technology – Page 24 – frans goes blog

Operating the operating systems

!– @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>I have been using now a pretty eclectic mix of different OSes (what’s the plural of OS in any case?) for some while now, on a daily basis. My ThinkPad laptop deals with the business matters with its Windows XP Professional, in home I edit videos and photos mainly using a Windows Vista Home Premium edition gaming PC, the home media and web server is based on Ubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS server edition, the living room Mac Mini is OS X Tiger, and there is also Laura’s XP Home Edition desktop upstairs, oh yes, and the Vista thing in basement can also multi-boot into an Ubuntu 7.10 desktop edition (and then there are all those gaming devices with their native operating systems). And all of those different packets of code have their problems, all of them. Too many problems to even start blogging about them. But there are individual strengths, too. Continue reading “Operating the operating systems”

Eye-Fi firmware upgrade worries

I am not sure if others are experiencing this, but after the recent February firmware pushed to users by Eye-Fi Inc., our photo uploads have started to fail: “Receive interrupted” are the frequent error messages. It looks they introduced something called “smart boost” in this upgrade, maybe that is the culprit. It appears to use your PC as some kind of cache, and since the Eye-Fi Manager software here is installed to a Vista machine, there might be compatibility issue. Dunno — weird they broke the product/service.

See: http://www.eye.fi/blog/2008/01/31/new-eye-fi-smart-boost-upgrade-and-ritz-camera-news-at-pma-08/

Edit (Feb 8, 2008): I have reached the helpdesk of Eye-Fi and continue to look into the source of this issue. My current suspect is that the new firmware does something a bit differently, in a manner that disagrees particularly with the DD-WRT firmware that I am using in my LinkSys WRT54G router (a Linux based, open source project). Currently with the Fonero Wi-Fi router I am able to reach much more reliable results. Will continue trying and testing… (Btw, if you are interested in tweaking DD-WRT, check out this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/router/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router-178132.php.)

Phone with a fold-away screen

Interesting, this thing apparently already exists (manufactured by Polymer Vision, a spin-off from Phillips) and could hit the stores in mid-2008. Folding, e-paper displays have been in laboratories for some time, but it would be nice to see some real consumer product like this mobile phone arriving into the street. More: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL2063412420080121?sp=true

Bluetooth links to iPod

Today the Bluetooth adapter I have been waiting for finally arrived in mail. The model (Sony TRM-BT8iP Stereo Transmitter) appears not to be available outside the US yet, so I had to use eBay (which led into extra costs and extra hassle; some US dealers appear to have blacklisted European customers using PayPal with their credit cards). But now that I can finally experiment with the Sony DR-BT50 headphones Bluetooth link with my old iPod, all seems very promising. My old experiences with wireless headphones were from the infrared period, filled with hiss and breaking connections. But these things seem to be from totally different era. The DR-BT50 could have a bit more room for ears, so the size is an obvious compromise in travel headphones. But the isolation is good, the silent parts sound beautifully clean and all tones from low bass to high tones have also that clear and powerful quality you’d expect from hi-fi headphones (true hardcore audiophiles will probably disagree, of course — but these are for MP3 listening, to start with). The actual range of Bluetooth stereo is according to my experiments around 4-5 meters (12-15 feet), and the music will break if you go beneath thick walls or to another floor in the house. But in the pocket, in a bag, or in the table — no problem: complete freedom of movement, liberated from the wires. The downside of this system as compared to traditional wired headphones is that you need to charge them after travel or other use, but then again, you’d probably also charge your iPod in any case. Great! Now, if I’d only have a mobile phone that would connect with DR-BT50; so far no success with my Nokia E70. That phone is still Bluetooth 1.2 technology, and thus might never really work with a wireless stereo hands-free set.

Steve's claims

This is also fun: Steve Jobs presented his views to John Markoff, a journalist and blogger working for New York Times, including sweeping statements like “people do not read any more”; check it out: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-passion-of-steve-jobs/.

MacBook Air versus the competition

Blogosphere is of course all afire at the moment about the announcements from this spring’s Macworld: the Time Capsule backup server, updated Apple TV, iTunes movie rentals announcement, and the sleek MacBook Air. (http://www.macworld.com/) Regarding the latest one, I must add I love the design, but the sharp and fragile-looking corners would not probably be the optimum characteristics to expect from your robust, everyday working partner. And most of the software we use for scientific analysis and media work come only for MS Windows operating system, so there we are. Thinking about that personal, miniature device to carry with you always, I am actually more interested in the direction that other devices, most particularly Nokia N810 Internet Tablet and Asus eee, that cheap micro-laptop, are taking. Links: http://www.nokia.co.uk/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_607323 & http://event.asus.com/eeepc/microsites/en/index.htm

Topfield recordings into DivX

One of the essential utilities in the media ecology of our home is the PRV — personal video recorder with search functions and a hard disk. We have the Topfield TF5100PVR, suitable for the DVB-T standard we use here in Finland. Since ‘Toppy’ has a hard disk, but no CD/DVD burner, the media archiving has its challenges, though. I think I have now finally figured a process to transfer Topfield recordings into DivX files for archiving and sharing:

use Altair or similar program to transfer the .REC files from Topfield into a personal computer (a short, high quality USB cable is a must for this)
use ProjectX to demux the .REC stream into audio and video components. At this point it is also best to use ProjectX to edit the recording, trim it of extra materials etc. (More instructions in Finnish: http://fi.wikibooks.org/wiki/Topfield_TF5X00/Tallennusten_hallinta — project home page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/project-x)
Now you have .M2V video and .MP2 audio files of the recording, and these need to be combined into MPEG-2 before it can be compressed further. I tried several solutions, but the only that worked was DVDAuthorGUI program, which takes m2v and mp2 as sources for a DVD project; after saved to a disk, go to VIDEO_TS subfolder, and identify a .VOB file that contains the sound and video of your recording. (It might be necessary to use VLC media player to see the file contents http://www.videolan.org/vlc/.) DVDAuthorGUI is here: http://download.videohelp.com/liquid217/dvdauthorgui.p and good (albeit Finnish) instructions here: http://fin.afterdawn.com/artikkelit/arkisto/dvd_authorointi_page_3.cfm — I tried also to use Nero for making .vob files, but could not get the audio in and synced.
After this, it is only one stop away from DivX, for which you need a tool like Dr. DivX: http://labs.divx.com/DrDivXDownload — the point of DivX encoding is that it provides a rather high-quality compression of video recording, and there are many DVD players that support playing DivX files (you should check the supported codec versions though, and update your player firmware when necessary). You only need the .vob file as the source file for Dr. DivX, and can discard all other files from the DVDAuthorGUI folders.
The output from Dr. DivX should now be the .divx file that you can use. Enjoy! (Thanks for guys at DVDPlaza.fi and AfterDawn.com for tips!)

IBM looks into the future

It is always fun to read how people try to guess the future; here we have what the researchers at the IBM labs think the next five years will hold for you: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22683.wss (Smart energy controls, smart cars, smart consumer products everywhere…)

iPhone story, sort of

Offering some glimpses behind the curtains, Wired runs a story of iPhone: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone

Squeezebox

This is another great little gadget: Squeezebox (by Slimdevices, which is now part of Logitech) is an easy-to-use device for playing all those mp3’s and other media files that reside in your media server disk through the speakers in your library or living room. It can use both Wi-Fi and wired ethernet to connect and can also connect to Shoutcast and other net radio stations. I had some trouble in configuring the Slimserver software in Ubuntu server to access files in my USB hard disk. Here are couple of useful links to help in that: