Our DVD collection - which consists mostly of kids DVDs - is marred by scratches that made each ~$20USD investment a complete waste of money. That was until someone (and sorry, I don't remember who it was...) recommended an open source video conversion utility named Handbrake! Handbrake is a slick little application that allows you to rip your DVDs or other digital video formats and either make simple digital backups or re-encode them for various digital media players (be it a computer, mobile device, or DMPs like the Apple iPod, Microsoft Zune, etc.

And - being a relative A/V n00b - this free, multi-OS supporting application makes it really easy!

Form the product website:

Supported Sources:

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (unencrypted--protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries), and some .VOB and .TS files
• Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.

Outputs:

• File format: MP4 and MKV
• Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 and DTS pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

Misc features:

• Chapter selection
• Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
• Integrated bitrate calculator
• Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
• Grayscale encoding

I highly recommend this application for parents who don't want to see their DVD collection become a pile of scratched coasters and for those of you - like me - who want to take your DVDs with you on the road and playback on your Zune (or hopefully iPod Touch after my birthday)!

Pre|Central reports that the Palm App Store been overwhelmed with application submissions, and with the App Store opening tomorrow (September 24th, 2009), I think that's a great problem to have!

From the Pre|Central article, Palm Developer Community Manager Chuq Von Rospach posted to the Palm developer discussion board the following:

We got more applications than we could handle well, which is a good problem to have. Unfortunately, it means we dropped some things on the floor, and that's bad, but with the impending "stuff" that's coming, this is all going to get a lot easier for everyone and a lot more transparent. If you didn't get a response in a timely manner, let me apologize to you. We should have done a better job on this, and I apologize for this. I'm working with the people I work with on this to try to make sure we do a better job of this moving forward. Good news is we've hired some people -- one's started, one starts next week, and the third starts the week after that, and that'll give us some great people and some new resources to make sure this gets fixed and works properly.

This brings me back to my ever-ongoing struggle with picking my next DMP: the Zune HD vs the latest iPod Touch. Specs-wise, the Zune HD is the favored product - beautiful OLED screen, HD FM Tuner, ability to go (with the dock) to 1080P video... but I've already decided that my next DMP will be the iPod Touch.

Anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm no Apple fanboy... so why the change? Simple: it's the App Store!

I know that I can buy the iPod Touch and - within minutes from purchase - begin purchasing (at a minimal price) an application that will address a real world need. I want to tweet from the road? There's an app for that! I want to post to a Blogger API-based blog? There's an app for that! Hell, I want to write code while I'm in the stands waiting for my son's football team to take the field?! There's an app for that!

The Zune HD? Sure, there's the Zune Marketplace App Store... 9 applications in total - and the only non-Game categorized applications are an MSN Weather Widget and a Calculator. Sexy huh?!

So, I'll be picking up the iPod Touch. Again, not because it's technology-wise a better product, but because of the options that are available to me post-purchase.

See, for me - as I rarely buy any big-ticket items for myself, a product designed for my sole usage that will cost ~$400USD... well, it just doesn't sit well with me. As a result, I tend to purchase a device and try to get the most out of it - via updates, upkeep, and kid-glove care - as possible. Thus, the initial purchase is simply the selection of the technology, and I have to decide from the time of adoption which product will look to have the better lifecycle.

I need my initial technology investment to grow with my needs, as well as the ever-evolving user experiences that tomorrow's gadget will bring to the table.

So being able to choose through literally thousands of applications allows me to evolve my use of the device with my needs. After all, there's an app for just about anything you need it seems.

Coming back to the Palm Pre - they have a single device in the field running the WebOS and the new Palm Pre hardware, but they have so many hungry vendors and individual developer application submissions that they have to bring on new staff to cover them all.

... So where's the Lotus App Store?

You may say it's OpenNTF. For our community, I think that's as close a fit to anything that's out there and available today. But while the solutions available on the OpenNTF catalog are some of the better applications developed for our particular platform... I don't think it's enough.

We need a simple, low-cost, consumer-focused application store - where a user of a product from the Lotus product portfolio can browse through consumer-priced applications, plug-ins, add-ons, and such. The result: you'll not only empower the user to do more with their technology investment, but you'll give them ideas on how they can better use the product.

You'll also drive vendor participation and innovation - as this is absolutely an untapped revenue stream that will breed a new level of competition.

So where do we start?

To my shock and horror, the Apple iPhone SDK is only supported on Apple Mac OS.

Not wanting to part with what could be a considerable sum of money to toe-dip into the iPhone/Touch development pool (read: no way in hell I'm spending $600+ USD on a whim), I think I've found a compromise:

1. Dell Mini 9 from eBay = $299 USD
2. Apple Mac OS X = ~$100 USD
3. Hackintosh Tutorial = free

So, for ~$400 USD, I could get a netbook (that I can always revert back to XP or run Ubuntu, etc.), that gets me what I need to get started with the Apple iPhone / Touch SDK vs. an entry-level $600 USD Mac Mini.

Thoughts from the Mac fans?

I am - first and foremost - a developer. I like solutions that allow me to get the job done, and when none exist and not afraid to roll up my sleeves and build something to ease my day-to-day.

Last night, I met up with Mitch, Whiso, and Mike for The First Annual PA-NJ-GA-LUG Event, which was held at a booth in the Tannersville, PA Friendly's. It should be a surprise to absolutely no one that the four of us started whipping out devices, comparing applications, giving suggestions and - at least me - accepting some well-offered advice, and Twittering, Facebooking up until closing time.

It quickly became apparent that my AT&T Blackberry Bold was outclassed in both applications and usage experience compared with Mitch and Chris's AT&T iPhones. The only upper hand I had was battery life, which is why Mitch admitted to carrying both an iPhone and a Blackberry Storm. Having used a Storm before, I know it wasn't because he enjoyed the Storm's UX!

There's an app for that rang through my head for the remainder of the evening. It wasn't simply the fluid UX compared to the relative clunky Blackberry Bold, but also something that had earwormed it's way into my head from the other day.

The other day I mentioned Scott Sigler's The Future of Content Delivery keynote at this years Balticon. In this keynote, Sigler states how - spoiler alert here people - the Amazon Kindle is a statistically insignificant player when compared to the Apple iPhone.

So... what am I getting at here?

For my 31st birthday (October 17th, for those of you curious), I had planned to treat myself to the soon-to-be-released Zune HD. Now, I love my Zune... but I'd be lying if I didn't yearn for some further functionality out of the device.

For me, it boils down to my intended usage. I use my Zune primarily as a podcast-catcher and simple DMP. My Zune 30 is currently only using 6.4GB of storage - <2GB for music, <3GB of video (all of which I can do without), and <1+GB of podcasts. The battery life is still decent on non-video content, but I want something more.

So I'm seriously considering an Apple 2nd (or potentially a 3rd if rumors hold true) Gen iPod Touch 16GB to replace my Microsoft Zune 30.

Aside from the basics - being able to pick up accessories pretty much anywhere - there are two things that are really pointing me in this direction:

The UX, and the App Store.

For anyone that's used an iPhone/Touch recently... I don't think I have to explain the UX. When you get a decently-written application on the device that leverages the true capabilities of the platform and device featureset, you get an amazingly intuitive device that allows you to get the simple things in life done.

The App Store - well, there's two reasons this interests me...

The first and most obvious, the there's an app for that mantra has become a mindset for both device users and platform developers - if I want to do it on the device, odds are someone has written something that will allow me to meet the given need.

And should I not be able to find an application...

Well, this gets to the real heart of the post and my thoughts on this subject: I want to get into developing applications on the iPhone/Touch platform.

And very much like my other efforts - such as Showtime, Zephyr, etc. - I don't plan on making my millions off of the sales (if I wind up charging anything, in fact), but the sheer numbers of customers out there using the devices on that platform near demands my taking notice and establishing at least a fundimental level of expertise in that arena.

It's a numbers game at the end of the day - I want what I create to reach as many people as possible - and Apple's won the product adoption game.

Not getting into the Apple iPhone/Touch product development area - to me - feels like a Lotus Notes Client developer not learning Domino Web Development.

So, thoughts on this? I'm eager to hear from iPhone/Touch customers, platform developers, fellow Zune fans, and anyone else out there with an opinion on this.