Using WordPress to Build Websites

By Chris Blair
I’ve long been aware of WordPress, but had typically viewed it as a tool for creating and managing blogs. In the past year, I’ve found that it’s a powerful tool for building rich, dynamic websites.
If you’ve ever looked into WordPress, the whole enterprise is a little confusing. There is wordpress.com, which is basically [...]

Netflix: Best value on the planet!

By Chris Blair
I’ve been aware of Netflix for years, but always viewed their service as more trouble than it was worth. When it comes to watching movies, I’m the spontaneous type, rarely planning a viewing in advance, so ordering a movie or movies, then waiting for them to be delivered in the mail didn’t seem very attractive.
When Netlix added [...]

New version of RealPlayer is much improved!

By Chris Blair
While I’m on the subject of media players. I was recently reintroduced to RealPlayer’s basic media player and I was blown away by how much it’s improved since the last time I used it. RealPlayer was initially a leader in online video streaming and it’s player was pretty much standard fare on Windows [...]

Play Quicktime and H.264 files in Windows Media Player

By Chris Blair
The default media player in Windows Vista and Windows XP cannot play a lot of popular file types, such as Quicktime and the now ubiquitous H.264/mp4 format. But now there’s a simple, safe plugin that gives Windows Media Player the ability to play both. The plugin is from a company called Medialooks and [...]

Compressing Video for the iPhone with Windows®

By Chris Blair
Apple has fairly strict requirements for video on their mobile devices, and for some reason many encoding applications cannot seem to output Apple compliant video even if you follow Apple’s specifications to the letter. I’ve spent hours searching online for reasons and have yet to find any.
Apple’s specs can be found here:
http://homepage.mac.com/qt4web/compressforiphone.html
In the [...]