Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.
There are a lot of online sources to help you find files online, but many of them are limited to only a few upload sites and don’t remove old links. Others put really annoying sponsored links up that look like regular results to get you to click on a paid link. This week, I was asked to review a file sharing search site called General-Files.com. It promises a cleaner search of more files with a bunch of features.
Finding and Downloading Files
There’s not really a lot to finding files to download online. Generally, you search and something will come up. The problem I’ve had in the past is that I’ll search Google and half of the results are other file search sites that generate a fake hit for sponsored links. In this case, however, I skip Google and head to General-Files.com and search for my file. The search is pretty quick and returns just what I’m looking for in most cases. Some people will use sites like this to download movies for free, which can be illegal in some cases. Others will visit hoping to download free music, which comes with the same legal concern. This is not the case all of the time, though. Many artists will share their music online for free and it’s perfectly legal. I often use a site like this to find fonts, clip art, a viral video or image, or any number of things. The possibilities are virtually endless as this site includes results not only from Uploading, MegaUpload, RapidShare and many others, but it also returns direct links to files from around the web.
In addition to searching for what you know you want, you can also choose from their lists of Most Downloaded, Most Commented and Most Rated, as well as Hot Files and the Latest uploads. Just use common sense when you download random files. Finally, when you’re ready to download a file you can click right out to the site that hosts the file and begin your download one file at a time, or you can queue them up to download all at once.
Additional Features
For those who want to be more involved in the social process, you can vote for files on a five-star scale, comment on files, and even report some of the less savory content out there. You can also send a Good Report to indicate that the file is generally good, virus free, or erotic in nature. Reporting bad content warns others against downloading it and comments and votes help guide the “Most” and “Hot” lists mentioned above. It’s the same concept as liking and commenting on Facebook posts. And speaking of liking on Facebook, each file’s details page includes a Like button so you can help others find it, too.
One of the features I nearly overlooked is the Alert option. Alerts are turning up everywhere these days. From Facebook push notifications on your iPhone to Google searches, alerts are a popular way to find out right away when something happens. On General-Files.com, you can set a search alert to let you know via email when someone uploads a file matching your search criteria. This feature will be invaluable when you’re searching for a hard-to-find file.
General Conclusions
With any file hosting site or search, you need be aware of what you’re downloading. General-Files is a little more helpful in this regard when the reporting features are used. The clean, ad-free and fast search along with compiled lists and alerts make this file search stand out heads above the others I’ve come across. It’s in my bookmarks and should have a place in yours if you find yourself searching for files often.
Everyone loves toys. Better still, toys that are remote controlled. Even better still, flying R/C toys. Still just a big kid, I was excited to put the S107G Mini Gyro R/C Helicopter from XenonProject.com to the test.
The S107G came in a long box which included the helicopter, remote control, USB charging cable, and a manual. The six AA batteries required for the remote control were not provided but easy enough to come up with. The helicopter came pre-charged and ready for flight. After using up the 6-7 minutes of flying time, I had to fully charge it for about an hour before getting to play again. The flying time was a little less than a helicopter I previously reviewed and the charging time was about the same. This helicopter is also much more sturdy, making it more comfortable to crash. The controller felt much lighter than expected, perhaps even a little cheap. It even has a 3-position labeled switch that only really has two positions to set it to. This, however, was of little concern to me as it worked fine and the helicopter is the piece that stands to take all the abuse, not the controller.
Learning To Fly
Even though the manual has some decent instructions on how to fly an R/C helicopter, it is definitely an acquired skill. As you may be able to tell from the video below, it can start out rough, but gets better with practice. The S107G was surprisingly easier to control and priced lower than the other R/C helicopter I own. Although the flight time is a little less, I got more out of it because less of it was crashing time.
In the video, I practiced turning and landing, even crash-landing the S107G in a 10×10 inch box. Watch the video to get a better feel for the experience.
Conclusions
$24.99 (web price) for the S107G feels like a steal for a nice starter R/C helicopter, making it a great gift for kids big and small. In fact, XenonProject has a lot of comfortably-priced R/C toys on the site. For a good helicopter at a good price this is an easy win.
Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.
One of the most complicated things to do for the first time is build a web site. Most people don’t even know what the HTML acronym stands for, much less how to turn hundreds or thousands of lines of HTML into a web site. And let’s be honest. Your first web site is usually hideous just like mine was. One way around this is to hire a website developer to create your site. An alternative for those without a huge web development budget is a site like the free website maker reviewed here.
(viewing a photo in my new site’s photo gallery)
How uCoz.com Works
The idea behind uCoz is pretty simple. They provide a web site that helps you create your own website online. From choosing a site name and design template to installing and configuring even the small details of what they call site modules, the whole process is done without the need for any real skill, an HTML book, Photoshop, or even a paid hosting account because uCoz hosts the site for free.
(one of the many configuration panels)
When you build a website, you’ll get a control panel, and this is where all the magic happens. From the control panel, you can change basic site settings, languages and wording, and add, edit, and remove pages as well as view stats on individual pages. Becoming familiar with how everything works in the control panel is the first order of business that you should attend to. This was pretty easy with help along the way, but there were a couple areas that took a little longer to comprehend. In general, most processes were easy to follow and accomplish, but there is a lot to play with.
The uCoz.com Web Top
The part that surprised me a little was the uCoz Web Top. The Web Top is a web interface that looks and acts remarkably like Windows. With everything from background configuration and even its own programs, the Web Top is your gateway to your websites. This is because they let you have more than just one free site. At first glance, the Web Top looked like a very over-done way of providing simple access to your multiple sites, but after playing, I realized that it offers a lot more than that. It has games, which I think is fun but counter-productive. More importantly, it has applications built right in. Beyond the simple Calculator and Task Manager are much more useful applications like the code development program and Pixlr, the image editor with lots of great features.
(creating images is easy with the Pixlr image editor)
I develop complex websites all day long in PHP and the tools I use the most are Photoshop for design and Zend for code editing. The offering of similar tools from within the Web Top makes this a much more viable web development and hosting platform for those with a little more skill and creativity.
Features and Modules
After you’ve created a basic web site you can add and configure a number of site sections or modules such as forums, photo galleries, a guest book, online games, a blog, polls, classified ads, and files. Each module is pretty configurable and most of them include user interaction like being able to give a photo anywhere from one to five stars. The sites also allow for user registration so that users can log in to interact. Behind the scenes, as an admin, you can block users, set up groups and permissions, and the list really does go on.
One of the cooler features I came across was the use of content tokens. A simple token I used was for an image. I uploaded an image to use with content and the system generated a token $IMAGE1$ for displaying the image. I copied that token to the spot in content where I wanted the image to appear and it showed up there. A more useful example was the widget token that was created when I generated a Twitter widget. I then just used the token in the same way I had used the image token and the Twitter feed widget appeared in the site.
Conclusions
uCoz.com looks great, but hides some really cool features behind your user login. I had no idea about Web Top until I was already using it. Other than the occasional broken image in the interface, everything was very intuitive and I had a basic site with some fun features up pretty quickly. The only area I felt needed some attention is the selection of templates. There’s a few nice templates to choose from (and you can modify any of them or make your own), but the selection is pretty slim. The non-commercial limitation is the only thing that should scare away those looking for a site on a shoe-string budget, but for a personal site, I don’t know of a better free solution. If you need a personal site, this should be your first stop.
At some point, almost everyone finds the need to record audio for one reason or another. For most of us, it’s just for remembering something important, as was the case the other day when I used the Voice Memo feature on my iPhone to make note of my brother’s new address. For professionals, however, audio recordings require a little more attention to detail. The Olympus LS-7 PCM recorder is one of the devices made for professionals.
Lots Of Features
Offering 24bit and 96kHz Linear PCM Recording, the LS-7 is not designed to just record a bit of audio for playback later. The sound quality is provided for professional use, offering crisp, clear audio recording and playback for things that require a little more fidelity and clarity than your shopping list. As you may be aware, higher quality in any digital media almost always means more storage space will be required and used. Thankfully, Olympus included 4GB of built in memory and a micro SD memory card slot for even more audio. At 4GB, you can get (according to the Olympus site) about 1.75 hours at a higher PCM quality and much more with lowered quality and varying formats, up to over 1,000 hours at the lowest quality with WMA files. In reality, anyone who pays the professional price for a high-end recorder like this will usually record in the upper limits of quality.
The recording and playback features are too numerous for me to go into detail on all of them, but there were so many, that I actually felt a bit overwhelmed at first. After playing with the LS-7 a bit and reading through the quick start guide, I was quickly navigating through several folders for audio file storage, recording, deleting, and changing many of the settings. The user interface required this practice in order for me to begin to feel comfortable, but it didn’t take long. With optional audio descriptions of every menu item and option, there was almost a feeling that the female voice was walking me through it. After getting comfortable with the menus, the voice can be turned off as well. The second feature that caught my attention was the storage folders. I thought it a bit odd that the LS-7 came with several pre-named folders by default rather than just adding and naming folders as needed. This is, perhaps, the one thing I would change about this device if I could. The final UI feature that impressed me was how I delete files on the LS-7. Although it sounds like a small thing, anyone who has ever lost any digital content that they created from scratch knows the value of confirmation before deleting anything. In this case, I would hit the Erase button that was ominously placed in a very easy to hit spot on the front of the device and I would be given an erase menu with the option to erase or cancel. After choosing Erase from the menu, I had to confirm. It’s an extra step, but it put a physical Erase button in a very easy place to find while not sacrificing my recordings to any mistakes.
The three built in microphones, including two Stereo Directional mics and a Center Omni Directional mic, are very prominent on the top of the LS-7. In my testing, I was easily able to see the Peak lights for the left and right light up as I moved my sound source. Upon playback, it was clear that they picked up as intended, too. Of course, this is another feature not needed for all applications, but when you need any kind of stereo or directional recording, this is a must. Other physical features included a built in speaker, microphone and headphone jacks, a large back-lit screen and even rechargeable batteries.
Device And Audio Quality
Weighing in at 3.17 ounces and with 4.4 x 1.5 x 0.6 inch dimensions, the LS-7 is small and portable, but also feels very sturdy and comfortable to hold and use. I wouldn’t want to drop it, but if I did, I think an external blemish might be the worst of it. To protect against that, a padded carrying sleeve is included, too, making the idea of breaking it accidentally a little tough to imagine. In addition to the features I mentioned above, the user interface as a whole is very detailed and easy to navigate with practice. Using the large screen well, Olympus left little to the imagination, freeing the professional to think about the work to be done.
The microphones picked up awesomely in my testing. I spoke normally, yelled and whispered and the LS-7 picked up every bit of my insanity clearly. Just to throw a curve ball at it, I even exited my home office with the LS-7 in my pocket, recording, to talk to my wife. The very beginning of the recording was lower, but after a couple seconds, everything she and I said was as clear as if I was holding a microphone in my hand.
Conclusions
The $199 retail price tag sets the LS-7 clearly out of the reach of those who don’t need a professional PCM recorder, but for those who do, it’s a welcomed and comfortably-priced offering. With an army of features, high quality microphones and intelligent design, the Olympus LS-7 makes a great little recorder for those with big needs.
