Make VLC Player Look like Windows Media Player 11

The VLC Media Player is an open source, cross-platform media client that supports the vast majority of media formats. One of the great features is that it supports skins that work across different platforms. This article will cover installing on both linux and windows.

You will first need to download the skin named WMP11 from the skins page. This skin looks a lot like Windows Media Player 11. It’s not exact, but it’s a pretty good skin.

To install on Ubuntu Linux:

Hit Alt+F2 to bring up the run dialog, and type in this:

vlc -I skins2

This will bring up the player in the right mode to let you install new skins. Right click on the title bar area and choose Select Skin \ Open Skin, and choose the skin file that you have downloaded.

That’s pretty much all there is to it.

To install on Windows:

Select the “VLC media player (skins)” option from the Start menu program group. This will start VLC in the right mode to select skins.

Right click on the title bar area, and choose Select skin \ Open skin and choose the skin file that you have downloaded.

Easy stuff. Now you have a great looking media player.

Update:Changed the article to point to the newer and better looking WMP11 skin instead of the Dalin one.

How To Rip DVDs with VLC

Yesterday we took a look at the new feature in VLC 1.0 which allows you to record DVDs to your computer. There is also an overlooked feature in VLC that allows you to rip your DVDs as well. Here we will take a look at how to rip DVD movies with VLC for Windows.

Note: This feature should work with VLC versions 0.9.6 and up.

Ripping a DVD with VLC

Load up the DVD you want to rip and start up VLC. Then under Media click on Convert / Save.

The Open Media window will appear and you want to click on the Disc tab. Check DVD, make sure the disc device field points to the optical drive with the dvd, and hit Convert/Save. You can select the start position by selecting the title and only record a specific chapter on the DVD. You can also skip the DVD Menus as you will not be able to use them in the ripped file.

Next the Convert screen opens where you will want to select a location for the ripped file.

While you are browsing to the location to put the ripped file make sure to give it a name and a supported extension. For this example we ripped Lord of the Rings and gave it a MOV extension. If you don’t label it with a supported file extension it will default to .ps (postscript) file.

When everything is set up the Convert screen will look something like this where we have the source drive and destination file with appropriate extension.

While the DVD is being ripped you will see a progress count in the main UI. The amount of time it takes will depend on the file format and size of the DVD but it will take a while no matter what.

You may notice a slowdown of your system as the process takes up a lot of resources.

You should be able to play the converted file with other media players assuming you have the right codec. Of course will notice the conversion results in lower quality compared to the original.

How To Copy a DVD with VLC 1.0

VLC 1.0 has gotten several cool new features, one of which is the ability to record what is playing in the screen. Here we will take a look at how easy it is to record a DVD or other video formats using VLC.

Want to rip the DVD instead of recording? We’ve got a guide for that as well.

Record Using VLC

You won’t see the record button in the default view so we need to make it available in the control panel by going to View and selecting Advanced Controls.

Now you can see the Record button along with a couple other handy controls like snapshot and looping.

Now when you start up a DVD or other video simply click on the record button and hit is a second time to end the recording.

While it is recording notice that the record button will be blue.

The recorded video is in MPEG format and stored them in the Documents folder labeled as VLC Record with the date and time.

This is a great way to save entire movies or specific scenes you want to watch later on your hard drive.

Of course VLC won’t burn the recorded MPEG file to DVD but you can certainly use other programs for that. This is a much different process than “ripping” and you will need to play the video while it records.

Download VLC 1.0 for Windows, Linux, OSX

Turn Off Auto-Play of Audio and Video CDs and DVDs in Ubuntu

Ubuntu automatically starts playing audio or video discs when you put them into your computer. If you don’t want this behavior, you can easily turn this off.

Navigate to System \ Preferences \ Removable Drives and Media

Here you can just uncheck the box for the disc type you don’t want to autoplay.

You can also disable autoplaying of portable media players such as an iPod.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Bash ( Command Shell for Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Redhat, Linux, etc)

The default shell on most Linux operating systems is called Bash. There are a couple of important hotkeys that you should get familiar with if you plan to spend a lot of time at the command line. These shortcuts will save you a ton of time if you learn them.

Ctrl + A	Go to the beginning of the line you are currently typing on
Ctrl + E	Go to the end of the line you are currently typing on
Ctrl + L	Clears the Screen, similar to the clear command
Ctrl + U	Clears the line before the cursor position. If you are at the end of the line, clears the entire line.
Ctrl + H	Same as backspace
Ctrl + R	Let’s you search through previously used commands
Ctrl + C	Kill whatever you are running
Ctrl + D	Exit the current shell
Ctrl + Z	Puts whatever you are running into a suspended background process. fg restores it.
Ctrl + W	Delete the word before the cursor
Ctrl + K	Clear the line after the cursor
Ctrl + T	Swap the last two characters before the cursor
Esc + T	Swap the last two words before the cursor
Alt + F	Move cursor forward one word on the current line
Alt + B	Move cursor backward one word on the current line
Tab	Auto-complete files and folder names

Note that some of these commands may not work if you are accessing bash through a telnet/ssh session, or depending on how you have your keys mapped.

Update: Some readers from digg have pointed out that you can also switch bash to use vi style editing keys. This article covers the default bash keys, but I’ll write another one to cover vi style keys as well… great suggestions! Subscribe to the feed for updates.

Stopping Obnoxious MSN / Windows Live Messenger Spammers

Have you been bombarded with spammers on Live Messenger telling you to check out some Look9683 spammer site? The good news is that you can completely block them, but sadly they won’t actually feel physical pain.

If you aren’t sure what we’re talking about… then you probably aren’t using Messenger:

The first time you receive a spammer message like this, you will be prompted with an option to block messages from unknown senders, which is exactly what you want to do. The problem is that if you don’t choose this option the first time, you won’t get the same option again.

Normally if you choose block, you’ll be notified that this blocks everybody who is not on your allow list. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just the way I like it.

If you’ve mistakenly or purposely chosen to allow on the earlier screen, you can still block all unknown users—you’ll just need to take a trip to the Options panel.

Here you’ll want to check the box for “Only people on my Allow List can see my status and send me messages”. Then you can setup your Allow list if you want, or block other people.

If you are using Pidgin to access your Windows Live / MSN Messenger / Hotmail / Whatever MS re-named it as today account, you can go to Tools \ Privacy:

Then choose the account in the “Set privacy for” drop-down, and choose “Allow only the users on my buddy list” in the lower drop-down.

This will stop those ridiculous spammers directly in their tracks.

How to Download Facebook Photo Albums

FacePAD: Facebook Photo Album Downloader allows you to download your friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, en masse, with the click of a button.

Screen Capture Tools: 40+ Free Tools and Techniques

Screen capture, or print screen is perhaps the most efficient way to share whatever appears on your desktop. They help tech users like us to share and communicate better with friends and peers. Major operating systems today comes with basic screen capture and print screen function, but if these can’t fulfill what you need from a screen capture then you are probably looking for a screen capturing tool.

Screen capturing tools do what the basic tool don’t. What these tools could do varies, including the ability to include sketches and text, instantly upload image online, audio capturing, dimension-specific capturing and more. Make your screen capture and sharing experience more interesting, here’s a showcase of 40+ Free Screen Capturing Tools and Related Techniques. Full list after jump.

Cross Platform

We love cross platform tools. No more worries when you are all too familiar with one tool and needs to get the job done on a different operating system.

• Jing Project

  A project of Techsmith, Jing has the ability to do instance image and video capturing. Aside from that, you can also do sketches on the image and share them online. Speaking from functionality point of view, being free tool is definetely a steal. [Download: Windows, Mac]

  

• Evernote

  Saying Evernote has cross platform supporting ability seems to be slightly inaccurate, instead it’s multi-platform. This awesome tool not only runs on Windows and Mac, it also supports iPhone, Windows Mobile and even websites. You’ve got to check out the video to see how great it is. [Download: Windows, Mac, more]

  

• WebKut

  Capture web pages in whole or parts. And because it’s developed with Adobe AIR, you bet it’s cross-platform. It captures web screenshots, the only problem is – it’s not attached to the browser. [Download]

  

• Websnapshot

  Yet another Adobe AIR application to take website snap shots. [Downloads]

  

Windows Only

By default, you can only do a full page and active window print screen on Windows. The following tools give you much more flexibility.

• ZScreen

  Open-source screen capture program that allows for region/window/full-screen screenshots. It can FTP screenshots and put the URL in your clipboard in a single keystroke. It supports automatic custom naming conventions with variables. [Download]

  

• Screenshot Captor

  Behave like most screen capture software. The most interesting part is – you can run it from a USB thumbdrive. Talking about print screen portability. [Download]

• Cropper

  Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C# on the Microsoft .Net platform. [Download]

• Capture

  Capture is a quick-and-easy screen capture utility for Windows (and NT), which allows you to capture the entire screen, at any color depth and resolution, and save it into a Bitmap file for editing. [Download]

• MWSnap

  Small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen. [Download]

  

• ScreenPrint32

  Free windows tool to print and/or capture to disk or clipboard, the full desktop, active window, predefined area, or user selected area of the screen. [Download]

• Snippy

  Useful free tool to copy webpage screenshot for sharing purposes. Interesting thing is that, when you cutting out a portion of an Internet Explorer window, the URL will also be copied to the clipboard; this makes it very convenient to select something interesting on a Web site and send it out in an email message. [Download]

• SWBCapture

  Screen capture utility that allows you to quickly and easily capture an image of any window on your desktop, or the entire desktop. [Download]

• Screen Grab Pro

  Screen Grab Pro features one-click grab of any screen for ease of use, Timer operation, Current window selection list and more. [Download]

  

• Wisdom-Soft ScreenHunter

  Wisdom-Soft ScreenHunter is a free screen-capture tool for you to easily take screenshots. ScreenHunter can capture a full screen, an active window, the client window, or a rectangular area. [Download]

• Gadwin PrintScreen

  Capture screenshots with ease. [Download]

  

• FastStone Capture

  Light and powerful screen capture application with whole screen, object-selective and region screencapture ability. Save files in various formats, BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF. [Download]

  

Mac Only

Here are some of the most commonly used screen capturing tools for the Mac enthusiast.

• Capture Me

  Flexible screen capture and recording utility for Mac OS X which features a floating capture window, several saving options, and resize ability. [Download]

  

• Backdrop

  Simple utility to fill your screen with a giant blank window. Fill the window with a solid color or a custom image, your choice so you can take clean nice printscreen. [Download]

  

• Skitch

  Skitch is not solely a screen capture tool. It allows you to capture screen shots of any application, chat moments and the ability to sketch on the screen shots. You can then upload it to share with friends. A printscreen tool injected with some fun. [Download]

  

• InstantShot!

  InstantShot! offers classical screenshot functionality for capturing the whole screen, a portion of it or a window and also the option to make timed screenshots or to make delayed captures over time. It offers a wide range of preferences and options to fit everyone’s needs. [Download]

  

• Paparazzi!

  Written in Objective-C and the WebKit framework, this small utility is suitable for those who wants to do simple screen shots in their Mac. [Download]

  

• Screenshot Helper

  Screenshot Helper shows a full screen window with a solid color or a desktop picture so that you can take clean screenshots without having irrelevant windows and desktop icons in the background. [Download]

  

• SnapNDrag

  SnapNDrag lets you take a screenshot by just clicking a button and dragging the resulting screenshot off, perhaps one of the simplest and easiet to use Mac printscreen tool we’ve seen. [Download]

  

• About Timed Screenshot 1.1

  A light screen capturing tool that runs in background until you kill the process (in Terminal) or logout. [Download]

• Copernicus

  Mac application for speed screenshot taking and video capturing (no audio). It’s also a virtual photo gallery. [Download]

  

Linux

Screen capturing tools for Linux users.

• XscreenCapture

  XscreenCapture allows you to capture an X11 dump from any Linux client with X11 port open. It will also convert and save automatically the result picture in the desidered compress format (default PNG). [Download]

• Xvidcap

  Screen capture enabling you to capture videos off your X-Window desktop for illustration or documentation purposes. [Download]

Web Tools

These web tools go beyond screen capturing of your desktop. It allows you to print screen any website, all the way from header to footer.

• Browsershot

  Free web service that shows you how your website looks like in different browser of different version. A must tool for web developers on a browser compatibility check.

  

• ScreenShots.jp

  Similar to Browsershots, this free web services is for those who understand Japanese.

  

• Super Screenshot

  Simple web service for those who wants quick print screens. No compatibility check of different browser or versions available.

• Clip2Net

  Clip2Net allows you to capture, sketch and share screencaptures online instantly. Good tool to communicate ideas with peers. [Download]

  

• Websnapr

  As the name suggest, it snaps thumbnail screenshot of any webites. All you need to do is enter the URL and hit capture. Comes with plugins you to facilitate blogging and web publishing.

• Thumbalizr

  Yet another online web thumbnail generator. Comes with API.

• Browsrcamp

  Test the compatibility of your design with Mac OS X browsers. Free web screenshot tool build on Mac OSX Leopard.

Firefox Plugins

Screen capturing plugin for Firefox browser. They prints the lower fold screens you don’t see.

• Screengrab!

  Firefox plugin with the ability to printscreen entire upper-fold and lower-fold of any browsing websites. Instead of saving the screenshot to a file, you can copy it to clipboard. [Install]

• FireShot

  Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages. Comes with sets of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Somehow it’s nota available for Firefox on Mac OSX [Install]

  

Idou: A 12.1MP camera phone to be launched by Sony Ericsson in September

Idou the new phone by Sony Ericsson is a 12 megapixel camera phone with Xenon flash. The phone is on the lines of Xperia, but is powered by Symbian foundation OS. The phone has 3.5inch touch screen with 16:9 aspect ratio. The mobile is expected to be launched by the company this summer.

The mobile was unveiled at Mobile World Congress held earlier this year. The mobile is expected to be launched by the name of Satio. The phone has a in built 12.1 megapixel camera. The mobile is expected to be available in three colors – Black, Silver and Bordeaux.

The mobile phone is finished with metallic materials that re-inforce the feeling of solidity. The idou will include Sony Ericsson’s media bar and music player. The homescreen of the mobile has been customized with Sony Ericsson Style and is similar to Sony Ericsson’s W960.

The mobile will provide you with 3rd generation of mobile networks. This enables fast data transfer speeds, easy access to the world of audio and video streaming, surfing, multimedia messaging and email where ever you go. Now you can quickly and easily send and retrieve files. Satio also offers lots of other features like Wi-Fi, 3G, a GPS chip, Bluetooth etc. You can enjoy high definition games and play many 3D games on this phone.

The phone specifications are:
Dimensions 112.0 x 55.0 x 13.0 mm
Weight 126gm
Display 360×640 pixel, 16,777,216 color TFT touch screen
Memory 128MB internal, expandable up to 16GB
Camera 12MP with autofocus, xenon flash and video LED flash
OS Symbian Series 60, 5th edition
Connectivity GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE, 3G, WLAN, Bluetooth, USB
Battery Standard battery, Li-Po 1000 mAh