(This post has been edited with this paragraph. Also the publication date has been changed to 6/29 which was intended, but my posting system screwed up royally).

Well, it seems that the queues for an Iphone aren’t only at the stores. Matt reports that activation of the service is S L O W…. I suggest you save yourself the hassle, and wait three months until the kinks are worked out of the system. It’s stupid to put yourself through this ‘ordeal’ (the words of one customer for an Iphone just to get it first!). Of course, you could just pay 35% or more and buy it on Ebay.

I’ve been making videos for my other blog for quite some time, but I thought that I would like to detail how I do this. Making videos is a time intensive task, I found, so any way I can cut corners, I might consider.

You need your source of your own video: a camera, DV-videocamera or webcam (even a mobile phone). If you are using XP, you’ll find Windows MovieMaker quite sufficient for a beginner’s level. You can organise the scenes, add effects, but you won’t have that much control of the video editing itself, apart from cutting scenes, etc. You can’t actually do much else. Still, it’s a good place to start.

I found these tools quite helpful to make some of the videos on my other website.

Bink: “Bink is a hybrid block-transform and wavelet codec that can encode your video using 16 different compression techniques (wavelet, DCT, motion compensation, a variety of vector quantizers, Smacker-style, etc). With all of these techniques in one codec, Bink can handle any type of video.”

VCDGear: “VCDGear is a program designed to allow a user to extract MPEG streams from CD images, convert VCD files to MPEG, correct MPEG errors, and more — all in a single step. Initially developed back in late 1997, the program has grown to do various extractions, conversions, and corrections on the fly. Cross-platform support will allow different machines to process and generate output that is compatible between one another.” It’s very helpful to grab data from VCD (esp. if like us, you have old videos made before DVDs became commonplace, unfortunately, it can’t add back the data that was stripped out, so the quality won’t improve!).

TMPGEnc:TMPGEnc is a free AVI to MPEG1 encoder. It will allow you to make VCDs and DVDs easily. I haven’t tried it, because I was using NERO for encoding VCDs at the moment. But this would be worth trying.

SuperEXE v2007: helps with converting WMV files to AVI and other formats, including FLV formats for browsing and playing on the web. “If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER © is all you need. It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click.”

RIVA: This tool helps to “Transcode your existing videofiles to the advanced Flash Video (FLV) format with this free Riva FLV Encoder.” It can help if you wish to upload your video files to the web for playing in your browser.

There is some overlap between some of these tools, as one or two tools didn’t achieve the required effects. I also used VLC for some basic encoding, and I used other tools when I couldn’t get the desired effects.

None of these tools really help improve the actual quality of the individual camera work, but since I spent a lot of time trying to find them, I thought I should share with you!

If you know any other great tools, please add them in the comments! Thanks.

Have you tried the new XP compatible browser from Apple? If you haven’t you can download it. I managed to install one copy on one of my XP PCs but not the other. I’ve created a JPEG displaying my website in it!

Now, this blog isn’t going to talk about how wonderful Apple’s Safari is… their own website can do that!

What I have noticed is based upon my own limited experience with this software…

Pluses: it’s install is straightforward, and it imports a lot of stuff automatically, including your bookmarks. It has that familiar Itunes theme (which I loathe) but it’s clean and easy to navigate around.

Also, the screen area on startup is much bigger than Firefox. There are also several other things I noted: it’s much faster than IE, and somewhat faster than FF 2.0. I love the snappiness of the browser. I also like the organisation of the RSS feeds, much cleaner and easier to read than other browsers (except ‘Flock’ which is a FF derivative).

Another great point is that it is integrated with QuickTime and ITunes. So for home users and non-commercial customers, this should be a big selling point. It’s also a very shrewd move on the part of Apple to integrate its offerings much more tightly with Windows. In fact, Apple’s Windows offerings are less of an attempt to allow Windows onto Apple as to persuade more Windows Users of the value of Apple products. Home users should rejoice!

BUT it isn’t without its problems. Firstly, it requires XP2 to install, so it wouldn’t install on two of my machines at all. It only runs in Windows XP (SP2+) and Mac. Unlike FF which can run on any Windows 95+ version right upto Vista. Moreover, FF is available on Mac AND Linux platforms. Though I don’t use either at the moment, I find that the ‘Open’ nature of the platform comforting if I ever decide to ditch Windows for Mac or Linux. I’m also attracted by the Mac Platform because of the small forms of the new mini-Mac and its ease of use.

A second problem for me is that FF is also hugely extensible as is the new version of IE. In fact, the extensibility of FF is one of its chief selling points. I couldn’t see any obvious way to create or add extensions or even themes for Safari in windows at least! So we’re stuck with the metallic Itunes theme. It ain’t pretty.

So, while it might suit for browsing pages, and reading feeds at home, I can’t use it at work, won’t use it for blogging much, and certainly can’t get anything like the power or variety that my current install of FF has!

Anyway, here’s Mr. Jobs introducing the new PC browser, enjoy.

Good one, Apple! But to win some converts, you’ve got to try harder. B++ for effort and style.