Movie Maker Beta goes Live

In the spirit of making key applications available online rather than as standalone programs on your desktop, Microsoft has launched Windows Movie Maker Beta live.

Find and download it from: http://download.live.com/moviemaker

It's a long time since Windows Movie Maker was updated - in computer terms it's almost geriatric! It will be good to see it given a makeover and some added functionality.

Seriously weird stuff

I know how to convert acres to hectares, I know how to convert feet and inches to centimetres and even centimeters but this site is scary weird with what it can convert: Conversiontable.org.

It can convert things I never heard of and certainly can't spell. And who knew there were such things as Barns and Bunders (hint: they are units of measure), or Labors, Hundreds, Homesteads and Hides?

If you're ignorant of the finer measures in life, head over to this site and check it out. It's deliciously retro in design with a Matrix colour scheme of blindingly monochromatic CP/M green and black.

On the practical side, you can convert currency, shoe sizes, liquids and land - just about anything and everything is covered here.

If you're just a helpless geek like me, check out the wonderful world of units of measure - it's way more riveting a dinner party conversation than what's on TV this week. Oh, and as an aside, if you're at one of my dinner parties, please don't get me started on the shipwreck they're making of the US adaptation of the award winning Australian TV series Kath and Kim.

Hint: Check out the original Oz version and plan to clean your bathroom on Oct 7 - it'll be much more fun!

I ♥ Twitterkeys

I love Twitter - I love staying in touch with everyone I am following and I love to see what they're doing. I'm also getting lots of cool information from Twitter folk - cool recommendations and contacts. In fact I'm about to start guest posting on Digital Photography School blog courtesy of a contact made with Darren Rouse through Twitter - how cool is that?

Today, CraftyChica had a note saying thank you to someone for some cute Twitterkeys she was using. Twitterkeys? What are they I asked myself?

The answer can be found if you cruise over here to http://thenextweb.org/2008/09/16/twitterkeys-enhance-your-twitter-conversations/ and grab yourself a link to them. It's a small window you open (and leave open) which gives you some cool icons to use in your Twitter tweets. And which work in blog posts too!

I ♥ Twitterkeys.

If you're looking for me at Twitter, you'll find me by searching for HelenBradley - call by and say hi!

What a Star! Photoshop World videos

I've just come back from Photoshop World in Las Vegas. My head hurts so bad with things I've learned.

One fun thing that happened amongst everything else is that I got interviewed by Dave Cross' daughter and the clip was used in the conference closing video - second time it's happened to me - must be the red hair!

So, it's now up on YouTube and here's the link (I'm the red head - duh! 19 seconds into the video) how cool is that?



I will be posting some tips and tricks I've learned in my Photoshop blog real soon.

Tags in Twitter - why and how to use hashtags

One issue with Twitter is that there can be things happening in Tweets that you'd be interested in reading but which you may not know about. So, for example, people you don't follow may be talking about subjects of interest to you or, as happened to me this week, I was at Photoshop World and I wanted to read other people's tweets from the conference although I may not choose to follow those folk on a more permanent basis.

So, when you want to share information relating to a particular and discrete topic you can use hashtags. Hashtags were, so far as I can understand, first supported via a website called hashtags.org. Provided you add hashtags to your Twitter posts and you Follow hashtags on Twitter, hashtags.org tracks the tweets that you post that have hashtags in them and makes them easy to find. A hashtag is simply the hash character (#) put in front of a tag name.

So, for example, at Photoshop World in Las Vegas, the tag #psworld was used to discuss things relating to the conference by attendees using Twitter. By following hashtags, any posts that you created that had the #psworld tag in them would be tracked automatically by hashtags.org and could be viewed on that site or followed using an RSS feed. However, it seems that although this should work in theory, it didn't in practice and still the #psworld tag doesn't appear in hashtags.

The simpler solution is to use Twitter itself to show you the tags. Simply visit http://search.twitter.com and in the search field type the tag you want to follow, for example #psworld and click Search. Now you’ll see all the tweets which include that tag. You can also grab a RSS feed for this query by clicking the RSS button in the search window.

When you track the hashtag information on either Twitter or Hashtags.org you can read tweets posted by anyone using that tag whether or not they are someone you typically follow. Of course, if you find someone posting regularly using a tag that you’re interested in then you can click their icon to see who they are and to follow them if desired.

So, here's what I suggest:

1 Follow hashtags on Twitter (optional since its performance seems to be erratic)

2 Add #tag_name to your Twitter posts

3 Use search.twitter.com to find and read other's posts on a particular topic.

4 If you're attending a conference or tradeshow, try to find the hashtags used by other attendees so you can keep in touch with what's happening.