Suffire.com | Geek Stuffs, Technology Related

pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/spendster_logo.jpg” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”494″ height=”133″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /br If you have a bunch of expensive stuff collecting dust in your closet or garage, it might be time to sit down with a href=”http://spendster.org/”Spendster/a and repent for your consumer gluttony. A project from the a href=”http://www.nefe.org/”National Endowment for Financial Education/a, Spendster asks folks to calculate how much they’ve spent on stuff they simply don’t need, and to share their stories. The videos already on the site are a lesson in humility that just might change your habits. And you can use the Spendster calculator to reveal the real cost of those impulse buys, expressed in credit card interest fees or how much you’d have if you bought into Google’s IPO or into an interest-bearing savings account./p div class=”related”a href=”http://spendster.org/”Spendster/a [via a href="http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/10/29/confess-your-shopping-sins-with-spendster/"Get Rich Slowly/a]/div br style=”clear: both;”/
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We’ve all been there: you’ve downloaded an episode of your favorite TV show to watch on your commute or stream to your living room, but the file you downloaded isn’t supported on the device you want to use it with. Once a significant obstacle to enjoying your media anywhere, this problem is easily solved by any number of free media converters. On Wednesday we asked you to share your favorite media converters, and today we’re back with the five most popular answers. Keep reading for a closer look at the most powerful and easiest to use media converters, then cast a vote for the one you like best.

Super (Windows)

Super is a free media converter that acts as a graphical front end to several of the most powerful command line tools like FFmpeg, MEncoder, and MPlayer. The application boasts extensive options for customizing your preferences with virtually any aspect of your conversion. The downside to that control is that Super’s interface is cluttered and intimidating for first-time users. Luckily for most purposes, converting a file to the right format with Super is as simple as selecting your output format (e.g., Apple iPod) and just sticking with the defaults.

FormatFactory (Windows)

Format Factory is a free media converter for Windows that converts video, audio, and even images between formats. With a nice icon-driven interface for helping you choose the kind of conversion you’re looking for, FormatFactory is one of the friendliest batch media converters you’ll find.

MediaCoder (All Platforms)

MediaCoder is a batch media transcoder that converts video and audio from and to most popular formats through a powerful graphical interface. Like Super, MediaCoder is a front-end for a number of command line media tools, allowing you to get as simple or complex as you want with your conversions. MediaCoder is available on all platforms, but its best supported on Windows. MediaCoder is also available in device-specific flavors for the iPhone and iPod touch, PSP, and more.

HandBrake (All Platforms)

HandBrake is a popular open-source media converter that encodes video from DVDs to many popular output formats. Available in both graphical and command line flavors, HandBrake can’t convert the range of formats the rest can—it’s limited to MPEG video (that includes DVD video). HandBrake easily earns its place as one of the five best DVD ripping tools, but it doesn’t have the versatility of many of the other applications featured in this Hive.

FFmpeg (All Platforms)

FFmpeg is free, cross platform command-line encoding tool that powers many of the more popular graphical applications in this Hive Five. While FFmpeg has more of a learning curve than the rest, it’s also undeniably powerful and flexible. If converting your media from the command line with FFmpeg appeals to you, check out how to FFmpeg your way to media conversion bliss.

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You’ve seen the best; now it’s time to vote for your favorite.
Which Is the Best Media Converter?
( surveys)

This week’s big honorable mention goes to VisualHub, a Mac OS X conversion tool that lost its place in the top five because it mysteriously closed its doors between the time we put out the Hive Five Call and now.

Whether or not your favorite made the short list, let’s hear more about it in the comments.

Web site Splicd creates custom links to embedded YouTube videos that start and stop at any time you define, allowing you to skip straight to the good part and avoid the rest. Let’s say, for example, you’ve stumbled onto a gem on YouTube but had to suffer through 10 minutes of complete boredom to get there. You want to share the video with a friend, but you don’t want her to have to sit through the whole mess for 20 seconds of pure gold. Just paste the URL of the video into Splicd, give it your desired start and end time, and it generates a custom link that starts and stops the video where you told it to (like this one).

YouTube is testing a new video upload tool that lets you edit your clip’s metadata while the upload happens, and they’re bumping the upload size limit from 100MB to 1GB. (Nice!) Here’s the tester link to the new uploader. While you’re all up in the ‘tube, check out our top 10 YouTube hacks. [via]

With or without the cooperation of television networks, your favorite TV shows have moved to the internet in a big way. On Tuesday we asked you to share the best sites to stream TV, and now we’re back with the five most popular answers. Keep reading for a breakdown of the best places on the web to find and watch the shows you love on-demand from the convenience of your browser.

Hulu

Hulu streams high-resolution, ad-supported videos of both television shows and movies. More specifically, the site distributes content by NBC-Universal, Fox, and a handful of their subsidiaries. Popular shows hosted by Hulu include The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Battlestar Galactica, The Simpsons, The Office, and Saturday Night Live. The biggest complaint leveled against Hulu is its US-only restrictions, though many of you are using previously mentioned Hotspot Shield to access Hulu from outside the US. Hulu isn’t entirely US-only, though—the first show Hulu made available to the world at large was Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, with Lifehacker favorite Felicia Day.

SurfTheChannel

SurfTheChannel aggregates video from all over the internet—including sites like YouTube, MetaCafe, and Hulu (along with much more obscure sites)—then makes all of those videos available through a simple, searchable interface. It’s not always pretty, but the selection is huge. The downside: According to the STC homepage, the site will shut down on October 1st.

SideReel

SideReel is a video aggregation site similar to SurfTheChannel, providing links to streaming video from all over the internet. It’s an attractive site, but if you’re there to find video it can be difficult to navigate to begin with. If video is what you’re looking for, just navigate to the Links section of a show’s page and click on the episode you want.

Straight from the Source

Apart from the sites dedicated to streaming content, more and more networks are building their own on-site tools for streaming content from the source. For example, the big three networks all have streaming sites: the ABC Full Episode Player, the NBC Video Library, and CBS Video. If you missed a show you’re dying to catch online, be sure to check the web site of the network it aired on to see if it’s available.

BBC iPlayer

The BBC iPlayer streams content from up to 250 programs from the British Broadcasting Corporation. BBC iPlayer restricts streaming to the UK-only, but like Hulu, setting up a proxy with an application like previously mentioned Hotspot Shield has worked for many people looking to get around these restrictions.

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You’ve seen the best options, so now it’s time to vote for your favorite.
Which is the Best Site to Stream TV?
( surveys)
The internet is an excellent new frontier for keeping up with the TV shows you love, but it’s certainly not the only way new technology is making it easier to watch TV. For more, check out six ways to catch your favorite TV shows. Whether or not your favorite site made the list, let’s hear more about it in the comments.