Flowplayer is an Open Source (GPL 3) video player for the Web. Use it to embed video streams into your web pages. You can also use it to embed screencasts on your site. It doesn’t matter what file format your screencasts are in, .mov or .flv, it can handle them.

Built for site owners, developers, hobbyists, businesses and serious programmers. There are free non-commercial versions available and competitively priced commercial versions.

Flash technology ensures that 98% of all Internet users can see your videos. Highly skinnable and extendable. No other software makes it easier. Flowplayer looks like the customizations are much easier to do and can be very nice looking.

If you add a screencast as a .mov file many of your users will have to add a Quicktime plug in to view the video. Flash Player has a much larger market penetration so 98% of your users will already have it installed so they will see your screencasts or videos with no extra installation nightmares.

Read more about the Flowplayer 3.1 web media player here.

Contact me if you need screencasts for your intranet, website, or office. I have made over 300 screencasts and I can deliver screencasts for any budget.

A great company providing open source media players

The JW FLV Player is a very popular and flexible media player. It supports playback of any format the Adobe Flash Player can handle (FLV, MP4, MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG and GIF). It also supports RTMP, HTTP, live streaming, various playlists formats, a wide range of settings and an extensive javascript API.

You can customize its look through skins and even design your own. Its plugin architecture allows you to easily extend the player with features such as sharing, recommendations, searching, analytics and ad serving.

I have been working with a client doing screencasts. The client needed something a Flash Player could handle. I didn’t want to purchase a video file converter so I was (h)appy to discover this player.

The client can purchase the commercial version and I can still deliver the screencast files in the .mov format that I get from either Screenflow or Snapz X Pro.

Read more about JW FLV Player here.

Contact me if you need screencasts for your intranet, website, or office. I have made over 300 screencasts and I can deliver screencasts for any budget.

I have a friend who had to reinstall windows and reinstall all the drivers and in fact find new software for a lot of things. I took the opportunity to suggest some great open source alternatives, alternatives not only because they are free, but because they work well, and are easy to use. Here’s an overview of CD Burner XP, a CD and DVD burning application.

What is CDBurnerXP?

CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components.

Key Features

• burn all kinds of discs
• audio-CDs with or without gaps between tracks
• burn and create ISO files
• data verification after burning process
• create bootable discs
• multi-language interface
• bin/nrg ? ISO converter, simple cover printing and much more!
• Operating Systems: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista/Windows 7

Try it out. I’m used to Mac’s and I found this application so easy to use and quick, I couldn’t believe I was on a windows machine.

Get CDBurnerXP now!

Open Source software? Does it interest you? Are you in the Toulouse, France area? There is a group called Toulibre that actively promotes open sources alternatives and runs workshops, social events, and even sponsors cultural events in the Toulouse region. They have a monthly dinner where you can go and discuss open source software or not with a bunch of like minded people. You can go to one of their workshops or ateliers to learn about a new software program. You can even bring your computer along if you need help with installation. Many of the events take place at the Centre Culturel Bellegarde. Of course it is in French but many members speak English so go even if your French is not up to par.

Learn more about Toulibre.

Here is a channel on Youtube that I found the has many videos dedicated to demystifying GIMP.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=techtonicc&view=videos&query=gimp

Here are 2 examples
Custom Backgrounds

Make Ice Text

You can make requests on this Youtube channel and he will make the tutorial for you. Try it out.

One of my new goals this year is to become an expert at many of the Open Source tools available. GIMP is a photo editing application rivaling Photoshop. GIMP used to be very difficult to use and the interface was not very user friendly. A lot has changed with the newer GIMP. I purchased a copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite 1 that had Photoshop as a part of the suite years ago. I downloaded a copy of Photoshop for Adobe CS3 but I have deleted both copies from my computer. I intend to use GIMP for all my photo and graphics needs. Here I will post useful resources and tutorials for GIMP.

Do you want to use GIMP on Mac OSX? Start here. There are also many plug ins available on this page. You can extend the built in functionality of GIMP with plug ins.
http://gimp.lisanet.de/Website/Overview.html

Here is the download page for OSX Leopard
http://gimp.lisanet.de/Website/Download.html

Instructables is a great site for learning how to do a variety of things. There are many tutorials on how to use GIMP. See the useful GIMP tutorials here.
http://www.instructables.com/tag/?sort=none&q=gimp&limit:type:id=on

Finally, here are 2 short videos, one about the basics of using GIMP, and the other about the GIMP user interface.

Do you have favorite GIMP resources?