Friedbeef’s Tech

Today is Blog Action Day!

On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind.  In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

So, in conjunction with Blog Action Day, and as part of our ongoing series dedicated to save the world right from your computer, here are 3 green ways to make a positive difference to the environment today!

Tip #1: How to save printer ink

Based on research done by the San Francisco Chronicle, printer inks have been found to be one of the most expensive liquids in the world!  Printing unnecessary items not only hurts the environment but your wallet as well.  Here are 2 quick ways to ensure efficient printing.

Method 1: Print ‘Selection’ Only

If you only need a few paragraphs of text from a page, there’s no sense in printing out the entire page is there?  What you can do is select the desired text with your mouse, then when you hit the print button…change the ‘print range’ to ’selection’ when you print.  That way only the items you highlighted are printed out.

Method 2: Remove unwanted portions of a web page

If you want a web page to still look almost like the original page except without items like graphic or ad banners etc. you can try a Firefox extension called ‘Nuke Anything : Enchanced’ (Sorry Internet Explorer users).  This will allow you to right click anything on the screen and remove it instantly prior to printing.

Tip #2: How to trade on eBay and help a good cause

The next time you buy an item look for the eBay Giving Works Ribbon!

The charity icon tells you that a listing is benefiting a certified nonprofit organization, and all listings created with eBay Giving Works benefit a worthy cause - changing the world, one listing at a time.

If you’re a seller on eBay, you may benefit from the fact people are willing to pay higher prices for your item because it helps a good cause.  To date, more than $40 million has been raised for nonprofits through items sold on eBay. 

Tip #3: How to travel in a ‘greener’ way

How do you make a trip to a bustling city and still manage to be as green as possible?  Jamble has assembled an awesome travel guide for turning your holiday, into an environmentally friendly experience.  From a list of eco-friendly hostels, to packing guides for the environmentally conscious - it’s worth checking out if you want to make your next holiday a little greener. 

What have you recently done to help the environment?  Let us know in the comments!

Related Links: If you liked this article, check out previous articles from part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 on how to save the world from your computer.

[tags] enviroment, printer, charity, travel [/tags]

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It’s about time someone did this.

Avot Media has released a mobile app which allows you to search for videos from multiple sources at one go and watch them directly from your phone.

What’s good about it

Say goodbye to searching individual mobile video sites like YouTube, trying to find an obscure video.  Just point your phone to the Avot Mobile Site and you’re good to go. 

Avot mV indexes and goes through a ton of sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Google Video in order to quickly bring you the most relevant searches no matter what the source.  

I also liked the fact that it streams the videos directly from their source rather than transcoding them.  Sort of like Yahoo Video Search - but for a phone.

What needs improvement

More Supported Platforms

While very useful, the biggest issue I have with Avot mV is the fact that it currently only works for phones which run the Windows Mobile Smartphone & Pocket PC OS only. 

This means that the Symbian OS platforms found on Nokia smartphones, as well as other phone operating systems are left out of the equation.  That will hopefully change soon as the product is still in beta.

Mobile video search rivals like VTap have already developed a module for the iPhone (as well as the Windows Smartphone/Pocket PC OS), and are in the midst of developing a java app so it can work across almost all phones, so AvotmV needs to get this done fast.

More Heavily rotated ‘Featured Videos’

Ideally, featured videos on the homepage of AvotmV would be be the cream of the crop from all the major mobile video sites.   

The thing is, I saw the SAME videos on the ‘featured videos’ page a few days in a row.  Avot mV needs to come up with a way to show me the top 5 videos from YouTube or Google Videos - which change constantly.  Rather than me having to know what to search for - the best of the best videos at the time would be at my fingertips.

Verdict:

If you have a compatible phone, I think Avot mV is definitely worth checking out given that it’s available for free and you have nothing to lose.  If you’re searching for a particular video, you’ll save a fair amount of time now that you can get what from a single source rather than visit individual video sites.

If you want to keep up with the latest updates for this cool little web app, check out the Avot Blog.

Do you want to watch videos on your phone?  Let us know in the comments!

Disclaimer: Avot Media has paid me to test and 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 Avot Media in any way.

[tags] mobile, video, search [/tags]

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ZoomIt is a cool tool released for free by Microsoft that allows you to quickly zoom in, and also annotate it your screen.

Many people tout it as something to be used for zooming into presentations, but I personally don’t believe in having any presentations that small to begin with!

Having said that – Zoomit makes an awesome tool for….

1. Zooming in quickly on images
2. Drawing on the screen (making circles, arrows etc) to illustrate your point during a presentation etc.

Extremely customizable and lightweight, it’s a very handy tool to have running in the background.

Quick Office Documents Zooming Tip: If you’re inside any office application (Outlook, Powerpoint, Excel, Word etc.) Hold down Ctrl, and use your mouse scrollwheel to zoom in and out of a document.  You don’t need to install anything for this.

(ZoomIt)

[tags]zoom, screen, presentations[/tags]

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