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My brother copied some old home movies on to a CD thinking that we could all play them. Well, we could, but on on the tv or any other device aside from the PC.  If it had been a DVD format it would have been no problem.  The movies were actually on a DVD, but the format just didn’t transfer.  Imtoo now has a DVD Ripper which would have been helpful if he had it last year.  You can easily take a DVD like that one and adapt it to about 14 different video formats, or a few different audio formats.  Then, you can watch it on your iPod or share it with family members who may not have the same viewing software as you do.  What’s more is that you can add captions and different effects, which is really helpful when the people who know who the periphery characters in old home movies are pass away…and the info along with them.

This is all fine and good, but is there a DVD Ripper Mac version? Yup. Rip those DVDs right iPod, iPhone and iPad as well as Android formats.  Want to do more than just rip and add a few effects? Video Converter for Mac allows you to take your videos and add soundtracks, and clip and merge, and recognizes over 150 video formats.  I had no idea there were even that many, but I suppose with different generations of technology, there are probably more formats out there than the household names.

Have you tried a ripping program before? If so, what did you think? Can’t live without it?

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I cleaned out nearly 1,200 spam comments from the blog this week. Some were incomprehensible and some were about enhancement products, casinos and slot game guides. A relative of mine likes to putter around at casinos all day and parks herself in front of the slot machine. When I mentioned the spam, she got excited and wanted to look at everything I had on computer gambling, particularly the rating guides. Somehow, she thinks that because something has user ratings, it means that Consumer Reports backs it.

That’s just what I need. At least at a casino, there are the pleasant distractions of food and shows, but at the computer, Aunt Edith can sit down all day and all night clicking buttons. That’s exactly what I need. Of course, that alleviates the need to drive her to the far side of the world a weekend each month. Fine by me, as long as she doesn’t miss her Impersonator show fix.

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There are so many widgets and tracking services catering to bloggers, and I never can sift through them all. It’s a matter or prioritizing exactly what I need. The latest one I’ve stumbled across is Blog Copy (blogcopy.com).

When you paste the code into your blog template, you will receive stats on who is quoting you or lifting information from your site. While not a plagiarism buster, per se, the true intent is to notify you of other folks that are talking about you. Sure, it would be great if they had added a link back to your site. However, the “trackback” functions of some sites aren’t 100% reliable, and if you rely on googling yourself, it may take a long time for pages to be indexed, particularly if they are obscure.

As of now, I don’t know of any inherent problems with the code interfering with other code or widgets, but if you have experienced hiccups, let me know.

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