Author: jamesclay

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JoikuSpotting

I really do like the iPod touch, the interface, the browsing experience, the video playback, the different applications now available.

Of course to get full functionality you need to be in the vicinity of a wireless hotspot. You can’t (for obvious reasons) use a 3G dongle and without bluetooth or the ability to connect a cable you can’t use a tethered mobile phone.

Now I know what you’re saying, get a 3G iPhone, well yes, that is all well and good, but three things are stopping me, one I already have a Nokia N95 which does what I need (well the typing is nowhere as near as nice as on the iPod touch), secondly I am well into a long contract too with T-Mobile. Thirdly, I quite fancy upgrading to the Google G1 phone.

So I was quite interested in trying out JoikuSpot. What JoikuSpot does is basically turn your 3G wifi mobile phone into a wireless hotspot.

So the Nokia N95 connects to the internet via the 3G network and then allows wifi clients connect to it via the 802.11 wifi.

It works very well and is in my opinion very clever.

The free version is limited and doesn’t allow you to do e-mail which is a pity, so I will probably upgrade to the pro version.

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EyeHome stopped

I really do like my EyeHome media streamer and it look like it has stopped working (again). It’s at time like these why I remember why I blog, when it didn’t work before I was advised by Elgato to leave it off for a long time, so at the moment it is unplugged and (probably) cooling down.

The EyeHome is now four years old (which is a long time in consumer electronics) and starting to show its age.

Sadly Elgato no longer make the EyeHome device, so I will need to look for a possible replacement. The key issue will be, can it play the raw MPEG2 recordings from Elgato?

In the interim I am using MediaServer from Twonky and streaming to a Sony PS3, but this doesn’t work with MPEG2 files, works fine with the MP4 iPod versions which the EyeTV creates, but these take a long time to export.

So if I can’t find a media streamer which works with MPEG2, I may just invest in one of the Elgato turbo.264 USB devices to speed up the encoding.

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BBC iPlayer on your Nokia N95 updated

A couple of days ago I mentioned that BBC iPlayer was now available on certain Nokia S60 phones including the Nokia N95.

BBC iPlayer on your Nokia N95

I did have a go and well let’s just say it wasn’t a great success.

So this morning, with what is being Sunday morning and all, decided to try the service again, wasn’t holding out much hope.

Interestingly when I started the BBC iPlayer application there was a message saying an updates was available. Usually when I see that and my application is working fine and there are no new features I ignore them, in this case though, obviously having problems, I did go ahead and download and install the update.

First major difference was that it was now possible to download programmes from BBC iPlayer, something which wasn’t possible before this update and before has only been an available service on the Windows platform.

Screenshot

So selecting something, I clicked download…

Screenshot

 4%…

 56%…

 98%… 

Error!

Hmmm.

Phone must be registered with BBC Content Provider. Register phone now?

I guess so…

Unable to download… 

Okay

Tried again.

Unable to play content

Okay let’s try the streaming once more.

Screenshot

Oh that still doesn’t work.

Well that’s fifteen minutes of my life I am not going to get back!

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Sad news indeed…

Very saddened to read the following on the Techspansion website.

…After much soul-searching (it’s not you, it’s me), for personal reasons, Techspansion is closing its virtual doors.

Techspansion are the people behind VisualHub and AudialHub.

VisualHub is probably one of my favourite applications of all time.

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BBC iPlayer on your Nokia N95

I was quite interested in reading this article on the BBC iPlayer for the S60 series of phones.

It seems that the BBC’s version of iPlayer for S60 has gone live, download it here. It has been implemented as a web runtime widget that kicks off streaming in RealPlayer. And it’s also, naturally, a bit fussy about which devices it installs on. It seems happy with the N78, N95 and N96.

Well having enjoyed using BBC iPlayer on the iPod touch, was quite interested to see it working on my Nokia N95.

Well as you can see from this video capture, I did not have a huge amount of success.

I was using wifi and I had configured RealPlayer to use wifi, but still no joy. The video would start, but then it would just start to buffer and eventually the connection would fail.

Hopefully I can get it working soon.

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Learning in a digital age – are we prepared?

Learning in a digital age – are we prepared?

4-7th November 2008

Register now for the third international JISC online conference. This important conference for practitioners and managers embedding e-learning into their practice focuses on the tension between the tried and tested and the wholly innovative. e-Learning may now have established a foothold in learning and teaching, but are the demands of delivering the curriculum restricting its innovative potential? How can we plan to ensure the best possible e-enhancement of learning in the future?

Keynote speakers are Professor Gilly Salmon, University of Leicester, on transforming curriculum design through technology and Professor Rose Luckin, London Knowledge Lab, on the relationship between learners, their tutors and institutions. The closing keynote is being delivered by John Davitt, writer, broadcaster and education technology specialist.

The conference has two themes each running over two days and will also include guided tours in Second Life facilitated by the JISC Emerge team. During the reading weeks, the two weeks prior to the conference, there will be orientation sessions for delegates new to Second Life. We are pleased to have James Clay, mobile-learning enthusiast, as the conference blogger. Some sessions will make use of the Elluminate real-time web conferencing system.

Finally, the e-Learning Showcase will provide a shop window on innovative work from JISC e-Learning projects and services and social events include a virtual fashion show.

Details of the programme are available at www.jisc.ac.uk/elpconference08.

Delegates from further and higher education and from overseas are welcome to take part. The conference takes place in an asynchronous virtual environment which can be accessed wherever and whenever is convenient to you. Book now. The fee is £50 per delegate

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EyeHome can’t find my EyeTV content

If you have been reading recently you will know that I have upgraded my iMac to Leopard.

The majority of software and applications I use seem to have been working fine.

However last night I decided to use my EyeHome so that I could watch a recording of Merlin I had made earlier using EyeTV.

However the EyeHome could not find my EyeTV recording, and I knew I had some. The EyeHome could find video in my Movies folder and other content across the iMac but not the EyeTV recordings.

I did remove the relationship between the iMac and the EyeHome, restart the EyeHome application on the iMac, but no joy.

In the end I used Wi-Fi Access instead. One of the features of EyeTV following an update (version 2.5) was the ability to stream recordings wirelessly to an iPhone or an iPod touch. It’s simple to turn on, just go to the relevant section in the EyeTV preferences.

EyeTV Wireless Access Preferences

What this does is once EyeTV has finished recording a TV programme, it will automatically convert the recording into a format which will play on the iPod touch or the iPhone. This is then made available over your wireless network via a web interface.

So using an iPod touch I connected it to the TV, browsed to my EyeTV recordings using the URL given in the EyeTV preferences and played the recording.

This worked well (and the quality is better than the BBC iPlayer version).

Having enjoyed the episode of Merlin, I now wanted to work out why the EyeHome couldn’t find the EyeTV.

I did find this on the Elgato website.

If you are using EyeTV with EyeHome, then EyeHome thinks your EyeTV Archive is in the Library folder for your User account. In reality, it’s probably in the Documents folder, or somewhere else that you chose via the Recording Preferences in EyeTV. Due to this error, EyeHome can’t find your EyeTV recordings without help.

A symbolic link, that points from the true EyeTV Archive location, will solve the problem – name the link “EyeTV Archive”, and place it in the Library folder ( ~/Library/EyeTV Archive). In other words, put the link here:

Open the Hard Drive

Open the Users folder

Open the folder that’s named after your User account (it may have a House icon).

Open the Library folder

Place the link called “EyeTV Archive” in the Library folder

Most users can do this using SymbolicLinker.

In this way, you keep the EyeTV Archive wherever you like, but EyeHome will find a link to it in that Library folder.

My solution is going to be to move the default folder to the Library.

What is interesting is I am almost 100% sure that I did not change this preference and if I had I would have not put the archive in the Documents folder, but put it in the Movies folder.

This was a fresh install of EyeTV as when I upgrade an OS or change computer (or in this case change hard drive) I usually start with a vanilla fresh OS install and then add my applications as and when I need them. This avoids clogging the computer with applications I used once or rarely, and usually avoids problems following you around from the previous install to the new install. A good example of this is that my Canon printer now prints everytime.

Lets hope EyeHome works fine now.

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Google announce the G1 Google Phone

Today Google announced the G1 Google Phone. The good news is that it will be available in the UK from T-Mobile in time for Christmas. I had anticipated that like many other devices, that the G1 Google Phone would be available in the USA first and a few months (or even a year later) it would appear here in the UK. If you recall Apple’s iPhone arrived in the US in June 2007 and did not appear in the UK until November!  However it is looking like that it will be available in the UK within weeks (if not at the same time) as the US version.

Not totally impressed with the look of the device, it does not exude style and class like the iPhone, but it does come with a touch screen and I am sure the qwerty keyboard will be useful for many.

Incidently why is it that I need to stop and think about how to spell qwerty?

I do have a T-Mobile phone and I hope that I might be able to upgrade to the G1 when it arrives in the UK later this year.

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When the GO!ng gets tough, the tough get going…

Okay, in a previous post I mentioned how I quite liked the GO!VIEW service for the PSP from Sony and Sky.

Having now used the service for two months I have unsubscribed.

I think I would have probably unsubscribed last month, but the service wouldn’t let me so I was automatically subscribed for another month.

So what’s the problem, it’s not as if I don’t watch “rented” video?

Well let’s see?

Was it easy to find what you wanted?

Basically yes, the Flash based interface was a little annoying and a little too clever for it’s own good, but for most purposes it was fine.

Were the files good quality?

Yes, as I said previously:

The quality of the Doctor Who video was quite poor, almost VHS quality, however I was more impressed with the quality of the Hustle video which was (in my opinion) as good as the quality I have managed converting EyeTV Freeview recordings.

Was it easy to move the files to the PSP?

Yes, and when you consider I was doing this on parallels on my iMac, I had added a extra layer of complexity.

So why have you unsubscribed then?

To be brutally honest, the one reason I have unsubscribed is that there is no new content.

In the last two months, there have been no additions to the content line-up. So we have Hustle season 1, but no seasons 2, 3 or even 4! We have Spooks season 1, but none of the other seasons. We have a single Doctor Who story and though you can rent the new Doctor Who, as part of the Entertainment package you only have the single Jon Pertwee Spearhead from Space.

True I could have watched other stuff, but I didn’t want to watch Desperate Housewives or badly made TV movies. I wanted more of the stuff I had watched.

So though it was only costing £5 per month, I’d rather not pay £5 per month for re-watching the same content again and again…

If they bring in new content, I may subscribe, but for now I’m going…