I have a whole bunch of photography tutorials I converted from Flash video format (.flv) to .mp4 so I can watch them on my iPad. Since those tutorials are broken down into a myriad of .mp4 episodes it makes it much harder to watch them in the right order. I needed to find a way to merge several episodes into large movies. This is where Squared 5′s MPEG StreamClip for Mac comes in handy. While this free video conversion tool allows you to convert alls sorts of video formats to .mp4, it also allows you to merge multiple .mp4 videos. Here’s how to do it. Read more »

I have a bunch of photography tutorials in the Flash video .flv format which I want to watch on my iPad. As you may be aware, everything with the name Flash in it doesn’t play too well on Apple’s iOS devices. VLC Media Player for iOS is able to play the .flv format but Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party software devs to use the built-in H.264 hardware acceleration for video playback. As as result, .flv videos usually don’t play very well on iOS devices. Besides, I prefer to manage my video collection in iTunes instead of dragging every clip onto an app icon.

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I just finished installing the 10.6.5 update on my 2010 MacBook Air using the Software Update utility. The installation process went smoothly but my 2 week old  13″ MacBook Air didn’t come back to life after the restart. It’s dead. No picture, no Apple logo, no chime, zilch! The only thing I hear is the fan when I press the on/off button long enough. During the update process the fan came on (until then I didn’t even know there was one). Maybe some component on the main-board overheated? Just speculating here.

I’m still in the process of trying all sorts of keyboard combinations to reset PRAM and stuff but so far, none have worked.

Dank Rainer Ullrichs ruKernelTool kann man sich ab sofort eine neue, internationale Firmware auf die schweizer Version der AVM FRITZ!Box 7390 herunterladen und anschliessend auf die Box flashen lassen. Im Firmware-Filter des Download-Reiters einfach 7390 eingeben, dann sieht man die neue Version sofort. Read more »

Have you ever tried to mount your DSLR camera vertically on a ball head, using an L-bracket and using the USB port for tethered shooting, all at the same time? Some time ago, I was watching an episode of D-Town TV where they were using an L-bracket on a tripod in the studio and I instantly knew that I wanted an L-bracket too. On that episode they were shooting horizontally so tethering the USB cable to the computer wasn’t an issue. However, things look different once you try to shoot vertically, let’s say for a portrait. Well, I don’t know about Canon but at least on quite a few Nikon bodies, this is simply impossible. Here’s why. Because there’s not enough space between the USB port and the ball head to plug in a Mini USB cable. I’ve found a perfect solution to this problem and it’s quite a cheap shot.

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Some smart folks over at macprime.ch found out that the Swiss iTunes store is being populated with movie titles for the first time. I fired up my Apple TV 2 to see if it sees the movies in the Swiss iTunes store as well but as of now, they don’t show up yet (see screenshot below). In iTunes, the non-HD rentals have a price tag of CHF 3.50 and HD-rentals will be streamed to you for CHF 4.50. TV shows don’t seem to be available at all. Read more »