Archive for the 'Software' Category

The Democracy player has now officially been renamed to Miro, which means that the new official webpage is http://www.getmiro.com. I’m a big fan of Democracy, having it installed on my Mac Mini, which is nestled next to the flat screen TV in our living room. I’m looking forward to all the exciting things that Miro will bring with it.

New version of Democracy launches and hidden in there, is mention of a name change with version 1.0, from Democracy to Miro… mmm shame, I much prefer Democracy. You can, as always get it here.

New features are as follows :

1. Folder watching.
2. Resume playback. If you’re watching a 15 minute video and stop halfway, we’ll remember where you were when next time you watch it. There’s a preference setting to turn this on and off.
3. Auto-updating for Mac users. This should be the last time that Mac users will need to go to their browser to download a new version. From now on, when a new version is released you’ll be able to install it within the app and relaunch (we’re now using Sparkle). Windows users don’t have auto-update yet, but we’ll be able to give you details about what’s new in each release from within the app (right now it just tells you that there’s a new version, with no details).
4. Minimize to tray on windows– when you click the red x in the upper right, the application will hang out in the system tray. A much requested feature.
5. Windows Vista compatibility. This solves playback issues for some Vista users.
6. Resizing of thumbnails. We now resize and cache thumbnails so that the images displayed are smoother. This also makes switching between channels much faster.
7. More thorough proxy support.
8. Ability to play audio files on mac (previously we sent you out to an external player).
9. Many more keyboard shortcuts on Windows. This will make remote control support easy. Full keyboard shortcuts for Mac are coming soon with the first version of Miro.
10. Bug fixes, memory use reduction, memory leak fixes. Updated Perian on OSX to version 1.0b5.

• Tagline : The Totally Rad Show is the summer blockbuster of geek news shows
• Website : The Totally Rad Show
• Subscribe Link :
  
• Parental Rating : 18
• Star Rating : 8 out of 10

The Totally Rad Show is one of those programmes that would have thrived on the G4/TechTV cable channel. It’s very down to earth with the very affable Alex Albrecht at the helm, also co-presenter of one of my other favorite Revision 3 shows, Diggnation, with Kevin Rose. Fortunately no grubby cable company has their hands on this or indeed any other Revision3 show and it’s for this very reason that these shows deserve to thrive. Also the fact that they’re also pretty good is another very valid reason.

Of the three hosts, Alex is the one that really holds things together. Dan Trachtenberg and Jeff Cannata, whilst being likable enough, just seem to lack that special chemistry. Admitedly we’re only at show #9, so this is something that can still develop, nonetheless it’s still enjoyable to watch.

The shows premise is to basically review movies, video games, TV, comics and all things geek. Everything seems to be above board, rather than a sycophantic vehicle for PR.

One of the major criticisms I have of the show, is that the sound levels seem to flail all over the place. One minute I’m turning up the sound to hear what is being said and the next, I’m hunting for the remote to turn it down again, especially when our hosts are laughing and joking around.

Conclusion: It’s still the early days for the show. While it’s still a bit rough around the edges, the content is great and I imagine it will go from strength to strength.

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• Publisher : Participatory Culture Foundation
• Platform : Windows, Mac, Linux
• Download : Download
• Cost : Free
• Star Rating : 9 out of 10

I’ve tried out Democracy a few times, but it never seemed to do what I wanted, in the way I wanted it. I was more used to using Juice to download my Vidcasts, but it was always then a pain to view them, as you had to go to the downloaded directory and well I won’t go into specifics, but I always wanted a more streamlined approach.

Recently I bought an LCD TV for our living room, one which I made sure had a VGA port. So once the TV was installed and set up, It wasn’t long before my Mac Mini moved from the basement and joined it to become our living room Internet gateway and media center. I tried keeping track of my Vidcasts via the Google Reader, which I’m also a great fan of, but with video’s greater Internet demands, I wanted to move back to something that would download my episodes, to make the playback more reliable. So I decided it was time to try out Democracy again, and wow is it every different. Actually maybe not different, but I find the perception of software can change vastly, when you really have an interest in using it. But anyway Democracy has now firmly established itself as my Vidcast catcher, but all is not sweetness and light.

My main machine for Democracy is my Mac Mini, albeit one of the early models, with a paltry 256meg of memory. The software runs fine, but it does seem to spend a lot of time playing catchup. One of the reasons for this, is that the software is mainly coded using Python, which is an interpreted language. The benefit of this however is that it’s relatively straightforward to create a version that runs on other platforms, in this case PC, Mac and Linux. The downside is that it’s not as fast as a compiled language. I thought that the Mac was the main culprit, but I also installed Democracy on my PC running Windows XP, which is a beefy PC with a gigabyte of ram. Democracy does indeed run quicker, but not as quick as I would have expected. That’s about the only downside I could find.

Not only is Democracy a great Vidcast aggregator, it also has a great directory which makes finding new Vidcasts a doddle. Fear not though if you can’t find your favorite Vidcast, you can also add a new Vidcast by just using it’s RSS feed address, the one that usually looks like http://www.indielaunchpad.com/rss.xml. The player is also great, enabling you to view Quicktime (one of the popular Vidcast formats) videos in full screen, which the basic (free) Quicktime player can’t do.

Conclusion : Almost as good as having Tivo for your PC. This software has come a long way. For $20 this software would be a steal. For free it’s a total no brainer.