Episode #94
Hi Uncle Leo, First off I want to say I am a big fan of your show. I watch everday on G4TechTV. Now to my question. I was wondering if you could inform me of (preferably free) software to get my foot in the door of the flash animation/ game developing world. Also could you please tell me if there is any way to hook up an internal hard drive from a desktop computer to a laptop. I am using a approx. 5–6 year old IBM Thinkpad and the hard drive is a Maxtor 120 Gig. I thank you in advance for your answer! Thanks
Robert, Richmond Hill, ON
We’ve recently had the chance to hear about Adobe’s new Flex toolkit, which allows users to create Flash applets and games. In fact, our guest Jim Rutherford showed how to use Flex to build a game in this episode: http://www.labwithleo.com/notes/53/
As for the hard drive: no problem. All you need is something called an external hard drive enclosure designed for desktop drives; simply remove the drive from the computer, install it in the enclosure and then plug it into the notebook via USB or FireWire (depending on your enclosure’s interface). You should be able to find one for $50 or less.
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Air Date: October 18, 2007
TranscriptCaller Questions
- Darwin, Saskatoon, SK
- Robert, Richmond Hill, ON
- MacKenzie, Tracyville, NS
Yewell's Jewels
- LClockwindows
LClock is a very simple program that makes the Windows’ clock look like a Windows Longhorn Clock. LClock also comes with a simple but configurable popup calendar that opens when the systray clock is clicked. No more double clicking on the clock just to view the calendar in the “Date and Time Properties” dialog box.
Sean's Shinies
- Fly Fusion Pentop Computer
$80
Learning can be a real pain, so anything that makes it more fun is welcome — say hello to the Fly Fusion Pentop Computer…not only can you use it to play educational games (with separately sold books), but you can use it to upload your handwriting to your computer…but you’ll need special patterned notebooks with the menu controls built in. And if that weren’t enough, the pen can also play MP3s. If that isn’t more impressive than an HB pencil, I don’t know what is.
Pro
- interactive games are fun
- uploads handwriting to PC
- plays MP3s too
Con
- bulky design hard to hold
- locked into special notebooks
Kate’s Tips
- Firefox Showcase
By Josep del Rio
Showcase provides a new way to manage your Firefox tabs and windows by showing them as thumbnails in a single window, tab or sidebar. Includes a find bar that will filter the thumbnails, and the capability to select the thumbnails in the same way you would select files in your system.
Find the Showcase menu in the ‘View’ menu (just under ‘Sidebar’). The default shortcuts are listed there. Those may be changed using the Keyconfig extension. New buttons will be available when customizing the toolbar.
Showcase can be shown as a window, tab or sidebar. Also, it has two modes: global (which will show thumbnails for all tabs of all windows) and local (thumbnails only for the current Firefox window).
Just click the thumbnail of the browser you want, and it will be shown to you automatically. You may also right click in those thumbnails to perform the most usual operations on them. Multiple thumbanils can be selected by using left click and holding down the Control key, or using the same selection actions you would use in your system. Mouse middle button can be used to zoom a thumbnail. Use Control-F in Showcase to use the find bar.