This Christmas, Get Closer with Your Family through Video Chat and have fun with Santa Claus nick face!

Traveling to spend this Christmas with family may cost you a good sum of time and money. That seems to be not a good choice, especially when you don’t have enough time and need to save money for some more important plans. How would you like to be able to see them when they open their Christmas gifts from you? The answer is you can do it with the help of video chatting. Here below is how you can do it.

No More Long Distant Phone Calls

First, you will need to have a webcam plugged into any of USB ports in your PC or laptop. Most new computers already have one, but if yours doesn’t, you can pick one up at most stores and it may cost you around $100 for a good quality one. Then you will easily plug it into an empty USB slot. If you have a PC and also have a laptop, just decide which computer you will want to use. The laptop is sometimes preferred because you can walk around the house while chatting; even you can sit it on a table or somewhere and chat as you are cooking dinner. So each member in your family can have more private time with the distant family members.

Next, you will need to use some chat provider. I think the top are AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Skype ; you can download them from the Internet. Check each out and then register an account with the one you prefer; they are often free and easy. You may also need to check to see if your family also uses the same chat provider, because you and your family will need to use the same provider to be able to chat.

The Fun Showtime of Santa Clause

Once you have downloaded and installed the chatting software, just start the program, sign in and you can start talking to your family. Also check with your chat provider as some allow you to create groups and you can video chat with more than one group at a time. If your family has some kids, you can make some fun for them through video chatting. You can try AV Webcam Morpher, a fun software program that allows users to be creative in online activities. The program will simulate a webcam to broadcast for you through nickfaces. You can create your own nickfaces or use pre-made nickfaces to change your online appearance.

The program not only provides you with pre-made nickfaces but also brings you tools to create more nickfaces by yourself. Use the program to prepare for the kids a show called “Santa Clause’s Showtime” on video chatting. There is a Santa Clause nickface available to download at http://www.audio4fun.com/nickfaces.htm or create your own nickface for the show. When the kids open their Christmas gifts from you, with just a click, you will change into Santa and say Merry Christmas and best wishes to them. You will make the kids really surprised and excited.

You should set up a time that you will be video chatting with your family and before that time, gather up your Christmas cards and gifts from them, family pictures and letters, etc. and make a list of stories and things that you want to tell them. If you will be visiting them on the Christmas day, find a comfy chair and a pot of tea and turn on a little Christmas music and enjoy the time with your family.

You will feel like your family is by your side and you never feel lonely in Christmas thanks to video chat. Not only in Christmas, you can feel very near to your family everyday with the help of video chat. No more long distance and loneliness.

Be Happy and Merry Christmas!

By Eric McDaniel

http://www.articlesnatch.com

Making Your Home Video More Memorable This Christmas

Producing home videos of your holidays will be really fun and enjoyable for your family and friends, and also bring you lots of beautiful memories. The best home movies should concentrate on the most wonderful moments and should skip all the uninteresting details that may bore viewers. It’s not any kind else of recording; it’s a home movie that means for entertainment only.

You should first rough out the scenes you want to capture and their length; especially if this is a home movie of holiday like Christmas. You should consider the moments you want to capture. For example, if a trip is just part of the holiday and you just want to record it as a segment of the movie, map it out in advance and record the best places that you visit. Make a detailed log of everything recorded so that you will be able to edit later when you begin to put together all the captured videos. Keep the log with the camcorder so that you can cut out scenes you don’t need as you go along.

Always provide action to make the film more interesting because people in action in the film are much more interesting than static shots of people just standing still. Remember scenery is fine in small doses; as long as it can add context to the film. Recorded voices are usually garbled or too low for this kind of film. So you can speed up the action to give the impression of an entire action in just a few seconds. Use voice-over to comment on the action. For dubbing on the action, you can try AV Video Morpher. The program can help you dub your own voices into movies for comments.

Editing the movie after the trip can be made easy. You already have the list of shots you have recorded. Use it to put the shots together into a coherent film. With subtitles for each clip you can make a finished film or any number of finished productions. Also AV Video Morpher can help you insert subtitles into your clips. You can change the chronology of the clips and put titles at the beginning of each version.

Be as creative as possible without producing an incoherent jumble. Keep your finished products short. Three minutes usually takes three hours to put together. So make several three minute films to keep the task doable and to keep your audience in their seats. The transition periods between segments will give those who were filmed a chance to reflect on the moments they shared together. These short segments make great gifts when saved onto DVDs as mini films or you can put together a longer DVD version and give that to the actors and actresses. You and they can then save them onto PCs or laptops. AV Video Morpher can help you burn your film into DVDs or convert from DVDs into your PC or laptop under multi video formats.

AV Video Morpher is a movie editing program of AVnex. It can help you produce your own movies by dubbing your own voices into movies, adding effects, and then burning it all to a DVD. Also you can remove the original voices from any movie or clip, and dub in your own voices later.

Your best travel clips may have educational value when uploaded onto internet sites like YouTube or as classroom aids. If you just let your films settle into your private archive, your time and effort may be wasted. Your films could be out visiting interesting places, just as you were when recorded them.

Have fun and Merry Christmas!

By Eric McDaniel

http://www.articlesnatch.com

How to create unique Christmas Music your own way

If you feel sick and tired of playing the same Christmas music every year, there’s one thing you should know that the artists always try to put out the albums of their new own versions of traditional Christmas songs. The songs may be the same every year, but the artists put their own takes on them to make them fresh.

The artists use a little creativeness to jazz or even rock the songs up and so on; so new albums of Christmas music are born every year. However, the albums are easy to find in any CD store; so it seems to be impossible if you want to have unique Christmas music of your own, except you create new versions by yourself. The artists use their creativeness to create new versions of traditional Christmas songs; you can do it, too. The artists need bulky studios to make new versions; you can equip yourself a studio, too. Thanks to the development of technology, you can equip yourself a virtual studio that cost you much less than a real one.

You can try Music Morpher Gold , which equips you with many tools to create remixes or medleys of traditional Christmas songs by myself. You can add some effects such as beats, echoes, drums, basses, etc into the songs or change the timbre, pitch, tempo of them. This is a great way to spice up any Christmas party; and it’s also a great way to add something extra to your Christmas music, at least for yourself to enjoy, or specially if you’re sick of the same old albums.

Renewing Your Favorite Christmas Songs

Your favorite Christmas music likely hasn’t changed for a very long time, but the artists can always add new instruments, sing the Christmas songs with a faster or slower tempo, or they may add or take out words as they see fit. The artists coming out with the Christmas music albums play your favorite songs but they may also come out with their own songs. It’s nice when they do this because it shows that they are skilled enough to mix it up with a little bit of old with a little bit of new. The result is that no two of these albums are ever the same.

Like the artists – but not that professional in fact – also you can change the songs or create new mixes and medleys from them without so much effort. Using Music Morpher Gold, you can mix the songs, make the tempo faster or slower, change the pitch or timbre of the vocals, and add sound effects, beats, drums, basses and so on; so your favorite Christmas songs always become fresh. The program also allows you to remove the vocals or music from songs. However, the outputs after removing are not really good, but what it can do about removing vocals and music is pretty good; Just little of music software programs of the same kind can do that.

The program also allows you to edit songs in single track and multi track waveform windows, which helps you to mix voice with the voices of your favorite artists. The greatest thing is that you have opportunities to do remixing or even DJing by myself, thanks to the software, then share your works with your friends, or at least enjoy them by yourself.

Making Great and Unique Christmas Gifts

The Christmas albums of every year by your favorite music artists can also make great gifts. When an artist comes out with one of these albums, it’s always a treat for the people who love the artist that put it out. So keep that in mind when you’re shopping for the people on your list and try to remember who their favorite artists are so that you can pick up these Christmas music albums to put under the tree come Christmas time.

Of course, if you don’t have the money for albums or CDs, you can make them by yourself as unique gifts. Just use the songs from your old Christmas albums and make some remixes, add effects, and save them. Then use the burner built right in Music Morpher Gold to create unique CD gifts, or use the soundwave editor to cut music clips from your favorite songs and create unique Christmas ringtones. If there’s one thing Christmas has an abundance of, it’s Christmas songs.

Have Fun and Merry Christmas!

By Eric McDaniel

http://www.articlesnatch.com

Some Ways To Make Children Believe That Santa Clause Exists

Part of the fun of Christmas is seeing the excitement of your children when they think that Santa Clause is going to come down chimneys and give all children wonderful gifts in the night. It is magic and kindness and it always makes children happy. It will be a sad time if some day children start to doubt that Santa exists or even no longer believe in Santa Clause and the magic of Christmas.

The Spirit of Christmas

If your older children start telling the younger that Santa doesn’t exist, talk to them. It might be that your older children have outgrown the belief in Santa, but you should explain to them the history behind Santa Clause. Talk to them about Saint Nicholas who existed once and was a kind man that gave at Christmas to those who were less fortunate. Explain to the children that Christmas is the season of giving, and remind them that Santa Clause always gives freely from his heart. Also do not let your younger children see or hear you talk about Santa Clause as though he doesn’t exist. Children learn from their parents and if you make it clear that you believe he exists, then they will believe in Santa Clause.

Together with your children set out cookies and milk for Santa Clause. Children enjoy putting out milk and cookies as well as making cookies with Mom or Dad. Making cookies for Santa Clause is half of the fun for children. Tell your children to leave out not only milk and cookies for Santa but also some carrots for the reindeers. This gives your children something fun to look forward to. You can even bake some cookies with your children to get them into the Christmas spirit.

Make sure there is at least one gift from Santa Clause. Also make sure you use a wrapping paper different from the other gifts. If you miss this, your children, even really young children, are likely to start believing that Santa Clause does not exist. Tell them that only nice children can get a toy from Santa Clause. So getting a gift from Santa Clause gives children something to look forward to in Christmas.

A Secret Phone Call from Santa Clause

On Christmas Eve, send the children to bed early. Tell them that Santa Clause can not come if they are still awake. If your children ask if Santa Clause is really going to come, go ahead and tell them yes. To make it more persuasive, you can make a secret call named  “a phone call from Santa Clause” to your children. Tell them that Santa Clause will call them at twelve o’clock before they go to bed. Then, when the clock strikes twelve, use your computer and some voice changing software to call them – of course don’t let your children know – and talk to them in the voice of Santa Clause from some movie about Santa Clause that your children ever watched. On the phone, tell them that they must be nice and go to bed early; also promise if they do so, they will see their gifts in the morning.
You can find some helpful voice changing software programs from the Internet or you can try a program I am using named Voice Changer Software Diamond. Use the program to change your voice and combine it with some VOIP program such as Google Talk, AIM or MSN to make the phone call. Although they can not meet Santa Clause, the call and the gifts they receive will make them believe that Santa Clause really exists. So sometime, to children, believing does not require seeing. 

There is no harm in letting your children believe in Santa. After all, Santa Clause is a representation of the spirit of giving away. Christmas is the season to give, so it is not a bad thing to let your children believe in Santa Clause.

Be Happy and Merry Christmas!

By Eric McDaniel

http://www.articlesnatch.com

50% OFF for AV Music Morpher Gold 4.0 – Weekend Sales From AVnex

www.audio4fun.com – AVnex Ltd. has just announced last week that the latest builds of its music products – including Music Morpher Gold, Music Morpher and MP3 Player Morpher – have just been tested and reported working well with Windows 7.

“On this occasion, we did offer the Weekend Sales for our AV Music Morpher Gold 4.0 software which is 50% OFF the original price on last weekend (December 5^th and 6^th, 2009). During the promotion period last weekend, we got hundreds of orders from music-lovers, two thirds of them had just upgraded to Windows 7. Therefore, we’ve decided to continue offering the same discount for this weekend. On this Saturday and Sunday (December 11^th and 12^th, 2009), you can get our AV Music Morpher Gold 4.0 at $49.98 and save $49.97. This offer just lasts for 02 days on this weekend, so, hurry up to save almost $50.” – said Jenny Yang, Head of Marketing & Sales.
AV Music Morpher Gold is a powerful package full of music tools with premium features including a multi-track recorder and editor, a whole suite of professional effects and AVnex’s famous patented vocal remover and extractor. The all-in-one music editor with the high-quality multi-track editor helps users mix songs better. The easy-to-use combined voice remover-extractor allows users to quickly create karaoke background music to sing along. The program will turn a humble PC into a fully-fledged recording studio giving users the power to make pop songs, funky remixes or even backing tracks. AV Music Morpher is music gear that is convenient and versatile, yet cost-effective for music lovers. This is a resourceful multi-channel music mixer that enables users to edit any number of channels for surround sounds. It has been improved with a multi-track editor and more cool music effects. The interactive funny space helps users enjoy special collections of funny sounds, ringtones, audio clips, etc. without using any browser. In comparison with AV Music Morpher Gold, AV Music Morpher (priced at $29.95 – no discount on this weekend) is a lighter edition, but it has almost the premium features except some ones such as Voice Extractor and Voice Remover – Center Filtering Method and some advanced music effects, which make the difference between the two editions.

More info on Avnex’s music software products commercial and free can be found at http://www.audio4fun.com, the official website of Avnex Ltd. Also the music software products commercial and free can be downloaded at http://www.audio4fun.com.
By Eric McDaniel

http://www.freepressrelease.com.au

Social Media? No Way. Social Middleware? Oh, Yes

In the world of IT, social buzzwords can be a real way to kill any interest in adopting applications that give the enterprise access to the consumer Web.

You have to speak their language. Social media? No way. Social middleware? Oh, yeah – now we are talking!

Socialware talks in a language that IT can understand. The company is offering social middleware products that help companies integrate social networks with a level of control that makes them comfortable that the access is compliant with government regulations and IT policies.

In many ways, companies have set up their own iron curtains to keep social interaction to a minimum.

It’s also fair to say that many companies are eager to let their employees engage with the social Web. But they want the risk managed, especially when it comes to interacting with social networks.

Socialware believes the missing component for the enterprise is a bridge layer that helps companies connect its people, processes and systems with the open, social Web.

Socialware offers feature access control to social networks. An admin panel allows the IT manager to block access to different features on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

For example, users may access LinkedIn but there may be features that the employee is not permitted to access. The feature is flagged with a message that tells the user they do not have permission to use it.

Socialware provides the security layers and controls that give corporate IT the comfort that the risk in exposing social networks can be managed with rules that reflect the policies of the organization.

Socialware is funded by Mike Maples, Jr., who is an investor in Twitter. It is also funded by Silverton Partners and G51. The management team members have backgrounds in Web 2.0 and the enterprise.

That’s a mix that can make for a winning combination in the enterprise space. Socialware’s technology is reflective of that experience. We’ll be interested in seeing how the company develops in the year ahead.

By Alex Williams

http://www.readwriteweb.com

MySpace buys online music service imeem

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – MySpace on Tuesday announced that it has bought online music service imeem and is weaving it into the social networking community.

“MySpace Music and imeem share a common vision and commitment to further enabling the socialization of content across the Web,” MySpace chief executive Owen Van Natta said in a blog post.

“This deal will allow us to leverage imeem’s industry leading technology and over time, meaningfully integrate their products into the MySpace Music experience.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Imeem launched in San Francisco in 2003 and became a popular online locale for streaming and sharing music free of charge. Imeem uses an ad-supported model to let users listen to Internet radio or embed songs at websites.

Imeem reported having more than 16 million users worldwide by the time it was bought by MySpace and went offline.

“In the coming weeks, our team will be working to take the aspects of imeem that users love and migrate them to MySpace Music,” Van Natta said.

“We’ll start that transition today by redirecting imeem users to MySpace Music to discover their favorite music.”

MySpace Music provides unlimited, free streaming of music, letting users customize and share playlists at the online social-networking service. MySpace Music is available in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

California-based MySpace Music claims the most comprehensive catalogue of audio tracks and music videos available online.

Along with free music options, the service enables users to buy songs as digital downloads from Apple’s online iTunes store.

Since being dethroned by Facebook as the world’s most popular online social networking community, News Corp.-owned MySpace has become an Internet venue where musicians famous or obscure can connect with music lovers.

http://news.yahoo.com

5 iPhone Apps to Get You Ready for Le Web

If you haven’t already heard, this week is the Paris-based Le Web Conference. ReadWriteWeb will be live blogging the event in the next couple of days, with startup writer Dana Oshiro attending with the Social Media Club House and news writer Frederic Lardinois attending as a TravelingGeek. The event will showcase some of Europe’s best and brightest tech companies. Below are a few resources for those attending the event:

1. Le Web iPhone app: A few days ago we wrote about the fact that Ustream and band app creation site Mobile Roadie have teamed up to deliver an official Le Web iPhone application. The service offers program information, maps and a feed of event-related news.

PicTranslator: PicTranslator allows users to take a photo of a menu or signage for instant translation. For $1 you’re given a chance to see basic translations, listen to pronunciations and try your hand at communicating in the language of love.

2. Tell Me Where: Based out of Paris, this service allows users to find nearby places in more than 15 categories including fashion, parking, tourism and restaurant-related picks. The iPhone app allows users to connect to their Facebook accounts and view places recommended by your friends. Users can also upload their photos and experiences using the app.

3. Metro Paris: This service allows users to navigate the Paris metro as well as the bus line with ease. Using your phone’s GPS, the service allows you to view your closest metro stations and offers real-time alerts on line interruptions. In late August, ReadWriteWeb covered this service’s augmented reality release. It is the first known augmented reality app to appear in the App Store.

4. Spotify: If you plan on being in Europe beyond the conference dates, you might want to signup for Spotify premium. The iPhone application offers users real-time file syncing and the ability to cache offline music playlists for use on the metro and other non-wifi enabled areas of the city.

5. Currency Converter: If you haven’t gotten used to converting currency, this application calculates the cost of all your rich and sumptuous meals.

By Dana Oshiro

http://www.readwriteweb.com

Christmas & New Year: You will need a Home Video Editor & Morpher. Get AV Video Morpher at 30% OFF. Valid till end of December 13, 2009

www.audio4fun.com – AVnex Ltd. has just announced the great week (from December 07, 2009 till end of December 13, 2009) for AV Video Morpher in which shoppers can get 30% OFF the original price.  “We all know that almost all people want to make their home videos recording their happy moments in the year-end and New Year holidays. We strongly believe that our AV Video Morpher software can help make things much easier and funnier for the amateur home movie makers.” said Jenny Yang, Head of Marketing & Sales.

“That’s why we decided to offer the Special Week for our AV Video Morpher software which is 30% OFF the original price. On this week, you can get our AV Video Morpher at $34.96 and save $14.99. This offer is just valid on this week only, so, hurry up to save almost $20.” – continued Jenny Yang, Head of Marketing & Sales.

AV Video Morpher 3.0 is an all-in-one home movie editor that completes your home entertainment center and inspires you to create your own movies, dub your own voices and burn your own DVDs. The program allows you to watch, morph, burn, convert, and capture movies, pictures, audio for your own home entertainment or for uploading. Also you can use the same capabilities to produce videos and presentations for business purposes. It features with many powerful video tools which help you do almost everything on movies.

The program provides you with a Movie Player with multi-format playback to play movies in AVI, WMV, MPG, MPEG, DAT, etc., so there is no need for you to care about video formats from now on; an Easy Audio Capturer to capture any audio output and save it in MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, etc., this will be a great tool for you music collection; a Video Converter to convert a whole video or selected video areas to a new movie and save it in AVI or WMV, so you will quickly expand your video clip collection with this tool; a Video Clip Marker to bookmark or save your favorite scenes or music moments from movies with original quality, so you can find the scene you love in no time; an Image Catcher to capture any scene or a series of images from your favorite movies and save them in BMP, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF, this is a great tool to enrich your collection of pictures from your favorite movies or you can capture your favorite shots and use them for your DVD covers. Also the program provides a Cover Editor lets you load any image from your PC to create your own DVD covers and labels, then add text to create great covers. Specially, AV Video Morpher is perfect for dubbing home movies and commercial movies. A Movie Voice Dubber helps you to record voices, change them into different styles and dub voices into movies. For more detailed information on AV Video Morpher, please visit http://www.audio4fun.com.

With this one-stop video tool, you can play and morph audio-video streams in real-time, add effects to movies, convert video files to AVI and WMV, edit subtitles, capture images, record DVD audio, burn, design DVD covers, and the most amazing, dub movies. It supports almost video formats (AVI, MPG, MPEG, MOV, etc.) Standing out from other movie players or movie editor software, AV Video Morpher makes dubbing movies easy thanks to its Voice Recorder, Remover and Dubbing Settings. To dub movies, you record voices from microphones, mix yours together with the originals, and merge to video files. Another good thing is its ability to real-time morph audio-video streams with audio and video effects, making the movie’s characters sound sexier, scarier, or more romantic. For example, you want to make a documentary movie. You can produce professional quality, black and white video for that perfect documentary effect. Or you can make your historic presentations more lively and compelling.

Using AV Video Morpher, you can produce your own movies by dubbing your own voices, adding effects, and then burning it all to a DVD. You can remove the original voices from any movie or clip, and dub in your own voices later. You can even make any actor become an alien, ghost, priest, etc with provided voice effects, so just add audio effects to change the voice of any actor to have more unique actors in all your own movies. Also you can capture any frame, clip, or entire movie your want, and then add in voices and effects to enhance and enlarge your video collections. That’s not all; many more good things else you can do on videos with AV Video Morpher. This is a great video tool for those who love not only enjoying videos but also editing and altering videos. For the best use of AV Video Morpher, many free online tutorials on the program can be found at http://mp3-player.audio4fun.com/free-online-tutorials.htm.

More info on Avnex’s audio and video software products commercial and free can be found at http://www.audio4fun.com, the official website of Avnex Ltd. Also the audio and video software products commercial and free can be downloaded at http://www.audio4fun.com.
Eric McDaniel

http://www.freepressrelease.com.au

MySpace Launches New Mobile Website with Built-in IM

Social networking site MySpace has just launched a new version of their mobile website designed for iPhone, Android and Palm WebOS users. The now-improved site at m.myspace.com offers quick access to your profile, including comments, your activity stream, your status, your inbox and more. Also available is a button dedicated to your photos, which makes it easier to browse through your albums. However, the most notable of the new features is the built-in instant-messaging function which makes the new mobile website a communication tool in addition to being just another social-networking app.

New Features

Although the mobile site at m.myspace.com is available from any mobile web browser, the newly updated version only visible to users of select smartphones. That’s because the new site is specifically designed to take advantage of features present in the advanced web browsers present on those devices. Users visiting from other phones will still encounter the older site, which itself was revamped at the beginning of the year, with a new look designed to make it more closely resemble the original, desktop-based website.

In addition to real-time updates from MySpace, the new mobile site introduces a built-in client which displays a web-enabled version of MySpace IM, the company’s own instant messaging service. By tapping on the “IM” button under the “Me” tab, you can instantly go online and chat with friends just as if you were using a standalone instant-messaging software application.

Mobile Website Now Outperforms Native Apps

What’s most interesting about the new web-based IM functionality in the updated site, is the fact that this is (for now) the only official tool provided by the company for IMing from your mobile device. Believe it or not, the dedicated mobile applications built for the iPhone, Android and Palm do not include an IM client at all. This has been a much-requested feature from MySpace users who have had no other choice but to use third-party applications like BeeJive IM, for example. In fact, a quick Google search on the topic leads to multiple MySpace forum posts begging for this feature as well as this user-created YouTube video demonstrating how you can get MySpace IM on your iPhone via other methods.

According to the company, 75% of its user base accesses the mobile web site, which could explain why they’ve focused on updating the site first before updating the native apps. However, it’s likely that the majority of their mobile web visitors are those without expensive smartphones, and so are being redirected to the older site. Without detailed statistics from the company itself, this is only a guess. But outside demographic studies show that MySpace is dominated by younger users, and is the social networking site with users in the lowest income levels. It seems probable that the network’s mobile-website visitors don’t own expensive mobile devices. That makes the smartphone mobile-website update and any forthcoming native app updates somewhat of a nonstarter for many MySpace users.

It will be interesting to see if MySpace soon updates their native applications to include this new functionality as well, or if they’re more sold on the idea that the mobile web is – or at least should be – the app of choice for their users.

If you’re interested in visiting the new site, you can do so via m.myspace.com using your phone’s web browser. The new changes are live for everyone as of now.

By Sarah Perez

http://www.readwriteweb.com