This post follows up on my previous post about podcasts where I recommended Webb Alert as a great source of tech news on a daily basis, well I’ve now had chance to do some more ‘research’ in this area and here’s what I found!

First a bit of background, I realise I’m perhaps a little late to the party when it comes to podcasts, but I recently bought myself an iPod Classic 80gb – the first ‘proper’ iPod that I’ve owned – I’ve only had an old iPod Mini which I bought off my brother a couple of years back, it was nothing special, but it was all I needed to play music in my car.

Anyway, this now means that I can play videos (a whole new world to me!) on my new iPod including video podcasts, so here’s a few of my favourite tech-related video podcasts.

Geek Brief TV

This is another daily tech news round-up which is about 5 minutes in length, it’s presented by Cali Lewis who’s just about as bubbly and cheery a host that you could find while at the same presents the tech stories and gadget features in a really cool way.

DL.TV

Regular host Robert Heron presents along with a guest host each week various computer-related topics from reviews, how-to’s, tech tips, viewer tech pics, they even have a Folding@Home team that are quickly heading towards the top 10 teams in the world!

Cranky Geeks

This weekly show takes a light-heartened, half-hour show hosted by John C. Dvorak where he and his guests discuss the latest news in technology and the Internet. I particularly like this one, it’s more of a grown-up show; I like to think of it as a tech news show crossed with the BBC’s Grumpy Old Men – definitely worth half an hour a week of your time!

Hope you like these recommendations and if you know of any good tech-related podcasts, then please let us all know.

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I recently wrote a post on my blog about a Speed Typing Test which ended up being pretty popular with my readers, so thought I’d share it with you here.

I’ve been using computers ever since I got my first in the form of a Sinclair Spectrum 128k +2 back when I was 7, however the one regret I have is that I still cannot properly touch type, but how good am I currently?

Given all the years that I’ve been using computers, it has meant that I can type fairly quickly at a decent speed through a combination of using 4-6 fingers at a time and semi-looking at the keyboard – I kind of know whereabouts the keys are, but if I don’t look down at the keyboard while typing, most of the time I will make mistakes. Now that I am blogging regularly, being able to get my thoughts into type as quickly as possible would be a real advantage for me.

55 words

This is the first time that I’ve used a timed typing test online to give me an idea of my typing speed, but from what I saw from my 55wpm results and those of others, given my limiting factors of not being able to touch type, I got a decent score that I’m quite impressed by.

Obviously, like many tests, this timed typing test included, it’s not going to be perfect, but it certainly gives a good indication how good you are and gives encouragement to put the time in to learning to touch type which you can do by going to 10 Fast Fingers.

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Webb Alert is billed as being ‘your daily tech round-up’ which serves up the biggest, and latest news and reviews of what is happening with regard to the Internet and technology.

I’ve been a viewer of Morgan Webb’s (almost) daily tech news video podcast (of sorts) for nearly 4 months now and can confirm that the around 5 minute show is of a high quality in terms of production and content. You can watch Webb Alert in a variety of ways, either by streaming directly from the Webb Alert website, by downloading it to watch later, or even as I have done below, embed it in your webpages.

On the site, each video also has a separate page which contains additional information, background and links to the stories contained within each video, handy if you want to do some follow-up reading or research on what was covered in the tech news video.What do think Webb Alert? Do you find it interesting and useful as a source of news? Have you got any other recommended tech news or review shows that I should take a look at?

In my opinion, the UK seems to be rather lagging behind in respect to their coverage of gaming and tech news issues, aside from Gamer TV on Bravo, Click on the BBC, The Gadget Show on Channel 5, they’re aren’t any other UK shows that I watch on a regular basis. Maybe I’m just completely missing the adverts for shows since I have Sky+ and generally skip the ads. Does anyone know of any other gaming or tech shows that are worth watching? If so, please leave a comment and let me know!

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If you’re anything like me, the question of free file conversion on the Internet is something I’ve been searching for a good solution to for so long now. Along the way I’ve found tools that have looked good, but ultimately been a long way off ideal, it’s like searching for the Holy Grail – where the only real way has been to pay for specific software to achieve this, until now!

The thing that has really driven me to search and search in this area is specifically converting Adobe PDF files into an editable file such as a Microsoft Word file – this was something that got asked of me so much at work in the past year.

The main example I have is that of job application forms which you couldn’t fill in electronically without an awful lot of effort in re-creating text boxes etc. in a word document then you had to print it onto a printout from the PDR file – it was all very complicated – you probably deserved to get the job just on that basis!

However, I’ve now found a site called Zamzar which is a free file conversion website that can convert files into literally hundreds of different types and the resulting file, certainly in the ones that I’ve tested ends up being a very usable reproduction.

Zamzar is much better than other free file conversion services that I’ve tried, especially in terms of .pdf to .doc files since it maintains layouts, textboxes etc. Give it a go and let us know what you think, or if you know of a better service, then please feel free to share that with us!

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