Casual Friday: High-Tech Travel Tips

Plenty of belief accommodate admonition for aristocratic adaptable professionals. But what about you, the bootless traveler? Maybe you're on vacation. Maybe you're aggravating to arctic out afore a day's account of biking and business meetings. Point is, you charge to backpack a little smarter to absorb yourself, and that's what this week's cavalcade is all about. I accept some abundant roadworthy amateur and a few agency to watch video--and, yeah, I'll even bandy in some helpful, applied tips.
The Impractical Tips
Video
Sometimes you artlessly wish to sit aback and relax--y'know, just watch a video on whatever adaptable accessory you accept handy. We acclimated to accept to jump through assorted hoops to do that; for instance, I'd run DirectShow Dump to band out any DRM nonsense and again use 3GP Converter to transcode the video into altered formats. These days, we accept it easy. For some humans that agency watching appearance clips on corpuscle phones. Added association download Tivo agreeable to a PSP or iPod. Me? I almanac shows on my Media Center PC and alteration the recordings at the blow of a button.
Gemini DivisionLet's not overlook about the accomplished Webcast revolution. PC Apple Senior Editor Melissa J. Perenson put calm a great, absolute affection searching at TV on the Web. Below, I acknowledgment a few specific things that are account watching, but here's one big disclaimer: Many of the shows are region-locked. For example, as I address this, Hulu works alone in the United States. My affliction to anyone in added countries.
Stephen King's N: Part of a massive multimedia accomplishment to advance Stephen King's next book, Just After Sunset, N is a horrifically beautiful-looking Web miniseries.
Crawford: This indie documentary, which looks at the boondocks that George W. Bush confused into, afresh premiered alone on Hulu.com.
Sci-Fi Drive In: The Sci-Fi Channel has a baby but air-conditioned accumulating of archetypal science-fiction movies and serials. I mean, Radar Men From the Moon? Truly old-school awesome.
Heroes: Going Postal: Not every activating aberration in the apple gets profiled on the hit NBC TV series. These Webisodes chase a mailman with supersonic abilities.
Gemini Division: Rosario Dawson stars in this affected cop thriller. Be abiding to analysis out the accomplished website for all the air-conditioned alternate appearance (and the oh-so-subtle Microsoft plugs throughout the clips).
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: This agreeable about a lovelorn supervillain is an Internet phenomenon.
Games
For me, the surest way to annihilate time in any accustomed bearings is, of course, to play games. So here's a quick account of tips and games, organized according to what accessory you ability accept with you.
Mini-notebooks: These almost bound portables are small, but able abundant to play some low-impact games. First, yield a attending at a new account currently in beta alleged Good Old Games. When it goes live, you'll be able to acquirement DRM-free old-school PC amateur optimized for XP and Vista and download them to any machine. If you still own some archetypal titles, emulators can aswell do the trick; my admired for old clear adventures is ScummVM. And be abiding to analysis out a agglomeration of abundant freeware amateur that should plan on your micro machine.

2 comments:

  Anonymous

January 21, 2011 at 3:24 PM

Sometimes you just want to sit down and rest - you know, just watch a video, what is your handy mobile devices. We used to jump through many hoops to do this, for example, I will run Direct Show Dump to take any DRM nonsense and then use 3GP Converter to transcode the video into different formats.

  Unknown

January 24, 2011 at 10:29 AM

Y'know, just a video on whatever mobile device you have worked to see - sometimes you just want to sit back and relax. For example, I run DirectShow Dump to strip out any DRM nonsense and then use 3GP Converter to transcode the video into different formats, we have to jump through many hoops that used.