From Download Squad:
What could be better than a program that will convert audio, video, and image files from and to just about any format you can think of? How about one that does it all batch-style with minimal clicking? FormatFactory doesn’t care what files you want to swap in what order, just feed it your sources and watch it go to work. Unlike a lot of similar apps, this one doesn’t limit you to only video or audio, or even to one file at a time.Dump in as much as you want of whatever you want, and FormatFactory will do all the heavy lifting. It even supports the iPhone and PSP, and 3GP as well - making it a great way to cram multiformat goodness onto your favorite portable player.
This posting is from almost a month ago, and I finally got around to trying it last night. It’s great! It converted a video for me in just a few seconds. I also tried a WAV to MP3 converstion and it only took a few seconds as well.
None of the download links on the site itself worked, so I did a search for the program and found it easily.
A month or so ago Download Squad linked to DVDFab, a program that lets you rip DVDs to your hard drive.
To burn or not to burn? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the absence of your DVD collection on your hard drive, or to take arms against those who poison your collection with various “protections,” and by opposing end them.
If you side with the latter camp, then you’ll be interested in DVDFab HD Decrypter, a free program for Windows that copies an entire DVD movie to your hard drive, and removes all the protections (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS) while copying. The program also provides full HD-DVD and Blu-Ray support (hence the “HD” in the name).
As is usually the case, the comments section of that posting provides some good alternatives.
A couple of weeks ago Download Squad posted about the DVD Rip utility, which makes it easy to backup DVDs:
There are plenty of applications that help you rip DVDs to your computer. But for the most part, you need to click through a series of long and tedious menus. DVD Rip provides a one click DVD archiving solution, no headaches required.
Rip DVD was put together by the folks at productivity blog Lifehacker. It’s designed to work with the popular DVD archiving application DVD Shrink. In order for Rip DVD to work, you’ll need to install DVD Shrink. But if you don’t already have it, don’t worry. DVD Rip includes a download link.
So what exactly does DVD Rip do? Basically, it answers all those tricky questions that DVD Shrink asks which you may or may not have good answers for. So all you have to do is insert a DVD in your drive, click the executable file, and wait a few hours until your disc is ripped.
Check out the posting as well as the comments at Download Squad, as some people have other suggestions.
I’ve only ever owned one video game console system and that was the original Nintendo (NES) system. I didn’t have very many games, but I loved playing Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. Several years ago I learned about emulators. I’m not sure exactly how this works, but essentially emulators are software that duplicates the game environment so it can be played in Windows.
I had forgotten about emulators until the other day when I was looking for a game online. I was expecting to find a Flash version of the game, but came across an emulator from NESCafe Web. As I looked into this further, there are loads of games now available online. They use Java to power them and they are exactly the same as the originals. Very cool!
To find a game, I’d suggest searching for the name of the game and NEScafe (for instance, searching for Tetris would require you to search for “tetris NEScafe” without the quotes).
If you are interested, here are the links I found to my favourite games:
Hasbro is the maker (either under the name Hasbro, Parker Brothers, or Milton Bradley) of some classic board games such as Sorry, Monopoly, Life, Boggle, etc. They have a website called StarttheGame.com where you can learn about their games. You can also play demos of some of their games. I played Boggle for a bit tonight before posting this.
Regular subscriber Pat send me in a link to Nexus Radio and said:
Cool free internet radio program, can also record songs to play on your mp3 player!
The software is rated highly at Download.com. The software is by Egisca, and their site describes it this way:
Nexus Radio is a free full featured radio player for listeners who want to record their favorite radio content for playback on their PC, or any portable device that supports MP3s. With over 6000+ radio stations and support for thousands more, Nexus Radio delivers the content radio listeners yearn for.
I haven’t tried the software, but you can read more on the official Nexus Radio site.
I heard about this site from Chris. On the Couchville site, you enter your zip/postal code, choose how you view TV (cable, satellite, or over-the-air antenna), and then choose your provider (if you have more than one option in your area). You then are presented with an AJAX-based TV programming schedule. You can drag the grid around to move up and down the channels or move forward or backward in time. It’s very cool.
Can you believe it? I actually found out about this one from my 90-year-old grandmother! She goes to POGO.com all the time and plays their Poppit! game. It seems similar to Bejeweled. Poppit! uses java so you need to have the Sun Java software on your computer.
The site has lots of games such as puzzle games, word games, card games, and more. I know there are lots of game sites out there, but if the site is good enough for my Nanny, then it’s good enough for you. 
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