Still As Life

With my installation of 4gb of RAM in my new computer it became time to figure out what operating system to use. As I mentioned in my earlier blog about installing the OS on my new computer, Windows XP Professional 32 bit, Windows Vista 32 bit, and Windows Server 2003 would not see more than 3.5gb of RAM, even though I have 4gb installed.

I have been aware of this limitation in 32 bit operating systems for a while, but I had to try it out for myself, just to be sure. There is one thing though that has always had me confused about it. In everything I have read about people finding 32 bit OS's not seeing their full amount of RAM, it has seen various different amounts. Sometimes it would be 3.3gb, sometimes 3.5, 3.7, 3.8 etc.

I could not figure out why it was always different.

I've done some reading up on it though, and the reason for this is not that 32 bit operating systems can only handle 3.something gb of RAM, it is that they can address a total of 4gb of RAM.

This means that any devices that have their own RAM, such as video cards have their RAM saved first so that it can address the entirety of the video card RAM. If there are any other devices, such as some high end RAID controllers and so on, this RAM is added to the list of addressable RAM.

Then the system memory is the last lot of RAM to be added to the total amount of RAM.

So since my video card is a 512mb video card, and I don't have any other devices with their own RAM, and 4gb is the maximum RAM that can be addressed it is worked out as follows:

4gb - n = addressable system RAM

Where n = the total amount of RAM in other devices.

As I have 4gb of RAM, and 4gb is the total, and I have already lost 512mb of it to the video card, that leaves 3.5gb of addressable system RAM. That is why 32 bit operating systems would only see 3.5gb of RAM in my computer.

It turns out there are hacks available for both XP and 32 bit Vista to have them show the full amount of RAM, however, they will still only address the amount as worked out above.

In some of my reading it has also indicated that the 4gb limit is only a Windows limitation and is not present in other 32 bit operating systems such as Linux and BSD variants.

I am not certain on that last point though so don't quote me on it.

Labels: hardware, software, technology

I have been playing Jedi Academy again recently as this is one of my favourite Star Wars games, and I have been in a bit of a Star Wars kind of mood. Now, I just saw this trailer/documentary about the making and technologies used in the latest Star Wars game, due out mid 2008, "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed".

If you watch it you'll find out anyway, but the new game uses Havok physics, Euphoria dynamic motion synthesis and Digital Molecular Matter.

So what this means is, you have physics, so everything moves based on physics rather than pre-determined movements, Euphoria gives the computer controlled characters the ability to think for themselves and react to what you do.

An example given in the video clip is that if you throw a crate at someone, they could either duck under it, jump out of the way, or even grab onto it. Such as if you throw a person, or pick one up, they will try and grab onto things. It is described as a sense of self preservation.

Then there is also the Digital Molecular Matter which combines with the physics to give everything different characteristics. It means would will break like wood, metal will bend like metal, a crate thrown into another crate will have a much different result to a crate thrown into something much lighter, like a person.

Anyway, have a look at the video and be amazed. I want this game now. Actually, I want to upgrade first so I can play it when it comes out, but you get the idea.



Also, the game story sounds absolutely awesome, after all, who hasn't always wanted to be Darth Vader's secret apprentice?

Labels: games, technology, video clips

This is a pretty cool idea, though quite pointless really.

A Mac Mini inside a Macintosh 512k!



Perhaps using a colour screen would have made it a little bit more useful. However I suppose in doing so, it would have lost some of it's uniqueness.

Ah wells. Interesting all the same.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

With all the awe and wonder surrounding the official unveiling of the gorgeous new Macbook Air at the MacWorld Expo last week, another fantastic new Mac laptop has been somewhat overlooked.

The Modbook by Axiotron. This is not an official Apple Mac, however it incorporates the magic of OS X and the same components used in Macbooks with leading tablet technology from Wacom!

That's right, the Modbook is effectively the first and only Mac Tablet! With prices for the basic Modbook starting at $2290 US, it is not much more expensive than the basic Macbook Pro ($1999 US), and only slightly less powerful.

The standard Modbook comes with a 2ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor that can be upgraded, 1gb of RAM, also upgradeable, built-in iSight Camera, optical drive (either combo-drive or SuperDrive), and just in case you get lost, global positioning system (GPS).

It is based around a 13.3" screen, and since it doesn't close like, it is protected by chemically strengthened Axiotron ForceGlass™ to ensure it is as safe as possible from damage at all times.

The screen incorporates digitizer technology from Wacom and the included Axiotron Digitizer Pen is:

• Fast - 133 position updates per second
• Accurate - 20x display resolution
• Sensitive - 512 levels of pen pressure sensitivity
• Efficient - No batteries required

As it is based on a Macbook, it retains the full Macbook connectivity suite, including 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 (two ports), FireWire® 400 (one port), Bluetooth 2.0 and AirPort Extreme® Wi-Fi.

It does not come with a built in keyboard like some tablet PC's do. Instead, you have the option of either just tapping the letters you want on an on-screen keyboard (a little time consuming in my opinion), or just writing like you would on a piece of paper. The Modbook has full support for Apple’s Inkwell® software on Leopard, so writing is no problem at all! Alternatively, you can get a USB keyboard.

The weight and battery consumption is no different to the standard Macbook, so there is no real reason there to cause problems.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog got a demonstration of the Modbook on video which I have embedded below:



One thing I am not quite sure about from the video is that the Axiotron rep indicates that a wireless adapter would be needed. The Axiotron website though indicates that it comes with wireless (as I mentioned above). Either way though, it is still a very nifty and highly useful device.

If I didn't already have a Macbook Pro, the Modbook would be on my list way above the Macbook Air.

By the way, if anyone would like to donate me a Modbook, I would happily accept.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

Recently, Sun Microsystems purchased MySQL for $1 billion. A little late I know, but I only just read about it.

There are articles about it on both the Sun and MySQL websites.

With a gigantic customer base, MySQL is a very successful open source endeavour, so purchasing something like this, potentially brings millions of customers, including clients like Facebook and even Google.

Along with such a large client base, comes the potential to really screw up. There are plenty of other database systems out there, both open and closed source with similar features and performance to MySQL, in particular, PostgreSQL. This means that if Sun were to mess it up, there are systems waiting with arms open. For example, on the TerraMedia server, we have both MySQL and PostgreSQL running. Of course, for many larger clients, transferring to a different system would be a lot of work and for many, it probably would not be worth it. However, for smaller clients, or transitioning systems, there is a much bigger possibility.

Added to that, at the Queensland University of Technology students are introduced to databases and taught using PostgreSQL in the introductory database subjects, no doubt this occurs at other universities as well. This means other systems are in a prime position to take a piece of the market from MySQL if things go sour.

Having used both systems though, I can see there are many similarities, so even someone who has only used MySQL could pick up PostgreSQL with very few problems.

However, I can't point out the possible pitfalls without mentioning the benefits.

Sun is a giant in the I.T. industry with a large amount of finances available to back MySQL. Not to mention, Sun has been extremely successful in releasing the Solaris source code in 2005, and the Java programming language in 2006. Thinking along similar lines, you can hardly talk about Sun's support of open source software without mentioning projects like NetBeans and OpenOffice.org. Both of these have thrived under Sun as well.

Additionally, work conditions are not expected to change, including being able to work from home, and Sun have invited the current staff to continue work on the system, including the current leadership and executives.

It is clear to me that Sun understands the value of open source technology and the communities surrounding it and I don't doubt at all, that in adding MySQL to their arsenal, Sun won't screw things up and MySQL will continue to thrive from the added support.

For anyone reading that has heard my theories on the future of the I.T. industry, involving companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Google and so on, this move by Sun supports my expectations completely.

I will write up my theories one of these days, or copy a chat log about them, or something.

Labels: code, internet, software, technology

This is quite an interesting little device, the Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card.

It's a standard size SD card that can be used in any camera that uses the SD format. It has a built in wireless radio and transmits photo's over a wireless network to a computer, or to any of the supported online photo services such as Flickr, Picasa, Webshots and so on.

Once it has been setup on the computer it all works automatically, making it very easy to have all of your photo's on your computer without having to find and hookup cables, or take the card out and use a card reader, or whatever other method you might use.

It is also compatible with Mac's as of the 14th of January, importing to iPhoto, with Leopard and Safari support.

Of course, they are a fair bit more expensive than your standard SD cards, but the uses may well make them worth it for many people.

Labels: hardware, technology

You have no doubt heard by now that Apple unveiled the brand new Macbook Air at the Macworld Expo this week. Given my recent purchase of a Macbook Pro, I have been very interested to see how these compare. After all, the Air is meant to be only 1.9cm at it's thickest point and 0.4cm at it's thinnest. Now my Macbook Pro is about 2.4cm evenly across the whole laptop. So this isn't logically that much bigger than the Air.

I just saw this video with a comparison of the two at the Apple booth and all I can say is wow. I think I would break it if I owned a laptop as small as this:



On the other hand though, I want one purely for the awesome factor.

There are of course a few downsides and at this stage it would not replace the current Macbook lines as it is a different market again.

The Macbook Air does not have a firewire port, or a wired Ethernet connection. It also only has a single USB port. A USB to Ethernet dongle is available, but then there goes your singular USB port. So no doubt a USB hub will be a required accessory for one of these, unless you are in a truly wireless environment, which I suppose, I kind of am. I use wireless on my laptop at uni, at home and at my parents place, and those are pretty much the only places I use it. For anywhere else, I have my 3G modem, which would take up the USB port. So I suppose, it would not be that big of a deal really.

It comes standard with a 1.6ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2gb of RAM and an optional upgrade to a 1.8ghz CPU. As for storage, it comes standard with and 80gb hard drive, the same as the ones used in iPods. The hard drive has an optional upgrade as well to a faster 64gb solid state drive.

So power and storage wise, it is pretty decent. Of course it doesn't compare to the Macbook Pro's which are still the workhorse model laptops.

The things that are, in my opinion, the biggest downfalls for it are the lack of a dedicated graphics card. It uses an Intel integrated GMA X3100 graphics processor which shares 144mb of RAM with the main system memory, and it does not have a built in optical drive.

For many people the integrated graphics card may not be a big deal, but for me, it is.

Apple have provided a solution the the lack of an optical drive with the external Macbook Air SuperDrive. Again, this is connected via USB to the single USB port. The external drive is something you can buy additionally, it does not come with the laptop.

I can understand that the market this laptop is aimed at may not necessarily have such a big need for an optical drive, and ultra-portability is more the key factor in the development of this laptop, but once you add all the things you need to carry around with you, if you need them, a Macbook or Macbook Pro may still be a better option. After all, they are still quite small.

The negatives aside, watch the video and be amazed at the new Macbook Air. Not only at the size of it, but the new functions of the touch pad.

The Macbook Pro (and I assume also the standard Macbook) has a very innovative touch pad system that includes extremely useful functionality such as, tapping with two fingers is a right click, touching it with two fingers and moving them the direction you want to go is scrolling etc.The Macbook Air builds on this with even more functionality such as zooming. Whether all of the functionality is available in all applications, or just in things like iPhoto remains to be seen (by me anyway), but it's just another step along the development path anyway.

Now if only my Macbook Pro could lose some weight and gain some cool aerodynamics such as the Air, but whilst keeping its higher powered components, that would be awesome.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

Hehe, this has been really well done:



Yay Blu-ray!

Labels: technology, video clips

All I have to say is wow, the same size as two 24" displays, massively wide screen, inverse curves, I want two, and I promise not to violate them so crudely by playing World of Warcraft on them as Veronica suggested.



I would like to say something in response to her saying:

"It's a DLP screen, it's rear projection, but it has a faster response time than an LCD screen."

Yes Veronica, of course it's faster. LCD's are slow compared to their predecessor's, why should this be any different? What rock have you been living under?

If you are going to report on technology, at least know what you are talking about, please.

Anyway, now that that's out of my system, I will take two of these lovely Alienware behemoths please.

Labels: hardware, technology, video clips

"A failed effort to soften the noise from British military helicopters led to a breakthrough enabling surfaces from mobile telephone screens to car roof liners to be turned into stereo speakers."

How interesting. An article on the Sydney Morning Herald outlines the results of an attempt to dampen noise from military helicopters that resulted in creating noise instead.

By the looks of it, they've created this honeycombed material that actually produces sound, and can be used in all sorts of scenario's, such as on an LCD instead of frame-mounted speakers. This works because it is see-through, and results in the sound being pointed directly at the user who is looking at the screen. So it doesn't affect what they are seeing.

It has been called "SurfaceSound" and looks like it could pave the way for a lot of interesting developments. From the article it seems like the audio quality is quite good, but as a bass player, I am interested to hear how it goes with lower frequencies and the reproduction of these frequencies, even more so, if they can produce the same feel as traditional sub-woofers, or even woofers. You can't just here the bass, you have to feel it or it is incomplete.

Labels: music, technology

I've been asked on a few occasions if it is possible to save YouTube video's to a local computer in a usable format.

Usable really depends on the definition of the person. There are a lot of free services out there such as www.downloadyoutubevideos.com or at Tech Crunch, where you paste the link to the YouTube video into the page, and it provides you with a link to download it. Then you have to rename it to a .flv file and play it in a player such as VLC that supports Flash Video files.

This method is all well and good except, a lot of people don't want to download a video player just to watch .flv files, and it really is a fair bit of work to get them this way. There are programs floating around to convert .flv files to .avi or other formats, but I haven't come across any that I particularly like, and again this is a lot of work for a single video file.

There is an alternative though. There is a website called vixy.net that that works similarly to the others in that you paste in a link to the YouTube video and it then provides a download link. This is the only similarity though.

When you put in the link you want, it gives you an option to choose what format you would like from a list:

• AVI for Windows (DivX + MP3)
• MOV for Mac (MPEG4 + MP3)
• MP4 for iPOD/PSP (MPEG4 + AAC)
• 3GP for mobile (MPEG4 + AAC)
• MP3 (audio only)

So you can pick what format you want based on what you plan on using it on. Then hit start and off you go. It is downloaded to their server and converted from a .flv to whatever format you chose and a download link is provided. This cuts out all of the other troublesome steps of the other websites that provide YouTube download links. In particular, it saves you the trouble of converting a .flv to an .avi or .mov or any of the other formats.

Of course because the DivX codec is used for the Windows option, you will need to have DivX installed on your computer, but then, you can play the video in Windows Media Player or whatever other player you prefer instead of being restricted just to VLC. Besides that, many people already have DivX installed so it's not a very big deal. DivX have both paid and free versions. The free version can be downloaded and provides everything you need to run the files from vixy.net.

There is also a free (with ads) download available from vixy.net of a PC based .flv converter if you already have the .flv files you want. I haven't tried this as of yet, but I gather it is based on the same software the website uses. It is currently only available for Windows but there is a Mac version on the way. Keep in mind that it is still only in beta so it isn't going to be perfect yet.

Alternatively, if you have access to a server you can upload the .flv files to, or if you have seen some on a website where the video url is easy to find, vixy.net will accept these links as well as YouTube ones, so it has a solution for a lot of .flv conversion possibilities.

I hope this helps someone with converting .flv files and downloading YouTube video's.

Labels: internet, software, technology, video clips

The Apple homepage has just recently been updated to advertise a new line of Mac Pro computers released yesterday that are described as a "Tower of 8-core power". According to the specs listed in the press release, this statement is perfectly accurate.

The standard 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of $2,799 (US), includes:

• two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses;
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory;
• 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots;
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; and
• ships with Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse.

In addition to the standard configuration, the Mac Pro offers numerous build-to-order options including: one 2.8 GHz, two 3.0 GHz, or two 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors; up to 32GB of 800 MHz DDR2 fully-buffered ECC memory; up to four 1TB Serial ATA hard drives running at 7200 rpm or up to four 300GB SAS drives running at 15000 rpm; Mac Pro RAID card; up to two 16x SuperDrives with double-layer support; NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 graphics cards; AirPort Extreme 802.11n; Apple USB Modem; Apple wireless Aluminum Keyboard; Apple wireless Mighty Mouse; and Mac OS X Server Leopard. Complete build-to-order options and pricing are available at www.apple.com/macpro.

With capabilities of running 32gb of RAM along with 8 3.2ghz Xeon cores, they really aren't kidding when they say these are the fastest Mac's ever made. Previously they couldn't claim this as in some scenario's, the previous G5 PowerPC's still outperformed the new Mac Pro's. This was even shown in the benchmarks on the Apple website. I can't find this anymore to link to it as it appears the performance charts have been replaced with new ones showing the power comparison of the new 8 core beasts. Though one does wonder why they are in some cases compared to the previous model with 4 cores and some compared to the G5's.

I suspect this has come around in part due to the release of 16 new Intel CPU's to the Penryn family of processors that were officially announced on the 7th of January, two days ago.

It wouldn't surprise me if the new Mac Pro's are leading the way for a new line of Macbook's as well. I have heard rumours of an "Apple Portable" but I don't know if there is anything to that or not.

My logic says though that it was only recently that a new line of iMac's were released, now there is a new line of Mac Pro's. That only leaves Mac Mini's and Macbook's/Macbook Pro's. This is purely speculation on my part though.

Labels: hardware, technology

I'm a little bit late with this as it was announced over a week ago now, that Netscape Navigator support will end from February 1st and there will be no future development on Netscape Navigator by AOL.

It is interesting to read some of the things in the blog and in the comments about this. For one, I was totally unaware there was still much of a following of the Netscape browser. If you are like me and remember the days where Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were the two most common browsers, then you have seen things change, many of you probably remember further back than that as well. Since the beginning of the Mozilla Foundation and the open sourcing of the Netscape core, Netscape has gradually fallen further and further behind in its user base.

Given that Netscape came to be based on Mozilla and later, Firefox, it seemed to me that the continued development work on Netscape was somewhat pointless as it, in my eyes duplicated the browser for no apparent reason.

Something I found interesting were, in the blog, and also reflected in many of the comments, was this:

"While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer."

Why is it that Internet Explorer is the only browser recognized as controlling market share? Once upon a time this was true, but a lot has changed. There are other browsers such as Opera and Firefox that claim their own portions of the market, as well as Safari, Seamonkey, Konqueror and so on. Why is Internet Explorer the only target? If anything, Firefox and Seamonkey should have been the primary competitors as they are based on the same core as Netscape.

In my opinion, Netscape shouldn't have been competing with Internet Explorer so much, but focusing on Firefox and determining what Firefox didn't offer, and building on that. Netscape was once a very useful program, but it has been years since I have even considered it. I haven't used it to test websites in a long time as if it runs in Firefox, it should also be fine in Netscape. Perhaps this has been a bit lax on my part, but if I'm not mistaken, they use the same core code, so they should render the same.

In one comment the following question is raised:

"Netscape's rise and fall symbolizes why it is important for all companies to constantly innovate and litigate when others use unethical tactics to hasten their demise.

Both Internet Explorer and Firefox can after Netscape. Why are they still around?

How did they manage to get popular debuting after one of the most important additions to the beginnings of the World Wide Web? We all know about Microsoft's controversial tactics - but how does one explain FireFox?!

Why did Netscape not compete successfully? Was there internal politics?

We should all learn from this!"

I don't know what the level of knowledge this person has is like, or what experience they have had with web browsers. To me though, why Netscape did not compete successfully comes down to the fact that it was no longer needed. It was no longer a mainstream web browser and competitor to Internet Explorer. Opera and Firefox had filled that place. They both came after Netscape yes, but Netscape didn't compete successfully, because it was competing with itself under a different name, Firefox. I expect that if Netscape had not been open sourced when it was, it would have continued to lose market share to Internet Explorer, and when Opera came around it would have added to the mix, just as it did anyway, and take away more of Netscape's user base.

The open sourcing of Netscape gave it an avenue to thrive and evolve into Firefox through the effort and contributions of the global community.

There is no doubt in my mind that Netscape played a significant role in the evolution of the Internet and web browsing, but in the end it's time was up as an entity. AOL made the right choice to "hand the reins fully to Mozilla", after all, they are essentially the same browser.

If you are one of the Netscape fans, AOL have, as their final development salute, created a Netscape Firefox theme with Netscape extensions to go with. So you can have Firefox appear as close to Netscape as it will get.

It is sad to see Netscape drop out of the game, but since Opera joined the game and the Mozilla Foundation produced Firefox, it's days have been numbered.

A salute to those who kept it going for so long is well deserved, and everyone that has worked on it over the years should be proud to know they helped forge the internet as we see it today, by navigating rather than exploring.

Labels: internet, software, technology

If you remember my blog from when I was looking for MSN for Mac, then you will recall that I mentioned Adium as a solution, however it did not have webcam support, so I kept looking for a different solution.

Adium 1.2 was released yesterday, and while it does not yet have webcam support, it sounds like it is well under way. The update has a lot of bug fixes, and adds a lot more usability to the system including adding more usability to the menu items and account management features.

There is much more than that and for full information have a look at the blog and the 1.2 release post.

It sounds like it will only be a matter of months before webcam support is available for Adium. In the meantime though, I discovered a temporary solution, if you want to use Adium. It's called MeBeam and uses Flash to integrate audio and video support. It does however do this through a web browser rather than directly through the Adium application which may not be suitable for a lot of people.

The audio and video quality is quite good, though there do seem to be a few other minor issues at this stage.

So if you like Adium, perhaps this is a solution for you. I will still be sticking with Mercury Messenger though as the webcam support is more to my preference than what MeBeam offers. Adium does sound like it will be very promising though in the near future with the release of Adium 2 which will include audio and video support.

I also came across a plugin for Adium called XBlaze that adds Xfire support to Adium, and as far as I know is the only Xfire client available on Mac. It still has a few minor bugs, but it appears to be updated relatively frequently. This is as good a reason as any for me to keep Adium on my Mac and up to date, so hopefully we'll see Adium 2 soon with full support for audio and video so I don't need another client.

Labels: software, technology

Joe Wilcox from Microsoft Watch has some really great advice in his top 10 recommendations for 2008. It's just a pity that chances are, Microsoft won't take much of it on board.

I particularly like number 2, and I think this is something that would be really beneficial. There is nowhere that properly showcases Microsoft products, and while I'm not a big Microsoft supporter myself, I can see how this is a big problem. Look at any of the Apple stores, or even Myers and David Jones, they all have big Apple showcases, with Apple products setup so that customers can try them out.

Sure, at say Harvey Norman, there are heaps of Windows computers setup and on display, but often times the sales people don't really know that much about the computers. If Microsoft could properly showcase all of their products together and show off how well they work together when they are setup properly, as Apple does, it would no doubt benefit their sales, as well as customer satisfaction, as they would actually be able to see how things should work together and setup their own purchases the same way.

There is a lot of operating system functionality and software functionality in Windows and other Microsoft products that people don't know exists or just don't understand, so it never gets used, or when it does, it doesn't get used properly.

In addition, the Microsoft website can sometimes be difficult to navigate when you are looking for help on specific things unless you know where to look. For many people this is discouraging and so they give up on things because they don't understand them.

If Microsoft were to open some retail outlets and improve help and support through their website and other retail stores, it would really help out their customer satisfaction and overall sales. If people are happy with a product or service, they will recommend it, and often a recommendation from a trusted person will be worth much more than any advertising campaign will be.

Perhaps I'm completely wrong here, but I don't believe I am. Go to Myers or David Jones, and the Apple section always has far more people around trying out the Mac's than the Windows section that has everything locked in display cases.

Last time I was at Myers, I counted over 20 people surrounding 3 iMac's, 2 MacBook's and 2 MacBook Pro's, the Windows section was completely empty. That's a big difference.

As Joe says, "Think simple. Be social."

Labels: rants, software, technology

Ah Christmas, this year, I received one of these Tattoo Bluetooth Headsets by Bluetrek because my parents always seem to call me when I'm driving, so they decided this would be a great idea.

It has been quite the mission though. I spent all day yesterday trying to get it to work. Once it had completed it's first full charge and I began attempting to set it up on my phone, I was unable to get it to work. My phone, a Panasonic x700 would pair with the headset with no problems, and the controls on the headset would work with the phone, but it would not send audio to, or receive audio from the headset.

Since this was being problematic, I paired it with my MacBook Pro and it worked perfectly fine!

So I spent the rest of the day fiddling with my phone settings and trying to get it to rout the audio correctly, but for some reason the battery finally died, far sooner than it should have. According to the box and manual, the Bluetrek Tattoo Headset has a 4 day standby life or 4.5hr talk time. It died after about 6 hours, mostly in standby.

After this I was unable to get it to charge again, the charge light would come on when it was plugged in, but it would only stay on for a few minutes, and as soon as I took it off the charger it would refuse to turn on.

So today, we took it back to the store and they replaced it with another thankfully. This new one would pair off with my laptop fine, but it still had the same problem with the phone. I tried it with mums phone though and it worked perfectly, which leads me to believe that for whatever reason, my phone does not fully support it. So if anyone else has had this experience with the Panasonic x700 that can offer some advice, that would be great. In the meantime though, I'm looking at a new phone anyway, have been for a while, so perhaps it will just have to come sooner than I had been planning. Good enough excuse for me.

The headset is a great little thing though. I can't stand some of the big bulky ones that are floating around. The Bluetrek Tattoo is tiny though and while it comes with hook type things to put around your ear, they are optional, and it is small enough, that it will stay in my ear on its own without needing the hooks. This is great cause it makes it much easier to cart it around with me than those big things. It is only 8.1g, so its tiny!

For anyone thats interested in these types of things, it also comes with 8 different "skins" so you can chance the look of it, hence the name "tattoo", but they are nothing overly special in my opinion. I'm quite happy with the standard black casing.

The ear piece is very comfortable to wear and has 3 different sizings that come with it, so it will fit most people with no hassles.

The audio is a little bit dodgy at times, if you move it around in your ear it fuzzes, but it doesnt have any trouble if you are walking around and so on until you get around 10m from it. The fuzziness when you move it around isn't a very big deal though because once you've got it there it's comfortable enough that you don't need to move it around.

It has a pretty decent range, as I mentioned, it does around 10m, including through a couple of walls. Nothing special, but it's about average in my experience with Bluetooth devices and it is more than enough for it's purpose. 10m is also the distance stated on the box as being the operation range, so it stands true to that.

If you are like me and need something very small and easy to cart around, the Bluetrek Tattoo Bluetooth Headset is a great little device.

Labels: hardware, technology

I came across this nifty open-source piece of web-based software last night that is really quite an interesting and useful idea.

Created by Johann C. Rocholl, Browsershots allows you to submit a website for any of the available browsers on any of the available operating systems. You can also specify things such as with or without Flash, Java, JavaScript, screen resolutions and colour depths.

The website is then added to the job queue and allocated to a particular factory. The factory (computer) then takes the web address and loads it up in your specified browser with your specified settings. A screenshot is taken of the browser window with your loaded website and it is then uploaded onto the central Browsershots server for you to view.

I've used it to test a couple of websites now in various scenario's and it works great, it's helped me pick up a few things I would've completely missed otherwise.

Of course since it is all automated, you don't see things such as any mouse over effects, so you still need to test them manually, however for everything else, this is an excellent idea!

The factories used for it are all voluntary and anyone is able to add a factory to the ones used for work. As factories are provided voluntarily though, often there are some unavailable. Such as when I was doing some testing last night, only one of the Linux factories was online, so I was not able to test all of the different Linux browsers.

This is a bit of a downside, but I think, the more widely known it becomes the more factories people will volunteer. After all, if people want to continue using a free service like this, people have to be willing to help out.

There is a paid priority system. So if you pay 10 Euros, you will receive a month of priority processing which effectively means you don't wait in the standard queue to have your screenshots processed, you are put at the front of the queue.

Alternatively, if you don't want to pay for priority processing, if you have a factory or factories setup to help out with the load, when all your factories combined are uploading 1000 screenshots in the 24 hours before the time you are submitting a screenshot, you will get priority processing as well.

On their wiki they have all the setup instructions you need to get a factory up and running on Windows, Linux or Mac. It's all very straight forward and easy to follow. So if you are interested in helping out with the processing load, or anything at all, it will no doubt be greatly appreciated.

Apparently the bandwidth load for uploading these shots can range up to around 20gb a month. Downloads would be much the same as browsing to all of the sites. So there is quite a lot of bandwidth involved, but if you can spare it and have a spare computer lying around, I really think this is a worthwhile idea. After all, anyone that regularly has to check browser compatibility will know how much time it can take to test websites in a wide variety of browsers and this really speeds up that time and let's you test in even more browsers than most people would.

I don't doubt that you will find it as useful as I am continuing to find it.

Labels: internet, software, technology

As you may recall from my blog last month about the new Skype phone on 3's mobile network, I was quite excited about it and looking forward to it's being available in Australia.

However, it seems my excitement was somewhat misplaced.

As great as the idea is and while it would no doubt save a lot of money for me where half of my calls could be made on Skype instead of via a regular phone call, it has come to my attention that it is only half as good as it sounds.

I have been looking into getting a new phone as my current Panasonic X700 which has been an excellent phone for the past two years, despite it's dying after the first year (though it was still under warranty so that was alright). It is now getting to the stage though where it is well and truly getting worn out.

I had been planning on getting a mobile phone that I could use as a modem, however as I covered in my blog about my new Vodafone 3G modem, this is no longer necessary. This put the Skype phone up at the top of my list.

However, as I have been doing a little more looking into it now that it is available here, I have found out, Skype can only be used in 3G coverage areas, and anyone that knows what 3's coverage in Australia is like knows that they have probably got the smallest 3G network of the top Australian mobile networks. This means that Skype is effectively only usable if you are in a capital city.

This poses a problem for me. I know that Skype can be used on dialup speeds. GSM networks can provide dialup speeds. So why can't Skype be used in GSM area's?

I can use Skype on my laptop with my 3G modem in a GSM area since Vodafone allow the modem to be used in GSM area's for no additional charge on top of the base 3G charges.

This means that I can still use Skype, even if it is only at dialup speeds. So this is a better option for me.

It looks like I'm back to looking at other phones. Sony Ericsson look very promising.

Labels: hardware, technology

I've just been visiting the Feng-GUI website after reading about it briefly in SitePoint's Design View Newsletter #40.

This is really quite an interesting tool. The idea behind it is that using the algorithm they have developed, it can work out what points of the website are the main points that would draw a user's vision towards them. It then works creates a salience heat map to determine which parts of the page are effectively the "hottest" areas. Or as described on their webpage it:

"...is an artificial intelligence service which simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap."

How cool is that? As you can see in the little image above showing this blog, the hottest points are not even on the content. While I don't think this is 100% accurate as of yet, I would say it is actually getting reasonably close and is definitely still a very useful tool for a web and/or graphic designer.

If you use the tool found on their home page, you can upload any image that is a max of 5mb and it will run the algorithm over it and produce a heat map for you. Alternatively, you can use bookmarklets or there is a Firefox extension available. These two options produce a larger image than the tool on their home page and so these might be more useful for some people, however I did notice that their is a slightly different result using these options. I don't know if it is because they are larger images or if it is something else.

Personally I think the heat maps produced by the home page tool are a bit more accurate, however the larger images are definitely more useful, especially in area's that have a lot of detail. I noticed that the Firefox extension and bookmarklets seemed to time out less than trying to create a heat map through the main page as well.

The Feng-GUI Firefox extension is very simple to use and is my favourite of the options. Once it is installed, it just ads a little flame icon to the bottom right of the Firefox status bar. Simply browse to the page you wish to see a heat map of and then click the flame. You will then be taken to the Feng-GUI website with a completed heat map in front of you. Easy as that.

The bookmarklet code can be found on the tools page of the Feng-GUI website and I have setup a little example below so you can see how it works:

Make a heat map of www.stillaslife.com.

I know I've already found this useful, so hopefully you will too.

Enjoy.

Labels: design, internet, software, special interest, technology

As you may recall from my earlier blog about my recently acquired Vodafone 3G USB Modem on the 4th of December, I was having trouble getting the modem to work correctly on my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.1, or Leopard. I was following the provided instructions to the letter but it simply wasn't doing what the instruction manual said it should do.

According to the instruction manual, after installing the software, it should ask to reboot the system. It didn't, so I had been rebooting it manually in my attempts at getting it to work correctly.

Upon rebooting, you were meant to run the installed program and click "Activate" once it had detected the connection. This was fine, this worked. However, according to the instruction manual, it should have created a new connection program in the applications folder that you click whenever you wish to connect. It was not doing this. If you attempted to run the activation program again, it would freeze the program when you clicked activate and would not un-freeze without a forced quit (I left it for over 24 hours to see if it would un-freeze itself, but it didn't). If you re-install the software, you are then able to try the Activate program without it freezing, but after the first time, it will freeze again.

Yesterday I called Vodafone customer support about it as this was becoming quite a nuisance, and as much as I would have liked to speak to someone in Australia about it, I spoke to someone from "Vodafone Egypt" about it.

They provided me with a newer version of the Vodafone Mobile Connect software that is currently only available on the Vodafone.de website for reasons I fail to understand. As far as I can tell, this newer version of the software is still only meant for Mac OS X 10.4, however, it seemed to behave exactly as the instruction manual described the version that came with my modem should. However there was still one problem. The connection program was still not being created after the activation program was run.

The Vodafone Egypt guy provided me with some instructions on what to do though, before I had downloaded the newer version (so he didn't have to keep me on the phone). These instructions were different to what was in the manual. He said that after running the activation program, go into my System Preferences, then into Network. Once I was there, to select the USB modem and from there, click connect and this would connect to the 3G network. I tried this with the older version of the software before installing the new one, and it worked perfectly without any problems at all. Connected almost instantly and voila. It worked identically with the new version as well. Of course, you then also have to come back into the System Preferences whenever you want to disconnect or reconnect which is quite a pain. However, it has a little tick box that you can tick to display the modem status in the the menu bar the same way it displays the status of the wireless and blue tooth connections by default.

So having ticked this option, I can now choose to connect or disconnect it from the menu bar as I would with the wireless and bluetooth.

Now that I've gotten this sorted out it works great, it would seem I am able to share the connection between both my laptop and desktop when I am at home as well, as I had been hoping, so this is working really well now.

Generally the connection on both Windows and Mac seems to be as stable as a decent ADSL1/2/2+ connection, and it is far more stable than my ADSL2+ connection is.

The speed's are nothing to write home about of course, but I can generally download at a rate of around 200kb/s with 3 bars of 3G reception, so that's reasonable for what I am using it for and I am really quite happy with it.

Ironically though, my ADSL2+ connection became almost stable within a couple of days of my signing the contract for this 3G modem. Annoying yes, but while it has been fairly stable, it's still dropping out more frequently than I would like, so the 3G modem is still proving to be very useful.

Labels: hardware, internet, technology

My sub-standard internet connection provided by my lazy landlord has finally ticked me off enough that I went out and bought a wireless modem.

I've been looking into this possibility for a while now and have looked at the offerings from 4 of the major providers in Australia, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Three.

None of the offerings from Telstra or Vodafone were even worth considering given that they were overpriced and had a low usage quota, but Three and Optus had plans that were worth looking at.

Optus had plans beginning at $39 a month bundled with a phone for 400mb quota or 2gb for $49 a month. Or if you didn't want it bundled with a phone the USB modem was an additional $5 a month on 24 month contracts or $10 a month on 12 month contracts.

Three's plans were more to my liking starting at $29 for 1gb and $49 for 2gb. Both plans came with the USB modem for free on the 24 month contracts, or for $10 a month on the 12 month $29 contract or $5 a month on the 12 month $49 contract.

The thing that had me reluctant to go with Three though is that they allow 2mb of data for roaming usage and then you are charged at $1.65 per mb. That is way too expensive since I will be using it in other places then just Brisbane and I won't know if there is Three 3G coverage or not, and chances are, there won't be since their coverage is predominately in the capital cities and other major cities.

So Vodafone and Telstra were too expensive, Optus was a tad bit more expensive then I wanted to spend at this stage, and Three didn't offer suitable roaming options, so this is why I had not yet done something along these lines.

I noticed this morning though, when my connection was working briefly, that Three had a new offer that bundled a Nokia 6120 with $550 worth of calls and so on with a USB modem and 1gb of bandwidth for $69 a month on a 24 month contract. Of course the phone can be had for $29 a month and the modem and data usage for another $29 a month, but the real selling point is the $550 worth of calls on the phone thats with it. So I was seriously considering going with something like this, then I discovered that on the 3rd of December Vodafone had begun a limited time offer until the 31st of December with 5gb of bandwidth and the USB modem included for $39 a month on a 24 month contract.

I haven't liked the idea of a 24 month contract at all, but the exit fee is only $25 for each month remaining on the contract, so even for a year, thats only $300 which while its effectively dead money, isn't that bad. So with this higher available quota than any other provider for a cheaper price prompted me into it so I off I went to Garden City to the nearest Vodafone store.

Upon arriving there and pulling out all the details I could think of at the time that I needed to check. For anyone else interested, the main points are:

While you only get 3G speeds in Vodafone's coverage area's, which are predominately capital and major cities, it will automatically switch to GPRS anywhere else using Vodafone's GSM network and you will not be charged any extra for it, you will just be on GPRS speeds which are similar to dialup, from memory, a tad faster.

The Vodafone GSM network covers the majority of the country, so I have 3G speeds while I'm in Brisbane, and then GSM most of the other places I would be using, so this works out quite well, not as ideally as 3G everywhere, but Telstra are the only ones offering that on their NextG network, which is far too expensive for my needs.

The USB modem and software is meant to be compatible with Windows XP and Vista as well as Mac OS X Panther 10.3 and above. This is important for me as I need it for my Mac laptop as well as my Windows desktop.

Excess data usage is charged at 10c per mb, which is higher then I would like, but is not too bad really.

There is also no option for a 12 month contract, it's 24 months only and it has to be paid by direct debit.

That's about it really.

So I went ahead and agreed to get it only to discover they did not have any USB modem's in stock, nor did any other Vodafone store in Brisbane! How can a company, 1 day after the beginning of a promotion have none of the product?!

So I went around all the other phone stores, double checked that Optus weren't doing any deals I hadn't heard of yet, they weren't. Connectone didn't have any USB modems. Soul Mobile it turned out don't do Vodafone, nor do Strathfield, so they were out of the question. Finally I found Crazy Johns who lo and behold had heaps of the USB modems in stock as they had pre-ordered in anticipation of the offer, so I was in luck, or so I thought.

Everything was going well, until they went to do a credit check and they wanted me to ask my employer to lie for the credit check. How is this legal? Anyway, 2 hours later, I ended up getting the lady that was serving me to forget altogether about my sub-contracting and just use my store-based job for the application, so half an hour later once she sorted that out, I passed the credit check and off I go with my new USB modem and Vodafone Red SIM.

So home I get and as you saw in the first photo, it's all very red and Vodafone like.


Out of the box it comes and first up you have to install the software. This takes a couple of minutes so I popped the SIM card in while I was waiting. It's fairly simple, it just slips into a little slide out tray then goes back into the modem.

The manual says that it prompts you when it wants you to plug in the modem, but no big surprise, it doesn't.

I got it all setup on Windows with no problems and as you can see in the photo to the right, it has a strong resemblance to the photo on the case!

Installing it on the Mac was a slightly different story. The software installs fine and it detects the modem, but it does not seem to behave exactly as it should. I'm not sure if this is a clash that has something to do with my using Leopard or what, but I plan on tinkering with it soon and seeing if I can figure it out.

The modem itself as you can see is quite small and portable. It comes with a single, short USB cable as I am using in the photo, and a second longer cable with two plugs on the end in case a single connection does not provide enough power.

The flashing light you can vaguely see on the front in the photo changes depending on the activity. It's off when there is no activity, green when the computer is communication with it without the internet being connected, dark blue when it is connected to the net but there is no activity, and teal when it's connected to the net and there is activity.

The Vodafone software for Windows is quite straight forward and simple to use. It shows how much bandwidth you've used per month, how much per session, and how far you are away from your quota. It also allows you to send SMS's from your computer. I don't know if these cost, and if so how much, but I shall attempt to find out soon.

The Mac version of the software appears to be just as simple, but as I mentioned earlier I haven't really fiddled around with it yet. I do know though that it doesn't have the SMS feature that the Windows version has.

The speed's are nothing spectacular, though they are far better then dialup, and far better then dealing with the poor landline connection here, even if it is far faster for the 20 second intervals that it works for.

I shall hopefully sort out whatever the problem is on the Mac soon and see how it goes. For now though, I highly recommend this as it has been very stable and consistent in the connection, even with things like video streaming, though I don't intend on doing this too much since it's only 5gb.

One thing I forgot to find out is whether uploads count towards the quota as well, so this is something I will have to chase up ASAP.

Anyway, chances are, unless I'm at work, uni, or visiting the family in Lismore, you'll be hearing from me via my shiny new 3G connection.

Have a good one guys and girls.

Labels: hardware, internet, technology