webkit-column-gap: 20px;

Location detection. With the growing interest in location-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare, it's useful for a browser to know where its user is. For obvious reasons, this was first implemented in mobile browsers, but Firefox 3.5 and Safari 5 have begun to provide support for geolocation. (Chrome's geolocation support is currently via Gears, which is in the process of being phased out in favor of HTML5.)
Working offline, with local storage. Keeping your data in the cloud is a great idea -- until you find yourself without Internet access. Or maybe you have a Web app that works with large amounts of data, more than you want to be continuously shuffling back and forth to a server. Or perhaps you have a limited data plan on your mobile device, so you want to do as much work offline as possible. Whichever the issue, the answer is to utilize offline Web applications using local storage that sync back to the cloud when you reconnect.
The browsers that currently support HTML5's ability to work offline are Firefox 3.5+, Safari Mobile 3.1+, Safari 4+, and Chrome 4+.
Canvas, animations, and transformations. One of the promises of HTML5 has been the all-illustrated, all-animated Web, using the new canvas element and assorted CSS3 properties. Here's where things stand as of July 12, 2010:

Specification	Description	IE	Firefox	Safari	Chrome
canvas	Dynamic graphics	9	3	3.2	3
canvas text API	Displaying text on canvas	9	3.5	4	3
Transitions	Animating properties of elements (simple)	?	4	3.2	3
Animation	Animating properties of elements (complex)	?	?	4	3
3D canvas graphics/WebGL	Dynamic 3D graphics with hardware acceleration	?	4	5	5
Transforms	Rotate and scale elements	?	3.5	3.2	3
3D Transforms	Transformations through a third dimension	?	?	5	?

Key: Green = Implemented. Red = No announced plans.

Shortcuts to HTML5's bleeding edge
If you're too impatient to wait for IE8 to die of old age, there are a number of ways to skip ahead -- again, depending on what your site logs say about your visitors. For instance, Google's Chrome Frame plug-in puts an instance of Chrome into IE browsers. If you know your IE-using site visitors are likely to have GCF installed, you can then force its usage with this small addition to the head of your pages:

That, plus a little JavaScript (provided by Google) to redirect users without GCF installed, is all you may need to work around IE's limitations.
The elements listed in this article are only a few of the ones currently included as part of HTML5 or CSS3. If there's a feature you just have to start using now, chances are good there's an open source project that is figuring out how to make it work for less-capable browsers.
Many of the media reports about HTML5 have focused on the politics, the "not until 2022" sound bite, or on HTML5's prospects as a "Flash killer." The reality of HTML5 is simply that it's the long-needed and long-overdue update to HTML4 -- and you can start to implement it today.

Download YouTube Videos for Offline Viewing

Ever wish you could watch that piano-playing cat at 35,000 feet? Alas, YouTube requires a live Internet connection, and Wi-Fi is still pretty hard to find in the friendly skies.
Fortunately, you can download YouTube videos to your PC for anytime, anywhere viewing, no Internet required.
There are countless ways to "rip" YouTube vids, but I'm partial to Keep Tube. It's available as both a Firefox extension and a browser bookmarklet, the latter compatible with Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc.
What's more, Keep Tube works with not only YouTube, but also CollegeHumor, Facebook, Google Video, Metacafe, and countless other sites.
When you see a video you like, just click the Keep Tube icon (in Firefox) or bookmarklet. From there you'll land at a Keep Tube page where you can download your video in one or more formats and sizes.
My advice: choose MP4 whenever possible, and always at the highest available resolution. YouTube's native FLV format requires a special player, whereas MP4 works in Divx, QuickTime, and other more-common players.
Also, MP4 files usually play nicely on smartphones, so you can take your saved videos to go.

Tips & Tricks: VLC Media Player

VLC 0.9 has released to widespread acclaim. The media player of choice for many, has packed in a horde of new features and marked changes in the design and interface. There are only two issues we have with the new design, which we will put out of the way first. The playback bar has jazzed up buttons, which won’t appeal to those who went for the minimalist charm of VLC. They have also inverted the direction in which the scroll works with the media, you scroll down to go backward, and scroll up to go forward which is counterintuitive to everyone and irritating to the long term users. Now for the good stuff.

Take Snapshots Of The Video

Go to Tools > Preferences > Video. Under video snapshots, enter the directory, a prefix, check ‘sequential numbering’ and choose a format. The default is .png.

To take the snapshot while the video is playing, go to Video > Snapshot.

Alternatively, you can take a snapshot using the keyboard with the hotkey [Shift] + [S].

To use a button to take a snapshot, go to Tools > Advanced Controls. The snapshot button appears on the playback bar.

Adjust The Colour Of The Video

In the playback bar, click on the icon that looks like the equaliser for lesser media players. This is right next to the playback button.

Then select the ‘video effects’ tab. The ‘basic’ tab will be selected by default. Check the ‘image adjust’ checkbox. From here, you can adjust the hue, saturation, contrast, brightness and gamma of the image. There is also a ‘brightness threshold’ slider.

The changed take place in real time, an this can be used to enhance dark videos.

Stream Video Across A Network

This can be used to broadcast a video over the Net, or to stream videos to everyone’s PC in the office at once, or to everyone’s laptops in a conference room.

Click on advanced open file, select ‘show more options’.

On the bottom right corner, next to the play and cancel buttons will be a small additional options button. Click on this, and select stream. A stream output dialogue will pop up.

You can select the encapsulation, the video and audio codecs and the bitrate. Remember that not all formats can be converted to all other formats, this is a limitation of the format and not of the player. Under outputs, select a protocol. Selecting multiple protocols will stream the video output in all the protocols.

To open a stream, go to ‘Advanced open file’, select the ‘Network’ tab and select the relevant protocol and address.

Overlay A Logo On The Video

Go to Tools > Preferences. Select ‘All’ under ‘Show Settings”

Go to Video > Subtitles / OSD > Overlays.

Click on ‘Logo Subfilter’ under Sub Picture Filter Module. Enter the path and filename in the bar below.

To do this via command line, go to Tools > Add Interface > Command Line.

Add A Ticker To The Video

Go to Tools > Preferences, select ‘All’ under ‘Show Settings’

Go to Video > Subtitles/OSD > Marquee. Enter the text in the marquee, and the text will scroll across the screen while the video is playing.

You can also tweak the settings to get an RSS feed to scroll across the video. Copy the feed url, then go to Tools > Preferences, select ‘all’ under ‘show settings;

Go to Video > Subtitles/OSD tick on “RSS and Atom feed display’ and enter the URL in the bar.

There is an option to display or not display images in the feeds.

Add Effects To The Video

We are not sure why this feature is provided, but it is fun and users may discover innovative uses for them.

Click on the effects button. Go to Video Effects > Image Modification.

The gradient effect gives a cartoonish feel to the video. The motion blur has a factor slider. These are the two main effects.

The other effects include waves, motion detect, noise, water and psychedelic. You can apply a selection of these effects at once to the video. The changes take place in real time.

To Resume Playback From A Specific Time

If you were interrupted while watching a video or a movie, and want to resume from the exact moment you left off, there are two ways to do it.

While playing the movie, go to Playback > Go to specific time, and enter the time in dialogue that pops up.

The other way to do this is to go to Media > Advanced open file, check ‘Show more options’ and enter the Start Time.

 

Use VLC As A Transcoder

Open a file, then go to Media > Convert/Save. In the file tab, click on the Convert/Save button.

Select the ‘File’ checkbox under ‘Outputs’. Enter a file name. Make sure that draw raw input is unchecked.

Then select an encapsulation, that is basically the format under ‘profile’.

Select a video codec and audio codec under the ‘Video codec’ and ‘Audio codec’ tabs.

You can save files in a format to be played on a portable media device.

Click on Save.

Change The Jump Settings

There are hotkeys to jump backwards and forwards through the file (refer to the list of hotkeys). The default values for the ‘Very short’, ‘Short’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Long’ jumps can be changed as per individual preferences.

Go to Tools > Preferences under ‘Show settings’ select ‘All’. Go to Interface > Hotkey Settings and under ‘Jump sizes’ edit the values as per your preferences. You can also use this window to change the default hotkeys, and add hotkeys to functions that have no default hotkeys.

Using The Loop Function

VLC can loop a part of a song or a video over and over again. To use this feature, go to Tools > Advanced controls.

The loop button should appear on the playback bar. Open the file you want to play, click the button when you come to the part on the media you want to start the loop at. Click on the button again at the part of the file you want the loop to end. VLC will now start playing that portion of a file in an endless loop till you click on the loop button again to stop the loop.

Play Image Files In VLC

VLC has the capability to play image files without having to mount the image files on a virtual drive first. Although many formats are supported, many are not. Open an image file directly for the video to start playing.

Listen to podcasts.

Go to Playlist > Additional Sources > Configure Podcasts. Add the podcast url, or add multiple urls.

Go to Playlist > Additional sources > Podcasts.

Go to Playlist > Show playlist. The list of podcasts you added should appear in the playlist window now. Double-click on one to start playing.

Listen To Online Radio

To listen to online radio, go to Playlist > Shoutcast Radio Listings.

Then go to Playlist > Show Playlist. The Shoutcast radio option should have appeared below the ‘Playlist’ and ‘Media Library’ options. A long list of genres and radio stations will appear. Select one that you want to listen to you. Some of the stations listed don’t work, and some might make the player crash. Some stations are listed under multiple genres.

Prevent Screensaver Interruption

This is a highly useful feature that prevents a screensaver from interrupting the movie you are watching.

Go to Tools > Preferences. In the dialogue that pop ups, look at the bottom left corner, and select the ‘All’ radio button under ‘Show settings’. Click on ‘Video’ preferences, and under ‘General Video Settings’ look for the ‘Disable Screensaver’ checkbox.

Skins

VLC supports skins. VLC skins can be downloaded from their site, but VLC also supports winamp 2 and xmps skins. Go to Tools > Preferences. In ‘Interface’, select the ‘Skins’ radio button and load the skin file from here.

Web Tips: E-Mail a Page, Customize YouTube, Kid-Friendly Videos

Here's how to quickly send a Web page, personalize your YouTube landing page, and point children and tweens to appropriate videos online.

It's been a while since I passed along some useful Web tips. Heck ,the last time was back in May, with "Quick Fixes for Internet Annoyances." This week I've got some more ideas for you. 

Quickly E-Mail a Web Page
So you just stumbled across a killer blog post, maybe something to do with, oh, I don't know, solving PC hassles. It's so good, you immediately want to share it with friends and family members.

There are plenty of ways to send a Web page. You can copy the URL and paste it into an e-mail. You can look for an embedded "e-mail this" icon and use the site's own mail form. Heck, I've seen some people take a screenshot of page and send that.

Why overcomplicate things? Both Internet Explorer and Firefox have built-in tools for e-mailing whatever page you're viewing.

In Firefox, for example, click File, Send Link. Presto: You get a new e-mail message (in your default mail client) with the page name in the Subject line and the link already pasted into the body. Choose your recipient(s), add a quick note, and click Send. Easy-peasy.

In IE, click Page, Send Link by E-mail to get the exact same result. Don't confuse this with the nearby Send Page by E-mail option, which embeds the entire Web page in the body of your e-mail, not just a link. While that may seem like a convenient way to go--hey, here's the whole thing, no browser required--IE does a terrible job of preserving the formatting of the original page.

Customize Your YouTube Homepage

You probably don't give much thought to what appears on the YouTube homepage every time you visit. You should, however, especially if you have a YouTube account. Let's take a look at some of the settings you can--and possibly should--change.

To get started, head to YouTube and sign into your account (if you're not already signed in). Near the top of the page, click Add/Remove Modules. (If you don't see that option, find your username in the upper-right corner, click it, and then choose Account. Finally, click Customize Homepage.)

As you can see, YouTube offers about dozen "modules" you can add to or remove from your homepage. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory, but there are few worth discussing.

First, I strongly recommend turning off Recent Activity, which shows your friends and subscriptions just about everything you've done on YouTube lately. I think what I watch or "favorite" on YouTube is my business, thank you. (Imagine my embarrassment if friends learned I like piano-playing cats!)

Second, if you upload a lot of videos and want to know how they're trending, enable Insight Map and Insight Chart. When you return to your homepage, you'll see various statistics and data on how (and where) your videos are being viewed.

Third, after clicking Save Changes and returning to your homepage, click the Edit link atop any module that has one and you'll be able to make changes to how many videos are displayed and in what layout.

Finally, if you want to change the order in which modules appear on your homepage, just click their corresponding up/down arrows. For example, if you want the aforementioned Insight Map to reside at the very top, click its up arrow repeatedly until it lands there.

YouTube offers a lot more homepage customization. Experiment a bit and you'll be able to configure your own page exactly how you like it.

Turn Your PC Into a Kid-Friendly TV

Calling all parents: YouTube is a mighty popular destination for kids, but not all the content there is kid-appropriate.

Send your toddlers and tweens to Kideos instead . The site serves up thousands upon thousands of child-friendly videos, from Animaniacs to Pixar shorts to Sesame Street to Word Girl (a personal favorite).

All you do is click an age group (0-2, 3-4, 5-6, etc.), then choose a "featured video" to watch or click into any of the dozens of available "channels." There's also a search option, natch.

When you click a video, you're presented with a simplistic player--and none of the often-disturbing user comments commonly found on YouTube proper.

My favorite Kideos feature? The free iPhone companion app. When you need a five-minute break from screaming in the car or the kids are getting restless at the restaurant, presto: child-friendly video on the go.

Just one word of warning: Avoid that insidious "Gummy Bear" song at all costs. You'll never get it out of your head! 

** GOOD LUCK **