ON Computers
BOB & JOY SCHWABACH
You've made a photo slideshow on a disk, but will that disk play on your TV?
If you have Vista, you can use the free Windows DVD Maker to do the trick. If you don't have Vista, you need a program like Roxio's MyDVD to make your video playable on a TV. MyDVD is re- commended by Microsoft and others and costs $50 from Roxio.com. You can find an older version of Roxio's Media Creator for about $10 on eBay.com, and that works too.
Many problems like this can be solved by clicking Start and then Help and Support. Type your problem subject into the little box that comes up.
We want more video
According to Cisco, the computer networking giant, video will account for close to 90 per cent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2012.
We like to watch Internet video with an MSN TV 2 box from Microsoft that connects to our TV. It not only brings in YouTube, but can also get movies from sites like Amazon's Video on Demand and Unbox. The difference between those two sites is that you have to wait for the whole movie to load when using Video on Demand, but Unbox starts the movie right away and continues loading in the background.
One small, easy video camera
Video cameras are getting easier to use, and our favourite is a new one called The Flip Mino. It's about the size of a deck of playing cards.
The Mino answers every non-techie's prayer: You push a red button to film something. After you take the video, you plug the camera itself into your computer; it has a little spring-loaded arm that pops out, and you plug that into a USB port.
As soon as you plug the camera into a USB socket, a menu pops up and you can choose to put your video on a web site, email it or burn it to disk. We wrote about the first version of this camera several months ago. It was nice, but the new version is a big improvement.
For one, you don't need batteries; it charges itself when you plug it into your computer. And the second reason sounds a little silly, but the button is much easier to push. It was really hard before. The Mino is $180 from TheFlip.com. (Probably cheaper from other places.)
Radio BlackBerry
Slacker Radio is software that lets you create a personal radio station that brings in tunes you like from the Internet. It works with any computer, but right now it only works in the US. A similar service called RadioTime works just about everywhere and you can get it at RadioTime.com.
Slacker Radio has a version for the new BlackBerry smart phone that's coming out in October. With the BlackBerry, you'll be able to hear your own stations even when not connected to a wireless network because the phone will download them to memory whenever there is a connection.
If you don't want to wait for the new BlackBerry, you can listen to Slacker Radio on your own computer for free, or buy the $200 Slacker G2 for portable MP3 players. We like listening on our own computer because like most slackers, we want it to be cheap and easy to find good music. You click a favourite category and let it play song after song. Or you can build your own station with all your favourites on it. More info is at slacker.com.
The numbers report
Girls are playing games online more than ever, including our young relatives. According to comScore.com, the total female online gaming audience grew 27 per cent between last year and this year, and segments of that population increased even more: Teenage girls increased their activity 55 per cent, and women between the ages of 55 and 63 increased by 43 per cent.
More good games
A game called Peggle Deluxe used to consume our days. Peggle Nights now consumes our nights. The first game is so famous you can find videos of best scores at YouTube.
What makes Peggle so addicting is the combination of pinball-style action, lovable characters, great music and nice graphics, not to mention the fact that you can be three or 99 and still have fun with it. The psychology of the game is clever. It gets easier just when you can't face a tougher challenge, and the fireworks and other rewards are neat. It took us a year to go through all the ins and outs of Peggle Deluxe. Peggle Nights is even harder.
The program plays Beethoven's Ode to Joy from his 9th Symphony when you win a level. There are 60 levels in Peggle Nights and a new musical introduction by the Slovak National Orchestra. You can play Peggle Nights for one hour for free before deciding whether you want to buy it for $20, at PopCap.com.
Readers can search several years of columns at http://www.oncomp.com. You can email Bob Schwabach at bobschwab@aol.com and Joy Schwabach at joydee@oncomp.com.
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