With iMovie, you can create better clips to show to your friends online or via MMS. Currently, it is offered in iTunes for $4.99. This is a very low price for a precious app that you can use to satisfy your artistic taste of a good customized movie clip.

How to Edit Video/Movie Clips

Step One: Launch iMovie from your Springboard and tap the ‘+’ button as instructed.

Step Two: Select the theme which best suits the movie you will be editing. Should you also want to use the theme’s music, you just have to toggle the button from OFF to ON. Of course, do not forget to tap on “Done” button thereafter.

iMovie offers five built-in themes you can choose from, namely; Bright, Modern, News, Playful and Travel.

Step Three: You will be brought to a screen wherein you have to choose whether to import previously saved media or to record from your iPhone’s cam.

Usually, I record video using cameras with high caliber lenses; I just don’t like the resolution of iPhone’s camera. Thus, I usually import videos to my iPhone rather than to record.

Step Four: When you import some videos to your iPhone, you will be able to choose from the thumbnails the video you want included in the timeline. The video clips that you put in the timeline are the ones that will be shown in your movie.

Step Five: Once you have added the clips to the timeline, you can edit them the way you want. You can move the clips forward or backward with a single swipe. To set the Title Style, Location or turn the audio off, you just have to double tap on the clip to open Clip Settings; you can even delete it from there.

After you’ve set everything, just tap on “Done” to proceed.

Step Six: Now, if you want to import another clip to add to your timeline, you can set the transition in between those clips the way you want it. Basically, the transition is the filler that connects the one clip to the other in your timeline. Double tap on the transition button to choose the type you want to use in between your clips.

There are four options you can choose from;

• None – if you choose this option, there will be a blank transition button between your clips; it indicates that there is not transition effects.
• Cross Dissolve – as what the name describes.
• Theme – it sets the kind of transition the matches the kind of theme you selected before you began editing the project.
• Duration – it will set specific time the next clip shows in seconds.

Step Seven: If you think the movie clip you are making is good enough and want to share it with your friends, you just have to export your customized movie. Just tap on “Project View” button and you will be able to see the export button from there. There are also three export options you can choose from; Medium (360p), Large (540p), and HD (720p).

Actually, the steps presented in this guide are so basic. You can do hundreds of things with iMovie iPhone app. All you have to do is to make yourself acquainted with the interface and functions of all buttons and you can create professional video clips out of your iPhone.

iMovie for iPhone (iTunes link)

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Some people are fine with this, but for those who wish that they can play (almost) any kind of movie files without the trouble of converting them can use some help from iOS apps that are built just for this purpose. Here are two alternative free apps that you can use.

1. VLC

This is one of the most popular media players for all the computer platforms out there, and now it has come to iPhone.

The iPhone version does only one thing and it does it very well – play videos. You can throw in practically any kind of videos and this baby will play them without difficulties.

The interface is also simple. You will see a list of available videos along with small thumbnails, “About” and “Edit” button (to delete the files), and nothing else.

To play a video, just tap on the one that you want to watch and you are ready to go. You can slide to adjust the volume and position of the scenes. There are also other standard playback buttons like Play/Pause and Skip Backward and Forward. Tap the “Done” button to stop playing, and tap the screen to hide/unhide the tools.

To add videos, you’ll need the help from iTunes. Plug your iPhone to your computer and open iTunes. Select the phone from the left pane and go to the “Apps” tab.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select VLC from the list. Click the “Add” button and browse to the place where the video files are, and the rest is self-explanatory.

2. OPlayer Lite

The second alternative is OPlayer. There are two version of this app: the Pro-paid version and the Lite-free version. Both come with more bells and whistles than VLC in terms of features.

Note: I’ve tried the lite version and it crashed a couple of times. Still, it’s a viable alternative.

You can add video files to OPlayer via iTunes, similar to VLC.

And those files will be presented in explorer-style. Tap on “My Documents” and you can choose one of the available videos to watch.

The playback options are similar to VLC, with the ability to play full screen by tapping on the screen.

There’s one thing that made me excited about OPlayer. I found out at the “Settings” that this app is capable of attaching subtitle to the movie (SRT files). So I experimented by adding a movie with its SRT files along with it. It turns out that the subtitle appeared for the first several seconds and then gone.

OPlayer is also able to add files via WiFi connection. You need to point your browser to the address that OPlayer provided. This address will always change every time you start the app, so be sure to check back the “WiFi Transfer” options from “More” menu every time you want to go through the process.

Your browser will show upload/download interface. Choose file and click the “Submit” button to upload, or click one of the file to download.

Another cool ability from OPlayer is the ability to open web page and download video files directly from the web. I opened YouTube successfully but not able to find any way to download the videos. I didn’t know any direct link to download videos from web so I couldn’t try the feature.

So far, these two apps are the best alternatives of video players that I could find in iPhone. If you know other alternatives, please share using the comment below.

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Internet made the sharing business a whole lot easier. You can instantly email your overseas friends about the latest and greatest song from your favorite rock band, or tweet about it to your followers. But why stop there? Why not join GetGlue – a community where people from all over the world share and discover things that they love?

Make Everything Stick

GetGlue describes itself as “a social network for entertainment“. Its goal is to add “fun” to the process of recommending things that you like (or not recommending things that you don’t like) by integrating itself to other popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter and by rewarding the users with virtual badges and freebies.

People can use GetGlue not only to recommend things to others, but also to get recommendations on things that they like. GetGlue can also be used as a place you go to every time you want to shop for specific items.

You can register for GetGlue account by simply choosing your user name and password, and writing down your email address.

Alternatively, you can use your Facebook or Twitter login info to get started quickly with GetGlue.

To enrich your GetGlue experience, expand it beyond the web interface. GetGlue is also available as extensions for major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and apps for iDevices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) and Android Phones. It means that you can access GetGlue anytime and anywhere.

To download and install the Glue extension for your favorite browser, find the item in the browser’s extensions repository. Here’s the example of Glue for Safari.

After the extension is installed, your browser will show a small recommendation bar at the bottom (or top) of your browser every time you visit sites that related to books, music, movies, or other “consumer” items.

To access GetGlue when you are away from your computer, use GetGlue app for your smart phone. Armed with the app, you can recommend the movie that you are watching at the theatre without having to wait until you get home.

The Web Interface

Now let’s explore the web interface. After logging in, you will be greeted by quick status update and recommended item(s).

There’s the “utility” bar at the right side of the page which consist of many things. For example: your personal data, link to GetGlue apps,

… To Dos, Quick Rate Button, earned stickers, etc.

Clicking the “Launch Quick Rate” button will open the quick rating window. Choose one of the items’ type to start rating things.

Your friends and relatives will appear under “My Subscriptions” and “My Subscribers” category. This is something like following and followers in Twitter. You can increase the number of your cult by inviting more people to subscribe to you.

And in the main page, there’s the update of what activities that currently happening among GetGlue users.

Bonus For Bloggers

If you happen to be a blogger, you can add GetGlue service in your blog. To do that, navigate to the bottom of the sidebar in the web interface and click on the “Install Glue on your blog or website” link.

The Glue widget window will open and you can choose your blog’s publishing platform. There are ready-to-use widgets for Blogger and Typad users, while other blogging platforms users can use the provided script instead.

Are you a GetGlue users? What do you think after using it? Would you recommend GetGlue to your friends and family? Share your thoughts in the comment below.

Image credit: GetGlue

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The problem is, even with all the convenience of the net, tracking several shows simultaneously is a tedious job. For each and every show, you have to regularly visit the torrent site every week, search for the show that you want to download, acquire the torrent, and finally download the episode. Multiple that with the number of shows that you follow and you will get a major headache.

Luckily, TED‘s here to save the day.

The Torrent Episode Downloader

TED is the short for Torrent Episode Downloader. The app is a multi-platform java application that will work under Windows, Mac, and Linux. TED’s job is to help users track down and download torrents for multiple TV shows. Basically, all that you have to do is set up several shows and forget all about it. TED will do the rest.

To set TED to track a show, click “Add Show” icon from the toolbar.

TED will show you list of popular shows. Click one of them and you will get all the necessary info about the show. If you want to “follow” the particular show, you can choose to start from the next available episode, the last aired episode, or custom episode. There’s also option to download the episodes in HD quality.

If you choose Custom episode, TED will show you all the available episodes and you can choose which one(s) that you want to get.

It’s possible that the episode that you want is not on the popular list. If that’s the case, you can click the “Add a custom show” button under the show list and then add necessary data about the show. Start from the name of the show and the Season and Episode number.

Next, add the Feeds addresses. These are the places where you will get your show from.

You can use the RSS address that you already have, or let TED generate the addresses automatically for you. Click the “Plus” button and choose either “User defined” for manual address or “Generate” for automatic list of addresses.

The “Filters” tab will help you filter the episodes. You can choose the size range of the file, minimum number of seeders, and filtering keyword.

The “Schedule” tab is otional. It will add episode scheduler from Epguides and TVRage. If you choose popular shows, TED will generate this ones for you automatically.

Let TED Get The Episodes

After finishing the configuration, you can let TED get the episodes of your show(s) automatically, without the need for you to interfere. Further customization is available from the “Preferences“.

The “General” Preferences will let you set the interval between episode search, place to save the torrent, and whether you want your default torrent to pick up the file download automatically.

The “Look And Feel” tab allows you to put TED to system tray and to always start TED minimized to tray.

Since there are always many torrents available for each episode of popular show, you can choose to download the torrent with more than minimum seeders or the one with the most seeders. This option is available under “Advanced” tab. You can also choose not to download compressed episodes as some uploaders tend to compress and split the episodes to smaller chunks.

All You Have To Do Is Watch

If everything is done correctly, TED will do the tedious job of monitoring new episodes of your favorite shows from the pre-determined locations. Every time it finds new episode, it will download the torrent and send it to your chosen torrent client. So, all you have to do is wait for new episodes to pop up in your computer and watch.

Should you decide that a show is not worth watching, all you have to do is delete it.

I’ll leave the legality issue to your conscience. TED will help you minimize the trouble of tracking TV shows episodes from the net, but everything that you do on the net is your own responsibility.

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Another problem is that other members of my family do not know how to operate my laptop and whenever I am away from home, they are unable to view the photos.

Then I thought – “Wait, why not burn these photos on a DVD drive as a video so that my family members can watch them on the Television. They can watch all the photos in my absence and there is no need to use the computer at all.”

So basically there are two steps involved:

1. Use a software application to create a video from a bunch of pictures.
2. Burn the video on a CD or DVD drive.

Here are two free programs which can be used to create a video from a large collection of photos:

PhotoFilmStrip

PhotoFilmstrip is the easiest program which can be used to create a video from a collection of photos. After the application is installed, open the program and hit “Control + I” to import all the pictures, as shown below:

2. This will open the editing pane where you can adjust the position of the images in the video. Simply drag and drop the images to position them in the sequence you want:

In the preview pane, you can adjust the output resolution of the video by dragging the cursor on the border of the selected image. The editing can be done on the left pane while the preview is shown on the right.

Next you can add subtitles and captions to a picture and specify the duration of the image in the video, as shown below:

When you are done with all the settings, make sure to save the combination as a project file from File > Save as. This will be handy when you want to add more pictures to the project later and may want to render the video from scratch.

To render the video, click the small “Right” icon and choose the project settings as VCD. Then specify the output directory and hit the “Start” button.

All done, the pictures will be combined into a video file and saved on the location you have specified. When the rendering is complete, double click the video file and you can view the video in Windows Media Player or any other media player of your choice.

Windows Movie Maker

If you want to add more effects to the movie, another great program worth trying is Windows Movie maker. Windows Movie Maker is available on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 by default, you can also download the latest version from the Windows Live essentials website.

The advantage of using movie maker is that apart from images, you can also add video files, background music, add title effects, sounds and transition effects to individual clips. Here are the steps to create the movie using Windows Movie Maker:

1. Click the “Add Videos and Photos” button and import all the media files in movie maker, as shown below:

2. Next, you can import a wav or MP3 file which will be played as the movie background:

3. To add custom animations to the individual image clips, switch to the “Animation” tab and apply an animation effect. There are different effects to choose from – default, dissolve, cinematic and reveals.

You can choose to apply the animation to one clip or to all of the clips added to the project.

4. Next switch to the “Visual effects” tab and here you can add various color effects to the clips. The options are – Black and White, sepia, cinematic, dissolve and so on.

5. When you are done adding all the visual effects and image transitions, go to the “Project” tab and select the output format as either wide screen (16:9) or standard(4:3) format.

6. Almost done, now you have three options:

• Publish the movie to your YouTube, Facebook, Skydrive or Flickr account
• Save the movie in your computer.
• Burn the movie in a CD/DVD.

After the movie has finished rendering, you can use Nero or other programs to burn the movie in a CD or DVD drive.

Have you uses any other tool to create a movie using a set of pictures? Please share your ideas in the comments.

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Apart from regular search queries, do you know that you can use the Google search engine in a variety of creative ways? You can use Google to know the sunrise and sunset timings, convert currency amounts, perform local searches, find movie show times and so on. These type of Google search, better known as Google special search requires the user to type a specific query and add an attribute to the query.

A very good example of a special Google search is knowing the time of a particular city. I live in India and want to know what time is it in London, UK. To perform this Google special search, I will have to type the exact query as “What time is it” and supply the parameter as “London”

What’s interesting to note is that these Google searches depend upon your geographic location (in some occasions) and the results are displayed accordingly.

In this article, we look into some special Google searches which can be used in a more creative way to know important things you have always wanted:

Know the Weather of a Any City Using Google

To know the weather conditions of any city, go to Google.com and enter the name of the city in the search box. Then type the state and the country of the city, as shown in the following example:

Not only will Google display the current average temperature of your city, but you can also see the weather pattern for the last week. Additional details like humidity and wind speed are also shown in the same page and you can add the result to your iGoogle home page using the link “Add to iGoogle”.

Know the Time of Any City Using Google

Similarly you can also know the present time of any part of the world using a simple Google search. Just type time in the Google search box followed by the name of the city or country as shown in the following example:

Use Google as a Calculator

You can perform simple arithmetical calculations from Google search. This includes addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root and power. To perform the calculation, type the complete arithmetical expression in Google search and you will get the end result as shown below:

Use Google as a Currency Converter

Often I would want to know what how much money I have in my Paypal account. Since funds in Paypal are represented in U.S Dollars, I use Google for converting the currencies to Indian Rupees.

To use Google as a currency converter, type the amount followed by the source currency name in the Google search box. Then type in followed by the name of the destination currency. Thus, if I want to convert 237 USD to Indian rupees – I would perform the following Google search:

Use Google to Know the Time of Sunrise and Sunset in your City

This one is one of my favorites. You can use Google to know the exact time of sunrise and sunset in any city of the globe. Simply type Sunrise and then enter the name of your city. The sunrise and sunset timings will be displayed right under the search box, as shown below:

Use Google to Know Public Data of Various Countries

Google can be used to know the trends for population and unemployment rates of any country of the world. Type population or unemployment followed by the country name and the results will be shown as in this image:

The data is shown from World bank’s database, you can click through the thumbnail to view more information regarding the population growth and unemployment stats of the particular country. The resulting page will contain public data of all the countries of the world, just select the corresponding checkbox from the left sidebar as shown below:

Use Google For Local Searches

Not many people know that Google is a great tool to find local stores, restaurants, shops and other business entities in your city. Say you are looking for a good restaurant that serves “thai food”. Go to Google.com and type thai food followed by the name of the city where you want to find the local business listings.

Google will show a map on top of the search results, pointing you to all the restaurants who serve the type of food you are looking for.

In the same way you can search for book stores, dentists, grocery store and other local business listings of any city.

Use Google to Find Movie Showtimes

If you are a movie addict and want to know the movie timings of theaters in your city, Google can help. Just type movies in the Google search box and enter the name of your city in the “Find Movie Showtimes” search box. Then hit “Get Showtimes” and Google will display the movie timings of popular theaters in your city, as shown below:

These are just a few ways you can use Google for performing special searches. You can visit this page to know more about Google special searches.

What’s your favorite Google special search trick? Let us know your ideas through a comment.

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The question is, how would you utilize the time? One of the possibilities is filling the boring commuting hours by watching movies or catching up with your favorite TV series on your portable multimedia player. Thanks to the gigantic capacity of storage available today, we can practically bring tons of movies inside our pocket. The classic white iPod is my wife’s best companion on the road, while I can go along just fine with my small screen smart phone.

The Cows That Tidies Up The Messy Movie Tags

Problem is, not all movie files are created the same way. Because there are many resources that you can use to get your movies; such as buying them from online store, downloading them using torrent, or ripping them from CDs/DVDs; you will also get many different tagging systems.

Most of the time, we’ll come across files that look like this: “tvamdi_113.tv-lol”. Unless you are a psychic, it’s difficult to guess what’s inside. Imagine having to go through those gibberish on the small screen every time we want to find a movie to watch. Life would be so much easier if all the movies are properly tagged.

We’ve discussed the topic of tidying song tags using Tagr, and similar process could also be applied to movies using an app called MetaX. This free app is available for Windows and Mac, and it will help you tidy the tags in a snap. Literary.

The first time of running MetaX, the app will give you several confirmation windows. Starting from the familiar checking for updates question, continued to the question of whether or not you want to search for tag data automatically, the offer of Enabling integration with tagChimp.com, and reminder about the importance of making backups of your data.

Then you’ll have the main window of MetaX before your very eyes.

Going Through The Preferences

As always, it’s good to start “messing around” with any app from the Preferences (Command + Comma). The first one is “General Preferences” where you can modify the general settings.

The “File Level Preferences” deals with type of incoming files and their name tagging.

The “Data Preferences” gives you options of sources to get the data. There’s an option to get and share data with tagChimp.

While you’re not required to have tagChimp account to get data from the service, you need an account to be able to share. If you want to do so, just register yourself for an account in their website.

The last one is “iTunes Preferences” and it is fairly simple.

Start The Tagging Process

To give tags to a movie, you have to open it in MetaX. If you choose to get prompted in the “File Level Preferences“, a confirmation window will pop up asking you what kind of movie that you open.

Then the opened movie will sit on the “Search” pane while MetaX doing the data searching. Most of the time, you will get the results within seconds.

Just browse through the choices and pick the best result.

The related tags of the selected result will be presented in the middle pane.

If the everything is satisfying, double click the selected result in the search pane and the tags will be locked to the file. Locked tags have checkmark on the box next to it.

You can also add and/or edit the tags manually. And if you don’t want your manual tags modified by the search result, just lock the tag.

You can modify more data about the movie by going to the “Video” tab.

Unless you want to be very detailed about the tags, you don’t need to mess with other tabs.

You can add more movies, and the list will be presented in the “Queue” pane on the right.

Repeat the process for other files in the queue, and if everything is set, you can click the “Wirte & Share” button at the toolbar. If you choose “Send to iTunes after writing” in the “iTunes Preferences“, your tagged movies will appear in iTunes, ready to be transported to your iPod.

Please note that MetaX only works with MP4 movies. That’s why it’s a perfect tool to tag movies for your portable multimedia player since MP4 is the accepted format among such devices. Use Handbrake to convert other movie formats to this mobile-friendly format

Have you tried MetaX? Do you know other alternatives to free movie tagging applications? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comment below.

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But that doesn’t mean that there are no alternatives. But there is only one name that keeps popping up is VLC. The two – QuickTime and VLC – shade other Mac movie players for none of the rest could keep up.

Until now.

Meet Movist

Recently I came across Movist. The developer’s homepage is in Korean – no wonder this app is not widely known, yet. But fret not as language is beginning to lose the role as a barrier. Or better yet, you can view the google code page instead.

This baby is barely a rival for the two giants – as it’s just starting to walk the earth. The latest version of Movist is still 0.6.1 at the time of writing; but most reviews predicted that this is the name that you are going to hear a lot in the future.

Here are few of the many Movist features: adjustable play speed, loop movie within a pre-set range, the ability to play partially downloaded movies, and keyboard shortcuts for almost every action. But the first thing that mad me fall in love for Movist is the great subtitle features (Movist –> Preferences –> Subtitle). Just remember to have the subtitle file ready with the same file name with the movie located inside the same folder.

Another cool thing that I found from Movist is the ability to play a movie as a desktop background (Movie –> Desktop Background or Command + D). This will be useful for example to continuously play your company’s promotional video.

There are a lot more features that you can access through the menus, most have their own set of shortcuts combination – good news for the keyboard people. And don’t forget to also peek into Preferences.

One thing that most people find annoying about Movist is the logo. One reviewer said it’s the rip-off from one alternative to VLC logo. It even has the VLC name carved there. If the developer want to be serious with the app, Movist should have its own logo designed professionally.

Ditch the Rest

The best way to take the most advantage from Movist is to make it the default movie player. Here’s how:

1. Open the Finder window and navigate to a certain movie file (mp4, FLV, mov, etc)
2. Right click on the file and choose: “Get Info” or simply use Command + I
3. Expand the “Open With” section of the file info and choose Movist from the drop down menu.
4. Click “Change All” and click “Continue” in the confirmation window.
5. Repeat the process for other types of movie file.

Now you can enjoy watching all movies with Movist. Just remember that this one is still in beta, so expect to have few glitches here and there.

Have you tried Movist? Do you have other alternative movie player? Share using the comment below.

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