VLC media player.

If you're like me, you enjoy doing things faster. Using keyboard shortcuts can help you spend less time looking for buttons or menus, and more time enjoying music and videos. So take a moment to become a more efficient by reading over these VLC shortcuts:

Space: toggle pause/play

F: toggle full-screen (you can also use Esc to leave full-screen mode)

Z: change zoom mode

Ctrl + Up / Down: Adjust volume up/down (you can also use mouse scroll wheel for this)

M: toggle mute

T: display time remaining/elapsed

+ / -: play media faster/slower

S: stop play

Ctrl + H: toggle control display

E: watch video frame by frame

V: toggle subtitles

P: previous item in media que

N: next item in media que

Interested in trying something new with VLC? Check out ... [Read more]

Canon 5D Mark III

Well, that didn't take long.

Less than four weeks after Adobe Systems released Lightroom 4, the company has issued a release candidate for Lightroom 4.1 to squash bugs and add support for one of the hottest cameras going right now, the Canon 5D Mark III.

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The 22-megapixel, full-frame SLR brings new low-light sensitivity, faster performance, overhauled autofocus, and other improvements over its 3-year-old predecessor. But until now, Lightroom fans who have the coveted $3,500 camera could only see its raw files by converting them into the Digital Negative format with Adobe's DNG Converter software.

Other improvements in the release candidate, according to Lightroom leader Tom Hogarty's blog post today:

• Point Curve adjustments made in Lightroom 3 and before have been restored.

• Lightroom 4 did not properly open external applications when using the "Edit In" functionality.

• Addressed performance issues in Lightroom... [Read more]

Keeping track of the awesome quotes you come across can be a tedious process. You could write them down and try to keep track of where you wrote them; or you could start a Word document dedicated to being a quote bank. While both of these options are possible, they're not as useful as Quick Quote. This open-source app will allow you to input the quotes you love and easily search through them when it's time to use one.

Step 1: Download Quick Quote from Sourceforge and extract the RAR file to a convenient location.

Tip: You can place these files on a USB drive, which will allow you to use the app on any computer with a USB port.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

Quick Quote has a fairly simple interface, focusing more on functionality than beauty. The search feature will allow you to look at quotes by their author, title, tags you added, and date. The split pane will show the content of the quote on the left and the title and author on the right.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

Step 2: Click File and the... [Read more]

Hulu Plus, the subscription video service chasing Netflix, said today the service is now available on seven Android tablets.

Hulu is the company backed by NBC Universal, News Corp., and Disney that is trying to become as ubiquitous on popular hardware devices as Netflix, the top player in providing premium Web video.

Hulu said that the Android-equipped tablets that now support Hulu Plus are Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Motorola Xoom, Motorola XYBoard 10.1, Toshiba Thrive, Acer Iconia, and LG G-Slate.

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The company said that it also rolled out "the new ... [Read more]

Apple has released an update to iTunes that addresses a number of bugs with the program's handling of photos, videos, and music artwork, along with a couple of file ordering issues and VoiceOver corrections.

The update should also fix a problem in which iTunes may become unresponsive for people using iPod Nano or Shuffle devices. So if you have one of these and have experienced hangs with iTunes, then this update should help.

A final fix in this update is for a problem in which browsing through TV episodes on an AppleTV device might result in them being reorganized.

The update should be available for both OS X and Windows via Software Update for those who have iTunes installed, but can also be downloaded at the iTunes Web site or CNET's Download.com. The download is about 126MB for people running OS X, and will be around 70MB for those running Windows.

As always, be sure to back up your system, and especially your iTunes library, before applying this update. If you use Apple's Time Machine for backing up your system, then you should be good to go, but if not then you might consider at least copying your iTunes Music folder to an external drive as a means of backing up.

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or e-mail us... [Read more]

Apparently a lot of people are interested in the new beta of Photoshop CS6: the software has been downloaded more than 500,000 times, Adobe said yesterday.

That's a big number for a premium software product. But of course, the beta is free, and the final version won't be, so it's hard to guess what the conversion rate will be from beta downloads to actual purchases.

Still, as a marketing stunt alone, it has to be useful for Adobe. Photoshop's price -- $699 for the full standard version and $999 for Extended -- is a big deterrent for people thinking about trying it. Getting it into people's hands could help convince them that it's worth paying for -- and perhaps that other software from the company's Creative Suite also is. It also could help encourage upgrades from people who skip alternate releases to save money.

Adobe hasn't had a public Photoshop beta since CS3.

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<... [Read more]