The Wonders of Free Internet Media

The last time we moved we decided to give our TV/VCR/DVD stuff away and its been one of the best decisions we've ever made. Now we watch one show per night on the internet and listen to tons of music online too.

Hulu is a great place to start for free internet TV and movies. There's tons of resources for free internet radio as well. One of our favorites is Radio Screamer. Sorry Mac folks, this one is Windows-only as far as I can tell.

Once you've downloaded and installed the free program (if you are comfortable with that sort of thing), you'll have this quick and easy interface to connect to hundreds of internet radio channels:


It includes information about the current artist and song, a direct link to the channels' website, a number of menu options, playback stuff and even a Record button (better check with your legal counsel before using that one!).

Here's an example of how to find stations by genre - soooo many options:


We listen to Folk Alley and Roots Radio a lot during the morning and afternoon and then often switch to 1.FM Blues at night. Almost no commercials and very seldom are there repeat songs! A winner, we think.

Windows Vista-Compatible Photo Re-Sizer

Some of you may remember a post from awhile back called "Invaluable Blogging Tech Tip For Photo Resizing". I know it was not valuable to Windows Vista users as the program discussed in that post was for XP only. Well, I've found a gem of a photo resizing tool that works with Vista! Its a third-party program and I take no responsibility for any one's use of it but I'm just pointing out its existence. Click here to check out the website where you can find out more about it.

I actually put it on my notebook PC (which has Vista on it) and it works quite well for me. Here's a screenshot showing an Explorer window and the menu that appears when I right-click on a photo icon. Note that there is a "new" option called "Prish Resizer" and that, upon hovering my cursor over that option, another option appears for various resizing levels:



There are a number of other handy options that can be found upon initial exploration of this handy little resizing tool. Again, the beauty of this and the XP version is that you can quickly resize photos from withing a file explorer window. This is so much faster than opening a program, importing photos, resizing them and saving them!

If you try this or any third-party software make sure you scan the download with your virus software before you open the file and install the program. When in doubt, back out!

Invaluable Blogging Tech Tip For Photo Resizing

Whether you are uploading pics to email or to use in a blog you may find this handy image resizing tool quite valuable. It's purpose is to quickly resize digital photos from within a Windows XP file explorer window. As far as I know, it does not work in Vista.

We take all our pics at our highest camera resolution and upload them to our PC intact. Often we need to resize them (make them a smaller file size) so that they can be emailed or blogged in such a way that the receiver of the email or blog post can download them quickly.

You can do the same thing in Google Picasa and any number of other programs but, to my knowledge, this is the only way to do it within a Windows file explorer window.

Here's what ya do:

1) To Get the Windows XP Image Resizer, click on the link below, scroll down the page and click on the ImageResizer.exe file. Follow the directions and install the program on your PC. If you are worried about viruses, save the file (rather than running it) and scan it with your virus software - then run it.

Get the ImageResizer.exe file

2) Navigate to the location on your PC where you have photos that you want to resize. Hover your cursor over a photo of interest and a small box will pop up. The last bit of info. is the file size. In the case below, the file size is 1.04 MB. This is a large file - much larger (and slow to download) than necessary for most emailing and blogging.


You can also right-click on a picture file icon and then choose "properties"....

...to see details about the file:


Now that you know your file size, you can resize if necesary. If you have succesfully installed the picture resizer program you should see a "Resize Picture" option when you right-click on a picture file icon:


Choose this option and you will see a "Resize Pictures" dialog box:

Click the "Advanced" button to reveal more options. We usually choose the "medium: option and click "ok"

Go back to the location of the original file and, presto, there will be a resized version in that same place. If it's not right next to the original, look around for it - it may be at the bottom of the list of icons. Hover your cursor over the resized version and, in this case, you'll see that the new file is a mere 56.6 KB - that's quite small compared with the original 1.04 MB.


So, after all this, what (you may ask) is the point? Let's illustrate - here's the original (1.04MB) file, click on it:


Now, click on the resized (56.6 KB) version:


Use the smaller file size for emailing and blogging and your recipients will thank you!