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Jan 18

WrapUp: Batch Encoding Videos with Handbrake, Microsoft Hires OpenStreetMap Founder, and More

Posted in: Android, ios, itunes, netflix, tablet, Today's Chili, windows phone 7 series, WrapUp

This article was written on November 29, 2010 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Kinect Hack Used to Play Super Mario
Mario fans will enjoy seeing this video demonstration of the classic Super Mario Bros. being played with a Microsoft Kinect that is hooked up to a PC.

WikiLeak Cables Provides Info on Google Hacking Incident
About a quarter-million diplomatic cables were leaked, and in it was some details pointing to China’s Politburo as the initiator for hacking some notable Google accounts.

Black Friday Spending Up 9% From Last Year
According to ComScore the spending on Black Friday in the United States this year hit $648 million, which is up from $595 million last year.

Windows Phone 7 “Jailbreak” Released
The first jailbreak for Windows Phone 7 devices has been released, and has opened up the platform to customizations and hacks that are otherwise not allowed.

2 Million Beatles Songs Sold in a Week
The first week that the Beatles were available on iTunes resulted in over 2 million songs being downloaded and over 450k albums.

Microsoft Hires OpenStreetMap Founder
Steve Coast, the founder of OpenStreetMap, has joined Microsoft as the Principal Architect for Bing Mobile. He will be used to develop better mapping experiences, and will also engage open data projects.

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.3 Alpha 1 Released
This pre-release version of Thunderbird incorporates a new Addon Manager in addition to over 190 fixes.

Opera 11 Beta Introduces Tab Stacking
Opera has gotten it right with their “tab stacking” implementation. To keep your tabs organized you can drag and drop tabs onto each other, and that will effectively create a group of them.

iOS 4.2 Available with Free Find My iPhone
The newest iteration of iOS includes AirPrint, AirPlay, multitasking/folders on the iPad, and free Find My iPhone service.

Over 600k Galaxy Tabs Sold in a Month
Samsung has sold more than 600k of their 7-inch tablet devices in the first month of availability, and is now in over 30 countries.

Netflix Starts Offering Streaming-only Plan
Netflix plans now start at $7.99 for a streaming-only plan, and the existing 1 DVD plan has been raised a dollar to $9.99.

Autonomous Audio Climbs Pikes Peak in 27-minutes
A specially-equipped Audi TTS went over 12 miles on Pikes Peak without a driver at the wheel. Video clips are available from the drive.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Make the Mac OS X Clock Show a Drop-Down Calendar
This free Mac app will display a calendar anytime you click on the clock that is located in the Menubar.

Quickly Fixing Typos in the Terminal
Using a caret trick you can easily replace text you mistakenly type in any terminal window.

ThickButtons Keyboard for Android Phones
ThickButtons is a free Android app that will try to predict the word you’re typing, and makes the letters you’re likely to type next a bit bigger.

Drag and Drop Uploads in Google Docs
Google Docs users can now leverage HTML5 technologies to drag-and-drop documents as an alternative way to uploading them.

7-Zip Can Now Decompress EXE, FLV, and More
The newest version of 7-Zip makes it possible to decompress even more file formats than you previously could.

Batch Encoding Videos with Handbrake
BatchEncoder is a free utility that makes it easy to encode videos in batch using Handbrake.

Give Focused Windows More Priority
TopWinPrio can be used to give any application you currently have focused higher priority than other processes on your system.

How to Install Evernote 4 in Ubuntu Using Wine
This guide walks you through installing the Windows version of Evernote in Ubuntu.

Get an Additional 768MB in Dropbox
You can get another 768MB of space on Dropbox by hooking up your Dropbox account to social sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Restrict Apps to One Running Instance
With SingleInstance you can restrict specific executables to only allow one instance at a time, which is useful if you find yourself constantly opening up multiple copies of the same program.