Author: jamesclay

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Ripping CDs could be made legal

Here in the UK it is (still) illegal to rip a CD to your computer (so when using iTunes or Windows Media Player you are technically breaking the law if you import a CD).

CDs

However the BBC reports that this may soon change…

Copying music from a CD to a home computer could be made legal under new proposals from the UK government.

Millions of people already “rip” discs to their computers and move the files to MP3 players, although the process is technically against copyright law.

This is of course of those things that we do on a regular basis, but is in fact still illegal, I would suspect most people don’t even realise it is illegal.

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Blu-ray “wins” the HD format war

Well if you read the BBC technology blog you will see that they are seeing the end of the HD format war and Blu-ray has won!

The HD DVD camp turned a crisis into a disaster when it cancelled its scheduled press conference at the show and then – perhaps unsurprisingly – cancelled all media interviews at the show. It’s left observers with the impression that the HD DVD group is in disarray and on the verge of collapse.

Where as Blu-ray

Blu-ray, on the other hand, is only to eager to parade spokespeople talking up its own format.

The BBC blog seems to indicate that the reason for the victory was the Sony PS3.

The PS3 comes with a Blu-ray player as standard unlike the xBox whose HD DVD drive was an additional extra and it was getting that Blu-ray player into people’s homes via the PS3 which has allowed Blu-ray to if not win the war certainly make that last march to victory.

I suspect if Apple release new Macs at MacWorld Expo with Blu-ray drives then this will be the final blow to HD DVD and Blu-ray will be declared the victor of the HD format war.

Then us consumers can go out and buy the Blu-ray player knowing we are not buying the HD Betamax or MiniDisc.

Photo source.

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Hot

It shouldn’t I know, but I always get surprised by how hot my PowerBook gets when I am using it and it is charging at the same time.

Take out the battery and it cools down pretty quick!

Just means that if I use the PowerBook on my lap I have to watch just in case it burns my legs.

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Hood 2.0 Workshop at ALT-C 2008

I think that there should be a Hood 2.0 Workshop at ALT-C 2008.

What the workshop should be about and the goal, well it needs to be Web 2.0 as that how Hood 2.0 was originally came about.

More than that, I need to think more.

Hood 2.0 Workshop at ALT-C 2008

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Recovery Disks

One of the issues with most UMPC devices is that they have no CD/DVD drive. This complicates matters when you need to install software and more importantly when you need to recover the machine.

I have just spent the last hour (or so) making recovery disks for the Sony VAIO UX1XN from a protected part of the hard drive. This should free up some 6GB of hard disk space, which will be useful as the flash based hard disk drive is only 32GB to begin with.

Does mean that I will need a DVD drive to recover the VAIO if it ever needs recovering.

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I was downloading a file!

So there I was thinking which office suite I should put on my new Q1 Ultra UMPC. I did consider Office 2003, but of course the Q1 does not have a CD drive, and my external drive is Firewire only. I know I could copy the disk onto an ISO image and that mount that as a virtual drive, or I could share a drive on a network computer, but that sounds like hard work (or so I thought).

I then decided to download and install OpenOffice, okay so it’s an 120MB download, but that won’t take too long, or so I thought.

So I started the download…

Well this according to Firefox is going to take an hour, okay no worries, I’ll leave the Q1 on, the batteries fully charged shouldn’t be a problem.

Left it for a while, did some stuff on the Mac, went back to the Q1  and it was off.

What?

It must have thought, “ah nothing’s happening here, I’d better turn myself off to conserve battery life”.

I was downloading a file!

“nope, mouse hasn’t moved, no taps, no keyboard entry, time to turn off”

I am downloading a file, I don’t want to stare at the screen for an hour, I just want to download the file.

“okay, time to turn myself off”

NO!

“I’m off….”

What about my file? I was downloading a file.

Well that sucks, and of course restarting an interruped download with Firefox means downloading all over again from the beginning.

So here I am now with the power brick plugged in, you’re not very ultra-mobile now are you?

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Enjoying the final episode

I am currently enjoying the final episode of the BBC’s Robin Hood, which I recorded yesterday on my Mac using an EyeTV device. I am viewing it on my TV via an EyeHome media streamer.

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Digital Photography Reviews

Digital Photography Review has recently reviewed quite a few digital cameras these are well detailed and thorough reviews and well worth reading if you are interested in getting a new digital camera.

Olympus SP-560UZ

Canon PowerShot SX100 IS

Sony Alpha DSLR-A700

Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10

The Sony looks like the one I would buy if I was buying a new digital camera, but then I am very fond of my Sony Cybershot and would be interested to see how their SLRs perform compared to my Canon.

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Bluetooth Printing

I have tried to print via Bluetooth from my iMac to my new A618 compact photo printer and have failed, in the main as the driver wasn’t on my iMac.

A618

It can be relatively simple as I found with the PhotoSmart 375 I had previously. This is one of the reasons I create the guides on my website so that when I need to install a new or an existing printer for a second time, I can remember how to do it, likewise by putting them online I can access the guides from anywhere and if required on a separate device (which is useful if you need to reboot or shut other applications down).

Checking my guide it is of course a driver issue, time to find the driver…

In the end I moved the photographs I wanted to print from the iMac to a USB stick and used the printer remotely instead.

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Hmm, would the EyeTV 410 make a difference?

On my  G4 Mac mini which I am using as a media centre under my television I have an EyeTV USB Freeview device for watching, pausing, rewinding and of course recording live television. I have been having a few issues with the quality of the recordings and viewing live television in terms of interference, but also when watching if a live TV window is open. I suspect that part of the problem is the speed of the G4 which is rather slow for a Mac and it only has 512MB of RAM.

I am wondering if I use the EyeTV 410 which is connected to my iMac whether that would make a difference? Whereas the EyeTV USB device is dependent a lot on the Mac for processing the video, the Firewire 410 device has a hardware encoder which in theory takes a lot of the load of video processing off the Mac.

I might give it a go and see how it works out, but will leave it till later as the iMac is going to record the final episode of Robin Hood tonight on BBC One.