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trevor may

Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

eDonkey Gets Shut Down

As of today the eDonkey network has been shut down. MetaMachine, the firm who created the eDonkey 2000 software, has agreed to pay $30m to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry.

Under the terms of their agreement they can no longer distribute the eDonkey software or any of its variants. An attempt to run the software will inform you via a pop-up that the network is no longer available and attempts to uninstall itself in a self-destruct fashion.

Visitors to the eDonkey website are now greeted with the message:

The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available.

If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law.
Courts around the world — including the United States Supreme Court — have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal downloading.
You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material.
Your IP address is x.x.x.x and has been logged.
Respect the music, download legally.
Goodbye Everyone.

As of posting, a federal judge has yet to give final approval over the settlement.

Several file-sharing services have yet to reach settlements with the recording industry, including Warez P2P, Limewire and Soulseek. (via Associated Press)

Countdown to Apple “Showtime”

Countdown to Apple “Showtime”: Blog212 sifts through the last minute rumours and speculation over Apple’s forthcoming announcements. Call me cynical but I reckon it’ll just be iTunes 7 with “enhanced” video downloads.

Democracy Internet TV player v0.9

Democracy Player v0.9 released: “Stop squinting at tiny web video. Instead, download and watch all the best internet TV shows in one powerful application: any video RSS feed, video podcast, video blog, or BitTorrent file. Fullscreen, high resolution, 100% free and open source. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.” For Windows, Mac and Linux. (via BoingBoing)

Mozilla Bookmarks Synchronizer

I use a whole array of computers to browse the web but was often driven mad knowing that I’d bookmarked something on one computer but wasn’t able to recall it on another. I just wanted a solution where I could automatically synchronise bookmarks between them. I also wanted a solution where the bookmarks weren’t public or stored on someone else’s server.

Here’s the answer, providing you’re using Firefox of course: the Bookmarks Synchroniser Extension. I’ve set it up so that it automagically synchronises with an xbel file on my server via FTP when I either open or close Firefox on any of my machines.

No more hunting for bookmarks!

Looking for answers in all the wrong places

I’ve just spent the morning trying to fix problems which should have been very easy to fix… but weren’t because I was simply looking in the wrong places for the answer!

Firstly, I attempted to collect my email. Thunderbird fired up fine, as usual, but just stopped at “Connecting to…” I thought the problem was my mail server but no, I could connect via IMAP and webmail just fine. Turns out the problem is Norton… again. Now, aside from being a hideous resource hog, Norton Internet Security is a lovely little app that runs in the background where you let it do its thing and forget about it. Of course, because it’s forgotten about it’s the absolute last place you (well, I, at least!) forget to look.

Secondly, I thought I’d have a play with OrangeTV, Orange’s new app (currently for the Nokia 6680) which streams “TV” to your UMTS/3G mobile. Now, I had a play with this a few days ago but couldn’t get any sound to accompany the video. Figuring it was just a network problem, and because I hadn’t used it before, I didn’t think too much of it.

This morning I gave it another go; again no sound.

When I first received this new handset I found the warning tones a little bit too loud for my liking and, as Nokia still don’t have the option of reducing the warning tone volume independently, I’d turned them off. Strangely, the developers of the OrangeTV app have chosen to disable the audio if the warning tone is turned off in the selected profile. Very odd.

Anyway, I’ve just wasted half a day sorting those out. Now I’ve wasted further time writing about it. :)