ffmpegmenu -One click Video Conversion

KDE users, here’s a neat application that creates a ’service’ in your file manager that allows you to easily convert videos to other formats using ffmpeg.

ffmpegmenu is what you need. After copying the simple script into the right directory, an action will appear in the sidebar of either Konqueror or Dolphin (your choice), which easily allows you to convert selected video to DVD, MPEG or into iPod format with a couple of clicks.

The script itself is very simple, such that it’s definitely possible to edit it to customise the commands it runs to make your own ffmpeg conversion options. It does require you have ffmpeg and the necessary codecs to convert to DVD, MPEG and iPod already installed, as it is just a loader which calls ffmpeg. But enough of that, how do you actually install the script?

Well, first of all, download it from KDE-Apps, direct download link here.

When that file opens, save it as ffmpegmenu.desktop and put it on your desktop. All we now need to do is to copy the file into place.

You’ll probably need to be root to do this, so run su - first (or Ubuntu users, prefix the cp command below with sudo).

# cd /home/yourusername/Desktop
# cp ffmpegmenu.desktop /usr/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus
# cp ffmpegmenu.desktop /usr/share/apps/d3lphin/servicemenus

Feel free to omit either the Konqueror or Dolphin command depending on whether you want this installed in one, the other, or both. Once installed, highlighting a .avi file should show the following in the sidebar (this screenshot from Dolphin):

And it’s done!

If you want to uninstall, simply remove the ffmpegmenu.desktop files as root, like so:

# rm /usr/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus
# rm /usr/share/apps/d3lphin/servicemenus

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Buzzword

Now, over the past year or so there has been a real move to push applications that live on the desktop into the online world.

Adobe made news a few months back by announcing that a basic version of Photoshop is to exist as an online application.

And now they have bought a company which has developed a sophisticated online word processor.

And it is creating quite a buzz as its name would suggest.

Buzzword is a flash-based application which - as it lives on the web - does not require any download onto your PC, apart from the basic Flash player that is.

In its look and feel it is definitely way ahead of Google docs. The menu system is in the form of toolbars which whizz across the screen once you have selected one.

It looks great and while it does not have the functionality of, say, Microsoft Word, you can do things like automatic spell checking as you type as well as insert tables, images, and lists.

And while a few basic features are notable by their absence, like word count and copying and pasting to and from the desktop applications, support for new features are being added all the time.

Once you have finished your document, you can save it in a regular .doc or .rtf format and import it into your desktop word processor.

Buzzword

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