TenthOfMarch.com

Recording videos and uploading them to YouTube to share is a common practice nowadays. However, most video sharing websites limit the video by either length, file size or both. Therefore, compressing the video before uploading it is important. It also shortens the uploading time.

For example, recording an 8 minutes video (320 X 240 pixels and 30fps) on my digital camera took over 200mb. After compressing the video, the size was reduced to 60mb. That is roughly a 70% reduction.

I am currently using eRightSoft’s SUPER to compress my video files. To download the software, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on one of the four links that says “SUPER © setup file”.

I notice a problem with the audio when I first compressed a video using its default settings. It sounded like “chipmunks” talking instead of a human (ie. Fast and high pitch tone). I tweaked the settings a little and it solved the problem. Below is a screenshot of the settings I am using. It may not be the optimum compression so post up your settings if it is better.

Do you have any other suggestions for software with better compression quality?

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I’ve come across a few bloggers mentioning that they scheduled their posts to be automatically published by Wordpress in a future date. After going through my Wordpress menu without finding a “schedule future post” option, I searched for it at Google and found two articles that helped:

• Schedule a future post in WordPress written by Bruce.
• Scheduling posts in WordPress written by Luis.

To write a post and have Wordpress publish it in a future date, all you need to do is to edit the “Post Timestamp” option before publishing the post as shown in the screenshot below.

Right after completing your post, look for the “Post Timestamp” option on the right. Check/select the “Edit timestamp” checkbox. Select the future date and time you want the post to be published. After that is done, click on the “Publish” button like how you would normally publish a post.

I’ve scheduled this post to be automatically published at 25/6/2007 at 2:00pm. I’m publishing this 2 and a half hours earlier. If everything works accordingly, this post will only be visible at the scheduled time.

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Are you still managing your emails using email clients like Microsoft Office Outlook, Thunderbird, or Eudora? Why not switch to GMail and let it handle your emails instead? If you are ready to give GMail a go, below are the steps required to setup GMail to manage your POP3 accounts.

Firstly, sign in to your GMail account. If you don’t have an account yet, you will need to sign up first. Click on the “Settings” link as shown in the screenshot below labelled “A”. Click on the “Accounts” tab labelled “B”. Then, click on the “Add another mail account” link labelled “C”.

Insert your email address into the textfield provided and click on the “Next Step” button. Do note that you can only manage up to 5 POP3 accounts using a single GMail account.

On the next screen, you will need to modify the settings for your email account. Input the username and password for your email account. It is important to check the “Label incoming messages:” checkbox. This step ensures that each emails from different accounts are labelled accordingly. Click the “Add Account” button to proceed.

Your GMail account is now setup to receive emails from the email address you inserted earlier. If you would like to send emails using the same email account, you will need to select the option “Yes, I want to be able to send mail as …” as in the screen below.

Insert the name that you want to display whenever you send an email using this account and click on the “Next Step” button.

Before you can start sending emails using this account, GMail requires you to verify that the email address provided does belong to you. You can do so by clicking on the “Send Verification” button. Google will send you a verification email that contains a verification code and a verification link.

You can either click on the verification link, or copy the verification code and insert it into the textfield below. Click the “Verify” button to verify your account.

After completing these steps, your GMail account is configured to send and receive emails from the account you provided earlier. If you want to allow GMail to manage multiple accounts, just repeat the steps again. Keep in mind that the maximum accounts you can add is 5. If you need to add more than that, just create a new GMail account

I’ll do a review on the pros and cons of using GMail as a POP3 mail client shortly. Stay tuned.

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