Here’s a few items I’d like to share with everyone as I find them extremely useful, hopefully you will too, thats if you have never used them! My Top 10 Apps of 2007 in descending order:

10. Spybot Search and Destroy

• Always a must on spyware infested Windows XP installs I come across (Unfortunately all to often). It removes a lot of the bad stuff, and my most used feature is system startup section, as I can stop all that crud from loading and slowing everything to a crawl.

9. iTunes (OS X Version)

I recorded a tutorial, showing people how to extract YouTube (and other flash based sites videos’) and get them onto your iPod. It was recorded on my Mac, so unfortunately its Mac specific, but really only iSquint program is, so if anyone can suggest a replacement on Windows or Linux, I will add it to the details of the video. I use Garageband for audio, iMovieHD to edit the video and audio and Copernicus to record my screen. I started by getting everything I needed ready (all the Firefox tabs etc.) and hit record in Copernicus. I imported that .mov into iMovieHD, and then proceeded to open Garageband, watch the video and talk myself through my own recording. I saved the voice part in Garageband, exported it and then imported it into iMovie. I checked to make sure the audio and video lined up perefectly (what I done on screen matched what I was saying) and then exported it as a .mov from iMovieHD. Then I uploaded the result to Youtube, which I think for a first try ain’t bad!! Watch it here:

Tor, (or The Onion Router) is a service which connects people all over the world with one aim: privacy. Tor protects from traffic analysis, basically where you have been. Benn to you Banks website? Feel like buying something off Amazon or Ebay? Your behaviour online is by no means private, you hand over your numerical address, browser details, country, city, versions of which plugins you use, where you came from, just to name a few. You may have seen on sites something to the effect of “Welcome Google user!”, that website knows exactly what you typed to get to it. Tor routes your online activity through different computers, for example mine went through an educational institution in the US and an Internet Service Provider in the Netherlands.

Just like software. it can be really useful to open source other things in life, collaboration is nearly always a good thing. John Buckman, CEO of Magnatune Records knows this principle all too well. He gave a speech at a Red Hat conference a while back, and he talked about the importance of music artists sharing the “source”, i.e. basically sharing the method of how the produced the music in the first place. This allows easier mixing, and a higher chamnce your work could be featured on TV or in a film, and you get paid

I found this doing a search for Domino Records DRM. I looked up some of my favourite artists to see if they were part of the “MAFIAA” that is the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), not surprisingly some were (70% of sold music worldwide is put out by this cartel). I got rather confused when a Franz Ferdinand album appeared on the list, when their debut album did not. Seems the record label did a deal with Sony for distribution. I found a piece of information quite old now (May 2006), but interesting anyway:

Just a note on the new look, hope you like it. I am very fortunate to be running Wordpress, the world’s best blogging tool (and it is open source). I looked up the fabulous theme site to go with it, and I came across this one and liked it very much. The last design was my own, but I had awful trouble implementing to look the same in all browsers (especially Internet Explorer, even the latest one, argh). I know the old one can be improved, so I am submitting to WP Themes directory, which I will update this post with the link. I love the new theme, it brings what I couldn’t to the old one: choosable colours and sameness across browsers. I’d like to thank Justin Winslow for that! Did I mention that the exact same colours are used in this theme? It brings a total different look though, the power of perception! So now you know these are the official DF’s colours!

I have one of those new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, as many of you know I was one of the first to buy its predecessor, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. What do I think? Well I have put of writing this for 4 days, as I wanted to really test it out. Before I start, I should say I was part of the Nokia Developer Device program, and I got the Nokia N800 at a big discount, €300 off the €399 retail price in fact. Under headings below I will take about the N800, and compare it to the 770:

Well as I write this it is a few days after Vista’s launch, and it has yet to set the software market alight. But this is nothing new, it happend with XP. How do you convince people the latest and greatest is worth the money? Microsoft is in a tough position due to stiff competition - old, working, fully-compatible windows machines don’t disappear into thin air. There has been a lot more FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)abput Vista already from the Free and Open Source camp. Some of the harsh critiscims will be justified, others probably not. Regardless this will not hurt Microsofts marketing whatsoever, the average user doesn’t share concerns over digital restriction/rights management - yet. Microsoft say it will be on 100m PC’s by years end. I don’t think it will be as fast as Microsoft would like, due to: 1) People wait for service packs. 2) People don’t upgrade PC’s as fast now. Most things people identify their computer with is increasingly online, a worrying trend if I were Microsoft, this creates platform independence for the average user, granted not the gamers, or other highly specialised software vendors.

I am embarking on a journey I believe everyone should: digitise as much photo, video and documents you can. It serves as a record of your existance, a guide to people of what your life was like. Why? is the most obvious question you might ask. Well I will tell you what prompted me, which is the culmination of a lot of different things.

This brings me to the first reason: Television. I find shows fascinating where people discover their ancestors were orphans, incredibly wealthy or died from exhaustion in a mine. It really makes you think what makes you the person you are, so to speak. David Attenborough says (although I have paraphrased) that if people look back at his 100-150 hours of television, they will get a snapshot of what the glaciers, mountains, desert and animals were like in the latter half of the twentieth century, not a complete picture, but one nonetheless of what Earth was like at that time.

BBC are putting together a Mac, Windows and Linux user, to debate the pros and cons of being a users for each operating system. While this in itself is good news (more airtime for alternatives), most of the comments are highly in favour of Linux, then Mac and lastly Windows. This is part of the BBC’s coverage of Windows Vista. My hope for the future is that Mac and Linux gain at least 10% each (20% total) over the next 5 years of the home desktop market, as this will push innovation forward, like AMD and Intel competition.