Do you ever get a lot of video links from friends over IM and you wish you could actually just save them first? Well, you could download them via clive on the command line.
It’s really nifty if you could save them and video them later, without having to browse it on the internet first. At least, for me, I think this is really cool.
Another awesome thing about clive is that it could download videos even from Google Video, CCTV, among others. See? Even other sites with video streaming could be a source for extraction …read more

Audacious. Screenshot by Clair Ching, 2008.
The search for the perfect music player will always follow me. In any case I am currently running Audacious and for most of those who have been used to the old school WinAmp, the general look and feel of Audacious is similar to it.
In any case Audacious has some plugins which you might find useful, depending on the stuff you play. It also has an equalizer and no pre-set options. So you’d have to listen well and make sure that you get the settings of your choice if you’re not used to …read more

The quest for an awesome music player happens every so often. I’ve gotten used to Rhythmbox but it has no equalizer =_= I’ve been frustrated with how my music sounds like and it has been tough considering that I prefer working while listening to music.
Exaile has come to my rescue!

Tabbed playlists in Exaile, screenshot by Clair Ching (2008)
Exaile has smart playlists, tabbed music browsing, a bunch of plugins and an equalizer! Yes. An equalizer. I was told that Banshee also has these features but because I miss using Exaile, I decided to install it for the sake …read more

If you have a huge collection of music files already, sometimes you realize that you were too lazy to add tags and/or descriptive file names to them. It’s a mess! Especially when you are looking for particular artists or titles or you’re in the mood to create a ‘mix CD’/’mix tape’ But no need to worry! Ex Falso will help you organize your files.

Ex Falso screenshot by Clair Ching, 2008.
Just look for a package of this nifty application in your distro’s repository and voila~! Soon you will have this tool ready to save …read more

Rhythmbox is the default on Ubuntu and these days I find VLC’s user interface too limited when it comes to playing music files. I’d rather stick with Rhythmbox or if I am playing songs found in one directory, I could make do with Totem. But if you want more options in managing playlists for your mediaplayer you need more than that.

Gmusicbrowser in iTunes layout, by Clair Ching 2008.
Enter Gmusicbrowser. In the package manager Synaptic, I recall reading something like it’s a jukebox. Maybe so. But I find it overwhelming. You have many options to …read more

And videos, too!
My boyfriend has been using Banshee while I decided to stick with Rhythmbox simply because it’s a default and I wanted to give it a chance. I’ve used Exaile (and it’s one of the players I really like) and Amarok (which is awesome) before and it’s because I used to not like Rhythmbox for some reason or another. Now that I am more used to Rhythmbox, I like using it. But I thought that I should see Banshee because I am curious. So without installing it, I checked it out last night.
Some things I …read more

I would’ve taken screenshots of Smplayer at work on my computer right now, it’s just that it’s not working right For some reason or another the video looks quite saturated when I try watching it on Smplayer but it looks ok on VLC and other players. Hrmm. But I’ve used Smplayer on Windows before and it’s a really great way to watch videos.
It’s very convenient because of the user interface. You get a menu with options on whether to include subtitles, etc. At the bottom of the video you have a volume control slider, the playback, …read more

I got a video in the Matroska file format — something that doesn’t usually happen to me. I would often get files in avi though. Or mpeg. I know I used to watch anime with mkv extensions but recently I haven’t. I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Hardy Heron so I didn’t have VLC yet. I tried looking for matroska gstreamer plugins, etc. on Synaptic and yet I found none. I was able to play it using Mplayer but I also wondered what else I could use to play the video. I installed …read more

Disclaimer: I don’t have an iPod but some of you might have one. Or you might come across fellow new Linux users who want to ask you about this topic.

HowToForge has a detailed guide on managing your iPod with gtkPod.
It tells you how to do the following:

Configure gtkPod and that you’d have to do it just once.
Load your iPod into gtkPod
Upload music into your iPod
Download music from your iPod
Manage playlists

After reading the guide, you could also read more about gtkPod.

Seems to me that a lot of phones these days can play 3gp. Sometimes commuting to work is so long so to kill of boredom, I read a book or play a game on my phone. But sometimes I really feel that I could watch something while I am standing in line for a shuttle to the train station. So there’s only one thing I must do: look for file converters! Here are links to some of the ones I read about.
3gp Converter
It’s an app with a graphical user interface which basically lets a user convert …read more