Running on Mac or Linux and tired of Adobe Flash eating up all your CPU cycles while you're watching YouTube? Buggy plugins that crash your browser and freeze your PC? Proprietary formats that get in the way? Want to embrace HTML5 and the future? Well, now you can... one YouTube video at a time.

NeoSmart Technologies has written an HTML 5 Video Viewer for YouTube, and you can use it to browse YouTube in true 21st Century HTML5 quality. And it's super-simple to use.

Just go to http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/ and enter the URL of a video to watch it in the embedded HTML5 viewer. Yes, you can skip, skim, pause, resume away to your heart's content.

Even better, we've written a GreaseMonkey/UserScript to add a link to all YouTube video pages that points to the HTML5 version, leaving you with no excuse to still use the Flash interface!

Continue reading 'Watch YouTube Videos Without Flash in HTML5'

With Windows 7 released and currently making its way to shelves in time for the holiday season, we've taken this opportunity to upgrade our copy of the official Windows System Recovery Discs for compatibility with Windows 7.

If you're like most PC users, you probably got Windows 7 with a new PC or laptop. And if you're like 99% of the population, you get your new machines from one of the major manufacturers. Dell, Acer, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo; who all have one thing in common: they don't give you a real Windows 7 installation disc with your purchase. Instead, they bundle what they call a "recovery disc" (that's if you're lucky - otherwise you'll have a recovery partition instead) with your machine and leave it at that.

It doesn't matter that you just paid a thousand dollars for a machine that comes with a valid Windows 7 license - your computer manufacturer just don't want to spend the money (or perhaps take on the responsibility) of giving you a Windows 7 installation DVD to accompany your expensive purchase.

The problem is, with Windows 7, the installation media serves more than one purpose. It's not just a way to get Windows installed, it's also the only way of recovering a borked installation. The Windows 7 DVD has a complete "recovery center" that provides you with the option of recovering your system via automated recovery (searches for problems and attempts to fix them automatically), rolling-back to a system restore point, recovering a full PC backup, or accessing a command-line recovery console for advanced recovery purposes.

Thankfully, Microsoft seems to have realized this problem, and have thankfully made a recovery disc for this purpose. It contains the contents of the Windows 7 DVD's "recovery center," as we've come to refer to it. It cannot be used to install or reinstall Windows 7, and just serves as a Windows PE interface to recovering your PC. Technically, one could re-create this installation media with freely-downloadable media from Microsoft (namely the Microsoft WAIK kit, a multi-gigabyte download); but it's damn-decent of Microsoft to make this available to Windows' users who might not be capable of creating such a thing on their own. You can make your own copy from Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, but now you have an easier alternative.

NeoSmart Technologies is hosting a copy of the Windows 7 Recovery Disc for your convenience. It's a 143 MiB download (165 MiB for the 64-bit version), and in the standard ISO format, ready to burned directly to a CD or DVD. Don't wait until your PC crashes to download a copy! Download and burn your recovery disc today, so that when the time comes, you'll be ready!

What it does: The Windows 7 Recovery Disc can be used to access a system recovery menu, giving you options of using System Restore, Complete PC Backup, automated system repair, and a command-line prompt for manual advanced recovery.

What it doesn't do: You cannot use the Windows 7 Recovery Disc to re-install Windows - it only fixes (not replaces!) Windows.

Why you need it: If you bought your PC from a major retailer, you didn't get this CD with your hefty purchase.

Continue reading 'Download Windows 7 System Recovery Discs'

If you have a bunch of old Java applications lying around in your Mac's /Applications folder, chances are, you'll come across this message box when you attempt to run them on Snow Leopard:

To open JavaApplicationStub, you need to install Rosetta. Would you like to install it now?

Personally, I try my best to avoid legacy Mac OS apps and haven't found the need to install Rosetta on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as of yet. Whether you have need of Rosetta for your other applications or not, there's no reason you should be running your Java-based applications through the Rosetta environment — they'll run just fine on native Intel Java on OS X… with just a little bit of a prod in the right direction.

Java applications are CPU agnostic (hence the "write once, run everywhere" Java motto). The Java applets you download and use can theoretically be run on any PC machine that supports Java; be it Intel, PPC, ARM, SPARC, or more. The native Java virtual machine will translate the "Java bytecode" into the equivalent machine assembly that your PC uses and understands, and therefore, Java code written for legacy Mac OS should run just fine on Snow Leopard

Continue reading 'Make Old Java Applications Fully Snow Leopard Compatible'

PCWizKid of PCWizKid's Tech Talk has been kind enough to create an über-cool EasyBCD video tutorial that covers the basics of bootloader configuration and manipulation via EasyBCD. The video's been an instant-hit on YouTube, and we've embedded a copy of it below.

Note that in the video, PCWizKid is using EasyBCD 1.7.2, which is the latest stable version of EasyBCD... But there's a secret 2.0 version out currently in beta — we recommend you download yourself a copy and be the coolest kid on the block. It's been rewritten for stability and reliability, and will feature a ton of new Windows 7-only features for your itching, tweaking fingers. :-)

Continue reading 'PCWizKid's EasyBCD Video Tutorial'

Please note: that this sort of post is what the losers at 4Chan get a kick out of and look forward to seeing, it's clear that they get a perverse sort of pleasure out of hearing these complaints, but isn't possible for anyone with a shred of dignity to let events like this go without speaking.

4Chan, a group of immature script-kiddies that anonymously post online and organize "attacks" against various groups, organizations, and websites, are it again. This time, it's not the Church of Scientology they're attacking, but innocent children. As the BBC reports, members of 4Chan have been uploading videos containing explicit sexual content in droves to YouTube today, specifically targeting children.

The videos uploaded by members of 4Chan consisted of children's clips that start off innocently enough, showing cartoons and other rated-G material usually targeted at children around 5 years old, but soon enough change to videos of adults engaged in sexual activity. 4Chan has the uncanny ability to strike a nerve, driving even the most liberal of internet users to condemn their behavior as pure evil. The problem is, the anonymous 4Chan members are perversely motivated by this sort of response, and cannot be shamed into bringing an end to their disgusting activities.

Continue reading '4Chan Strikes Again, Hiding Porn in Kids Clips on YouTube'

How much would you pay for people to know you're really you? That the updates coming in every 2 minutes on that twitter page come from yours truly and not someone else... someone else pretending to be you?

If you're like most people, the answer is not much. But there are people out there that really care, and with good reason. If you're the FBI, Oprah Winfrey, or one of the million other celebrities currently on Twitter, you probably don't want someone out there passing themselves off as yourself while posting fake updates to an account literally millions are watching.

Some people to whom money is not an issue already pay thousands of dollars for meaningless SSL certificates - something tucked away in the corner of your browser window that no one pays much attention to. But imagine if Twitter were to start offering "verified accounts" that have been authenticated as belonging to a particular person or institute... how many of these celebrity accounts would suddenly turn into cash cows for Twitter?

Continue reading 'Verified Accounts: Twitter's Next Attempt at Making Money?'

Back in 2008, Apple introduced the new Mini DisplayPort standard as the only video output method on the new MacBooks and LCDs. Mini DisplayPort is a freely-licensed VESA standard [1] and has now been adopted by a number of other display manufacturers, and is a miniaturized version of the original DisplayPort interface.

This week, the fourth revision of the HDMI high-definition video output connector was revealed in the form of HDMI D, weighing in at a mere fraction of the original HDMI connector size and intended for use with mobile and embedded high-definition video devices [2]. The new HDMI connector is expected to ship later this year, and is in direct competition with VESA's Mini DisplayPort interface.

VESA is the international governing body for computer graphics standards, and has been designing video output standards since its conception in the late 80's [3]. HDMI is a private group formed in 2002, and licenses its interfaces out to manufacturers at four cents a device + a $10,000 yearly fee.

Continue reading 'Mini DisplayPort to Get Some HDMI Competition'

Users attempting to upgrade from Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition to Windows 7 Build 7100 (the unofficial RC1 release leak), are greeted with the following "compatibility warning" dialog:

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition's "Ultimate Extras" have been a constant source of derision and anger from Vista users ever since its release 3 years ago. If the blog posts are to be believed, millions of users purchased Windows Vista Ultimate Edition in the hope that the added-value "Ultimate Extras" package - which was left un-described and of unknown worth at the time - would turn out to be a good investment.

Continue reading 'Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras'

Recently our original article/rant on Firefox's legendary memory abuse has seen an increase in comments and views; and I had intended to post the following comment in light of the article's rebirth and the ensuing discussions in the comments.

The reply turned out to be longer than I'd originally intended, so here it is as its own post.

I'll try to be as objective as possible in this reply:

The most important thing for frustrated end users to keep in mind is that Mozilla/Firefox cannot be held responsible for cases where incorrectly written plugins and/or extensions cause Firefox to abuse system memory - that's the trade-off between empowering developers and keeping the code squeaky clean.

Most of the cases reported are indeed caused by one or more extensions or plugins gone awry, doing something they shouldn't be doing, or something they don't know how to do properly. Some of the most popular plugins for Firefox are notorious for their memory leaks; but few users realize just how dangerous they can be, and that the Firefox devs cannot really do anything about it.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that Firefox has some memory leaks in the codebase itself. They're clearly not easily reproducible and they don't happen very readily nor often enough because the developers have clearly spared no effort in their attempts to address this problem for once and for all. But they're there, nevertheless.

Continue reading 'On the matter of Firefox and memory leaks...'

A recent article on OSNews highlights the changes expected to come in Google's Chrome 2.0 for Windows and the progress being made on the Linux and OS X fronts for Google's new browser.

In the article, Ben Goodger, lead Chrome UI developer, states

[Google avoids] cross platform UI toolkits because while they may offer what superficially appears to be a quick path to native looking UI on a variety of target platforms, once you go a bit deeper it turns out to be a bit more problematic." [... Your applications end up] speaking with a foreign accent.

But there's something we're not getting here. Obviously given enough brilliant programmers and a good team lead to keep the different codebases in sync, going with native APIs is the better approach. But the reasons Goodger is offering aren't very convincing.

Continue reading 'Does it GTK/QT/Win32 Really Matter for Chrome?'