Are you one of those people who really love Skype, because it lets you…

1. talk with people from all over the world for free;
2. chat through a simple interface, without all the unnecessary bells and whistles that many other messengers feature;
3. have video conversations?

Then we have good (and possibly some bad) news for you. Let’s start with the good news: a new beta version has been released. Skype for Windows 5.0 build 123 beta is available for download, and here’s what new in it:

• 10-way group video calling
• Skype Home experience
• Offline instant messaging
• New contact search and add experience
• Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions
• Post call experience
• General User Interface refresh

If you wonder what “Post call experience” is all about – don’t worry, we don’t have a clue either. We do like the 10-way group video calling feature, though (in a previous version this was limited to 5 only), and the offline instant messaging. Since my conditions for calling are indeed problematic (not everybody’s got access to the same amount of bandwidth, folks!) I’ll be interested in giving this one a go.

The possibly bad news is that I’ve read that this might be a free trial – what that means for the future of Skype I don’t really know, but I do hope they’ll keep the model as it is.

If you are not yet using dropbox, then maybe you should start considering it -it’s a fantastic tool for synchronizing your important files across multiple computers. If you are already a dropbox fan, then you might be interested in IDriveSync, which does essentially the same thing but with a few more options. Check out this review on downloadsquad for more details.

Okay, we know: you use Videolan‘s Media Player VLC (because you know what’s good for you), but what we don’t know is if you’re using Windows as well. If you are, then you might want to upgrade again, because some problems have been fixed:

A bit after the 1.1.3, an important security issue was discovery in most windows applications, and VLC is affected too. Since security issues matters, here is a new release, targeted for the Windows platform!

• Windows Dll loading security issue, in Qt4 and dmo modules – VideoLAN-SA-1005
• Fix for folders opening issue on Windows
• Updated translations

Go and get that upgrade, already!

Everybody’s favourite media player, VLC, has been upgraded to version 1.1.3. Everybody’s favourite music player? Sure! Because VLC can literally play just about any music or video file out there, and if it doesn’t play, then it’s most likely not music or film. It does so by using a series of internal codecs, so there’s no need to install any extra software, either: everything works straight out of the box.

Because this is an open source project, the volunteers behind this program have ported it to many different operating systems: Are you using Windows 2000 or something upwards of that, one of the various flavours of GNU/Linux, or MacOS X, perhaps…no problem: there’s a version for you. If your system is not supported, you can even get the source code and try to compile it yourself.

What is really fantastic is all the different kinds of input it supports. Sure, it can play something from your hard disk, but what about this: if you connect it to a DVB source (Digital Video Broadcasting, via your satellite receiver, your digital TV receiver, or cable TV), it will play that, too. Give it any kind of streaming media via the internet, and you make it happy. If there are subtitles available, it will show them, of course, and if there aren’t, you can always add them. You can even use VLC to send your own streaming music/video over the internet, but if you’re advanced enough to understand this, you probably already knew.

Are you still using Windows Media player? Will you please stop doing that immediately? Get this download, and you’ll thank us soon enough. And if you don’t know how to do that, we can always give you some tips.

In his blog post Social media and trying to drink from a firehose Jason Renshaw comes up with a few interesting observations -seasoned Twitter & facebook users will undoubtedly recognize that sometimes it really can get too much, and that you can indeed spend hours trying to keep up with things. Luckily enough, there are also a couple of applications that allow users to keep all their social accounts manageable. Read the rest of this entry »

Fastcompany has an interesting read about the impact of smartphones and handheld computers on the way we teach (or should teach).

When the Singer sisters were just 6 months old, they already preferred cell phones to almost any other toy, recalls their mom, Fiona Aboud Singer: “They loved to push the buttons and see it light up.” The girls knew most of the alphabet by 18 months and are now starting to read, partly thanks to an iPhone app called First Words, which lets them move tiles along the screen to spell c-o-w and d-o-g.

10 years ago, when I was giving Comenius / Grundtvig trainings and tried to persuade that very “soon everybody would have a digital photo camera”, many of the course participants scoffed at me. By now it’s hard to find a phone without a digital camera, and many of them have built-in functionality to send the videos that have been recorded straight to YouTube!

Tactile technology is making it easier for kids to learn how to use advanced technology, and is going to empower them in a way difficult to imagine for the current generation of teachers. Now does that sound like an interesting challenge to you, or what?

Many people have been trying to get rid of their Facebook accounts, and have found that Facebook is not that keen on letting you go. In fact, most of us will be able to use the “Deactivate account” option under Account > Application settings, but this just makes your account dormant. Log into it again, and it will be automatically activated.

But what if you really want to get rid of Facebook then? Head over to https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account.  You’ll get a page where you can choose to permanently delete the account. Just make sure you don’t log in for 14 days, and then everything will be gone for ever. (And yes, your friends will probably miss you.)

WordPress 3.0 has been released for quite a while now, but you know what we’re really missing out on, over here at Let’s Learn IT? We want *integration* ! Why is there still no plugin (that works) which can connect this site with, say, Facebook or so?

Ping.fm has support for the wordpress.com sites, but not for the wordpress.org sites (which is what we use). They’ve promised us that they’re working on a solution, though. Nice folks, those at Ping.fm.

Imagine you have a bunch of videofiles that you’d like to play on a standalone DVD player -with a nice menu of course. Well, in that case, DVD Flick is definitely worth while considering, not just because it is extremely simple, versatile, powerful but also because it is open source -oh joy! Read the rest of this entry »

Last week a minor update was released of WordPress 2.9, which itself was released halfway through December last year. So…what are the goodies brought to us in this shiny, new version? Well…if you are one of those people who find themselves throwing brilliant pieces of writing in the bin (and of course regretting having done so soon afterwards), then we have good news for you: 2.9 gives you the possibility for recovering postings from the bin. Images can be edited, too, and it has become easier to embed videos in posts.

This minor upgrade fixes 34 problems, and if you’ve experienced problems with any of these problems before, then now is a good time to do the update. And if you don’t want to download the upgrade, then you can always go upgrade automatically via the Tools > Upgrade menu in your blog’s admin area.