Tunes - Tuneflow

You just got a new iPod or other music player over the holidays, and your older iPod looks like Craigslist fodder. Here are at least 10 reasons to re-consider its worthiness.

Windows only: BitTorrent super-host The Pirate Bay claims its ViO MobileConverter tool reduces nearly any video's size by 20 percent and converts it for mobile devices faster than anything else. Let's see about that. Why the speed and quality test? Simply because ViO, with all the nuance of the typical Pirate Bay communication, claims this on its home page:

Windows only: BitTorrent super-host The Pirate Bay claims its ViO MobileConverter tool reduces nearly any video's size by 20 percent and converts it for mobile devices faster than anything else. Let's see about that. Why the speed and quality test? Simply because ViO, with all the nuance of the typical Pirate Bay communication, claims this on its home page:

In the past year we've highlighted hundreds of Windows apps aimed at making your life easier, boosting your computer productivity, and powering up your PC. For those of you who weren't able to keep up, here's a look back at the most popular Windows downloads of 2008.

Sure you could probably pick up a pleather case for nearly any electronic device you own, courtesy of eBay and healthy international trade routes, but it would lack the charm of a hand crafted leather case. There is an excellent tutorial over at the DIY blog Instructables on how to make a molded leather case.

The proliferation of thumb drives and external hard drives has made optical media like DVDs seem a little less handy—but there are still plenty of ways to put DVDs to good use. These shiny, multi-gigabyte discs can run entire operating systems, put movies on your computer and vice-versa, host a robust copy of Wikipedia, and do so much more, if you know how to work them.

Windows only: Free application Eraser Portable puts previously mentioned Eraser—the popular open-source secure file deletion tool—on your thumb drive for secure file deletion on the go. Like the original, Eraser Portable can wipe any hard drive, optical media, files, folders, encrypted data, the Recycle Bin, and pretty much any other data you want to kill.

It's hump day and I was looking for a quick, fun project to try out. So I figured I try something easy I found over at the Make Magazine blog earlier this week—a set of speakers made from paper cups and a pair of earbud headphones originally created by artist Dmitry Zagga (in no small amount of jest).