April, 2011

Online media streaming is taking off in a big way, with a number of services streaming video, music, and games.  Only yesterday, Hulu Plus launched its multi-device service on the Xbox 360, and HBO launched its HBO Go app for iDevices.

Hulu Plus features current and back season TV shows and HD movies for a price of $7.99/month.  They have purchased many seasons outright, and allow users to stream every episode if they desire.  A number of back seasons are also available, making it easy to catch up on your favourite shows.  There are ads on Hulu Plus, which they say they have included to “reduce the monthly subscription price of the service.”

This quote comes from the Hulu blog, and gives you an idea of their vision for this service:  “How can someone watch all these TV shows? The only possible way is if someone could pull up these shows wherever they were, on whatever device they happened to have available. That’s why we’re excited to announce that Hulu Plus subscribers can now watch their favorites through more than just the browser on their Mac or PC.”

HBO Go is designed to bring premium content directly to your iDevice, with both HBO original series and hit movies included.  However, this is not so much a new media solution as it is an add-on to an existing distribution network.  Unless you are already a HBO subscriber, this app is basically useless.  However, despite this let down, this app will no doubt be very well received by all existing HBO customers.

These two new services will be competing with an increasingly saturated field of media streaming services, including Netflix and Apple TV.  However, despite the massive success of Netflix among others, it is the shear scope of different services available that may be hindering the streaming industry – or at least confusing consumers.  In order to get access to all of your favourite shows and finally ditch your cable, it is likely you will have to subscribe to multiple services and even then be content with missing out.

William Shakespeare is doing his bit for cyber bullying, with his play Much Ado About Nothing coming soon to a Facebook page near you.  This project will include status updates, posts, pictures and videos, with students helped to create separate pages for characters complete with profiles and pictures.

The Much Ado About Nothing project has been designed as both an educational resource and a way to combat cyber bullying, which is a big problem for Facebook and other social networking sites.  However, this project is also very interesting for a number of other reasons, being one of the first of its kind where characters can be updated and interact through such a popular social tool.

Much Ado About Nothing is based around the damage caused by social bullying, and follows two couples that are fighting against rumours and gossip.  This is a big step forward from simply using modern language in a Shakespeare play or using actors from various backgrounds.  This play changes the very way that characters can interact, by using the same technology used by its audience every day.

Douglas Cronk, the director of the original performance of Much Ado About Nothing at White Plains High School’s in November of last year, has noticed the growth of cyber bullying: “I know that in our area a number of schools have experience things like smut lists and other things,” he said. “A list of young people and who they’ve been with. They’re usually not true but they have a strong impact on the kids.”

Daniela Poppe plays one of the lead roles of “Hero”, a natural singer, says “I think it’s a very creative idea.  I think it’s a great way to make Shakespeare more, how do you say, comprehensible to teenagers, kids, and especially kids who don’t enjoy Shakespeare right away.”

Firefox still lacks one major feature that is supported in all other major browsers.  Known as “speed dial”, this feature provides access to your most visited and most frequently visited websites on a single tab page.  However, cnet have listed a number of ways to get around this “lack”, with a list of  four Firefox add-ons that can also perform this function.

Speed Dial 0.9.5.8

This is a highly customisable solution in the best spirit of Firefox add-ons.  Some of the options you can control include whether it opens in new tabs or new windows, the number of ‘dials’, and how dial groups are implemented.  You can even link groups to hot key combinations and control the look of each dial’s thumbnail.  The major negative with this add-on is that it’s all manual, and has no learning ability.

Fast Dial 3.4

This add-on also lacks the ability to automate the process of dialling up frequently visited websites, and is also less customisable than Speed Dial.  However, due to its light weight feel, once you get it running, many users find that the speed of this add-on is actually better than Speed Dial.

Auto Dial 9

In contrast to Speed Dial and Fast Dial, Auto Dial 9 does have the ability to learn from your most frequently visited websites and create dials from this list in an automated fashion.  However, unlike Speed Dial, it does not feature much in the way of customisation.  You can customise some aspects of this add-on however, with button size and row width adjustable.

Sugestron Speed Dial 0.9.12

This add-on is limited to eight dials, although it does read your history and automate the listing of frequently visited websites.  While this add-on is not the most elegant of these alternatives in terms of its interface, it is in many ways the best representation of what is offered in other browsers.

iStylr is an online application that enables you to easily create, edit and share tableless CSS designs online. It lets you im – and export almost any website and allows you to create themes on the basis of other people’s designs.

iStylr is a WYSIWYG CSS editor and HTML editor with focus on the development of CMS templates. If you are looking for a solution to shorten development times for CMS templates and themes look no further. iStylr allows you to create, convert, edit, publish, share, import and export templates for the worlds most used CMS and blog systems like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, TYPOlight and many others.

It was created by Stephan Helbig in 2005.

It was the summer of 2005 when he got the vision of the iStylr and he instantly got into development. His vision was a tool that can handle any system type (Blogs, Shops, CMS, Forums, etc.). A tool that makes use of webstandards and enables it’s users to create beautiful tableless css designs within minutes. A tool that makes the pro’s save lots of time during template development and still makes newbees getting started fast.

And here it is: The iStylr, an online application that enables you to easily create, edit and share tableless css designs online. It lets you im- and export almost any website and allows you to create themes on the basis of other people’s designs.

LightCMS is a content management system for web designers. Design sites, upload them to LightCMS content management system,and deploy world-class websites your clients can manage themselves.

Keeping up with a growing list of client websites can be a challenge on most systems. But on LightCMS, it’s simple. They take care of all the server issues, hosting configurations, software upgrades — all the technical stuff — and give you a simple, solid platform where you can manage any number of websites with a single login.

It also offers client billing. If you choose to use it, they’ll take on the hassle of invoicing and charging your clients.

Best of all, they offer unmatched system support.

• Setup websites in less than a minute.
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Track your online Agile Projects velocity, by Team Member, by Status, and Red flags for tasks that are overdue. Run your agile projects the way you want to.