Vista Gadget: Wallpatch Video

I just found a Vista Gadget that has become my favorite. It’s difficult finding really good Vista Gadgets.

Wallpatch Video lets me watch movies right on the desktop. Now, I know some of you are thinking that most other players let you watch movies on the desktop, too. But, this is different. I don’t need to open up a player and I can customize the size of the screen and it’s on the desktop and out of the way. No toolbars, borders, or menus in the way. The options only appear when the cursor is over the gadget and auto-hide when the cursor moves off.

It’s very simple to use. I have been looking for something like this for a while. It lets me to continue doing anything else on the computer while the movie is playing.

I don’t know what video types it supports except for AVI, WMV and can play DVDs. It wouldn’t play W4V, which comes from iTunes. I would be very happy if it could!

Go check out Wallpatch Video, which is at version 2.0 now.

Redesign Natali Del Conte’s Site

Here’s a little challenge for those of you who can design sites. WordPress ones to be exact.

For those of you who don’t know who Natali Del Conte is, she appeared on the TeXtra shows and now has a new show, Loaded, on CNET TV. She posted up a challenge on her blog today. She is challenging anyone to design her site and she will pay you $100 via PayPal. That might sound like a low amount, but you will receive credit for designing the site and you can put her on your resume as a reference.

I think designing Natali’s site would be enough to do it! Hurry and start designing, this ends on February 29, 2008!

This is what she says she is looking for:

Here is what I am looking for: I would like to get rid of this aquatic-looking color scheme. Perhaps something a bit more gender-neutral. Even a gray scale would be nice. I don’t like the font that my name is written in above either. I would also like to use either one of the two photos below in the header. I’m not really all that picky about it but one is quite formal and the other is more casual. I’m sorry I can’t give too many more guidelines. Like I said, I have no vision.

I hope someone will take up this challenge, because I’d like to see what it will look like redesigned. She deserves a redesign. Here is what it looks like now:

8hands for Social Networking: Better Than Digsby?

From my previous post about Digsby, one person left a comment mentioning 8hands. Personally, I think it was probably a way to get the word out about it. Why do I say this? Keep reading to find out.

First, before I start with telling you the things I like and dislike about 8hands, I want to let you know that I do like Digsby a lot. But, only because it allows me to use just one application for instant messaging, social networking and e-mail if I choose! It also isn’t ugly.

The person who left the comment about 8hands said:

Nothing seems to work, and as written, the memory leak is impossible to deal with.

I have yet to see a memory leak. Digsby did use more memory than it should, but that was before the recent update. Try Digsby again. But, I have not seen a memory leak, so that must have been a really early beta version. 8hands even uses much more memory than Digsby does. Currently, 8hands is using 75MB and Digsby is only using 32MB.

I’m sticking with my 8hands which offers some of its features. The IM in 8hands is limited to social networks friends, but the notifications are way better and it supports all social networks, not only Myspace and Facebook.

Some features? How about one feature? It only offers social networking and instant messaging to social network friends. Digsby offers social networking, instant messaging for Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, Google Talk, etc., and e-mail. 8hands also does not support all social networks as she says. It’s limited to: Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and maybe one more. It also supports RSS feeds, but I’ll stick to Google Reader for that.

Regarding the notifications being better, I found this to be untrue. Digsby allows me to reply to instant messages right from the notification popup. What can be better than that? What does 8hands do? It shows me what someone has said and lets me click on it to open it in a browser. I’m sorry to whoever likes that, but I’d prefer not opening a browser just to reply. If I wanted to use a browser, I wouldn’t use a desktop application. The reason I have a desktop application is to bring everything to my desktop.

Speaking of the notification popup, give me time to read long messages. It starts hiding just a couple seconds after it appeared, making it impossible to finish reading the end of the message because it’s already hidden.

Also, whenever there is a new notification, I can’t scroll in the current window I’m in. It’s like the notification popup becomes the active window.

Something else I don’t like, although I like the color purple, I do not want to see purple on the application! It just doesn’t go well with my desktop. It’s ugly, let me customize this. Yahoo! Messenger even let me change from the purple to another color.

One thing I do like about 8hands is the history window. But, it doesn’t seem to show full messages. In order to view full messages, you have to click on the one you want to view and it opens a browser window. Digsby allows me to read full Facebook history. I don’t use MySpace, so I don’t know about that one. It would be great if Digsby had a history window to view all IM and social network history. Currently, it only lets you view IM history.

To DownloadSquad.com, no, 8hands is not “almost perfect”. I think it has a long ways to go still. I’m not saying Digsby is perfect either, but it offers more.

I’m not trying to give a harsh review of 8hands, but I expected more when I tried it out and it wasn’t really all that. If I want updates for Facebook, Twitter or Pownce, I’ll use one of the Facebook applications, Snitter and Pownce’s client if I want to use a desktop application, which keep me on the desktop and doesn’t force me to open a browser. And, yes, 8hands brings those together instead of using multiple applications, but, I shouldn’t have to use a browser. Digsby needs improvements with this as well.

Comparing to Digsby, it doesn’t have much more. Both are still very new and need some work. Hopefully soon Digsby will have more social networks to choose from, such as Twitter. For now, using Google Talk and receiving Twitter updates via IM works just fine. The one advantage 8hands has over Digsby is a few more social network choices. But that will eventually change as they add more.

Please note, that I spent about half an hour playing with 8hands which is the same amount of time I used for Digsby. Digsby was easier to setup and faster. 8hands seems to have a longer response time when doing things (causing the busy cursor to appear a lot).

I would like to hear about your experiences with either 8hands or Digsby in the comments.

Instant Messaging, Social Networking and E-mail Together

Digsby has it all.  Connect to AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! networks. Check your e-mail from Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail or any POP/IMAP accounts. For social networking, get updates for Facebook or MySpace! Who needs MySpace though?

Some of you may notice it looks similar to Pidgin, except Pidgin doesn’t include all of the features that Digsby does. Digsby is still in beta and currently doesn’t support audio/video chats. For some, that might be a deal breaker.

Unfortunately, the social networks don’t include Twitter and Pownce access. Hopefully it will support those in the future. Of course, the temporary fix for Twitter is to setup up Twitter to send notifications to your Google Talk account.

I love Digsby’s notifications. They aren’t like notifications from similar applications. Besides the common status notifications, Digsby alerts of you a new message with the option of typing in a response in the little notification popup.

One unimportant feature that I would like to see is skinning of the notification popup. Right now it has an almost bulky appearance to it. I would like it to have customizable transparency and the option to choose other background colors.

Another feature I want is removing the grouping by network. I just want my contacts listed without groups and without moving them into a single group, because then if I login someplace else, it will change how I see them.

Something that does need to be fixed is the memory usage. I’ve found it reach almost 100MB. When the contact list is minimized and there aren’t any chat windows open, it can use about 60MB. Since Digsby is still beta, it’s okay for now and that is something they are working on.

If you like using applications like Trillian, Miranda, or Pidgin, check out Digsby!

Others discussing Digsby and offering invites to try out the beta:

• Lifehacker: Consolidate IM, Email, and Social Networking with Digsby
• BizzNtech: Digsby- A Perfect Blend of IM, Social Networking and Email
• Mashable: Digsby Invites: Centralize Email, IM, Facebook and MySpace
• UNEASYsilence: Digsby – Manage Your Online Life