Monthly Archives: September 2006
Nintendo Wii
I very rarely take the time to discuss gaming consoles in Click as this article tends to be more focused towards the serious side of computing such as applications, new technology and the Internet.However, once in a while something quite unique appears on the horizon and it would seem wrong not to give it some exposure.
Nintendo recently announced that their new Wii console would be released on December 8th, meaning it has a release date perfectly timed for the Christmas rush which is way ahead of the Sony PlayStation 3 release date of March 2007.Of course, the more powerful Microsoft Xbox 360 console has already been available for around three quarters of a year which means Nintendo will have to deliver something special to avoid being hopelessly outsold during the festive season.
Luckily what it lacks in hardware specifications it makes up for in ingenuity and cost.The … Read the rest
Backing up movies
As you can imagine a company such as ours that sells blank media (CD’s, DVD’s etc) does get asked on a daily basis how to go about making a copy of a movie using a home PC.As this is something not yet covered in Click I thought this week I would write a definitive answer as to hopefully decrease the frequency that this question pops up.
I will of course point out where the law stands on this; you are legally allowed to make a single backup of any copyrighted video that you own for personal purposes only as long as that backup is then kept for your sole use and not rented, lent of given to a third party.To copy a movie for any purpose other than this is very much illegal and something that neither myself nor the Herald Express could condone.
To backup a movie DVD you … Read the rest
Readers Questions Part 3
I’ve received a couple of e-mails in the last week which I thought I’d share with my Click readers.
It was interesting to read your article about YouTube last week although one of the disadvantages of this website is that it has not been possible to download the videos on YouTube for offline use.This means that you will not be able to view the videos away from an internet connection, and if one of the videos is removed for any reason you will not be able to see it again.
This problem is solved with YouRipper (free from www.snapfiles.com/get/youripper.html) which allows you to download any YouTube video as a Flash video in .flv format.YouRipper acts like a video recorder for YouTube, and allows archiving of your favourite material.
The .flv format that YouRipper will save the video as cannot be played in most of the common media players but it … Read the rest
YouTube
The popular video hosting site YouTube.com has hit the headlines several times recently for all the wrong reasons so I thought I’d draw focus back to the real reasons this website is always on my favourites list.YouTube was founded back in February 2005 by three early employees of PayPal and has already grown to become one of the most popular sites on the Internet.It provides users with a way to upload video content as well as being able to immediately view a huge number of video files completely free of charge.
As you would well imagine the variety of the content is huge – with 65,000 videos being uploaded every 24 hours you can type practically any word or phrase in to the search box and without fail a number of results will be returned.All videos are rated by users of the site and if you choose not to search … Read the rest
WEEE – What is it good for?
The UK Department of Trade and industry (DTI) last month released its final plans for the implementation of the EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive which over the past couple of years has caused a great deal of controversy.The directive focuses on the disposing of old electrical and electronic equipment by making manufacturers responsible for taking back and recycling products that have come to an end of their natural lifecycle.
There are of course people arguing on both sides of the fence both for and against WEEE which I will discuss this week in Click since my technologically savvy readers will quite clearly be affected by it in some way or another.
On the positive side this directive should result in several benefits to the environment by providing manufacturers with an incentive to design their equipment in a more environmentally conscious manner. Additionally the directive will provide the … Read the rest
