The NeceMoon Album | Chapter 4: Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips
Author: Necemon Yai
Date: 2018-04-23T23:00:00+00:00
Description: The NeceMoon Album Technologies and Strategies to Keep Moving Forward By Necemon Yai Chapter 4: Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips Featuring Jean Luc Houedanou TheAlbum.NeceMoon.com
Publisher: Evasium

The NeceMoon Album

Technologies and Strategies to Keep Moving Forward

By Necemon Yai

First edition

Published by Evasium ®

April 2018

London, UK

TheAlbum.NeceMoon.com

The contents of this file are protected under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

License
This file is free to distribute and give away to as many people as you would like.
I only ask that you do not sell it or publish the content onto any website.
If you use any quotes from this document, give me credit and link to the original file.
If you write a book and I quote you, I will give you credit and links too.

© Necemon Yai
necemon@gmail.com
www.necemonyai.com

All Rights Reserved.

Version 1.0.7.235

To the ones I lost, to the ones I got back

For each one that gets lost, ten get laid back

Table of Contents

Introduction      5

For All Practical Purposes      8

Chapter 4: Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips      9

Where to Find Free Quality Audio Books?      10

Convert Video Files With VLC (by Jean Luc Houedanou)      13

[Interview] In The Bubble Of Jean Luc Houedanou: "a fleet of drones that prevent theft and abuse"      16

FFmpeg, The Fastest Way To Edit a Video File (in 5 seconds or less)      18

Getting started with Metro Studio (or how to benefit from the largest collection of Metro-style icons for free)      20

Instant Messaging For Your Website : Have it the Giant Way      24

Final Reminder      25

Conclusion      26

Share The Album with Your Mates      27

Introduction

About The NeceMoon Album: what is this all about?

The NeceMoon™ is a Blog about Technology and Strategy. The Album is The Best-Of, a compilation of the most popular articles on The NeceMoon™.

The main objective of The NeceMoon™ is to share tips and insights on a sensible range of topics, in order to let others learn from my mistakes and successes, and hopefully to make things easier for the next person.
The main objective of The Album is to promote an optimal access to that content. The Blog format does not always do justice to techno-strategic content. Originally, Blogs were designed in a journalistic spirit and are more suitable to chronological events and (more or less trivial) discussions around daily news. Even if the usefulness and the importance of an analysis persist in time, it becomes almost impossible to find and difficult to consult, as more articles keep stacking.
That is why the best articles have been cherry-picked, reviewed and arranged in a logical order that better matches the layout of a book. The Album is free of charge.

The NeceMoon™ can be accessed from NeceMoon.com (or necemonyai.com/blog)
The NeceMoon™ Album can be downloaded in various file formats, in full from TheAlbum.NeceMoon.com (or necemonyai.com/Blog/page/The-Album.aspx). The available formats are PDF, EPUB, MOBI/AZW3/KF8 (Amazon Kindle) and MP3. Furthermore, the various chapters and volumes can be downloaded independently/separately, according to your interests.

About the Author: who is Necemon Yai?

I am a Software Development Engineer extensively involved in Microsoft .NET technologies. Full time developer. Part time digital artist, strategist, essayist and entreprenerd. I majored in computer science from NIIT, Christ University and Swansea University (Master of Engineering, Computing).
At the time of publishing this, I have worked for a Europe leading E-Commerce company, a major UK financial group, the General Electric global corporation and a few tech start-ups that you probably never heard of.
Over the past decade or so, I have been running The NeceMoon blog, where I describe my experiences, my observations and my reflexions. I mostly talk about Technology and Strategy. Here I share my most popular articles.

About the Contributors: who is in your War Council?

I invited the best writers in my network to include some contributions in this book, especially some of their most relevant insights in terms of Technology and Strategy. These top authors are, Ahou The African Chick, Antoine Mian, Cyriac Gbogou, Darren Mart, Edith Brou, Holty Sow, Israel Yoroba, Jean Luc Houedanou, Jean-Patrick Ehouman, Karen Kakou, Monty Oum, Nanda Seye, Nnenna Nwakanma, Olivier Madiba, Vanessa Lecosson and Yehni Djidji.
Along with their respective writings, you can find links to their own web pages. In addition, most of these contributors introduce themselves and provide you with some tactics in our exclusive interviews that you will also find in this book.

About You, Dear Reader: who is this book for? What’s in for you?

In The Album, there are 9 chapters organised in 2 volumes. Each chapter deals with a specific topic. You don’t have to read everything. If you are interested (to one extend or another) in one or more of these topics, you would possibly appreciate the related chapter(s):

Volume 1: Moon Light (softcore)
Chapter 1: Strategy and Tactics
Chapter 2: Digital Marketing and Web Visualisation
Chapter 3: Corporate Worlds and Emerging Markets
Chapter 4: Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips
Chapter 5: Transition - Extra Thoughts and Sharp Fantasy

Volume 2: Full Moon (hardcore)
Chapter 6: Software Development and Engineering
Chapter 7: C# .NET Programming
Chapter 8: Epic Prototypes, Classic Projects, Historic Genre
Chapter 9: Research and Case Studies

If you want to, you can download and read only the chapter(s) and volume(s) that you are interested in. Several file formats are available on TheAlbum.NeceMoon.com
(or necemonyai.com/blog/page/The-Album.aspx)
All the Web links in this document are working, feel very welcome to click on them.

For All Practical Purposes

The NeceMoon Album, Chapter 4

This document contains the Chapter 4 of The Album: “Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips”. If you care, 8 other chapters are also available. Depending on your interests, you may download, (re-)read or share any of the various chapters and volumes independently/separately. The PDF, EPUB, MOBI/AZW3/KF8 (Amazon Kindle) and MP3 formats are available.

To get them, just click on any of the links you like below or go to TheAlbum.NeceMoon.com
(or necemonyai.com/Blog/page/The-Album.aspx)

The NeceMoon Album (complete)

Volume 1: Moon Light (softcore)

Chapter 1: Strategy and Tactics

Chapter 2: Digital Marketing and Web Visualisation

Chapter 3: Corporate Worlds and Emerging Markets

Chapter 4: Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips

Chapter 5: Transition - Extra Thoughts and Sharp Fantasy

Volume 2: Full Moon (hardcore)

Chapter 6: Software Development and Engineering

Chapter 7: C# .NET Programming

Chapter 8: Epic Prototypes, Classic Projects, Historic Genre

Chapter 9: Research and Case Studies

The Album is available in French as well at Album.NeceMoon.com
(or necemonyai.com/Blog/page/L-Album.aspx)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips

Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips

Featuring Jean Luc Houedanou

Where to Find Free Quality Audio Books?

By Necemon

An audiobook (or talking book) is a recording of a text being read.

Your relationship with "reading" is modified by the use of hearing, instead of sight which is traditionally attached to printing. Technological advances (mostly in terms of recording and sound reproduction), availability of new features and many other advantages (saving time, more mobility, less physical storage space, experience sharing, listening pleasure, literacy learning, etc.) contribute to the considerable growth of the audio book in recent years.

Simple to use, the audiobook attracts different age and socio-professional categories, often for different purposes, sometimes for opposite reasons: only solution for some categories of disabled people (visually impaired for example), reading comfort for the elderly , mobility and new training experience for younger people, saving time for the productivity geeks (can be used while commuting or doing other physical tasks), listening pleasure and user-friendliness...

If you are looking for free audiobooks to download, here are some websites I can suggest for your listening pleasure.

Librivox
Free public domain audiobooks. More than 10 000 audiobooks available, read by volunteers from all over the world.

Project Gutenberg
The oldest digital library (established in 1971).

Open Culture
900 free audio books from one the best cultural and educational media on the web.

Thought Audio
Free audio books for a selection of classic literature and philosophy titles.

Learn Out Loud
Your destination for audio learning. Thousands of the best free audiobooks online.

Digital Book
Browse thousands of free audiobooks. Either download entire audiobooks to listen offline or use their simple online audio player to listen directly in the browser.

Loyal Books
Free Public Domain Audiobooks Downloads. About 40 genres.

Free Classic Audio Books
Digital Narration for the 21st Century. The downloads are available in mp3 and in m4b formats.

Educational Technology Clearinghouse (Lit2Go)
A free online collection of audiobooks in mp3 format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF file.

Many books
About 2000 audiobooks. Browse through the most popular titles, recommendations, or recent reviews.

Youtube
Great content, both in terms of quantity and quality.

If you understand French (or are trying to learn it), you may also want to check these recommendations.

Wishing you a good listening time.

Convert Video Files With VLC

By Jean Luc Houedanou

How to use the best free video converter/encoder available on all platforms, also known as...

VLC. That's right, in addition to being a true Swiss army knife for video playback, VLC has a video-to-video (and audio) conversion functionality that is little known to the general public. Here is the procedure for using it:

- Go to the Media/File menu and select Convert/Stream (on MacOS) or Convert/Save (on Windows)

- In the first field, select the file to convert, then the format/profile of the converted file and finally click Convert/Save/Start.

That's all.

Admittedly, VLC does not allow batch files to be processed and it does not provide conversion presets (Youtube format, iPod format, etc.).

But considering its price, it would be outrageous to ask for more.

[Interview] In The Bubble Of Jean Luc Houedanou: "a fleet of drones that prevent theft and abuse"

1. Quick (but effective) introduction of the personage and his achievements?

Jean Luc Houedanou, currently Head Of Design in a startup called WeDev Group and having 7 years and several months of experience as a web consultant (including CERAP Inades, as well as the Electoral Reform International Services). I have a Masters degree in E-commerce and a diploma in Information and Systems Management, both obtained from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada.

In terms of skills, I am a web integrator and a web design/strategy consultant. I am also involved to some extent in SEO and Training.

My achievements that I am most proud of are related to the field of Training: I have had the opportunity several times to train journalists or media professionals in the use of social networks, a web radio deployment, content creation and blog management. It's a real pleasure to see every person negatively biased towards these technologies who ends up fully embracing them afterwards and even becoming advocates of journalism 2.0.

2. What are your main goals in life?

My goal by the end of 2018 is to write an e-book on WordPress template design and also to launch a podcast on information technology and (my second passion) computer-aided music. I started writing the e-book and regarding the second objective, I am in partnership with a Web TV with adequate equipment. So I am well on the way.

The idea behind these two projects is the same one that motivated my return to The Ivory Coast: to promote a more reasonable and more productive use of information technologies in Africa. There are several problems in Ivory Coast, in Benin (my home country) or in Senegal (my country of birth) which would find a quick solution if young minds of the continent mastered the information technologies better: for example, I have been working for several months with young people who developed WeFly Agri, a plantation management software coupled with a fleet of drones that prevent theft and abuse on plantations and increase productivity.

Africa is a fertile ground for innovation, so I try modestly to plant my seed in that area.

3. What tools and techniques do you use to accomplish things efficiently?

Software: Gimp, Inkscape Sketch, Affinity Designer, Sublime Text, AMPPS, IA Writer, OmmWriter, Firefox Developer Edition, Emmet LiveStyle, FileZilla (a must), iMovie (yes, iMovie, it's a perfectly capable editor) as well as GarageBand

Gadgets: Macbook Pro (for ease of use) and related devices (magic mouse and keyboard). I have an entry-level Android smartphone (Tecno W5 lite) and supplementary, a MyKronoz Zefit3 that I treated myself to for Christmas, in order to remind myself to be less sedentary and do a little more physical exercise.

Technologies: ReactJs, html, jQuery, Gulp and Compass

4. Any recommendations for your juniors?

In terms of podcast - the Daily Tech News Show - www.dailytechnewsshow.com.

5. What is the best way to contact you?

@jlhouedanou, on all social networks, except on Facebook. On that latter social network, my address is facebook.com/bloghouedanou

FFmpeg, The Fastest Way To Edit a Video File (in 5 seconds or less)

By Necemon

What's your problem?

You want to remove or extract a part of a video.

You could download, install and/or buy some advanced editing software which has such feature (like Adobe Premiere Pro), but it takes a lot of time and energy, especially if you are working with several, long videos and the software has to decodes and re-encodes the files every time.

The solution: FFmpeg.

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video.

Ffmpeg has a simple command that lets you edit the file as you will, almost instantaneously. It also works for audio files.

1. Download the package

=> Windows

=> Mac

=> Linux

2. How to use it ?

Just run the following line from your command prompt
ffmpeg -i InputPath.mp4 -ss 00:10:00 -t 00:00:05 -acodec copy -vcodec copy OutputPath.mp4

Where -i is the path to your file.

-ss is the start position in Hours:Minutes:Seconds

-t is how long a clip you want - again in HH:MM:SS

The acodec and vcodec tells ffmpeg just to copy the file without changing its other audio and video properties.

That's about the fastest you can get it done.

Getting started with Metro Studio (or how to benefit from the largest collection of Metro-style icons for free)

By Necemon

Syncfusion Metro Studio is a tool which provides a collection of over 2500 Metro-style icon templates that can be easily customized to create thousands of unique Metro icons. The icons are available royalty-free and can be used in open source projects as well as commercial applications.

To get started, just download and install MetroStudio from the Syncfusion website. As soon as you do this and run the program, you can see a wide range of icon categories from (mobile) application to data, to education to emoticons, etc.:

You can directly browse the icons files (.svg) through your file browser by clicking on the "Explore Source" button next to the category title. But MetroStudio is not just a browser for a collection of static files, it's also an editor. Actually, an Edit button appears while hovering any icon. By clicking on it, that icon can be customised at will and many properties are editable : dimensions, background shape, background color and icon color to name a few.

Your selected (and customised) icon can be copied to other applications, saved as xaml data or exported as picture (.ico, .jpg, .png, etc.). The collection is therefore suitable for many types of projects, from PowerPoint presentation to software products including WPF apps, Web apps, games, Mobile apps and websites.

With a simple drag-and-drop move toward the bottom-left corner, you can also edit multiple icons at the same time by organising them as a project.

Finally, MetroStudio deals with text styling. Easily customize and export thousands of font characters as regular icons. Input one or more characters directly in the text box or choose from the character map. It is also possible to drag character icons into projects for group customization and export them to the desired formats.

It's a very complete tool and here is where it gets even cooler: the product is worth $499, but you can download it for FREE today at syncfusion.com/downloads/metrostudio

Instant Messaging For Your Website : Have it the Giant Way

By Necemon

You have probably used the in-browser Instant Messaging service of one of the Internet "giants", whether it's Gmail, Msn or Facebook. You know, that small window with your online contacts at the bottom corner, which can be extended into conversations. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have a similar system right into your own website? Well, now you can, that's what the new Mango Chat is all about.

Mango Chat is a small, fast, cross-browser and full-featured chat component which allows you to add chat functionality to your ASP.NET website or web application. It includes features such as high load support, font/color customization, emoticons, and many more! The best thing about Mango Chat is that it's a web control which would integrate in your website as easily as a simple drag and drop.

Mango Chat uses Jquery/Ajax and makes sure that minimum bandwidth and server usage is utilized. It can easily support high volume of users without any degradation in response time. Further it supports multiple options for data store (in memory, XML, SQL Server, etc.). So Mango Chat can help you connect your website members regardless of the data store you use.

And as I mentioned before, it's a component that runs in the bottom right end corner of your website screen (as on Gmail). An obvious advantage is that it doesn't take too much space and let the user make some other operations on the same webpage.

Mango Chat comes with a premium unlimited license with full support for a price of $999. But wait, there is also a basic license that costs only $99.

Go get Mango Chat now at www.mangochat.net

PS: Don't take my word for it. See Mango Chat in action at demo.mangochat.net/testoptions.aspx. You can also download and try a demo version with no time limit at www.mangochat.net/Download.aspx.

Final Reminder

Chapter 4

Before we conclude, I just thought I would remind you that this document contains the Chapter 4 of the Album, and that 8 other chapters are also available. You may download, (re-)read or share any of the various chapters and volumes independently/separately, depending on your interests. The PDF, EPUB, MOBI/AZW3/KF8 (Amazon Kindle) and MP3 formats are available.

To get them, just click on any of the links you like below or go to TheAlbum.NeceMoon.com
(or necemonyai.com/Blog/page/The-Album.aspx)

The NeceMoon Album (complete)

Volume 1: Moon Light (softcore)

Chapter 1: Strategy and Tactics

Chapter 2: Digital Marketing and Web Visualisation

Chapter 3: Corporate Worlds and Emerging Markets

Chapter 4: Quick Wins, Tricks and Tips

Chapter 5: Transition - Extra Thoughts and Sharp Fantasy

Volume 2: Full Moon (hardcore)

Chapter 6: Software Development and Engineering

Chapter 7: C# .NET Programming

Chapter 8: Epic Prototypes, Classic Projects, Historic Genre

Chapter 9: Research and Case Studies

The Album is available in French as well at Album.NeceMoon.com
(or necemonyai.com/Blog/page/L-Album.aspx)

Conclusion

This is Good Bye. However, we can stay in touch. Feel very welcome to add me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. If you also have any tools and tactics that help you achieve things efficiently, I would like you to tell me about that. My email address is necemon@gmail.com. You are more than welcome to write to me and report any possible mistake in this document, or to suggest any improvement, or to tell me about your favourite parts. However, if you don’t like The Album, don’t bother writing to me.

Anyways, I wish you all the best for your ongoing and next projects. Thank you for reading. And many thanks to Wikipedia, MSDN, IconFinder and FreeDigitalPhotos for the clarifications and the graphic resources. Special thanks to the Evasium Team. Thanks to all those who contributed, thank you Ahou The African Chick, Antoine Mian, Cyriac Gbogou, Darren Mart, Edith Brou, Holty Sow, Israel Yoroba, Jean Luc Houedanou, Jean-Patrick Ehouman, Karen Kakou, Nanda Seye, Nnenna Nwakanma, Olivier Madiba, Vanessa Lecosson and Yehni Djidji.
Thank you Monty Oum, rest in peace.

Share The Album with Your Mates

Just click on any relevant icon below. It only takes a couple of seconds and it’s free for everyone.
Alternatively, you can share this link on any social media website or email it to your contacts that would benefit from reading it: http://TheAlbum.NeceMoon.com