At this rate, Wikipedia will have to blackout everyday!

The English section of Wikipedia was blacked out yesterday, protesting against SOPA and PIPA, the draconian Internet laws the American Government is pushing. I am against these laws as they sound very oppressive and give a lot of arbitrary power to certain individuals and organisations to control how Internet works. However, I do not think Wikipedia did something its members, administrators and funders can be proud, by blacking out the site for a day. They have set an undesirable precedent.

It is very fashionable these days to show that you stand up for a social cause. However, the issue of SOPA and PIPA is an all American Issue. Wikipedia is a service that caters to a global audience, funded by people from all over the world. True, the laws in question affect people and businesses all over the world as they give power to American Government and Internet Services to take down even websites that do not operate in USA. But, it is an American-specific issue!

Now the question is, will Wikipedia assume the role of an activist to support any social or political cause anywhere in the word? Will they proclaim their support to almost all political revolutions in the world? Will they protest against every human rights violation that happens in any country?

Wikipedia is not an activist site. It is an information site. If you are an activist or advocate, you need to have an opinion. Wikipedia is about facts. And facts are neutral. Opinion is not neutral. At this rate, where will Wikipedia draw the line between activism and information delivery? How can it stop people from voicing their opinion on controversial pages in wikipedia?

Now, they say that wikipedia arrived at the decision to blackout the site through a democratic process. So, does that mean that from now on through a democratic process wikipedia members can decide what facts are to be mentioned on a particular page? All they would need are ten morons who agree against the five morons who don't.

If you think about it, democracy is about opinion. It is about majority opinion vs miortiy opinion. Just because the majority has an opinion, it does not mean that the opinion becomes a fact by default. An opinion is an opinion. A fact is a fact. It doesn't matter what number of people support it against what number of people don't support it.

What Wikipedia community did yesterday was foolishness at its best. Wikipedia just killed the notion that it is neutral. Now, Wikipedia will have to come down for every damn issue that comes up in every damn place in every damn corner of the world. At that rate, Wikipedia will have to be permanently taken down!

How to edit videos on your Android Phone?

The best thing about a smartphone is the quality of the photos and videos you can create with it. There is an whole ecosystem around the idea of photos and videos on a smartphone. Smartphones succeed in the market not just because they can seamlessly connect you to the Internet. They succeed als because of the quality of the media you can create using them.

Once you create a photo or a video using your smartphone, the next question is how you share it. And when it comes to sharing videos you create using your smartphone, it becomes a little tricky. Videos are best when they are edited well. The problem with your Android Smartphones so far has been the issue with editing a video. You absolutely had no way to do it. The best you could do was to capture videos using your smartphone and transfer them to a PC to edit them. Now, that is not in any way seamless.

In a world that is increasingly becoming mobile, you should be able to create and edit videos on your phone itself. The moment you need to go to a PC to edit the video you just created, you become less mobile. And if you think Android is about replacing your PC, then you must have a way to edit your video. Is the some way you can edit the videos to create using your Android Phone. If you are using a tablet like me, there is a way.

You can edit your videos using the video editor for android, which you can download from here. You can trim your video, add titles to it and incorporate your favourite soundtracks too. The transitions are awesome. All you need to have is a little patience and a phone that is on air plane mode.

Why do you need to put your phone on air plane mode as you edit a video with the video editor for Android? The answer is simple. It is because of the same reason why you will not do anything else on your computer when you are editing a video. You cannot receive any data or phone all while you're editing a video on your Android Phone. Especially, when you are rendering the video. So put the in Air Plane mode while you are editing.

I have tried this application on a tab. Try it on a regular phone and let me know if it worked.

How to download videos from an Android Browser?

Once I wrote about how you can use Real Player Beta to download videos on your Android Phone. That process has a limitation. You can download only those videos that require a video player to stream, if you are using Real Player. You cannot download and save videos that play in the browser itself, using Real Player.
Often we come across great videos online that we would love to download and keep. If we are using a laptop or a PC, we can download the videos that play in the browser using Real Player Plugin. But can you do the same thing if you are using a smartphone to download a video?
I am a proud Android User. I believe that you can do anything that you do on a Windows PC on Android. If you badly want to do something on your Android Phone, there will be an app somewhere for that. That is exactly what I thought when my Twitter friend Allen Reza asked if there is a way to download videos that play in the browser on an Android phone. And I set out to figure out how to do it. And boy, I figured a way out.
You can download videos that play in your Android Phone Browser, if you follow my instructions carefully.
1. Go to Android Market and download Spool.  Spool is an application that allows you to download web pages if you want to read them offline. You can download Spool from here.
2. Open a web page with  videos on your browser. Click the share button in your browser to bring up all those applications that enable you to share. You will find Spool in that list. Click on Spool to save the webpage.
3. Once your webpage is saved to Spool, make sure that you download the entire page on your phone. Once you do this, Spool saves the video as an mp4 file in the sd card of your phone. You can already view the video offline.
4. Sometimes we may want to save a video and delete the webpage. If you use the stock file manager in your Android Phone, you will not be able to find out the folder in which Spool saves the video. This way you may have to keep the entire webpage for the video. Thankfully there is a work around, if you want to keep only the video or move it to your external memory card. Go to Android Market and download the Astro File Manager. 
5. As I told you, Spool keeps its folder hidden. Once you download Astro File Manager, enable it to show hidden files. You will see the .spool folder. Open the spool folder and find out the folder in which the video is saved. Copy the video file and move it to your external memory card.
6. You can now go back to Spool and delete the webpage from your device to save space. Your video will be safe in your external memory card.

Update: Please note that spool is removed from the android market and you cannot download videos anymore. 

Hide photographs and videos on Android Phone

Mobile phones are increasingly becoming the devices on which people store their personal photographs and videos. When it comes to personal photographs and videos, there are those that you want people to see. Then there are the ones you do not want many to see. And you want to hide those from inquisitive eyes.

It is a major issue when you have friends or relatives who think it is their birth right to snoop around in your private space. What can you do to protect that little private space of yours and hide those photographs or videos you do not want anyone to see?

You may have crooked friends with a twisted mind and an overhyped idea of fun, who wants to post that photograph you took last summer with your girlfriend on Facebook and tag you for the world to see. Your parents are your friends on Facebook and you do not want them to see that photograph yet. Is there any way you can hide your private treasure from the eyes of your hyper fun loving friends, the next time they sneak out your phone to snoop?

Is there some way you can hide your private photographs and videos on your phone? If you are using an Android phone, there are plenty of ways in which you can hide photos and videos. My personal favourite is using Vaulty.

Vaulty is an Android Application that allows you to hide any photograph or video saved in your Gallery. All that you need to do is download Vaulty, scan the gallery, select the files you want to hide and hide them. You can password lock Vaulty and it will tuck away your private images and videos in a hidden folder, invisible to naked eyes. It is a great application, considering the fact that it reduces your overshooting blood pressure next time your dad or mom checks your phone and there are videos or images you do not want them to see. You can download Vaulty from here.