Hello world!
by admin on Aug.17, 2010, under Uncategorized
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Current Phone Dilemma
by cypress on Jun.09, 2009, under News
Yesterday, the iPhone 3GS was officially announced. Today, the Nokia N97 NAM edition began shipping. A few weeks ago the Samsung OmniaHD i8910 began selling. Those are currently the three most advanced “phones” on the market today. Actually the N97 and the i8910 are really the most advanced devices and the iPhone is in that list because of the vast number of developers, services, and apps it has.
Nokia N97
What I like about this device is the 3.5″ touch screen, 32GB of internal memory + microSD card slot ( I just got my 16gb card which would be 48GBs of storage in my mobile device). It has a 5MP camera with dual LED flash, VGA video at 30FPS. And it has 3.5G in the USA. The best feature is the slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the only 1 of the 3 devices here which has that. The most appealing factor of this phone for me is the live widgets on the phone’s homescreen. The webbrowser has built in Flash support so sites like YouTube work.
What I don’t like about the device — it’s screen is resistive and the other two devices have capacitive screens. It has the slowest processor (Single ARM 11 434MHz) of all three devices. If you want to watch movies on the device they have to be transcoded or you have to buy a separate application to play straight DiVX movies.
iPhone 3GS
What I like about this device: My absolutely favorite thing about the iPhone is the App store which allows you to download over 50,000 applications. The beauty of the App store is how well integrated it is into the phone as well as into iTunes (even though I hate iTunes because its 80MB for a music player update). Although I like having devices that are different from everyone else’s, the iPhone’s popularity appeals to me because the GPS apps which show you where your friends are, would be much more useful to me because my friends actually have iPhones.
What I dislike about the device: It only has a 3MP camera, no flash whatsoever, no keyboard, no webbrowser flash, you have to transcode your movies, no memory card slot, no access to the filesystem.
Samsung i8910
What I like about this device: Where to start? It records HD video (1280×720) at 24FPS. It has an 8MP still camera. This device has the largest screen, 3.8 inches, it is AMOLED, and it is capacitive. The device has a 600MHz processor and a dedicated 3D graphics chip. It can play movies without transcoding them. According to reviews, the colors which the device shows are amazing. The OmniaHD runs S60 5th edition, which is the same operating system that the N97 has, and some of the applications for the N97 work on the i8910
What I dislike about the device: It has no 3/3.5G in the USA….seriously…WTF…it’s 2009… Besides the lack of a fast cellular data connection, the device lacks a physical keyboard (and I am not fond of the onscreen keyboard for S60 5th). Another issue, for such an imaging/video centric device, why does this only have a single LED flash?!?
So, to sum everything up, all 3 devices are very technologically advanced. They all have awesome features, as well as drawbacks. I like the iPhone for its community, but I like the N97 and the i8910 for their hardware. The i8910 is the most technologically advanced device, but it falls short for me because of its lack of 3G. Having been using the N85 for the last 2 months, I can’t see myself going back to a non-3G device even if it does shoot HD video. I am also not really impressed with the N97 because of its camera (same one as the one in the N95 from 2 years ago), and also the same processor, and no 3D hardware. The iPhone’s hardware is not very impressive when compared with to the likes of the other discussed devices, in the photo and video department because it has no flash and only a 3MP camera.
Ultimately, I would likely buy an iPhone 3GS simply because it would be the cheapest device to buy (without factoring in the montly AT&T fees). For $299 you get the 32GB version, where as the N97 costs $699 from Nokia (granted it is unlocked).
RedBox code for May 11th
by cypress on May.11, 2009, under Redbox
The free movie code for RedBox today is 6A43JK. It expires at midnight CST time.
Streaming Media With Hamachi and XBMC
by cypress on May.08, 2009, under Tutorial
In today’s connected world, most of us have tons of media, be it movies, or music. They are generally stored on our home servers. The problem arises when we are away from that central hub of our media. There are tons of methods to stream that media over the net, including Orb and Sling and many others. This tutorial will show you how to use Hamachi, a simple to setup VPN program, and XBMC to stream the media.
NOTE: Your experience with using this method may very. The streaming of media, especially movies, is very bandwidth dependent. If you have Dial-Up for your server, this will not work. You may experience buffering problems with DSL as well. The higher your bandwidth upstream on the server, the better your overall experience will be on your client.
This will be a 3 part process.
What’s needed:
- Hamachi – http://hamachi.cc
- XBMC – http://xbmc.org/download/
Outline:
- Step 1: Install Hamachi
- Step 2: Install XBMC
- Step 3: Setup XBMC
Part 1: Install hamachi (on Windows)
- Go to the hamachi website and download hamachi. It is free for personal use, so on their site just click Download now. You do not need to enter any of the information, simply tick the check box and click Go To Download
- Once it is download just double click the installer to launch it.
- Follow the following slideshow which walks you through installing hamachi.
- Once hamachi is launched, you will have to create a network, choose a name for your computer and choose a password for your network.
NOTE: You will have to setup hamachi on both your server and all your clients.
Part 2: Installing XBMC on the client (Linux, Mac and Windows are supported — this tutorial will focus on Windows)
- Go to the XBMC website and download the client for your OS.
- Once it is download just double click the installer to launch it.
- Follow the following slideshow which walks you through installing XBMC. If you want to launch XBMC tick the “Run XBMC Media Center” if you want XBMC to launch when you are done installing. You do not have to launch it yet.
Part 3: Mapping your remote drive through hamachi
Before you proceed, make sure both your server and client have hamachi and that they are both added to the same network.
- Open up hamachi by double clicking on its icon in the system tray.
- Right click on the computer which is your server and select Browse. You will be presented with a screen which is the same as if you were on the same (local network).
- Right click on the drive or folder which you would like to map.
- Give your mapped drive a letter and choose finish. It will now appear in your My Computer folder just as if the drive was installed in your system.
- Launch XBMC. Click Video. Click on Add source. Click on Browse and select your newly mapped drive. Then drill down to the folder which contains your video / movie files. Once you get the folder you want, simply click OK. This is what you should see.
Then click OK to complete the addition of the source. It will then show up in your Video sources. If you click it, you can see a list of all the movies which are in that directory. - Once you find the movie which you want to see, simply open its directory (if that is how you have set up your server) and then click on the movie. Once it buffers the first few seconds, the movie will begin streaming. This is what you’ll see.
NOTE: You can can follow the same steps in order to add your music from your home server into your XBMC’s library.
Windows 7 Release Candidate is out
by cypress on May.05, 2009, under News, Technology
The next pre-release of the eagerly awaited Windows 7 is now out. It can be obtained through the Microsoft website (http://bit.ly/Ovq8H). If you are interested in upgrading from build 7000 I would advise that you hurry up and download it before they decide to limit the number of downloads.
A quick word of warning to those who followed my triple boot tutorial: reinstalling Windows 7 is most likely going to overwrite your MBR and remove Grub which means you won’t be able to boot into Ubuntu or OS X. There should be directions online on how to reinstall grub. I will update the post later with a link to such a tutorial.
*UPDATE* As promised, here is a tutorial from Fosswire which walks you through rebuilding your GRUB bootloader after installing Windows 7.
Nokia Point & Find Update
by cypress on May.04, 2009, under News
As of today, May 4th, 2009, Nokia has released an update to it’s Point & Find application which I reviewed a few weeks ago. They say that it is still an early beta and it has some known issues.
Unfortunately I can not test this version out as it only supports S60 Version 3 FP1 devices, and right now I am using a N85, which is a FP2 device.
As of now the app is only supported in the US and UK. However, if you click the US link you can download the SISX file. Here is a link to that page. If that does not work for you, download it here (its the N95 8GB version).
If you have used it and would like to submit a review, please write a comment and I will get in touch with you.
Red Box code for May 4th
by cypress on May.04, 2009, under Deals, Redbox
The free movie code for RedBox today is BY75H9. It expires at midnight CST time.
ShavWet
by cypress on May.02, 2009, under Weekend Fun
If this is how I got shaved, I wouldn’t mind having to do it daily, maybe even twice a day:
