Have you ever listened to a great music video on Youtube which you would love to add to your MP3 collection? Well now you can with a new service called VidtoMP3. Simply enter the video url and this service will rip the soundtrack out of it and provide you with an MP3 file download.
VidtoMP3 currently supports all the video sharing sites I have heard of such as the popular sites like Youtube, MySpace and some I havn’t heard of such as SantaBanta, Sharkle and ZippyVideos.The only downside is that the website is covered in advertisements but they have to make money somehow.
For the last two blog posts I have been using Zemanta, a blogging add-on which suggests related images, links, tags and similar articles to the post you are writing. Zemanta provides a few installation options either as a Firefox or Internet Explorer extension or you can install as a plug in for your blogging software, it supports many blogging platform such as Wordpress, Drupal and Movable Type.
The links and tags suggestions have been the most accurate and useful, all the links and tags of this post have been suggested by Zemanta. Sadly the same can’t be said for the images or articles suggestions. During the creation of this blog post Zemanta’s gallery didn’t feature a Zemanta logo or a screenshot of Zemanta in use however it was flooded with Firefox, IE, Drupal and Wordpress logos and screenshots.This is due to Zemanta ignoring the tiltle when finding images suggestions, which may be alright for longer blog posts with multiple images however an average post only has one image which is usually related to the title.
Zemanta automatically puts a reblog button at the bottom of any post which has been “Zemified”. I don’t really like this as although the button is easy to delete I still think it should be opt in feature.
The Zemanta’s website features a live demo of its suggestion algorithm at work, showing you example suggestions from your own text.
Recently I have been looking for a virtual desktop program with clean and simple desktop switching and hotkey support. I had previously been using Dexpot but it lacked of visual eye candy. Then I found DeskSpace from Otaku Software. DeskSpace gives you 6 virtual desktops in a beautiful cube switching interface. It’s desktop switching is fast, simple and as eye candy rich as Apple’s spaces.
When the hotkey is activated (default is Ctrl + Shift + Win) your desktop zooms out to become one face of a semi-transparent cube using the mouse, scroll wheel or desktop number key you can then rotate the cube to a different desktop. DeskSpace also handles multiple monitors nicely however a downside is that the program does cost $19.95 yet a 14 day trial version is offered.
What’s your favourite desktop switching program? Let us know in the comments.
A few days ago I created my first timeline using a service called dipity which allows you to create a timeline of your life by importing feeds from other websites such as your blog, last.fm, flickr, twitter and many other services. You can also manually add events to your timeline and many people have made very detailed timelines such as this IRAQ war timeline. Collaborative timelines are also supported which is another great feature. Dipity has also recently launched an interesting mashup called Timetube.
I finally have a blog. Yesterday I found that michael-stewart.com was available so I registered it. I have chosen a theme and now all I need to do is write an about page and add links so my social profiles in the side bar. I still don’t know what I’m going to write about but having my name as a domain was too big a chance to miss.
