Fresh Google Wallpaper: December 2009

The Best In Audio Video Tools

What do you use your computer for? Long gone are the days when the computer was strictly a data processing tools. Today, the computer is an all-purpose media entertainment center. Its capabilities have gone far beyond keeping a catalog of all your movies and music – it’s even gone beyond playing all your favorite music and movies. These days, with the right tools you can splice, cut, record, edit, mix, create and publish your own media. And to accompany the new capabilities there’s a dizzying array of new software tools that can help you do everything from rip CDs to encode complete animations and videos. How do you find the best new software tools?

And you’ll find them easily. There’s no need to wade through page after page of directory structure. You can search all categories from the front page on the site, or click on a category to go directly to browsing that category. You’ll find video editors, audio editors, CD rippers, imaging software, video and audio converters, complete all-in-one packages and more. There are shareware listings, commercial listings and freeware listings – in short, just about everything you’d ever want to play with your media.

Each listing includes a capsule description and a full review as well as a side box that lists all the important details about the software – including both a staff and user rating, and the chance to enter your own rating. The categories include All-in-One, Media Players, CD Rippers, CD Burners, Converters, DVD software, Editors, ID3 Tag Editors, Mobile Phone Tools, Plugins, Radio and Broadcasting (plogcasting, anyone?), Recorders, Utilities and Voice and Text editors.

The reviews are comprehensive, listing all the capabilities of each software package and how well it performs each function. It’s a nice bonus that’s not often found on pure directories.

For software publishers, there are multiple opportunities for exposure. There’s an easy submission tool to add a free listing of you audio or video software, and many different ways to increase the exposure of your listing at very reasonable rates. You can opt for a featured listing, front page exposure, top level search results, footer text links and more.

Among the most popular software featured at audio-video-tools.com is Blaze Media Pro, the popular powerhouse all-in-one media tool that converts between all available video and audio formats .Rip, burn, convert, edit, capture, create, extract and combine files to create your own unique media.

Terror Attack on Flight to Detroit - Gulf Between a Quick Response and a Smart Response

December 28, 2009

Somewhere between prohibiting Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from flying and allowing him onto an airplane with explosives stashed in his briefs, there’s a gulf. Rather than bridge this chasm by focusing increased attention on the half million suspicious persons who have been identified, new rules will keep hundreds of millions of non-threatening passengers confined to their seats; books, blankets and computers protectively out of their laps in a response that will do little to address the real terror threat.

As could be predicted, the thwarted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas day is resulting in a swift and sweeping - if not well-thought out response.

In television interviews, Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano is doing her best to explain what looks like a security lapse. In the past few weeks, Mr. Farouk was outed by his own father who went to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to explain that his son’s behavior was growing increasingly worrisome. The 23-year old’s name was added to the list of known or suspected terrorists. The list is 500,000 thousand names long and it is this sizable number that seems to have national security folks stumped.

“You have to understand that you need information that is specific and credible if you are going to actually bar someone from air travel,” Ms. Napolitano is quoted as having said on CNN. This is frighteningly reminiscent of the quote by President Bush who, when asked why an August 6, 2001 memo warning of Al Qaeda activity didn’t prompt some kind of national security response said, "There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to."

Herein lies the gulf. Without specific information, security professionals certainly can take preventive actions, short of actually barring people from flying, (like say, Cat Stevens)

Each day the Transportation Security Administration is responsible for screening two million air travelers in the United States with little differentiation in the amount of attention given to each traveler.

Can we ask that the when one of the 500,000 on that list actually buy an airline ticket that their passage through the security be given just a tad more attention than the family headed to Disney World?

We should also expect that some methods be used to leverage the information presented to authorities by conscientious folks like Mr. Farouk's dad. Simply adding names of suspicious folks to a list that doesn't get checked isn't even one step up from doing nothing at all.

Great Lessons Learned From Thank You Notes

December 27, 2009

As we opened Christmas presents the other morning, the kids and I took notes about who gave us what. That list, scribbled in the chaos of Christmas morning, becomes an important document when it’s time to write our thank you notes.

I got into the habit of writing thank you notes when I was a young girl. My mother was insistent that all four of her children should write letters to everyone who gave us presents. It didn’t matter if the gift had been delivered in person and the gift giver verbally thanked, or if the present came from a perfect stranger.

Each year in the spring, my brother and my sisters and I would arrive home from school to discover a box full of presents from England. These were Christmas presents that never arrived in season. That was fine with us. We fell on them with great enthusiasm coming as they did, so long after our Christmas gifts had lost their novelty.

The box from Europe always had really cool things. One year we got some very unique mechanical pencils and boxes of replacement lead. There were toys and other doodads you just didn’t see in the States. England was still a long way away back then. My siblings and I loved the stuff that came in those cartons. For quite a while I never questioned the reason or the source of the gifts and it wasn’t until I was old enough to write thank you notes that it even occurred to me that there was a person behind the loot.

As it turned out, there was a pretty interesting story there. They came from a woman who had been communicating with my mother since the two of them were 13-years old. They were pen pals. Their correspondence continued through high school and into adulthood. In fact, my mother and Nette still keep in touch going on 63 years now.

It will come as no surprise then, that when I was in junior high school, mom encouraged me to get a pen pal. It seems so quaint now, in the age of email and IM and cell phones to think of a time when if you had something to say to someone you sat down, wrote it out, revised it, addressed an envelope, found a stamp, walked to the mail box and trusted that your news would be transmitted to the recipient within a week or two and that you’d have a reply in the next month. It sounds like I’m remembering life in a past century and I guess I am.

In any event, that is the kind of expression in which I was encouraged to engage and I have over the years filled my share of diaries and journals as well. While I was not, nor am I now a prolific epistolarian, I’ve written two books, and worked as a journalist for three decades so I guess I’ve killed a tree or two at this point in my life.

The most dependable pen pal I ever had was my grandfather, Sam. Because he was very generous with me I was obliged to write thank you notes with some frequency. I might have resented having to write the letter but I knew once it went into the mail, I’d hear back from him promptly.

When his letter arrived, it contained two things; a personal and handwritten reply, which included an update on his life and comments and questions about mine, and also my original letter with each misspelled word circled and each grammatical error corrected.
My grandfather could not bear for English to be maltreated and that went for the spoken word too.

When we were together if I started a sentence saying, “There was this girl…” I’d hear, “You mean - a girl I know.” If I reported on some activity involving my brother by saying, “Me and Jamie…” I’d hear, “You mean - Jamie and I.”

The parallel track to my grandfather’s lectures on proper English was the vocabulary and spelling component. Sam had a prodigious vocabulary. Though I never learned if it was inadvertent or intentional, I never had a conversation with my grandfather when I didn’t learn the spelling and definition of at least one new word. You may be thinking that Sam was a bit of a scold, but that’s not the case. We’d play games together. Especially Scrabble. That was a favorite.

In short, my grandfather was fascinated with words. He was taken by their variety and elasticity, how one root could branch into many others. He loved the specificity and power and structure of words.

The other thing my grandfather loved was travel. And I think these two great interests clashed because while he appreciated learning about people and nations around the world, he was frustrated that his marvelous facility with English did not serve him in many of the places he visited.

For many years he entertained the idea of creating a universal language called Pip. He used to talk to me about it and one detail that I remember is that no word in Pip would be more than one syllable. Now I think that my grandfather was ahead of his time, working out in his mind a vocabulary of words that would serve the global village.

As far as I know, Pip did not go any farther than our dinner table conversations. It certainly did not bring my grandfather fame and fortune. Sam practiced tax and estate law and made enough money so that he was a frequent donor to Rutgers School of Law, where he received his degree. His daughter - my mother - recently helped create of a law library reading room in my grandfather’s name. That is a great gift to his memory.

So when I think about my mother and her father one of their greatest gifts to me was teaching me to appreciate words. When used properly they can bridge cultures, enlighten minds and bring ideas to life. So in this season of gift giving, I want to show my appreciation for the great lessons they taught me through thank you notes.

Crazy Pics Taken At The Right Time

Tags: Crazy, Funny, Interesting, humor, Incredible, Amazing, awesome, Beautiful, strange, Weird, Weird People, Ugly

Crazy and Funny Celebrity transformed into muscled beefcakes

We all know celebrities can be obsessive about their weight.

One minute they’ve slimmed down, the next they’ve piled on the pounds, perhaps to play a new film role.

But these digitally altered photos take the weight game to the extreme – by transforming the stars into bodybuilders.

Keira Knightley is often criticised for being too thin – but she’s beefed-up here

Angelina Jolie complete with bursting biceps bigger than husband Brad Pitt’s
The images are created by superimposing the celebrities’ heads on to photographic images of bodybuilders.

And the results will certainly make you take a second take as they look bizarrely realistic – even though Winehouse’s scrawny frame has been transformed into a toned manly physique.

Imagine: Model Gisele Bündchen would hardly fit down the catwalk built like this

Cameron Diaz with muscles so big the veins in her arms are nearly bursting
The shots also show how photo trickery can truly transform the look of a person.

And it flies in the face controversial techniques glossy magazine use to make their front cover stars look thinner.

Larger than life: Sx And The City stars Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker

Charlize Theron striking a rather unfeminine pose with killer calf muscles
Instead, the results show the stars as they could look as a serious athlete.