I was reminded of this amusing Microsoft iPod branding video which was leaked.
Still funny.
Though if you look at the Zune, they did learn their lesson.
Serving media through the home
I really like my EyeHome device. I’ve had it a few years now and even had it fixed in Germany one time when the power supply failed. Changing to 802.11n made it much better and more capable of showing content from my Mac on my television.
It’s such a great concept I did wonder if I would be able to serve media to other devices and not just the EyeHome.
This came up recently when I put a Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) under my television which can act as a uPnP device and serve content from an appropriate media server. Not only that, but you can pair a PlayStation Portable (PSP) with the PS3 to be able to access the PS3 remotely.
A plan was starting to form…
If I could get the PS3 to access content from the Mac, I could then watch it remotely on the PSP. The PSP didn’t like accessing content direct from the Mac, so this could work, couldn’t it?
The first issue was getting some media server software running on the Mac, the EyeHome software didn’t work; and though Elgato make a uPnP software product, EyeConnect, it appeared from the Elgato website that the PS3 as a media extender was not in the list of supported extenders, and there were a few reports in the Elgato forums which kind of put me off. There is a 30 day trial, so I might give it a go later.
What did come out in my research was Twonkymedia.
The PacketVideo MediaServer enables you to share your multimedia throughout your home. It is available for many different platforms and interworks with a large variety of client devices including XBox 360™, Sony PS3™ and Sony PSP™. TwonkyMedia requires fewer resources and is faster than other UPnP media servers, and provides more features that help users enjoy large media collections.
Installed and ran it…
Worked very well.
The PS3 picked up the iMac which I was running the software on.
The PSP picked up the PS3 – though I believe that the PSP can access the media direct, but I was trying to be clever!
I tried a few other devices.
The iPod touch through the web interface could access the media.
My Nokia N95 could access the server, and the media.
A Nokia N810 could access the media, it just couldn’t play it!
Overall I was impressed, very likely to pay the €30 it costs.
Google Chrome
Google have gone and released a browser of their own, Chrome.
Windows only at the moment, so I have not yet installed it.
Looks interesting.
YouTube in 1985…
I did find this amusing, how YouTube was in 1985!
YouTube in 1985
Before they got real big…
So is it faster?
I have been using my new LaCie Poulton drive for over a week now and so far I am impressed with it. Running Leopard on it for my iMac means I now have a lot more free space over 700GB compared to the 15GB I seem to have with the original 250GB hard drive I had on the iMac.
So is it faster?
Yes!
It certainly appears to be faster, but I suspect that Leopard is also a factor as that made a difference with my MacBook Pro.
It was certainly a bit of a pain going through all my applications and re-installing them, re-activating some and finding the serial numbers of others.
VMware Fusion 2 Beta
Though very happy with Parallels
Get the best of both the Mac and PC worlds with VMware Fusion. With an intuitive Mac-native interface and a wide array of powerful features, VMware Fusion provides the most seamless way to run Windows applications on your Mac.
I am trying out the VMware Fusion 2 Beta on my iMac, it installed just fine as did Windows Vista.
I don’t do a whole lot in Windows, but for some stuff you need Windows such as GO!View for the PSP.
These OEM versions will work with VMware Fusion (and Boot Camp or Parallels). 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.
Why I like Parallels
So here I am installing Leopard on an external drive on my iMac and installing various applications. One application I use now and again is Parallels so that I can run Windows and Ubuntu on my Mac in a virtual machine.
One of the things I like about running an OS in a virtual machine is that I can just copy them from the internal drive to the external drive and do not need to worry about installing Windows again, basically it just remembers where it was when I closed it down previously – even though that was on a different drive running a different version of OS X.
Nice and easy.
Installing Leopard
So I have my new drive, a 1TB LaCie Poulton, and though it is not as quiet as I would like (well a 7200rpm drive is still quite noisy, but at least there are no noisy fans).
So decided to install Leopard on it and use it as a boot drive for my iMac. The iMac only came with a 250GB drive which is proving problematic, I am hoping with 1TB of space that I can at least have a little more room for “stuff”.
Rather than install Leopard direct, I decided to install from the iMac install disks and then install Leopard on top of that.
Once Tiger was installed, I went straight to Leopard. Once Leopard was installed I then ran Software Update, and of course forgot to change the energy saver settings, so as before, the iMac did a Vista on me and turned itself off whilst downloading a 560MB update – for 10.5.4
I will then need to decide which software to install that I will use.
Wondering if Office 2004 is Leopard compatible (I think it is) and wondering if CS2 is? Problem with both those is that they are both not Universal applications, so both rely on Rosetta as they are PowerPC applications, and as a result are quite memory intensive.
Will certainly be installing iWork ’08 and iLife ’08 and iMovie HD ’06 as well.
Still downloading the updates.
Quiet External Drive – LaCie Poulton 1TB
Was is only a few days ago I was blogging about noisy external drives when I happened to find myself in the Apple Store in Regent Street in London when I noticed that they had a LaCie Poulton drive on display, switched in and boy was it quiet. So quiet that even when I put my ear to it, I couldn’t hear it!
No fans.
So even though I had only popped in for a look at the Apple Store, out came the wallet and a purchase was made.
