Friedbeef’s Tech

What is Joost?

Video on the Net? Surely this is nothing revolutionary - Or is there more than meets the eye with Joost?

Designed by the same geniuses who brought you Skype and Kazaa, Joost is a new way of watching TV on the Internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

Other features include search, chat and instant messaging, built right into the program - so you find shows quickly and talk to your friends while you watch. And with no schedules to worry about, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you like - as often as you want.

On the surface, it might seem like another YouTube, but once you start playing around with it - you’ll find it’s so much more. The two main things that sets it apart would be the high quality of shows, and blazing fast streams with P2P technology. All for FREE of course!

I was very impressed with the way it could cope with my horribly slow Internet connection. YouTube’s stream is usually choppy my machine. Joost - in contrast, streams flawlessly, and with arguably better video resolution to as well!

It even comes with interactive widgets and chat platforms. This platform is so attractive - even major networks like CBS have agreed to start offering its content (CSI, Survivor) on Joost when launches this year.

Make no mistake - Internet TV has arrived and its name is Joost.

Get a FREE Joost Invite

A Joost closed beta invite is one of the hottest properties on the net these days. If you happen to be looking for one, it’s your lucky day!

This week I’m giving away TWO invites to Joost as part of my first ever blog contest!

The contest entry rules are simple:

#1 Drop me a comment in this post telling me what you think about Internet TV - I’d love to hear your thoughts!

#2 Then - Join my community by doing one (or more) of the below:

1. Subscribe to my RSS feed or email newsletter
2. Join my MyBlogLog reader community
3. Add me to your Digg friends list
4. Add me to your StumbleUpon friends list
5. Link back to this post on your own blog

Winners are picked randomly, and will be notified both by email and announced on May 5th 2007. (Make sure you use a valid email address in your comments). Please limit yourself to one entry. Good luck!

Update: 3rd May 2007 - Joost has given us unlimited invites - so EVERYONE who fulfills the two contest requirements above - gets a FREE Joost Invite!

[tags]joost, tv, freeware, iptv, video[/tags]

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Ever had a set of photo you were really proud of and wanted to showcase on your living room wall?

Now the issue with typical photos is that they fade over time, and may not be the classiest things to blow up in size and hang on your wall even after you’ve framed it.

What Wallhogs offers up is an online service where you can upload your photos have have them blown up to large proportions, and then printed on reusable vinyl, or canvas (or photos if you wish) - which makes them much more presentable in a room setting.

How does Wallhogs compare with their competition?

As with many of my reviews, I searched around the web for a competitor to benchmark against and came up with Zazzle, and LargeFormatPosters.com.  All of them offer similar services so let’s take a look at their prices.

Canvas posters

Wallhogs - USD$19.99 for a 11″ x 14″ canvas print

Zazzle’s - USD$39.95 for a 11″ x 16.5″ canvas print

LargeFormatPosters.com - USD$15.00 for a 11″ x 14″ canvas print - Winner

Photo posters

Wallhogs - USD$19.99 for a 24″ X 52 high glossy photo print - Winner

Zazzle - USD$34.95 for a 24” x 36” high glossy photo print

LargeFormatPosters.com - USD52.00 for a 24″ X 52 high glossy photo print

Vinyl posters

Wallhogs - USD$24.9924″ 24″ x 52″ vinyl - Winner

Zazzle does not sell Vinyl posters

LargeFormatPosters.com - USD$60.67 for a  24″ x 52″ vinyl

Bottom Line

Now there may be slight differences in quality and costs of shipping between the services listed above - but it does seem like Wallhogs comes out as a winner in terms of overall pricing.  There are not too many prominent players in this business yet, but Wallhogs is certainly one service worth keeping an eye on.

Disclaimer: Wallhogs has paid me to review their service, and to give an honest opinion.  Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, and have not been influenced by Wallhogs in any way.

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Microsoft’s ‘find and replace’ function is a lot more powerful than most people think.  More than just a way to replace text, it is actually possible to do a search and replace on formatting as well!

Quick Formatting in Word

Tech blog Codejacked recently talked about how he could change fonts quickly by clicking on the ‘more button’ in the ‘Find and Replace’ feature of Microsoft Word.  He went on to state the following:

“Changing fonts is just the tip of the iceberg. This technique can be used with any sort of formatting (paragraphs, styles, etc.)  Also, be sure to click on the Special button to see the options that are available there (Any Digit, Any Letter, etc.)  These wildcards and special symbols (along with plain text) can be used in combination with the formatting criteria.  For example, it’s possible to change all negative numbers to red this way, by specifying the Find What as a minus sign followed by the Any Digit notation and by specifying the Replace With as nothing but with a font color of red”

Quick Formatting in Excel

Well after some investigation, it turns out similar functionality can be found in MS-Excel (Not for PowerPoint unfortunately).  Just click the ‘Options’ button in Excel ‘Find and Replace’ to get access to these extra features.

With this, I can find and replace a certain type of cell format, or just select the format from a pre-existing cell. While there is a time and place for using the ‘Excel format painter‘, this ‘find and replace’ feature makes more complicated format changes much faster.

Do you know any other quick formatting tricks for Microsoft Office?  Let us know in the comments!

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