The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
More and more I find myself turning to the Web for a service. Geek stuff, for sure, but there are hundreds of websites out there waiting for us to need something and drop by. When the Web was new and fresh, we surfed the tubes, but we really couldnÕt interact in any way. We could do for the Web, but it couldnÕt do anything for us. Now almost all of the time when I need some type of geek service, I can go online and find a site that will do what I need, and often for free. It began simply with well known sites like flickr for picture storage and YouTube for videos. Instead of storing things on my own machine, I considered these places as storage lockers where I didnÕt have to clog up my own hard drive. This soon moved into other things like Google docs. One of my now all-time favourite services online, Google docs lets me create word processed documents, presentations and spreadsheets all online, save them, share them with others, and collaborate with people all around the world at no cost. This is a great service, itÕs free, everyone can access the information, you donÕt need to worry about having the right software or the same software as anyone else. It all just works. These services are pretty simple and basic. Millions of people have accounts at places like these and use them constantly, but the web also has a lot of other places I can turn to, with tools that I can use when I need them. I work with lots of different files. In any given day, I might have at least a dozen different file types. Newer and older versions of things like PowerPoint, and Word or Word Perfect documents. I might have video files with all sorts of frame rates and audio files from Estonia that are saved in a file format IÕve never heard of. This used to be the bane of a computer userÕs existence. This is how we all ended up on Microsoft products; because we wanted something common that we could all use and open. But the web has changed this. Services like vixy.net, media-convert.com and zamzar.com let me work with file formats from anywhere of almost any type. Simple and free, for most of these services, I can simply upload the file I need converted and then wait for the website to convert these files into something else that I might want. If someone sends me a Word Perfect file and I canÕt open it, I simply send it to media-convert.com and ask the site to convert it into a Word file which I can download and use with no problems at all. Simple. But the web also has more complex pieces of software that have moved online. A perfect example is with online video editors. Windows people hated Apple people when iMovie first was released. Simple to use software to edit videos that is included with every Apple computer sold, PC people were plain and simple unhappy as they had nothing like it they could use. Video editing software was expensive and often required people to install specialized parts to their computers. The software was complex and hard to use, often crashing and failing. Jump ahead several years and now not only is software available for PCs that matches the Apple version, but it is completely free and online. Sites like Jaycut.com and Jumpcut.com are similar. You simply set up a free account and hook your camera to your computer, uploading the video files that you want to work with. You then drag and drop your video clips into a timeline, add your transitions, sounds and titles and then save it all as a movie. These sites also go further then this, allowing you to save in several different formats, give you a web address if you want to embed the movie on a blog or even download copies of it to store on your own computer. Unlimited storage, easy access, and all free. There are other great examples of ways that the web is becoming a service, but using these sites are starting points, you can begin to dream of all kinds of ways that you can get what you need online. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
