15 Unreasonably Useful Websites

The following is a continuance of my previous article, “15 Ridiculously Useful Websites.” The response to that article was overwhelming. The comments left by those who read it made one thing very clear: the list was incomplete. Although I did not initially write the article with the intention of listing the 15 best sites on the web, that is how my message came across - my fault. I have decided to respond to your comments with a series of follow-on lists containing more useful and entertaining corners of the web. I hope you enjoy them:

1. Musictheory - A grass roots website that contains lessons, trainers, as well as several other utilities.

2. iLike - iLike is a music site where you can organize share and discover new music. There is an iLike side bar available for Windows Media Player as well as iTunes. You can even upload your own music to the site if you would like to.

3. Youtube - This is an obvious one. Watch videos of just about anything for free.

4. Freedocumentaries - This is an awesome catalog of documentaries about many different subjects. You can browse the films by region, theme, or title. The videos are free and are accompanied by a brief description, comments, and sometimes a link to a related page.

5. Buzzillions - Product reviews by consumers who have been verified by the retailer they purchased the item from. You can search for specific items or go through a preference-based menu to find products and reviews that are lined up with your intentions/interests/user level.

6. Craigslist - No matter what you need, chances are, you can probably find it here.

7. Farecast - Farecast provides predictions and trend analysis for airfares and hotel fees. In their own words, “Know When to Buy™: Our airfare prediction shows if fares are rising or dropping. Based on the prediction, we provide a recommendation to buy now or buy later. Know Where to Stay™: Our Rate Key™ indicates whether or not today's rate for a specific hotel is a deal. It compares an individual hotel's current rate found to its observed historical rates.”

8. Download - Offers a central location to find free downloads for subjects ranging from antivirus/firewall to audio/video & gaming software.

9. Pixalo - A great photography site that helps photographers no matter their skill level. It has a community forum were you can get equipment reviews and answers to your questions. The site also offers a free members gallery where you can upload your own photos.

10. Rutomail - This site is full of links to other sites. The links are organized into various categories including business, lifestyle, and Internet, etc...

11. Gyminee - A fitness website that allows you to set goals, track your progress, monitor and plan nutrition, and even invite or find new friends to coordinate with.

12. Roughguides - A pretty good travel website that provides many different ways of researching destinations.

13. Bugmenot - Type in a website that requires a username and password; Bugmenot provides you with a name and password to use…free. Useful for big websites, not really for obscure ones.

14. Wikipedia - Another seemingly obvious site…A user-dependant research site. Wikipedia is very adaptive in that you can cruise through a subject by clicking on embedded links to visit related articles and topics. This allows the researcher to see the topic from many different perspectives.

15. IMDB - Seriously, this is one of the most comprehensive movie information databases on the net. It is very, very thorough.

Torchwood edited versions for the family

 

BBC2 is to screen a specially edited pre-watershed version of Dr Who spin-off Torchwood aimed at younger audiences.
Each episode of the show, which moves to the BBC2 from BBC3 for a second series next year, will be repeated with an edited version that is toned down in terms of its violence to make it more family-friendly.
Its creator Russell T Davies has ruled out removing any scenes involving same-sex relationships.
Speaking today at the launch of the second series, Davies said: “We’ll cut the swearing and cut the violence, but no we will not be cutting the kissing, so no story there.”
BBC2 controller Roly Keating said the decision to repeat each episode with a pre-watershed one was prompted by demand from “families and younger viewers”, adding the move meant “everyone can enjoy the new series”.
When the second run starts next year, the regular cast of Torchwood will be joined by Buffy and Angel star James Marsters.
Other actors lined up to make guest appearances throughout the series, which is filmed in Cardiff, include Alan Dale, Richard Briers and Nerys Hughes.
BBC Wales controller Menna Richards said: “The first series of Torchwood was a huge hit with audiences. We’re extremely proud it’s produced in Wales and its success is a reflection of the huge wealth of talent and creativity that exists here.”
When Torchwood was aired on BBC3 last year it achieved the channel’s highest ratings in 2006, with an audience of 2.5 million for the first episode.

Top 10: Free Video Rippers, Encoders and Converters

 
So many video file formats, so many handheld video players, so many online video sites, and so little time. To have your favorite clips how you want them—whether that's on your DVR, iPod, PSP or desktop—you need the right utility to convert 'em into the format that works for you. Commercial video converter software's aplenty, but there are several solid free utilities that can convert your video files on every operating system, or if you've just got a web browser and a quick clip. Put DVDs on your iPod, YouTube videos on DVD, or convert any video file with today's top 10 free video rippers, encoders and converters.

10. VLC media player (Open source/All platforms)

 
Ok, so VLC is a media player, not converter, but if you're watching digital video, it's a must-have—plus VLC can indeed rip DVD's, as well as play ripped discs in ISO format (no actual optical media required.) VLC can also play FLV files downloaded from YouTube et al, no conversion to AVI required. Since there's a portable version, VLC's a nice choice for getting your DVD rips/saved YouTube video watching on wherever you go.

9. MediaCoder (Open source/Windows)

Batch convert audio and video compression formats with the open source Media Coder for Windows, which works with a long laundry lists of formats, including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+V2, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio, AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia, ASF/WMV, Quicktime, and OGM, to name a few.

8. Avi2Dvd (Freeware/Windows)

Make your video files burnable to a DVD with Avi2Dvd, a utility that converts Avi/Ogm/Mkv/Wmv/Dvd files to Dvd/Svcd/Vcd format. Avi2Dvd can also produce DVD menus with chapter, audio, and subtitle buttons.

7. Videora Converter (Freeware/Windows only)

Videora Converter is a set of programs, each designed to convert regular PC video files into a format tailored to your favorite video-playing handheld device. The Videora program list includes iPod Video Converter (for 5th gen iPods), iPod classic Video Converter (for 6th gen classic iPods), iPod nano Video Converter (for 3rd gen iPod nanos), iPod touch Video Converter, iPhone Video Converter, Videora Apple TV Converter, PSP Video 9, Videora Xbox360 Converter, Videora TiVo Converter, and Videora PMP Converter.

Honorable Mention: Ares Tube for Windows converts YouTube and other online videos to iPod format.

6. Any Video Converter (Freeware/Windows only)

Convert almost all video formats including DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-4 movie format for iPod/PSP or other portable video device, MP4 player or smart phone with Any Video Converter, which also supports user-defined video file formats as the output. Batch process multiple files that AVC saves to a pre-selected directory folder, leaving the original files untouched.

5. Hey!Watch (webapp)

Web application Hey!Watch converts video located on your computer desktop as well as clips hosted on video sites. Upload your video to Hey!Watch to encode it into a wide variety of file formats, like H264, MP4, WMV, DivX, HD Video, Mobile 3GP/MP4, iPod, Archos and PSP. Hey!Watch only allows for 10MB of video uploads per month for free, and from there you pay for what you use, but it's got lots of neat features for video publishers like podcast feed generation and automatic batch processing with options you set once.

4. VidDownloader (webapp)

When you don't want to mess with installing software to grab that priceless YouTube clip before it gets yanked, head over to web site VidDownloader which sucks in videos from all the big streaming sites (YouTube, Google Video, iFilm, Blip.TV, DailyMotion, etc.), converts 'em for you to a playable format and offers them for download. Other downloaders for online video sites buy you a Flash FLV file, but VidDownloader spits back an AVI file.

3. iSquint (Freeware/Mac OS X only)

Convert any video file to iPod-sized versions and automatically add the results to your iTunes library. iSquint is free, but readers have praised the pay-for iSquint upgrade, VisualHub, which offers more advanced options for a $23 license fee. Check out the feature comparison chart between iSquint and VisualHub.

2. DVD Shrink (Freeware/Windows only)

Copy a DVD to your hard drive and leave off all the extras like bonus footage, trailers and other extras to save space with DVD Shrink. DVD Shrink utility to rip your DVDs to your hard drive for skip-free video play from scratchy optical media.

Honorable mention: DVD Decrypter (beware of advertisement interstitial page), which Windows peeps can use to copy DVDs to their iPods.

1. Handbrake (Open source/Windows, Mac)

Back up your DVD's to digital file with this open source DVD to MPEG-4 converter app. See also how to rip DVDs to your iPod with Handbrake. 

What's your favorite way to convert video to the right format? Did I miss any good ones in this list? Let me know in the comments.

'Journeyman' Heading For Axe, Admits Creator

 

Journeyman is at risk of being axed due to poor ratings and the current writers' strike, according to the show's creator Kevin Falls.
The man behind NBC's time-travelling series, (which is currently airing on Sky One in the UK) admitted that the 12 episodes currently filmed may be the last. Falls told Premium Hollywood that further production on the show is "a long shot... given the strike and our questionable numbers".
However, Falls added that the twelth episode would function as a finale to Journeyman, which stars British actor Kevin McKidd, best known for his role as Tommy in Trainspotting. "We wrote it in a way so it could be the series-ending show. I mean, it wouldn’t answer every question, but it would give you a lot to chew on.... in the case we would actually go on to a second season, we didn’t want to turn over every card," he said.
Kevin Falls said:
NBC has decided to air the 12th episode (”Perfidia”) on Wednesday, December 19th at ten o’clock. That means our 10th episode will air on Monday the 10th (”Home by Another Way”), the 11th will air on 17th (”The Hanged Man”).
The decision to air the 12th episode had a lot to do with the passion of our fans through SaveJourneyman.net, the online petition and letters and emails to NBC executives.
There’s still no news on our long term future, but we can promise you this: three terrific episodes inside of ten days. Oh, yeah, and you’ll get some answers, too.
Your comments and pro-active attempts to save the show are very much appreciated by me and my fellow Executive Producer Alex Graves, Kevin McKidd and the cast, writers and crew. But more importantly, it’s working.
But don’t rest. We need you. We want a back nine–and beyond.

NBC gives Journeyman two weeks notice!

 

We're hearing that the next two weeks are crucial for NBC's Journeyman. While nothing official has been decided, the rumor is that if the Nielsen numbers don't rise for the Nov. 19 and 26 episodes, the network will yank the show, without airing all the episodes produced.
The network is only interested in the live Nielsens, not DVR viewers or downloads, says a show staffer. This is a problem for the show, because the majority of emails the show gets is from fans who watch online. Since ads touting the ability to watch Journeyman for free online are common, that's hardly surprising.
The show staff is hoping for the best, according to our source. "I feel like we take the fan community very seriously. [For example], when Langley appeared on the show, he got a huge response as someone who could give answers, not more questions. We went back and added more of him. We've been loyal to our fanbase."
Now it's time to see if the fanbase will be loyal to the show. Want to help? Check out the Fans of Journeyman Facebook group. Of course, the only way to truly save the show is to watch tonight and next week, and make sure everyone else you know tunes in too.

Tom Cruise to star in 'Doctor Who' episode

 

Tom Cruise is set to star in a special episode of hit British TV show 'Doctor Who'.
The 'Lions for Lambs' actor is among a host of top US stars, including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Madonna, who the BBC are hoping to get on board for three installments of the British sci-fi series to be filmed next year.
An insider told Britain's Daily Star newspaper, "BBC producers know they can't pay these stars what they are used to, but what they can offer is an exciting role in a real cutting-edge show. And the big stars love that kind of kudos."
'Doctor Who' already has a track record of attracting top stars for cameos. This year's Christmas special, 'Voyage of the Damned', will see Kylie Minogue play a waitress at the 1912 launch party for the famously doomed ocean liner Titanic, which sank after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage.
The three 'Doctor Who' specials will be shot in 2008, but will not hit screens until 2009.
The three episodes are rumored to be the final time actor David Tennant will play the time-travelling Doctor.
It is also believed 25-year-old actress Billie Piper - who quit the show in 2006 to pursue other projects - will return to play his sexy sidekick Rose Tyler.

Trek's Sarek Is Cast

Ben Cross has been cast as Sarek, the Vulcan father of Spock, in J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek feature film, StarTrek.com reported.
He will be paired with Winona Ryder, portraying Spock's human mother, Amanda Grayson. (Variety had earlier incorrectly reported that Ryder would play a Vulcan.) The young Spock will be played by Zachary Quinto.
Sarek was first played by Mark Lenard in the original series and subsequent movies.
The film, currently in production under the direction of J.J. Abrams, is scheduled for release on Christmas Day 2008.