You gotta love Gordon Kelly over at trustedreviews.com and his review and comparison of the iPod shuffle and the Sansa Clip.

 This wasn't announced during the Let's Rock / Let's Whimper event late night, but Apple has quietly updated the iPod shuffle... 

 So what has exactly happened? Well, if you go to the Apple Store you'll see 'NEW' in capital letters stamped all over them but it really should just say 'Respray'. 

Yup, while rivals such as the Sansa Clip and ZEN Stone Plus sport screens and feature such revolutionary ideas as song selection and sequential play, not to mention double the capacity (4x in the case of the Clip) for less money Apple has decided what they were lacking was more colours.

Consequently you can get the same screen-less, FM tuner-less, voice recording-less, sequential play-less, 1GB and 'flagship' 2GB players now in blue, green, pink and - in an Apple store only exclusive - (PRODUCT) red. Wow. Prices remain £32 and £45 respectively and with the new 8GB iPod nano starting at £109 the company really does need to rethink its budget player offering... 

In related news, fiscally sharp TR readers have pointed out to us a very interesting observation: while iPod price cuts were widely heralded by Steve Jobs last night their translation into pounds has been even more callous than ever. The main offender is the 32GB iPod touch which having previously cost £279 in its first iteration now costs £289 in its second. The US price: $399 (£227) and excuse me, but aren't flash memory prices meant to be in free-fall? 

Apple, you've had better shows... 

Update: The ever wise LostSwede has also noted the new 32GB iPod touch at £227 ($399) is only £8 more expensive than a 16GB iPod touch in the UK. Cheers Apple... 

 See his complete post here.

There comes times that you may want to combine a couple (or more) MPG video files into just one larger file. I had this case come up just recently.

I needed to decompile a dvd that I wanted to watch using my thumb drive. Unfortunately my thumb drive is only 2.0 Gigs and the movie was over 4 gigs. There are several ways to copy a DVD to your computer and I won't get into how to do this now. But I needed to copy it to my thumb drive in the original VOB structure that the DVD uses instead of one large file.

If you are familiar with DVDs and their layout you will know that they usually breakdown the movie into about 1 Gig VOB files.

At the end of the day after doing the decompiling I had all the original VOB files on my computer and , if you didn't know it, a VOB file is the same exact thing as a MPG file just with a different extension. 

So to "turn" them into MPGs I simply renamed each one of the VOB files to an extension of MPG. Now I had the MPG files I neded and I could copy them to my thumb drive seperately,  move them or watch them and then delete as needed. Cool deal I was all set.

But after all of this was done I still had the individual MPG files on my computer and could use them all combined into on movie file for use later. So how do we do this?

I did a quick Google search for "combine MPG files" and of course it came up with several programs that could do it, but they were not free or they were crippled in some way.

After thinking about it awhile I knew I could do something like this with Windows Movie Maker, but that was going to be a bit of a chore too. I have to import each one, select the output, etc, etc.

So I dug back into my old DOS userbrain and remembered that I could use the good old "Copy" command to combine files. So I did this and I was all set. No program to download, no Movie Maker stuff, just plain old add this file to this file stuff. :)

Here is how it is done.

If you have 2 or more MPG files that you want to combine simply go to your Windows  Start > Run icon. Click on it and type in CMD. You will then be presented with a new window.

You can then go to the directory that holds your files. If you don't know are not familiar with basic  DOS commands that Windows uses see here for a good listing on how to do this and what they all mean.  

Once you are in the directory (or Folder as Windows like to call it) you simply run the copy program and combine the files like this.

Type in "Copy" and then "/b"  (The "b" command tells it to use Binary mode, very important!") after this type in the names of the MPG files that you want to combine with a "+" (plus) sign after each one.  Its imparative that you type in the file names of your MPGs in the order that you want them combined. Then I entered the name of what Iwanted to movie to be called after I combined them.

In my case I had 4 MPG video files I wantred to combine so I typed in:

"copy /b 1.mpg + 2.mpg + 3.mpg + 4.mpg mymovie.mpg" (without the quotes). 

After it was done copying, and this could take some time if you are copying large files, I now had the movie all combined into one video file I could do with whatever I wanted.

No program to buy, no creating a video with Windows Movie Maker, jsut plain old DOS commands. You can use this with any video files without a probelm at all.

If you have any questions on this let me know.

It may be about time to dig out that old library card.

Hoping to draw back readers, libraries have vastly expanded their lists of digital books, music, and movies that can be downloaded to a computer or MP3 player -- and it doesn’t cost a cent, unlike, say, media from Apple Inc’siTunes or Amazon.com Inc.

In Phoenix, for instance, branches have banded together to create a digital library that currently has about 50,000 titles of e-books, audiobooks, music and videos that can be “checked out” from anywhere.

Once discovered, says Tom Gemberling, the electronic resources librarian for the Phoenix Public Library, the program often proves wildly popular.

Not long ago, Gemberling visited a local trailer park to speak about the program to 100 or so seniors -- who regularly travel the roads touring in their recreational vehicles. “They were cheering and screaming by the end,” he said. “They were so excited. They’re RVers, so they can go anywhere on the road, find a computer, go into the Phoenix Public Library catalogue, download a book and play it while they drive down the highway.”

Available in thousands of libraries across the country, the programs work like this: First you need a library card, access to the web, and some easily downloadable software -- the Adobe Digital Editions, the Mobipocket Reader or the OverDrive Media Console.

At that point, just browse around the library’s website, select some titles, add them to a digital book bag and click the download button. If the title isn’t available, it can be placed on hold for downloading later.

Depending on the library and title, the item remains on your computer for one to three weeks before disappearing, meaning you don’t have to bother with returning a book, CD or DVD to the actual library.