IBM Breakfasts on Blade

For IBM, September has been one big shopping spree. First came the company’s $1.7 billion acquisition of data warehousing and analytics company Netezza, then the purchase of risk management outfit OpenPages for an undisclosed sum. And today, IBM announced plans to buy Blade Network Technologies, which makes Ethernet switching hardware and software for data centers.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, though word on the street has it that it’s worth roughly $400 million. That seems a reasonable price if it helps to futher secure IBM’s (IBM) position in the increasingly competetive data-center market.

Twitter Feeds and Blogs Tell Hidden Story of Mexico’s Drug Wars

A small army of bloggers and tweeters is filling the gaps left by traditional media in Mexico that are increasingly limiting their coverage of the country’s drug wars because of pressure from the cartels.

“Shots fired by the river, unknown number of dead,” read one recent tweet on a busy feed from the northern border city of Reynosa, #Reynosafollow.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

New Zune2 review (part 2-1) upgrade, hardware, software and Social

When we first caught wind that Microsoft was in fact doing its own portable media player (and then published the first ever photo of the Zune), we hoped it might finally be the play to knock the iPod off its perch. Sure, in mid 2006 there was no shortage of devices more advanced than any given iPod, but then (and now) the iPod enjoyed unchecked dominance of the market in the US and many countries abroad. Steve Jobs knew the day would come that Microsoft would really enter the game.
What we were hoping for was that the portable media world might be in store for another Sony / Nintendo upset. Remember in the 90s how Sony and Nintendo's partnership went awry, and Sony, totally sick of Nintendo completely owning the game console space, brought out the original PlayStation? Before the console's second generation was through Sony had more market share than they knew what to do with. Sony upped Nintendo's game with the PlayStation, then upped their own with the PlayStation 2 -- and took over.
If Sony could do the impossible and topple the infallible Nintendo of old, surely Microsoft, the world's largest technology company, could make at least make a dent in Apple's armor. Yeah, the first-gen product is important, but the second gen product is crucial, because if you can't up your game -- and everyone else's -- you're just another player. This year, Microsoft really had to make the Zune count. Read on to judge for yourself whether they did.
The first generation Zune, as we all know, was little more than a slew of off the shelf hardware and software Microsoft cobbled together in a rush to make a play for the annual holiday gold rush. And the interesting part is, all things considered, it really wasn't bad at all. No one thought it was "done", but it was a lot better than some of the other PMC-based devices we'd seen to date. This year Microsoft brought a slew of new Zune products (and enhancements) to the table, including two new players (flagship 80GB and the flash model), new device software (which runs on all devices), new desktop software, and a new service (Zune Social, a music-oriented social network reminiscent of Xbox Live).



Device software
Yeah, we know Microsoft technically skipped right past device software v2.0 and jumped to 2.2, but the update is the best place to start since it affects the most users and devices. Microsoft won some well-deserved brownie points for ensuring all Zune players new and old can run the new firmware, meaning that for now your old Zune will have feature parity with the new hardware.
So here's the deal with the device software: it adds some crucial bits (many of which we expected the first time), takes away some minor but important things, and leaves the other 90% largely unchanged. First, the stuff Zune 2.0 takes away:
Song flagging
The five star rating system
The language menu The good stuff, though, is very good:
MPEG-4 and H.264 playback support
Podcasting support
Sync over WiFi (which we'll get to later)
In terms of performance, both old and new hardware and firmware were almost identical in testing. A lot of people have been claiming the new firmware is much snappier, but we didn't find that to be true at all. Two Zune 30 devices boot up within a half second between 1.0 and 2.0 series firmwares, and the flash-based Zune 8 we tested booted to home screen less than a second faster. Traversing menus took no more or less time or when syncing and the like. (Note: scrolling through long lists appears to happen slightly faster, but that's likelier an interface tweak, not a performance increase.)

Related theme:
New Zune review part 2-1
New Zune review part 2-2
New Zune review part 2-3
New Zune review part 2-4

Recommended Products:
Aiseesoft DVD to Zune Suite
It can help you convert DVD, IFO and all video formats to Zune, Zune 2 MP4, WMV and Zune supported audio MP3, WMA, and AAC etc.

How to sync and put cusomized ringtone on iPhone

There are also some other ways to convert audio to iPhone ringtone and sync it to iPhone with iTunes, but I think these are a little complicated and users may be at a loss with such ways.

Here I recommend iPhone PC Suite, an almighty iPhone manager that can let you manage phone book, software, media and other files between iPhone and computer without iTunes easily.

But before using this tool, make sure your iTunes installed and has been connected with iPhone once before (Then you will never need not run iTunes when you use iPhone PC Suite to manage your iPhone).And when the first time you connecting iPhone, it will install PhoneDaemon on your iPhone, don’t worry it is green software and will do nothing harm.

Now I will show you how to sync the converted iPhone ringtone to iPhone without iTunes. Connect you iPhone to computer, double click” iPhone PC Suite” to start iPhone PC Suite, the program will scan you iPhone automatically for a short while. Then click button “Personal” on the main menu, select ”ringtone”.



Click “New Ringtone” to locate the converted iPhone ringtone.

Select your target iPhone ringtone, then it will upload the ringtone to iPhone automatically.



Then you can select your favorite audio file and set it as your iPhone ringtone on iPhone. Click “setting”->”Sound”->”Ringtone”, the converted ringtone is listed on column “Customize”. Now you can enjoy the fun of your unique iPhone ringtone!
This free iPhone PC Suite also has other powerful functions, we will share them later.

Previous part: How to convert DVD, Movie, Music to iPhone ringtone and put ringtone on iPhone?

How to upload videos to YouTube easily and quickly on Mac

Google has released basic software called Vidnik which is the quickest, simplest way to make movies using the built - in camera on your Macintosh and upload those movies to your YouTube account. You must first sign up for a free YouTube membership to upload videos. You can use Vidnik to create a video diary, or just to quickly record a video comment to attach to an existing YouTube video. Vidnik works with the built-in video cameras on recent Macs, with Firewire video cameras, and with many USB video cameras.

Part 1, use Vidnik to Record video segments using your iSight camera and upload them to YouTube.



To use Vidnik, run the app, then click the record button to start recording. Click it again to stop. Trim to just the golden moments you want to keep, as in the screen shot above. Fill in the required title, description, and so on. Click the upload button. That's it.

Part 2, Use Vidnik to upload videos to youtube
You can drag movies made in other programs onto Vidnik's column of movies, and then click the upload button. And to use another program to do a little post-production, use the Gear menu to show Vidnik's movie file in the Finder. Edit the movie in the other program, and then upload it.Vidnik can only support videos such as: 3GP, AVI, DAT, MOV, MP4, M4A, WAV, AAC. It does not support ASF, FLV, MPEG, RM, WMV, MP3, AC3.
You can use the video converter for Mac to convert your videos to the formats that Vidnik can run.
If you want to upload DVD to TouTube, you need to use DVD ripper to rip DVD to video formats supported by YouTube first. If you are Mac user, you can use this DVD ripper for Mac .

Facebook Should Absolutely Build a Mobile Phone

The meme of the weekend was a TechCrunch report that Facebook is working on its own phone. Facebook quickly distributed a detailed denial of any phone-building activity, trying to cut the story at the knees by stating it is not building a phone but it is working on adding support for Facebook Connect into mobile operating systems and building a broadly accessible HTML5 version of its site. But the idea clearly has staying power, and why not — it’s a good one.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Okay, Okay. Maybe the iPad Is Magical, After All….

You’re not going to use Apple’s (AAPL) tablet to create trippy stop-motion animation videos. But, as this clip from London ad agency Dentsu shows us, you could. If you wanted to.

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King Shows You Can Teach Old Dogs New Tweets

Peter King didn’t particularly want to write a weekly online column and he certainly wasn’t interested in Twitter. He had a full-time job covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated, thank you, and that was quite enough.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

How to Convert and Edit HD Video

Because of the widely using of HD Camcorder, now it is really convenient to record family parties and other things you are interested in. Nowadays, people would like to share their things with the rest of the world through Internet, such as youtube.com and other video websites.

This guide aims to show you how to convert and edit the video you recorded using your HD camcorder
What you need is a powerful HD Video Converter.

Step 1: Load Video
Click "Add File" to load the video that you want to convert to Aiseesoft MTS Converter.

Step 2: Choose Your Output Profile and Settings
From "Profile" drop-down list you can choose your output profile according to your need.
You can also click "setteing" adjust the settings of your output video, such as "video/audio encoder", "Video/audio Bitrate", "Channels", "Resolution" and so on..
Step 3: Video Editing
This powerful MTS Converter allows you to do many video editings.
1. Click "Effect" to make special effect for your movie.
You can adjust the "Brightness", "Contrast", "Saturation" and also you can use "deinterlacing" to improve you output effect.

2. Trim:
"Trim" function allows you to pick up any part of your video to convert. You can just convert a part of your video that you want.

3: Crop:
Cut off the black edges of the original movie video and watch in full screen on your iPod using the "Crop" function.

Step 4: Conversion
After you have done all the steps above you can click "Start" button to start your conversion.

Here I also recommend you some High Definition video converter, MTS Converter, TS Video Converter.

How to Put Youtube videos on iPod, PowerPoint ,etc for free

This guide will show you how to download video content from numerous sites (youtube, Google Video,etc) and convert videos to iPod on Mac using two methods. It is pretty simple for according to the following statements.
iPod, iPhone accepts mp4 video detail as follow: MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.
PPT accepts: mpeg, asf, avi, wpl. wm, wmx, wmd, wmz, dvr-ms, mpv2, mp2v, mov, etc

1. Using free online YouTube converter
The first method is using a website to convert youtube video to iPod or powerpoint for free, Of course, you can also convert other media videos.
This is good for you when you only have one file to convert or you can't install the programs necessary for conversion. My favorite is zamzar converter.
You don't even need to download the video file to your computer. Enter the URL of the video to the box, choose the format you want to convert youtube videos to (iPod accepts mp4 video. So choose the format 'mp4'), and Enter your email address , then click 'convert'. The output file will be sent to your mailbox after the conversion.



Another free online converter I like is media convert.
But you can't convert big video files using free online converters. It is up to 100MB. And the quality of the output files is so.

Tip: How to put pictures and photos to iPod, iPhone
1. Download iTunes from http://www.apple.com
2. Plug your iPod in to iTunes
3. Make a folder on the computer with all of the photos you want on your iPod (Name it something you with remember!)
4. Click on the iPod icon in iTunes
5. Click on the Tab "Photos" on the top.
6. Check the box "Sync photos from:"
7. Chose the folder all of your photos are in.
8. Click apply, then eject your iPod and enjoy your photos!

2. Using iPod video converter for Mac
The Second Method is using iPod video converter software to convert Youtube videos to iPod on Mac for free.
For this you need the following:
1. A video to download.
2. iPod Video Converter (Mac OS X version / Windows PC version).
Step 1: Download the videos
The downloaded file might be two formats: avi and flv . iPod and iPhone only support mp4 format. So you need to convert the videos to MP4 files.
PowerPoint understands .avi. If it the file is .avi, you do not need to convert it to put it on PPT. But most videos will probably be in .flv format. You can't embed Flash in PowerPoint. These will need to be converted to .mpeg or .avi format.
To do these conversions, you will need video converter which is capable of doing the conversion.

Step 2: Converting The Video to iPod, iPhone, Powerpoint, etc
Great, now you have located the file and downloaded it to the desktop. What's next? Well, you need to open up your freshly installed Aiseesoft Video Converter for Mac.
Click the "Add File" button to add the video files that get from the video sites to the program by automatically selecting an appropriate encoder for the video files you want to convert to.
Select the output format on the output format list. Aiseesoft iPod Video Converter for Mac can convert videos to almost all popular video players like iPod touch, iPod classic, iPod nano, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, PS3, Youtube (web), Creative Zen, iRiver PMP, Archos, various video mobile phones and many other digital video and audio players. If you want to put videos to PowerPoint, you need to convert the videos to avi or mpeg formats.
This process only lasts a few minutes at the most.
If you want to convert several videos into one file, what you need to is to click'merge into one file' option . As we know, the mp4 format is high conpatible with iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, so it the best format for converting to iPod, iPhone, etc.

How to convert MTS, TS, M2TS Video to HD video, MP4, WMV, AVI

Record everything around you and share with the world/friends/family is becoming more and more popular among young people. Get a HD Camcorder is necessary and also how to share is really important. I think you can use youtube.com, make a DVD and so on. As the video you record on your camcorder is MTS, TS, M2TS or other HD video format, so you have to convert them into normal video format to edit.

Today I will share with you how to convert MTS, TS, M2TS video to normal video formats.
You need 3 nice tool to do it: MTS Converter, TS Video Converter, M2TS Converter.

Part 1: How to convert MTS video
Step 1: Load Video
Click "Add File" to load the video that you want.

Step 2: Choose Your Output Profile and Settings
From "Profile" drop-down list you can choose your output profile according to your need.
For example, if you have a iPod and you want to convert video for it, you need to choose "iPod" from the profile list and then it also provides the second chance to specify your iPod generation.
You can also click "setting" adjust the settings of your output video, such as "video/audio encoder", "Video/audio Bitrate", "Channels", "Resolution" and so on..

Step 3: Video Editing
This powerful MTS Converter allows you to do many video editings.
1. Click "Effect" to make special effect for your movie.
You can adjust the "Brightness", "Contrast", "Saturation" and also you can use "deinterlacing" to improve you output effect.

2. Trim:
"Trim" function allows you to pick up any part of your video to convert. You can just convert a part of your video that you want.

3: Crop:
Cut off the black edges of the original movie video and watch in full screen on your iPod using the "Crop" function.

Step 4: Conversion
After you have done all the steps above you can click "Start" button to start your conversion.

Part 2: How to convert TS video

Step 1: Load Video
Click "Add File" to load the video that you want to convert.

Step 2: Choose Your Output Profile and Settings
From "Profile" drop-down list you can choose your output profile according to your need.
You can also click "setteing" adjust the settings of your output video, such as "video/audio encoder", "Video/audio Bitrate", "Channels", "Resolution" and so on..

Step 3: Conversion
After you have done all the steps above you can click "Start" button to start your conversion.

Tips: Video Editing
This powerful TS Converter allows you to do many video editings.
1. Click "Effect" to make special effect for your movie.
You can adjust the "Brightness", "Contrast", "Saturation" and also you can use "deinterlacing" to improve you output effect.
2. Trim:
"Trim" function allows you to pick up any part of your video to convert. You can just convert a part of your video that you want.
3: Crop:
Cut off the black edges of the original movie video and watch in full screen on your iPod using the "Crop" function.

Part 3: How to convert M2TS video

Step 1: Add File
Load your M2TS video.

Step 2: Choose Profile and Settings
Select your output profile according your need and adjust the settings of your output video if you like.
(the default setting works well)

Step 3: Start Conversion
Click "Start" to begin your conversion.

ITunes Songs Aren’t Purchased but “Licensed,” Court Rules

In a decision that could affect the financial relationships between record labels and performers, a federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday ruled that songs downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store are not actually purchased, but are rather “licensed” by the ostensible buyer.

The distinction is hardly academic. Under most recording contracts, artists are entitled to 50% of revenue from licensed uses of their music. That usually means soundtracks for movies, TV shows and ads. Sales, on the other hand generate royalties for the artist at a much lower rate–generally in the low teens, and rarely more than 20%.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Wave Headed for Google’s Remainders Bin

If Google keeps this up, it’s going to find itself with a busy little bargain basement filled with engineers and developers poking around for deals on discontinued products. First it was the house brand Nexus One smartphone finding new life among Android developers after failing to grab the public. And soon the guts of Wave, the ambitious but amorphous and ultimately abandoned collaboration tool, will be made available as an open-source, client-server package, called Wave in a Box, to those interested in building on Google’s experiment.

Steve Levitan Gets His Wish: “Modern Family” Leaves Hulu (Briefly)

“Modern Family” creator Steve Levitan says he loves the Internet, but says he wants his show off the Web. Because the eyeballs it attracts don’t do him any good.

Wish, granted! Temporarily.

Turns out Levitan’s show has been off the free Web — Hulu, ABC.com and ABC’s free iPad app — for the past month or so. Hulu, which is co-owned by News Corp.’s Fox (NWS), Disney’s ABC (DIS), and GE’s NBC (GE), explains that its streaming rights for the show expired on July 27th. And that the show will be back this fall.

That seems a little weird, because you can still watch online episodes of most other big network shows that aired last year. But I’m told that while some ABC executives were actually in favor taking Levitan at his word, “Modern’s Family’s” temporary absence isn’t a punishment, but has to do with the release of the show’s first DVD set, due out later this month.

Which makes sense. Because even in 2010, Hollywood — in this case News Corp.’s Fox, which produces the show — still values analog dollars more than anything the Web can produce. So if the TV guys think there’s a chance that free Web shows cut into DVD sales…

And while these windows/channel conflicts aren’t going away anytime soon, they remain confusing.

For instance, you can still watch the last episode of “Lost” on Hulu, even though the DVDs of the last season went on sale a couple of weeks ago. But Hulu says the series finale will disappear from its site on September 20. And that won’t be showing seasons 1-5 after the end of 2010. Go figure.

But! You can still watch “Modern Family” on the Web, without breaking the law. All you need to is wrangle a Hulu Plus invite, and you can watch it on your Web browser, iPad or Apple’s iPhone (AAPL), for that matter. Is that worth $10 a month to you?

How to Make iPhone Ringtone

You bought an iPhone and love all its features, but wish you didn't have to pay for your songs twice to get a ringtone. (We know that iPhone, iPhone 3G Ringtones use the file extension .M4R. And the users must pay $2 for a piece of song through Apple iTunes store). There are plenty of songs in your music library, but no way to make ringtones from any of them. Rihgt?

Actually, with a little bit of trickery (nothing illegal) you can create ringtones from any one of your non-DRM songs.

This works on both Mac and Windows PCs.

Window Users

You can create free iPhone Ringtones by yourself with Aiseesoft iPhone Ringtone Maker.
You can take the following step-by-step instructions to start.
Step 0: Download and install Aiseesoft iPhone Ringtone Maker.
After a short while, you can see the following interface:

Step 1: Click "Browse" on the right side of "Input File" to import the file that you want to make ringtone from it.
Step 2: Play it and listen the music to find the segment that you want to use it as ringtone. Then drag and click the start & end slider to set your wanted segment, or type the start & end time in the corresponding text box directly to get the exact segment. You also can pre-listen the converted audio before generate.
Step 3: Click "Browse" on the right side of "Local Output Folder" to choose the output destination.
Step 4: Check "Export to iPhone" option, the converted ringtone will be load to your iPhone directly.
Step 5: After all the settings are finished, click "Generate" to begin making your own iPhone ringtone.

Key function
* Convert any video to iPhone ringtone M4R
* Create iPhone ringtone from any audio files
* Get any clips from video and audio
* Edit Added iPhone ringtones

Using Aiseesoft iPhone Ringtone Maker, you are free to edit the added iPhone ringtone by removing it or renaming it directly.

For Mac Users, please go to Aiseesoft iPhone Ringtone Maker for Mac.

How to download free youtube, yahoo, google, stream video for free

This step-by-step guide will show you how to download video from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo and other video download website. Videos come from those websites are streaming videos. You need special software to capture steaming videos. Today we take YouTube video for example, write a guide about how to download streaming video to computer for free. This guide provides two methods:
1. with free online flv converter;
2. with firefox
This guide is also fit for other video websites as follow video list:
http://www.aiseesoft.com/article/free-download-video-list.html
3. How to transfer the downloaded youtube video to iPod PSP Zune iPhone Cell Phone and other MP3/MP4 player?

1. With free online flv converter
Step1. Open this website: http://vixy.net/. It's a free online FLV converter.
Step2. Then go to YouTube http://www.youtube.com and find a video that you love. Copy the URL that in the Red box. Like this format: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs



Step3. Paste your video file URL to the input box (figure as follow), choose the right format you want. If you want to edit the video, AVI is a good choice. And MP4 is fit for iPod, PSP, Zune, Apple TV and other MP4 players. This online converter also can rip audio to MP3. Then wait for the conversion.



Step4. When the conversion finished, we got the download link of the output video. Click the download link to download the video and save in your computer (remember where you save it in). Done.

2. With Firefox
If you have Firefox browser, you can follow these steps.
Step1. Install the videodownloader extension. This is a free plug-in for Firefox. It enables you capture streaming video from website. Here is the Download link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390
Step2. After installing videodownloader, restart Firefox. In the bottom right, you'll see a little box. Go to the video you want to download, double click that little box, and select download link. Then you could download the streaming video you want. (Note, you have to rename the file extension from “html” to “flv”)





You have to rename the file extension from “html” to “flv” when you save the link. (Make sure your compute is show file extension)

3. How to transfer youtube video to iPod PSP Zune Phone and other MP3/MP4 player?
For iPod: if your download youtube video already is MP4 video, drag it to your iTunes library (or click iTunes "file" -> "add files to library"), plug in your iPod to computer, and then select your iPod device on the left panel of iTunes, click "Movies" tab, check the videos you want to sync and click "Apply", done.
If your downloaded YouTube video is not MP4 video, you have to convert it to iPod format at first, take a look at this free iPod converter, it embeds an iPod manager that can convert and transfer YouTube video to iPod directly without iTunes, here is a step by step guide about it:
http://www.aiseesoft.com/article/ipod-movie-converter.html
For PSP: PSP is the same as iPod, they are both support MP4 video, if you have converted the YouTube video to MP4 with above method, you can copy the MP4 video directly to the "Video" folder in your memory stick (if there is no "Video" folder in your memory stick, you can create by yourself). If your downloaded YouTube video is not MP4 video, you have to convert it to PSP format at first, take a look at this PSP Movie converter, it t can convert and transfer YouTube video to psp directly, fully support all firmware version of PSP, here is a step by step guide about it:
http://www.aiseesoft.com/article/psp-movie-converter.html
For Zune: Zune can play WMV video, if you have converted your download YouTube video to zune format, then open the Zune software, drag the wmv video to your Zune software, plug in your Zune to computer, and then Zune software should detect your Zune automatically, then click "Start to sync", the video will be transfered to Zune player.
If your downloaded YouTube video is not WMV video, you have to convert it to Zune format, take a look at this free Zune converter, it can convert video to Zune format, it can also convert YouTube video to MP3 for other player, here is a step by step guide about it:
http://www.aiseesoft.com/article/zune-movie-converter.html
For cell phone: Cell phone accepts 3GP video and MP4 video, just convert your downloaded YouTube video to the proper format, connect your cell phone to computer, and then copy the videos to your cell phone memory card. If you don't know how to convert video, take a look at this step by step guide:
http://www.aiseesoft.com/article/total-video-converter.html