Hello there dear pursuer!

I’m kind of nostalgic right now, so I’ll start of in the traditional grade 12 letter writing style…

I’m writing this letter blog to inform you that Spread Firefox, the Mozilla Firefox website, is organising a Download Day in order to achieve a world record by having the maximum number of people download Firefox 3 on that day, and to request you to participate in the same.

Mozilla aims to have 5 million downloads in a single day, when the first stable version of Firefox 3 is completed. Though the exact date is not known, it is expected to be sometime in June 2008. You can pledge your support, and your download, at the Download Day website. The Mozilla team will inform you via email about the exact date of the event. By participating in the event, you will not only be part of a world record, but you’ll also help make the web, and your computer, a safer and secure place. If you’re a bit hyperactive, and if you don’t have much activities to poke your head in to, you can also take up the cause in your school/college/office/locality and make a bash of the entire event (hey, yet another reason to have beer! ) . If you’re on Facebook, go ahead and add the event to your calendar! Mozilla is venturing in to fields yet unraveled through Firefox 3, which boasts of a lot more secure and safer system and interface. (see more below)

I once again hope that you will Pledge your support for this programme, and help make the open source effort a huge success!    

Yours faithfully,    Mohan K.

Well, yes, that a lot more balderdash. But coming back to the point of the post, this is awesome oppurtunity to support the Mozilla Firefox movement. And of course, if you’re not a Firefox user, this is a splendid time to switch!

Why should you choose Firefox 3? Tristan Nitot says it all!

Ten reasons to choose Firefox 3 over your obsolete browser

Safer browsing

• 1 - Proven security track record, with more frequent, transparent updates, so that you use a safer browser
• 2 - malware protection to be protected against unwanted downloads such as viruses and trojan horses

Better browsing, with thousands of improvements

• 3 - Awesome bar, so that you can find places you’ve been before with a couple of keystrokes
• 4 - "Save on exit" so that when you launch Firefox, you’re immediately ready to surf, with last windows and tabs open
• 5 - Remember passwords without a dialog box, so that you decide to save the password after you’ve logged-in
• 6 - New download manager, users can pause a download and resume it later, with a search box to easily retrieve previous downloads
• 7 - Customizable: change the look and feel (themes) and add features (extensions) to Firefox through the built-in add-ons manager. More than 5,000 community-built extensions are available for free!

Better performance

• 8 - Fastest on complex Web applications, such as GMail so you are more comfortable, even on old machines
• 9 - Uses less memory than any other browser, so you’ll get more mileage out of your computer
• 10 - Moving the Web forward by supporting advanced Web standards so that the Web keeps evolving and benefits users in the long term.

Hey hold it! I know it sounds cool, but hold on buddy! Don’t download the beta yet… (damn, I just let slip that there is a beta download option! ) Try to hold off until the Download Day, so that you can contribute to creating history!

Talking about history, its time for me to vamoose and be history for the time being, so adios amigo! I’ll catch in a short while, with my next radically interesting (boring) blog post

Technorati Tags: firefox, firefox 3, firefox3, spread firefox, download day, firefox download day, world record, firefox download, firefox world record

MPlayer, as I had mentioned in my previous post on my Top 3 Audio/Video players, is a media player for Linux, which supports almost all kinds of audio and video formats. It can even play semi-corrupted, and semi-downloaded files. And it rates # 1, as my most favourite and preferred video player.

It is, by creation, a player for Linux, coded by Astral and team. It is essentially a command line operated player, but later on GUIs were introduced for it. Of late, it has GUIs even in Windows, but these GUIs are not very stable, and often destroy the stable credibility of MPlayer. The MPlayer is now available for all operating systems - Linux, Unix based OSes, Windows, and Mac OS X.

How to install MPlayer -

For Linux, go to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html . They have a very good explanation on how to install MPlayer on Linux. Of late, MPlayer comes as the default AV(audio/video) player in many Linux distros.

For Mac OS X, go to http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/ . They’ve developed a very good GUI for MPlayer on Mac. Its as simple as download, install, and drag and drop to play.

For Windows, the procedure is a bit more tedious, but worth the effort.

1. Go to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html and download the MPlayer 1.0rc2 Windows.
2. After downloading, unzip the package to somewhere easy to remember. For example, unzip it to C:\Program Files\MPlayer so that its easy to locate at a future date.
3. For Windows XP and 2000, go to Step 4. For Windows 98 and previous, go to step 5.
4. Next, go to your Documents and Settings folder. By default, it will be in the root directory, C:\, but could differ if you’ve changed the location or have installed Windows in a different directory. In Documents and Settings, chose the folder which corresponds to your Windows username. i.e. If your Windows username is Geekboy. open the folder Geekboy in the Documents and Settings folder. Inside that folder, there will be a hidden folder called SendTo. If you can see it, open it. If you can’t, either enable the View Hidden Folders (Tools > Folder Options > View > Show Hidden Files and Folders > OK) or append "SendTo" (without the quotes) in the address bar. Go to step 6.
5. (for Windows 98 and previous versions) Go to your Windows folder (by default, it should be C:\Windows\). There will be a hidden folder named "SendTo". Open it. (if you can’t see it, either append SendTo to the address bar, or enable viewing of hidden files by going to Folder Options).
6. Create a shortcut (Right Click > New > Shortcut) and point the shortcut to a file named mplayer.exe in our MPlayer folder (in our example, C:\Program Files\MPlayer\mplayer.exe). You’re all set to go!
7. Now, to play a file using MPlayer, right click on the file, and scroll over Send To  and click Mplayer. Enjoy!

To get an idea of the controls in Windows, go to Interactive Control in the MPlayer Manual.

But here are a few basic controls -

• f - to toggle fullscreen
• arrow keys - to fast forward/rewind
• Page Up and Page Down - to fast forward/rewind by 10 minutes
• p - Pause/Play
• q or Esc - to quit
• / and * OR 9 and 0 - increase and decrease volume
• m - to mute sound
• o - to toggle timer

Those are the basic controls. There are more advanced controls for everything from increase/decrease movie speed to adjusting hue/brightness/colour etc. Check out Interactive Control for more information.

Supported Media Formats

• Physical media: CDs, DVDs, Video CDs* Container formats: 3GP, AVI, ASF, FLV, Matroska, MOV (QuickTime), MP4, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia
• Video formats: Cinepak, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV
• Audio formats: AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, Intel Music Coder, Monkey’s Audio, MP3, RealAudio, Shorten, Speex, Vorbis, WMA
• Subtitle formats: AQTitle, ASS/SSA, CC, JACOsub, MicroDVD, MPsub, OGM, PJS, RT, Sami, SRT, SubViewer, VOBsub, VPlayer

I hope that this post was useful and informative. Enjoy the MPlayer world!

Technorati Tags: MPlayer, media player for linux, linux media player, MPlayer windows, Windows media, play all formats, movie player, best media player

Hello all,

I’ve often been asked which was my favourite AV player. Five years ago, I used to respond with "Winamp" or "Power DVD". But now, I should say, my opinions have changed. And thats why I laugh when people say that their favourite player is Real Player, or QuickTime. Right now, after having used most of the available audio/video playing software, I have formed a few of my favourites. And I thought that I would share them with you…

# 1 - Mplayer

Mplayer - an audio/video player for Linux, comes in as my all time favourite AV player. It can play as many video or audio clips as you want simultaneously. It has never crashed for me. It can play semi downloaded files, files with the wrong extension, and once, it has even played a zipped file! Any file with an audio or video track can be played with Mplayer. On Windows, you need to do a manual install, with a Send To shortcut to make it work. It does not have a GUI, but its amazingly powerful. Visit the Mplayer website for more information. Information on how to install and use Mplayer in your Windows system coming up in my next post.

# 2 - VLC Player

Almost as powerful as Mplayer, with a neat GUI, ladies and gentlemen, in second position comes VLC Player. Cross platform support and freeware - 2 words which make VLC magical! It can, like Mplayer, play isolated DVD files, all sorts of music and video files. But sometimes, especially in case of a defective DVD video file, your system hangs. If you like power, and no fancy stuff, but still a GUI, go in for VLC Player.

# 3 - Windows Media Player 11

Stylish and hot, WMP 11 creates a whole new AV experience for Windows users. Free to install for "genuine" Windows users, this awesome looking player is a complete package for any home user. Vista looks, audio/video tweaking, library feature, sync with music players, stable performance etc. are the main features of WMP 11. It comes in as # 3, even above iTunes, because of its fast and stable performance, cool looks, and easy to use sync feature. You can download WMP 11 from the Microsoft website.

Yes, thats my top 3. I hope that you’ve found this post useful. And no, Real Player, QuickTime etc. are not among my favourites. In fact they feature at the end of my favour list… Just below my top 3, comes DivX, iTunes, Powe DVD etc.

Technorati Tags: top 3, audio video players, audio players, video players, audio software, video software, av software, top 3 audio video players

Hi all,
    The Linux for people, Ubuntu Linux, has rolled out its latest version, Ubuntu 7.04. Its supposed to be “cool”. I’m not a linux fan myself, but I’ve used Ubuntu before, and I’ve found it the best among the various versions of Linux which I’ve used…

    For newbies, Ubuntu Linux is a FREE version of Linux. You can get it for free by downloading the ISO file, or by ordering a free cd/dvd(takes 4-6 weeks for delivery).

    You can try out the various options to get Ubuntu 7.04 on the Get Ubuntu page, or download it(click here).

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux, ubuntu 7.04, released, download, get it free

Aloha!
    The much awaited version 2 of the popular mail client Mozilla Thunderbird has been released! Boasting of faster service, live search, better graphics, tagging and more, this beauty has become my favourite!

    A “What’s New” list from the Mozilla website -

•   Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.

•  Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.

•  Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.

•  Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.

•  Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.

•  Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.

•  Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.

•  Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.

•  Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.

•  Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.

•  Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.

•  Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.

•  New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.

•  Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

    Reportedly, very many bugs have also been fixed.

    You can download Mozilla Thunderbird 2 at the Mozilla Website.
    You may also want to read up the Known Issues.

Technorati Tags: thunderbird, mozilla, released, release notes, bug fixes, download, known issues