freeform goodness

If you’re a free software kinda person who feels guilty about your heresy/iPhone purchase, you can always try to ease your karmic burden by rocking the Free Software Song as a ringtone (128k, no copyrights claimed.)

:: Dave Walker 15:42 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/iPodtouchandiphone]
:: tags: iPodtouchandiphone

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:: Dave Walker 07:09 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/iPodtouchandiphone]
:: tags: iPodtouchandiphone

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Putting this here for Google’s sake — the information is out there, but scattered…

You can play the High Definition videos from Apple’s Quicktime Trailer site on your PS3 (maybe the Xbox 360 as well — I don’t have one to test.) This is nice, as Apple’s trailer site has about 10x as many trailers available compared to the PSN store. The HD videos are internally MPEG4 conformant h.264 video and AAC audio. I believe Quicktime Pro is also required. In theory this should work in either OS X or Windows, but I only have OS X to try.

1. Click one of the links (depending on your TV’s resolution, of course) and the trailer will load in QuickTime Player. Depending on download size, it will take anywhere from a couple of seconds to an eternity for the movie to finish downloading. I recommend allowing the trailer to download fully before trying to export it.

   
2. Make sure you set the viewing window to “Actual Size” — as far as I can tell, QuickTime wants to export the movie at the same resolution as the current window.



3. Choose the “Export” option in QuickTime Player’s file menu.



4. In the resulting dialog, choose to export the movie with both audio and video set to “passthrough.”







5. Move the resultant MP4 file to your console via network, using something like MediaLink or MediaTomb, or via a thumb drive.

:: Dave Walker 08:35 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/ps3]
:: tags: ps3 playstation quicktime movies

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I’ve owned an iPod touch since the beginning of the year and it’s a pretty cool device— it does the expected iPod stuff with a very nice screen for video and the bonus of being a WiFi enabled handheld web browser. I also, for work, carry the world’s worst mobile phone. That’s actually probably a little unfair— it’s probably not so much worse than all the other shitty little phones billions of people carry around, but I do hate the thing — horrible UI, poor battery life, impossible to find accessories (sync cables, chargers) for, etc.

Back to positive things, as mentioned above, I really do like the iPod touch, particularly the net-enabledness of it. As ubiquitous as WiFi is, though, finding a quality clear and open connection when I’m out and about is always a bit of a crapshoot. Watching the prerelease hype for the 3g iPhone, I finally decided that what I really wanted was an iPod touch that had an always-on connection. A few months back I looked into getting something like the CradlePoint PHS300, but quickly realized that then I’d be carrying 3 little devices around all the time, and that’s just silly.

So, I, um, bought an iPhone (Tammie did, too.) We hit the sweet spot in terms of availibility — we purchased at the Somerset Apple store on Saturday. This meant that the Friday launch day activation disaster had been resolved (a friend and I talked to a guy Friday who spent 6 hours waiting for a phone), but there were still actually phones available (most stores sold out on Sunday.) We got in line @ 2:30 PM and were inside the store at 4:00. We walked out with two working phones a half hour later.

• What’s to like
  • It’s teh Internets, in mah pants. Duh.
  • It’s still a great iPod
  • Remote
  • I get to make Sven smile
  • Safari is a great mobile browser. The fact that it works everywhere now and not just when I get lucky is officially :)
  • The already way fun Maps application that I knew and loved from the iPod touch gains immensely in utility when paired with even the halfassed GPS in the phone. I may never be lost again.
  • Syndicated feeds and Twitter and and Flickr and all that crap are a natural fit, and the new apps for them in the App Store are largely pretty good, if a mite buggy.
  • The lack of Flash is a feature.
• What’s not to like
  • If I turn on all the advertised goodies (3g, WiFi, location services, paired Bluetooth headset support) the thing plows through a battery charge like Lindsay Lohan though an eightball. I’ve quickly learned to take advantage of charging opportunities when I get them.
  • 2 years indentured servitude to a phone company
  • Freetards yell at me for not donning a mobile hairshirt instead.
  • Accessories (cases, etc.) are thin on the ground — manufacturers are still converting over their lines from the 1st-gen iPhone.

:: Dave Walker 10:52 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/iPodtouchandiphone]
:: tags: iPodtouchandiphone

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…and built-in screenshots, too.

:: Dave Walker 04:25 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets/iPodtouchandiphone]
:: tags: iPodtouchandiphone

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It’s been a few years since I’ve really paid much attention to gaming consoles. Since I own one again I’m trying to pay at least moderate attention to the various gaming sites so I know what’s coming out and when, how to spool content from my computers to it, etc. One thing I’ve (blissfully) forgotten in the interval is how obnoxiously stupid console fanboys are. Every time I follow a link to an article about a title or accessory or feature I’m interested in, I make the mistake of reading past the end of the article and I see the comments posted by the various mental giants who’ve invested their entire self worth on which small television-attached beeping box sells the most units. It’s almost as bad as adults who hold a grudge against other cities because the hired-gun millionaires that run around in the stadiums and arenas in their town won or lost versus the hired-gun millionaires that run around in someone else’s.

:: Dave Walker 20:12 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets]
:: tags: gadgets

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Adding to the list of things that work really well in the Sony PSP’s web browser would be Google Reader’s newish mobile mode. Well, it’s not actually new (you’ll note that link goes back to, um, May) but I kept hearing people talk about it as “Google Reader’s mobile phone mode” or something, and you know I hate me some phone surfing. I was pleasantly surprised to find it works really well in the PSP’s browser (as does the latest revision of Flickr’s mobile interface).

I tried them both out while resting upon my turkey-enhanced butt over the weekend.

:: Dave Walker 14:26 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets]
:: tags: gadgets psp mobile webapps

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(link.)

:: Dave Walker 19:19 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets]
:: tags: gadgets

:: Comments (0)

Yeah, I know, I should have stuck to the 1.5 firmware for teh h0mebr3w, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

It’s still not at the official site, nor via wireless update as of this writing (Wed Jul 27 09:28:18 EDT 2005), but I found it here. That link also lists all the features that are supposed to be in the update.

The browser string for the new Sony PSP Web Browser is “Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00)”, in case you want to try serving special content for it. It really cries out for something like this — the first vendor to release one of these that works with the PSP gets my money (I hate hate hate mobile phone-style tappitytappitytap-style press-the-number-key-12-times alphanumeric input)

I tried to take some photos of the unit with 2.0 firmware installed but I’m having fantastically bad results no matter what I try. The combination of a shiny black PSP and a bright screen is completely confusing my camera, which can’t manage to focus.

I’m still trying to figure out the new video format stuff. If nothing else, H.264 should allow me to squeeze more video onto a memory stick.

:: Dave Walker 09:42 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets]
:: tags: gadgets

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Apologies, youngsters. This is going to be one of those irritating essays where someone tells you tales of how things used to be and how much easier you have it now. Don’t fret; this one won’t take too long.

I started buying and listening to music in earnest in about 1980 or so. I had a paper route and no real expenses, so I could spend about $10-$20 a month on music. Buying music meant investing in 7-inch vinyl singles or, more uncommonly, 12-inch vinyl albums. I could listen to them in two places — the cheap but able stereo in my room or the nicer stereo my dad had downstairs. Dad had a cassette recorder, but I don’t think he or mom had cassette players in their cars yet, I couldn’t afford a Walkman, which at that point were still new and rather expensive. I didn’t really start doing portable audio until my junior or senior year of high school, when Walkman knockoffs were affordable enough so that I could buy a cheap one, which was, as I recall it now, probably about the same size and weight as a Buick. I know it had a shoulder strap. Think about that for a minute.

My first really workable portable was a Sony WM-30, which I somehow scrimped up $99 for before my freshman year at Michigan. The device thoroughly defined the year for me. Every spare dollar I had went towards buying prerecorded cassettes (gack, what a horrible format) to keep the thing fueled. Its big advance was that, as opposed to the monstrosity I owned earlier, it was only slightly larger than the cassette it contained. It was my constant companion as I walked across campus from class to class.

I had a really nice backpack, a roomy one made of pigskin that served me for almost ten years. It had a compartment on the back that could hold 4-8 cassettes (depending how tightly I packed them). Before setting off from the dorm in the morning, I’d pick a handful of tapes for the day and load them into the backpack. This wasn’t ideal, of course — cassettes were fragile, susceptible to heat, cold, spilled liquids, being stepped on, etc. Of course, I also had textbooks, notebooks, floppy disks, and whatever other class materials in the backpack, which meant I might end up looking like an infantryman slogging up hills on days when I had a lot of walking to do. During my sophomore year, I got a Sony Discman, which had a rechargable battery, was also the size of a Buick, and cost me, as I recall, $200 in 1986 dollars.

CDs were even more inconvenient as a portable format — antiskip technology was in its infancy, and the player would only run about 3 hours on a charge. So I’d leave with 3 CDs in the morning, they’d skip constantly while I was moving, and I’d really only get through 2 and a half of them before the player died. Three CDs meant three artists — CD recorders weren’t even in laboratories yet.

Flash-forward 20 years and I have a $150 device that holds about 20 albums worth of material, weighs ¾ of an ounce, runs 15-18 hours on a charge, doesn’t skip while hanging either around my neck or from my rearview mirror, no matter the terrain, and can, with a little planning, display an almost uncanny knack for picking the right song for any given moment.

I would have murdered for this thing in 1985.

:: Dave Walker 10:26 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/gadgets]
:: tags: gadgets

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