There’s no limit to free media players for handheld devices. My Nokia Internet Tablet has a player that I can stream media from network locations (aka Gandolf, my media server).
You can even do it with a Windows Media Extender like the XBox 360 or the Popcorn Hour (also highly recommended).
But what about your desktop? Well, if you want to kill productivity, install a media player that lets you stream movies!!
Yesterday, I found a player that I particularly enjoy, Moovida. It’s compatible with all the major operating systems and is truly a beautiful application.
Moovida is much more than a simple media player… it is a cutting edge media center bringing the best of the internet to your TV screen. Automatically creating your own digital library you can browse from your sofa with a remote control. The elegant and easy to use interface automatically displays artwork and fan art throughtout and gives you access to movie synopsis and artist info.
Granted, it’s got some bugs but that’s cool. It’s a great app anyway!
I can’t remember if I ever shared this with you, but it’s an awesome tutorial on how to build a server rack for your house or your office, without having to pay thousands of dollars!
Admittedly, it isn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever put together, but it works and exemplifies the geek in me :0)
For about $150 and 3 hours of work, it’s entirely possible to put together a stand-alone unit to house all of your computers/servers. I, for instance, have my email server, web server, media server and file server in this bad boy. There’s also a rackmount network hub, modem and monitor hanging off the side so I can monitor vitals…
Anyway, here’s a link to the original how-to article:
If you’ve ever thought about operating your own microblogging service, I’ve got an app for you. Obviously, dethroning Twitter isn’t really a possbility, but you might do one for your office or your family!
I found this cool open source server script for you to play with. It’s called Laconica, pronounced “luh-KAWN-ih-kuh,” and is a Free and Open Source microblogging platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange short 140 character messages over the Web.
Users can choose which people to “follow” and receive only their friends’ or colleagues’ status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter, Jaiku, and Plurk.
Want to try Laconica without installing anything? Hop on over to identi.ca, the largest microblogging service based on Laconica.
I’m cleaning out my Firefox bookmarks (all 2300 of them) and dumping them into Evernote. It’s proving to be more of a pain than I thought it would, but Evernote gives me persistent search and a way to attach files!
Here’s an interesting WordPress hack that I thought you guys would be into…
WP-CRM is a WordPress system for creating a basic Contact Manager / CRM. The system requires a combination of plugins and a theme. It was inspired by the great work David Yeiser did with WP-Contact Manager, and by 37signals Highrise.
Features:
Add contacts from the front end of WordPress – no need to go to the admin screen.
Associate an image with each contact.
Assign each contact to a company… or don’t.
Create a note history for each contact.
Clickable email and website links.
Google map contacts address.
Dial a phone number works on cell phones with internet browsers.
Check out TubeMogul and to get access to Jimmy and Travis’ online video creation video (I know.. that was weird to type..) just click here: Social Media Soap Opera
For a long time, I’ve believed that the future of operating systems lies in a browser – hence Web Browser OS.
If you think about it, the only thing you SHOULD need to get up and running is a basic OS that runs your computer and opens up a web browser (which Linux does nicely).
WindowsForAll does exactly that. It allows you to use the Silverlight technology and open up a full, Windows operating system in your web browser.
This os browser operating system deploys quickly and you can run all the native components on it. The downside is you can’t store data and files on the instance because it technically ‘lives in the cloud.’
As clustering technology and server disk drives increase in size though, we’ll be able to enjoy the full potential of browser based operating systems!
