Out of the Woods

Ever since I started taking digital photos seven years ago, I've been absolutely paranoid about losing them. As the old adage goes when dealing with a hard disk drive, it's not if it will fail but when it will fail. I started making backups to CDs, then to DVDs, but there is always that time between backups that has me nervous. I'm also bad about remembering to make new discs.

I started making continuous backups to my server machine in the basement, but that drive was getting full. Besides, there is also the threat of a fire taking out all the physical copies stored in the house. With bandwidth to spare and on-line storage costs coming down, I started looking around at on-line backup solutions.

Most of the services have free trials and make perhaps 1 or 2 gig available at no cost, but the cheapest plans that included at least 10 gig run $15 or more per month. When you start adding up the costs, you'll find that you can buy a lot of large hard drives for that kind of money. That's when I came across Jungle Disk.

Jungle Disk uses Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3), which is an API that developers can use to create applications that use storage on Amazon's servers. The best part is the Jungle Disk program that lives on your PC costs $20 and the monthly cost of Amazon's storage is dirt cheap. I'm able to back up 10 gig of photos, financial, and genealogy data for about $1.50 per month, and the backup store is updated automatically and continuously in the background. It took a few days to upload everything initially, but now it takes just a few minutes a day for the changes to be sent.

If you're looking for good, reliable, cheap on-line backups, Jungle Disk is it.

Posted by Ken at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Woo hoo! We're getting closer. A week or two ago, this box was installed at the AT&T pad down the road. I've been able to confirm that it's a U-verse VRAD. I pass it every day, so I'm now watching for signs that it's being brought to life. Unfortunately, this pad doesn't directly serve our house, but things are looking promising. Now I'm watching the pad that does serve our house with eagle eyes. I can't wait to get rid of Comcast.

Posted by Ken at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I continue to be blown away by the free software available from Microsoft as part of their Windows Live suite. One of the things I like to do when I'm somewhere that offers a stunning view is to take a series of photos that, when stitched together, makes a very nice panorama. It results in a photo that is much more striking than you could take with a single exposure.

After I took several such photo series at the Atlanta FRC championship a few weeks ago, I started looking around for current photo stitching software. "Free" was my goal, and after looking at a few hosted on SourceForge, I was starting to get disappointed. That's when I saw someone mention a feature of Windows Live Photo Gallery that does photo stitching.

I quickly downloaded and installed it and started poking around. With most stitching software, you have to manually assign some common points in two adjacent photos to give the software something to work with. With Photo Gallery, all you do is give it a list of photos and, bam, out pops a nearly perfect panorama. If you know where the edges are, you can find a few artifacts, but the results are better than I've ever seen, especially for software that requires no user tweaking. I haven't even looked at the other features of the program. Go download it and take a took. You may also find my photo set from the championship here.

Posted by Ken at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good old Reuters. I found this first photo a little over a year ago, but it was the AP that passed it through. Here's another one with the presidential seal perfectly behind George's head. Does anybody even look at these things before publishing them?

Posted by Ken at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hmm. This whole Windows Live thing looks promising. I last wrote about how much I like Windows Live Writer. I now find a news item that SkyDrive provides 5 GB of free on-line storage. I've been looking into on-line backup storage for a while now, and I've not found any free ones that I like. SkyDrive looks promising, but in my quick look at it, I don't see any nice synchronization utility that would make regular backups happen automatically in the background. I did find a few forum posts saying that kind of functionality would be nice to have. It looks like Microsoft is actively working on SkyDrive, and it's in its infancy, so we may see something yet. Here's hoping....

Posted by Ken at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hurray! A Hartford Superior Court judge sided with AT&T last week, overturning a DPUC ruling that U-Verse is a cable service and therefore needs a cable franchise license. This is good news for those of us who want an alternative to Comcast that doesn't involved putting up a satellite dish. I wrote last December that I was looking forward to having service in our area, and I'm still waiting anxiously. VRADs are popping up all over Manchester, and I'm hoping they continue to move eastward toward Tolland. Fortunately, it doesn't look like our attorney general is going to appeal the ruling, so we may be out of the woods.

Posted by Ken at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wrote a blog entry a while ago about a USB thumb drive that can be worn as a bracelet. Skullcandy does this one better with their Bully watch. This thing has a built-in 1-GB MP3 player. It's even durable and attractive. I still prefer to use my phone for my podcast listening, but it's nice to see some alternatives out there.

Posted by Ken at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AT&T announced today the availability of their U-verse IPTV in three areas of Connecticut (Hartford, New Haven, and Stamford). We were the first in our neighborhood to have DSL (I know because SBC was still installing the hardware when they hooked us up), and I’m super anxious to try out U-verse. I’m sure it will be a few months before they get around to installing a VRAD (video-ready access device) down the street from us, but I’ll be closely watching for its appearance. I heard from a tech inside AT&T that they plan to deploy 3000 VRADs just in Connecticut during 2007.

Posted by Ken at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here’s a post about some nice tools for geotagging photos and for linking Google Earth to geotagged photos. A geotagged photo has latitude and longitude coordinates of exactly where it was taken attached to it. Until we have digital cameras with built-in GPS receivers, we have to take a few extra steps to do the tagging, but the latest round of tools is making that process a bit easier.

Posted by Ken at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone seems to have a tiny flash drive these days. They can be worn like a necklace, and some can even double as an MP3 player. Imation decided to combine the latest craze in plastic wristbands with the flash drive craze and came up with a drive that you wear on your wrist or backpack. Fun stuff.

Posted by Ken at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The future of home entertainment is fully connected devices. You’ll be able to retrieve any type of content (music, photos, and video) from anywhere in the house using an array of networked devices. While most of today’s TV activity focuses on the set-top box, there is a new breed of television starting to appear that has this connectivity built in. Check out HP’s newest offering, the SLC3760N, that includes wired and wireless network connections and can stream content from an in-house server in addition to sources on the Internet.

Posted by Ken at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, this is so cool. Chip PC has announced a new thin-client PC that resides inside a standard dual-gang outlet box. Plug a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into the JackPC, and you have a complete networked PC. The company has a standard wall box that has contacts on the upper inside edge. You run network cable (which also handles power) to this box when you install it, and put a blank cover over it until it’s time to use it. When you want to install a PC, it simply slides into the box, making contact with the connector inside. There is also a wifi access point that can be installed in the same box instead of the PC. If you simply need network connectivity, there is a slide-in module that gives you that as well.

Imagine installing these boxes all over the house or other building during construction as you might install ordinary network jacks. When you need a PC at some location, simply slide it into the box and you’re done. Very nice.

Posted by Ken at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hmm, now, how did I put it? “…a form factor so slim it just begs to be snapped in half in your back pocket.” Apparently, more than a few folks are having problems with easily scratched and broken displays. There is even a web site dedicated to sharing information.

Posted by Ken at 10:23 AM | Permalink

One of my favorite podcasts is the HDTV Podcast with the HT Guys. I’m nowhere near the point of being able to afford any kind of HDTV setup, but I enjoy listening to information about hi-def so that when the magic day comes, I’ll know what I’m talking about.

In a recent podcast, the HT Guys visited a home theater setup in San Diego that is just over the top. Check out some of the pictures and give a listen to the interview.

Posted by Ken at 1:31 PM | Permalink

I’ve been closely watching home media appliances, and a new one has hit the market. Musica by Olive is essentially a standalone audio jukebox with a CD-R drive and an internal hard drive. You store all your audio right on the device and never have to handle a CD again. It can also stream audio from the Internet or any UPnP AV device in the house. You can do the same thing with an off-the-shelf PC and some free software, but you can’t beat the size, looks, and ready-to-go aspects of this box. At $1099, it’s not cheap, but some people will find the price worth it.

Posted by Ken at 1:09 PM | Permalink

Apple has announced their newest digital media player, the iPod Nano. A cross between the Shuffle and the Mini (which appears to be discontinued since I can’t find it on their site), the Nano sports 2 or 4 GB of memory, a color screen, and a form factor so slim it just begs to be snapped in half in your back pocket. Of course, you still need iTunes to manage its content, and it uses Apple’s DRM-laden AAC format. It’s quite sexy, but I’ll stick to MP3s on my SanDisk player so I can simply drag and drop files to it.

Posted by Ken at 4:28 PM | Permalink

All right. I admit it. So NTFS isn't so bad after all (see Windows XP Rescue Boot Disk). I started capturing some video from my DCT6412 DVR today, and every file cut off right at the 4 GB boundary. Hmm. I bet that's a fundamental limit of FAT32. A quick search revealed that to be true. NTFS, on the other hand, has no practical limit. Many live Linux distributions also support NTFS nowadays, eliminating my main objection to the format. So, a quick PartitionMagic conversion of my data partition now allows me to capture any video file my STB can throw at me.

Posted by Ken at 9:18 PM | Permalink

Here’s a neat idea. Netflix is a DVD rental service, where you fill out a list of movies you want to see, they send them to you to watch, and you send them back when you’re done. The service costs a fixed amount each month. Djangos (and other services) will purchase used DVDs from you at a fraction of their retail value and also sells used DVDs at reduced prices. If you want to get rid of DVDs you don’t want and replace them with ones you do want, the price difference between what they’ll pay you and what they charge can be significant.

Peerflix, though, provides a platform for trading DVDs. You make a list of DVDs that you no longer want, and another list of DVDs that you’d like to get. Peerflix matches people up and enables you to essentially make one-for-one trades. Normally it costs 99¢ per trade (which is much less than you’d be losing by selling your DVDs to places like Djangos), but if you sign up now, you’ll get up to 100 free trades through the end of the year. There is no membership or monthly fee. It’s pay as you go. I was skeptical when I first read about it, but it looks like a great deal. Sign up at this link.

Update: I just received the mailers for the DVDs, and I'm not thrilled. They expect you to mail only the disc. I have several pristine DVDs and cases that I was hoping to trade for equivalent discs and cases. I know it's the disc that counts, but I like the package as a whole. I'm going to have to rethink this service.

Posted by Ken at 12:29 AM | Permalink

Words just don’t do this justice…

Posted by Ken at 12:26 AM | Permalink

There have been lots of DVRs and DVR projects around lately that handle all the digital audio and video one could ever want in a home. Record and play back television, play downloaded and streamed video files, play downloaded and streamed audio and MP3s, and display digital photos on the television. There have also been quite a few home automation systems and projects around over the years that do lighting, HVAC, and security nicely. However, until now the two applications have existed pretty much independently.

I’ve finally discovered a suite of programs from Meedio integrates all home entertainment and control in a single Windows box.

Posted by Ken at 12:06 AM | Permalink

Here's one for all you guys who have wanted to try Skype for making VoIP calls, but didn’t want to give up the security of knowing traditional phone service was still there when Internet connectivity was down or for emergencies. The DUALphone combines Skype support and a POTS phone line into a single cordless phone. Plug one cord into your phone line and the USB cable into your PC, and you’re good to go. The display even shows when your friends are logged onto Skype and allows you to connect to them with a single button press.

RTX America is supposed to start taking orders for them today, but their site still says order taking will begin “soon.” No word on price.

Posted by Ken at 10:11 AM | Permalink

So you’ve decided to put together your own PVR. MythTV running on a Linux box with some off-the-shelf hardware is a fantastic choice. However, how many people want to look at the typical PC enclosure in a stack of A/V equipment? SilverStonetek makes a whole line of PC cases designed to look good sitting on top of your receiver and amplifier. The one in the photo even has an LCD display with touch screen right on the front. The best part is the basic units don’t cost much more than a regular case.

Posted by Ken at 10:59 PM | Permalink

I was once heavily involved in the home automation industry, having designed the majority of the hardware and software for a commercially available system that still runs my house today. I’ve always wanted a small display and keypad device that could be mounted inside the wall at several strategic locations around the house so I could interact with the system, but never found anything that would look nice and work with my system.

Now, though, ACS has a very nice-looking device that fits in a double-gang electrical box and does exactly what I want. Maybe it’s time to dig back into that original control code to add support for this puppy.

Posted by Ken at 9:23 AM | Permalink

It’s about time. There are quite a few grass-roots projects that put a PC in your car to play MP3s. They all rely on you bringing some physical media out to the car to load new material into the player. I’ve had a vision for quite a while now of just such a car-based MP3 player, but one that could connect wirelessly to your main computer while the car is parked in the garage. Imagine your home computer downloading the latest podcasts during the night and automatically loading them into your car. You go out to the car in the morning, turn on the radio, and instead of being stuck listening to some obnoxious DJ, you hear your favorite shows.

The Omnifi DMP1 brings all that functionality to a commercial product. You can load content into its 20-GB hard drive using either USB or wifi, or you can slide the whole drive out and bring it inside. The main unit mounts out of the way while a thin radio-size controller mounts on (or in) your dash. I want one.

Posted by Ken at 11:08 PM | Permalink

The Slingbox from Sling Media is a dedicated piece of hardware that connects to virtually any A/V source and is used to stream the audio and video to any networked device, including anywhere on the Internet. Watch and control your cable box or DVD player from anywhere in your house right from your computer desktop. Set up a wireless laptop anywhere within reach of your wireless access point and have instant videos. Connect with a supported cell phone or PDA from anywhere in the world and access the content on your DVR.

Intriguing as this sounds at first, I can see some potential drawbacks. It sports inputs for baseband audio, composite video, S-video, and RF. In my mind, it really could use a Firewire input as well so content that is already digital can stay digital and avoid the analog intermediate step. My Comcast DCT6412 STB has its Firewire output enabled and the pictures coming from it are spectacular when displayed on my laptop’s screen.

Next, most broadband connection upload speeds are a fraction of their download side, so you need a higher-end Internet connection to get decent quality remotely. On a related note, you also need a static IP address to access it from outside the home. Again, static connections usually carry a higher price tag.

Nevertheless, several people over at Engadget who have bought the unit and left comments had very positive things to say about it. For $249, it might be worth a look.

Posted by Ken at 2:00 PM | Permalink

It’s been a few years since I paid out hundreds of dollars per semester for college textbooks. I can only imagine what the prices must be like today, twenty years later. Another vivid college memory is having to lug a day’s worth of books around campus. Living off campus down a steep hill, we tried to make each trip up to campus worthwhile, so planned for the whole day.

A pilot program being tried at several colleges this fall makes textbooks available in electronic form at a reduced price. At my alma mater (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), incoming freshman are already required to own a laptop computer. There are hot spots blanketing campus, high-speed connections in the dorm rooms, and wired classrooms. The computers are fully integrated into the curriculum, so it makes sense that your textbook would also be available on your laptop. I know if I were a student today, I’d jump at the chance to save a few dollars and have less weight to drag around.

My only reservations have to do with the DRM that will be used with the books. Apparently, each textbook will be tied to a single computer and rights to the text will expire after five months. What happens if something happens to your computer mid-semester (stolen, broken, hard drive crash)? The old standby paper-bound book starts to look pretty attractive when you can’t use the electronic version even on a backup or loaner machine. Long-term value of the book is also an issue when you can’t refer back to it in future semesters. In engineering programs where such basics as physics and chemistry don’t change for decades at a time, a short-term book doesn’t make much sense.

Students are only saving 33% off the hardcover version, which I don’t think makes up for the Draconian DRM methods being proposed. It seems to me a compromise might be to charge something like 25% of the normal price for a semester-long license, and perhaps 80% for an unlocked version. After all, production and distribution costs approach zero for an electronic version, so the cost becomes royalty and pure profit. Granted, college students are among the worst offenders of “shared” music, so casual piracy could be a problem, but there has to be a better way.

Posted by Ken at 3:43 PM | Permalink

Here's some fascinating news on the home entertainment front. People in the consumer electronics industry have been predicting the death of the movie rental market as pay-per-view has continued to expand into people's living rooms. However, PPV has been most popular with two-way cable TV, and less so with satellite receivers, given their one-way nature.

Now that PVRs are making huge inroads into the home, Rupert Murdock (new owner of DirecTV) has come up with a novel application. He wants to deliver movie content to DirecTV customers while they sleep and have it stored in a protected partition of the PVR's hard drive. Customers can then elect to rent or buy the content that is already loaded on their box. In fact, he is so sure of the idea that he's ordered 20 million DVRs for his customers!

One of my favorite blogs has a short writeup about it, while Slate has a more extensive article.

Posted by Ken at 2:57 PM | Permalink

Well, after a short break from blogging, I figure I'll give this a shot again.

Flikr is one of the best on-line photo hosting services out there, and they finally have some schwag for the diehard fans. All you have to do is send them a self-addressed envelope (don't even need a stamp) and they'll send back a handful of buttons and stickers. Now if they'd only say what size envelope would work best...

Posted by Ken at 8:29 AM | Permalink

Here's one for the "you can't be serious" department. According to an article in the March 9 issue of USA Today, MP3 players are aiding the bad guys to steal your identity! Isn't it nice that we have such responsible journalists looking out for our well being? Engadget has a nice point-by-point analysis of how silly the article is, so I won't repeat it here. The scary part is how many people are going to start warning everyone within earshot of the latest high-tech hazard. Sheesh...

Posted by Ken at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been a home automation freak for years now, and I'm always looking for new ways to connect things in and out of the house. That's why this description of the Digital Lifestyle Aggregator and one possible implementation caught my eye so quickly. I want this kind of setup in the worst kind of way. I plan to go back and reread this list often to see what other ideas spark my imagination.

Posted by Ken at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is no end of cool things you can do with Linux. I've been following the Asterisk project for a while now. This open-source project lets you build your own PBX on a Linux distribution. Now it's even easier to do with Knopsterisk. This is a version of Asterisk that has been configured to work with Knoppix, which is a distribution of Linux that is contained on a single CD. You boot any 'x86 machine from that CD, and you're running Linux without any installation involved. Boot up the Knopsterisk CD, and your PBX is up and running in minutes with minimal installation and configuration.

The only drawback I see is it appears that the CD is only available to purchase. I can't find a download link for it. However, since it's only $9.95, it's not a huge deal breaker.

Posted by Ken at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's been some buzz lately about the latest Google offering in which you can search for television programs. Google Video indexes the closed-captions sent with many TV shows and will point you to shows based on your search terms. I thought that was pretty cool, and a neat use of content that is already digital and prime for searching. That is, however, until I came across Blinkx.

Blinkx isn't happy simply watching closed captions. It actually analyzes the audio stream and applies speech recognition to it to extract information that is then searchable. They also have a utility that can be installed on your desktop that constantly searches for your favorite search terms. As computers and the Internet continue to be combined with our entertainment devices, what is possible just keeps getting better and better.

Posted by Ken at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple's recent introduction of the Mac mini last week didn't surprise many in the industry. Rumors had been flying during the days and weeks leading up to Macworld Expo. You might think that having a sub-$500 Mac available was a logical next step on Apple's part, but the move has left others wondering about their motivation. Robert X. Cringley has an excellent column this week in which he speculates about Apple's long-term plan, much of which makes a lot of sense in the grand scheme of things. Very interesting read.

Posted by Ken at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Up to now I've been hosting our limited photo album on my server. It was just easier to have complete control over the presentation and I was able to move the files over our internal network. Some of the external photo hosting services are start to look pretty good, so I'm going to give some thought to using one of them. It should make browsing faster for the visiter anyway. The newest is HeyPix, and it has a very nice-looking interface. It also has a powerful and easy-to-use client that makes updating and managing albums easy.

Posted by Ken at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check out this cool video of a true artisan keeping the craft of the letterpress alive. Having worked with the publishing industry for years, I gained an appreciation for good typography, and I just love watching the truly skilled at work.

Posted by Ken at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

    
There's been a growing trend toward building standalone networkable boxes that you can bring home, plug in, and have working quickly. The Mirra Personal Server and Buffalo Technology LinkStation are just such boxes that make backing up all the machines in your home simple. Plug one in, add a bit of software to your PC, and all your files are automatically backed up on a regular basis to a network drive. I do pretty much the same thing with my Linux server, but for people who want something that just works, these are worth looking at.

Posted by Ken at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)