Yahoo! Answers Blog Malaysia

It’s the school holidays, what are some of the activities you do with your family? I know that some families take a short holiday trip (or longer if they can afford it). Some, like my cousin, just stays at home and surfs the internet or helps out at another cousin’s flower shop. Well if you’re out of ideas, here’s a few IT/internet projects you can consider doing with your family and friends!

(Photo thanks to Roslan Tangah (aka Rasso))

1) Compile all your Multimedia stash into one box! I’m sure we have lots of DVDs and VCDs all over the place, and every time we want to watch something, we’ll have to hunt high and low for it. So how about copying all those movies and tv series into one storage device? All you need is: (a) a hard drive multimedia player which can be connected to your tv set (b) install a freeware so that you can copy your DVD into your computer (c) just copy all the files from your VCD to your computer. The final step is to copy all these files from your computer to the multimedia hard drive, hook it up to your tv and there you go! Shows on demand.

(Photos thanks to Andres Rueda)

2) Building your own computer. Assembling a computer is actually much cheaper than if you buy a “ready-made” computer in the shops out there. The main parts to pay attention to are: (a) a good processor (b) a decent-sized hard disk – either 500GB or even a 1TB one! Woohoo! (c) nice and big LCD monitor so that you can watch movies from your computer (d) a suitable graphics card – if nobody in the family plays games, then you can go for a cheaper one (e) proper casing for your CPU (f) and even a webcam (which are quite affordable now) to keep in touch with friends and family members overseas!

So there you go, some fun IT projects you can do with your whole family. If you have any other school holiday ideas, do share! Enjoy your week!