EyeTV 3
In amongst all the hype about the MacBook Air at MacWorld a lot of other announcements got a bit lost.
Elgato have released EyeTV 3.
This new version has quite a few enhancements compared to version 2, though it looks like many of them look like they will only work on a Mac running Leopard.
At this time I don’t think I will be upgrading.
Find out more.
New Apple Stuff
Those who know me will know that I am a bit of a fan of Apple products, not exclusively, but I do like good design and stylish kit.
Yesterday in San Francisco at MacWorld Expo, Apple announced some new products and upgrades for the iPod touch and iPhone.
Key new product announced at the keynote was the MacBook Air, a small light MacBook.
I do like small computers, great fan of the 10″Sony VAIO laptops, however this is slightly bigger than I would like, and I can’t see how that would survive travelling by air or train.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s very stylish, well designed, but doesn’t meet my needs for a small portable computer for use at conferences, on the train and in coffee shops.
No rumoured touchscreen, nor a Blu-ray drive either (actually no optical drive, though cleverly you can use your other Mac’s drive wirelessly, which is a very clever piece of software and something I would like to use with Windows UMPCs).
Nor can you can carry a spare battery, actually you can’t even replace the battery, it has to be sent to Apple to be replaced if it goes faulty.
There was also upgrades for the iPhone and iPod touch announced which provide additional applications, annoyingly free on the iPhone and a £12.99 upgrade for the iPod touch.
Huh!
Probably worth it for the e-mail and notes applications which make the iPod touch a more useful.
Also announced was a new Airport Extreme base station which comes with a 500GB or 1TB drive for Time Machine backups.
On the Americans get the opportunity to rent films, here in the UK we don’t, well not for a while.
“Think Jaiku is losing to Twitter? Wait till Android Devices Start Shipping”
Excellent blog article on though Twitter is winning the battle in the numbers game, Jaiku will win the war once Android starts shipping.
What if Google where to build Jaiku into Android as the standard phone Address Book? As soon as Android devices started to ship, Jaiku (whatever form it takes in the future) would gain hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of users rapidly. This isn’t as crazy an idea as it sounds. As I’ve posted before, Jaiku was originally conceived as a location and status aware address book; many Nokia users who have the Jaiku S60 client application installed already use the service in this way.
Read the full blog entry, makes for interesting reading.
Personally I much prefer Jaiku over Twitter, the RSS and the comments allow for me a much deeper richer experience, more importantly as well it allows for interactivity much more easily than Twitter.
Of course I don’t like the 504 errors (who does) and that bird, but hopefully with a day off tomorrow (what am I going to do) Jaiku will get better and we’ll see less of them.
Follow me on Jaiku.
Big Screen with a PSP
One of the new features of the 2000 series of the PSP is that you can now purchase an AV cable which allows you to watch video or view photographs through your TV (or through a projector if it has composite video inputs).
I recently got hold of a cable, it is available through Amazon
At £12.99 it’s not expensive, but it’s not cheap either, but it does work very well. You can get cheaper ones at Amazon
Initially I tried the cable with one of those small portable Toshiba LED projectors and though I couldn’t get any audio it worked much better than I thought it was going to.
The I tried a normal projector and that worked fine.
I used it to view video and image as well as play audio.
One concern I did have was that there was a warning on the packaging that the PSP could only output in NTSC format only and of course here in the UK we use PAL, so when I got home I connected it to my TV, which is an older Sony CRT model and it worked really really well.
I couldn’t get it to display any games though.
Overall I was impressed with the cable and the quality of the output.
Can I use OEM versions of Windows on my Mac?
Can I use OEM versions of Windows on my Mac?
Generally the answer is yes. Though if you purchased a computer with an OEM version of Windows then the license only covers that hardware and according to the terms of use can not be transferred to another computer.
These OEM versions will work with Boot Camp and/or Parallels or VMFusion. Though as OEM versions you won’t get any support from Microsoft, for that you will need to purchase the full retail versions.
Note that Windows Vista Home can not be used with Parallels or VMFusion due it licensing restrictions.
Problems with WEP
Some people have quite a few problems connecting devices to a WEP encrypted wireless network.
One of the problems with WEP is that the actual standard relies on a 10 character HEX key for 40bit WEP and a 26 character HEX key for 128bit WEP.
In order to make things easier for people, vendors use certain algorithms to convert simple alphanumeric passwords (or passphrases) into HEX keys, thus enabling people to use simple memorable WEP password rather than lengthy HEX keys.
The problem is that different vendors use different algorithms to generate the HEX key and therefore a ASCII password on an AEBS will be hashed differently on a Netgear client and vice versa.
One thing is a 13 character 128 bit WEP password will be hashed by all vendors in the same way (if you use 40bit WEP then a 5 character password is required).
Though sometimes not even that works and the HEX key must be used regardless.
Having said all that WEP is considered today to be insecure and not recommended (it can be broken quite easily by a determined hacker) if you can use WPA. However if you have legacy devices which don’t support WPA then WEP is sometimes all you can use.
Full Resolution Video on your PSP
If you have a PSP
Prior to firmware 3.30 adding video to a PSP was a bit hit and miss.
When I first got a PSP I was very disappointed with the quality of the video I encoded for it using either EyeTV or Toast, more so when I compared it to the demo video I had on the demo UMD disk which came with it.
It wasn’t for some time that I didn’t realise that the PSP did not support full resolution video from a Memory Stick.
You also had to convert the video to a specific MP4 format and importantly change the name to something unfamiliar like M4V01011 and then find the obscure \MP_ROOT\100MNV01\ folder. You were restricted to a 368 x 208 resolution. If you wanted a thumbnail you had to create a jpg file and then rename it as .thm all quite complicated though there were quite a few tools that allowed you to do this quickly and easily (I used Toast quite a bit). One problem was working out what video files were what (easy on the PSP, more complex on a computer).
With the release of firmware 3.30 this changed.
Encoding full resolution h.264 video for the PSP is now possible, this means that you can use the full 480 x 272 resolution and the excellent quality and compression of h.264.
However when I started to encode video for a PSP with firmware 3.30 I did initially have a few problems.
I tried to encode some full resolution video using VisualHub and the in-built settings and then some settings from a forum. However in both instances the video would not play on the PSP.
I initially thought it was maybe because at the time I was using the trial version of VisualHub (which has a two minute limit). However using the default low res settings it encoded and played fine.
I even formatted the Memory Stick wondering if that would solve it, it didn’t.
So I encoded the video in the original pre 3.30 firmware specificiations. As I copied over the video to the \MP_ROOT\100MNV01\ folder when I noticed a Video folder in the root of the Memory Stick.
So I copied the full resolution video over to this video folder, and guess what, yes full resolution h.264 video on my PSP.
Really impressed with the quality.
Really impressed with VisualHub.
So if you have firmware 3.30 or later ensure that you use the PSP to format the memory stick and then you will have a video folder into which you can copy the video files without having to worry about any naming conventions and be able to have full resolution high quality video.
Kindle is quite popular
Amazon’s Kindle
Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. We are working hard to manufacture Kindles as quickly as possible and are prioritizing orders on a first come, first served basis. Please ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We will keep you informed by email as we get more precise delivery dates. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.
Some are going for silly money on eBay, but I guess it won’t be long before they are available once more.
Of course they aren’t available in the UK at all, I wonder if we will ever see a UK version of the Kindle?
Blu-ray still winning…
BBC reports on how the Blu-ray supporters scent victory
The backers of the Blu-ray high definition DVD system are predicting victory in the format wars with HD DVD.
Blu-ray was certainly always my first choice, but I did wonder if HD-DVD was going to win because of the studios. It now looks like Blu-ray will win because of the studios!
Blu-ray was probably my HD of choice down to both Sony and Apple supporting the format, and I really like using their products. It was also mentioned in many reviews that Blu-ray was technically better and after the VHS and Betamax war, I was hoping that consumers would choose the higher quality option this time round.
Looks like they have.