Sunday, December 28, 2008

PSP Internet Review

2 reviews in a row! This time, I'll be complimenting the PSP's
NetFront internet browser. First, I'll mention everything I like about
it. Then, I'll go over some common criticism it recieves and shut it
down.

My #1 favorite thing about it is features. The PSP can do more than IE
and as much as much as Firefox, with great stuff like bookmarks and
tabs. Attaching to a network is easy and fast, thanks to the ability
to save configurations.

There are also a few common complaints I'd like to adress:

"Most sites aren't compatible."

That's an overstatement. Probably 60% of all sites work fine on the PSP. Of the remaining 40%, 50% have "mobile"  versions that work great. So, 80% of sites are compatible.

"YouTube doesn't work."

Not with the normal browser, but you can install PSPTube (Google it) which works great.

"Text entry sucks."

Text entry is like on a phone, so you'd press "6" three times to type "m." However, for the nitpickety, you can switch to a plain numpad, a full QWERTY keyboard, or a symbols pad. A touch screen would help, but I typed this whole post up to the start of the complaints on my PSP. Then, I reached the maximum amount of characters it would allow. "Text entry sucks" probably is the most true complaint there is.

All in all, the PSP makes a great web browser for on-the-go, but if you can use a computer, I recommend that.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

DVD Flick Review

Note how this is not a rant, but a review. DVD Flick is a free and open source DVD creator, if that's the correct term. Basically, it lets you put a bunch of clips together, save them as a DVD Flick project file (.dfproj) and burn them to a DVD using open-source ImgBurn. Or, for the more advanced user, it will create .iso files to be burned with any ISO burner (I like ActiveISO). But the interface itself is incredibly easy to use. Most software has a toolbar at the very top with options like File, Edit, View, and so on. DVD Flick has just 9 big buttons. Although this may sound like an app for 3 year-olds, the settings menu has a lot of advanced features, like creating ISOs, verifying disks, and more. Plus, when it's burning, you'll see a button: [Entertain me.] This brings up a very nice version of Tetris to amuse your soul, probably the nicest download version you can get.


Thursday, December 4, 2008

LilyPond Rant

I love ranting. The other night, I was looking for some kind of free musical notation program, like Finale Notepad, but free. I googled it and came across LilyPond. It advertises itself with a warm (and false) slogan: "LilyPond...music notation for everyone." There are two things wrong it this statement. The first one is that it is music notation software. In reality, it is a program that allows one to print out sheet music which can be downloaded from their library. And by the way: "There are now 313 pieces of music avaliable!" In case you didn't catch it, that's nothing. That's only 28% of everything Bach ever wrote or half of all of Mozart's songs. But all that is naught compared to the true lie: "...music notation for everyone." After I downloaded it, it took well over 20 minutes just to install. This must be a nice application, or very graphically based, I think. So I open the folder I installed it to and I can't even find the app itself! I had to look online to find out that it was is ...usr\bin, buried amongst 50 or so .dll files. I open it up and...no GUI! The f***ing app that advertises itself as "...for everyone" has a command line interface! I promptly uninstalled it, a process which took 15-20 minutes. And even still, it didn't even delete anything. I deleted the folder myself, which took more like 15 or 20 seconds.