Eric Mills

I’ve been using DVD Decrypter for months and months now and I haven’t created a coaster yet. Many people are familiar, perhaps, with DVD Decrypter’s role in RipIt4Me, or as a stand alone ripper, but little known is the program’s ability to burn an image file (.iso). That’s it. Rip your DVDs and compress them however you want (try DVD Shrink — and sometimes DVD43 allows DVD Shrink to overcome a shortcoming) and rip / compress your DVD to an .iso file, then burn with DVD Decrypter. Oh yeah, and they’re all free (as in beer) programs.

I add a few new programs and add-ons to the computer(s) in my world every day or week; I’m trying to keep track of them.

“Library Books” is really nice for its simplicity and integration into the menu bar of OSx. I use Picasa for simple edits to photos in XP Pro and this plug-in will send your photos directly to Flickr from Picasa.

Tonight I’ve upgraded to version 0.3 of Texter, 0.9.6 of Democracy Player (apparently the last before they change their name), installed VMware 1.0.3 build 44356, to which I plan to add Ubuntu 7.04, and realized that the “sounds like” funtion of Jott.com is not an alternative (like I wrote up in my last post) but rather a phonetic sounding out. One has to wonder if they are amassing a large database of voice recogonition, along with a seriously large amount of cell phone numbers (read: unlisted until now). Still, Jott’s services are currently unparalleled. And, yes, I do know about Loopnote. In fact I used to work with, and drink beers among, the guys involved. Best of luck.